Preston Dahlgren, R.N.

So I have been meaning to post this for a while, I just haven't had a chance. Who knew that summer vacation could be so busy!!

As you can see by the title, Pret passed the NCLEX and is officially a Registered Nurse. There is quite a story behind it, though.

So the minimum questions for the NCLEX is 75. If you only get 75 questions, you either bombed it, or passed it easily. Well, Pret got took three hours to take the 75 questions and then was kicked out of the test. He had felt better about it than the first time, but still wasn't sure, so he had no idea whether he had passed or failed. Needless to say, he was a little anxious to get the results.

He had taken the test and not passed in March, but his results were still posted on the testing site. He paid to get the results of this test (taken June 17th), but tried too early, so it gave him the failing results of the earlier test. He called to let me know that he hadn't passed (I was in Wyoming with my parents) and so we were all really bummed that night. He was able to hang out with and talk with a few friends to keep him occupied and distracted, but it was still a rough, depressing night (and I wasn't even there to scratch his back as he fell asleep. It was sad!) Our mothers were probably the most upset about it of all of us--my mom couldn't stop moping and his mom just didn't know what to think about things.

Brenda (Pret's mom) has a really good friend that became a RN about a year ago. She told Brenda about checking the State of Utah Professional Licensing department (DOPL) to see if he had an active license and trying to beat Pret to knowing the results of the test. Well, Brenda was awakened at 4:00 in the morning after he found out he hadn't passed and was prompted to go and check the DOPL sight just in case. When she checked, it showed that he had an active license as of the day before! She went running into their bedroom and woke up Pret's dad, Dan, and they decided they ought to let Pret know.

Well, we don't have a land-line and Pret turns his phone off to charge at night, so they had to drive over to our house and pound on the door/ring the door bell repeatedly (because we have an air conditioner going in our bedroom) to try to wake him up. They finally got him up and he was a little disoriented. They had printed off the page and showed him and I think he was in a state of shock. I had actually left my phone on so I could use the alarm, so I awoke at 4:30 to see my mother-in-law calling me. But when Pret answered, I was really confused. I asked why if everything was ok, and he replied, "Sort of." I then asked why he was calling from him mom's phone and he then proceeded to tell me the whole story. I was so shocked that I didn't really know what to say. We chatted for a bit and realized what had ended up happening with the "unofficial" results still being posted. It was amazing the difference in talking to him. He was a completely different person!

I was pretty tired, so I just kind of hung up and drifted back to sleep, but Pret was so hyper that he just went to the gym before he had to go to work. It is amazing what a difference having two different results make.

So Pret has now been working as a RN for almost a month. It has been a transition, but he is enjoying doing "real" work and more than anything, feeling like he is free to do what he wants and not feeling like he has to be studying all the time. We have enjoyed working on some projects together that we haven't had time to do since we moved into our place last summer. More than anything else, though, he has been working hard at de-bugging our house. We seem to continue to get infested with ants and now earwigs. We attribute the latter to all the rain we had at the beginning of the summer. What a pain!

I am still working on getting the pictures I took onto the computer. Please be patient!