Question?! Answer: Ask Tuffy Luv.

Dear Tuffy Luv,

I’m graduating with a degree in nursing. Where should I move?

Ready to start life

Dear Ready to start life,

Wow. Well, that depends. I found this nifty little site: fabulousnurse.com. According to fabulousnurse.com, the best city for a nurse is Austin, TX, followed by San Antonio, TX and Salt Lake City, UT. Seems to based on a number of factors, including basic number of job openings and salary. I also found nursinglink.monster.com, which claims based on cash per hour, California and Hawaii are the top two. Um, I think I’m going with that one.

You’re obviously looking for an adventure, since you’re willing to relocate any flooping place based on your question. So open up your options by eliminating some, yes? First you need to think about what you’re going to do with that nursing degree. Do you want to work in a hospital? Or do you want to be a psychiatric nurse? Or a nurse educator? Or a school nurse? You can search that way and find really interesting jobs in other cities that you would never have found if you just searched “nurse.”

You could also be a travel nurse or disaster nurse and help by traveling to the people who need you most. Aunt Tuffy will worry about you, because it’s dangerous and scary, but I’m sure it’s also incredibly exciting and rewarding. On the other hand, you also have to think about other things. Like?

(1) Your family. Do you want to be close to them? Far from them? Make sure you know and consider it!!

(2) Starting your own family. Do you want to do that eventually? Think about the general time-line you’d like to set and pick your location based on how steady or not steady you might want to be.

(3) Do you like cities? Rural areas? Suburbs?

Girl, you need to visit some places. Take a roadtrip and figure out what the floop you like in a place. And then find a job and move there.

Hearts & Skulls,

Tuffy Luv

[Lead image via Supri Suharjoto / Shutterstock]

Last week I went to my university’s health center for a birth control pill issue. As soon as Dr. Nancy scurried in with her Lisa Frank name tag and orthopedic shoes, I knew that this was going to be trouble. I answered the routine questions and then braced myself for what was next; the question that every single girl dreads.

“Are you sexually active?” inquired Dr. Nancy with her beady eyes judging my contraceptive-popping self. What the hell are you supposed to say in that situation?

“Well, you see Nance, I did hook up with my ex-hook up two weeks ago but other than that it’s been quite the dry spell…” Nobody really wants to delve into their complicated lust life with a complete stranger.

This got me thinking, how does anybody really know if they are “sexually active”? To me, activity isn’t all-or-nothing; there are several levels to be aware of. Dr. Nancy, for instance, would abide by the criteria of “hyperactivity.” In other words, if you have ever touched a boy or even really thought about it, you are sexually active for the rest of your life and probably well after you’re dead. Read More »

[Every once in a while, we have to go something that blows. Something we’re not prepared for. Something, that at least, makes a good story…]

I took my off clothes slowly, placing them in the plastic hospital bag and eyeing the hospital johnny with intense trepidation. Intense, fearful, trepidation. I was in the hospital for a biopsy – a biopsy that had been scheduled the day before – so there really hadn’t been any time to prepare for what was about to happen. And when it comes to hospitals, I need to prepare.

After clothing myself in a paper thin gown and crawling underneath a paper thin blanket, I made small talk with a nurse as she prepared vials for the blood she was about to take, and an IV she was about to shove into my arm. Apparently, when you get a biopsy of something hanging around your rib, lots of things are included; vials of your blood, IVs, a few needles of Novocain, “conscious sedation”, and some kind of giant, hand-cranked needle to do the actual biopsying.

The hand-cranked needle was the thing I was least happy about.

I sat underneath the blanket and wiggled my feet, squinting as the nurse flicked the inside of my elbow, the same place that had been flicked only a few days before, and squinted even more as she stuck the needle in. “Looks like someone already got you right here!” she said cheerily, and I nodded as I bit my tongue, wondering if she knew how painful it was to puncture an already bruised patch of skin.

Once the IV was taped securely to my arm, I began the always taxing process of sitting and waiting. People in scrubs padded in and out of the room, my parents stood over the bed and made some strange jokes, and my nurse checked my blood pressure, pulse, and asked me thousands of questions – including if I was in “spiritual distress” (a question I considered answering yes to, because, isn’t every twenty-something in spiritual distress?). Read More »