How I became a nurse

I am a licensed vocational nurse in Northern California. I wasn't always a nurse. I spent 30 years as a tour bus driver and before that I drove ambulance for about 8 years. I am 67 years old and still work 12 hour shifts at a small skilled nursing facility in North Eastern California. I did not go to nursing school until I was 54 years old. That proves that no matter how old you are you can still go back to school and be succesful. I would like to encourage any of you that are thinking about going back to school to do it. I have wanted to go into nursing for many years but raising 4 children isn't easy and could not seem to get the opportunity. After my children were grown my wife of 33 years decided she did not want to be married any longer so she up and left. That is when I went back to school with the encouragement from a nurse I met on a tour bus trip to Canada for 18 days. She went back when she was 50 and became an RN. I originally had planned to be an RN but just couldn't seem to get through all the requirements such as chemistry to get in the RN program. I did do physiology and Anatomy and Microbiology but had to do chemistry to get into that particular RN program. I next chose to go to LVN school and was accepted into that program. It was an 18 month program so I graduated in 1997. In Sept of this year, I have been an LVN for 10 years. I had always thought I wanted to be an ER nurse as a lot of people do but actually I have found I prefer Skilled nursing because you really get to know your people. I did spend 5 years in Calaveras County as a med surge nurse working in a small hospital in San Andreas Ca. . I was in a boat accident and had to have shoulder surgery and was off for 6 months and lost my seniority. I then did about 6 months of home health which was a lot of fun. The only drawback doing home health in the mountains I had to drive a lot of miles between patients and tore my car up. Four years ago my wife and I decided to move to a different location and got on the computer looking for less expensive property. We found Alturas Ca. and bought a place up here. We live at 6200 foot elevation on two acres in a three bedroom two bath mobile home with a Ramada over the top to protect it from the up to 6 ft of snow we sometimes get. On the side I am a distributor of Karl's Formula. It is a product if used properly helps prevent the common cold and flu symptoms. If you want to know about it go to my website at

http://excaliburnetworks.com/index.php?id=wardjh
You can learn all about this and other products.
I am also happily married to my wife diedre whom I met on the internet about 6 years ago. She is very supportive of my work and in fact has decided to go back to work and has applied for a job opening at the hospital. The one thing I would like to do is encourage older people to go back to school it is really enjoyable and also would like to encourage more males to become nurses because their is a great need for men in this profession. That is about all I can think about writing at this time. I am going to try and find a group to support that helps to prevent suicide because I just lost my oldest grand daughter to suicide on Nov 15 of this year.