Foreshadowing

In literature, foreshadowing is a literary device in which an author indistinctly suggests certain plot developments that will come later in the story. Here are some examples of foreshadowing in my life:

I was in my first semester of nursing school when my car accident happened in 2003. So many of the things I was learning in school and a lot of the experiences I was having would soon become so prevalent in my life, but in a different way than I could've ever expected. First of all, I thought that I would be the nurse, not the patient! But as I've learned, life often has a way of throwing monkey wrenches in our neat, well-made plans.

In school we would have some sort of lab on Fridays to learn some sort of practical skill. One of the first labs we did was all about how to do a proper bed bath, and we even had to break up into pairs, get into the hospital beds in the lab room and bathe our partners and then let them bathe us. (We were basically in swimming suits, but it gave us an idea of what to expect.)

Here's another example of foreshadowing. In July of 2003 I asked Steve, a family friend and nurse who worked in the ICU of Barnes Jewish Hospital to give me a tour of the hospital since I would be starting nursing school in a few short weeks. Steve showed me all around the hospital, including the ICU. (Who would've known that four short months later the ICU at Barnes would become my home for seven of the most trying/life-changing weeks of my life?!) When I was in the ICU after my accident a few times I recognized people's faces and I could not for the life of me figure out how I knew their faces. My short-term memory was sort of fuzzy after my accident, but a few months later I remembered the hospital/ICU tour with Steve and I was able to put two and two together and make the connection.

A month or two before my accident I decided to look for a job at a hospital working as a nurse's aide. I dearly loved my job at the movie theater where I'd worked for the previous 3½ years, but decided to get a job where I could get some experience in the nursing field. I'd gotten the job, but hadn't started yet. (I was planning on quitting my job at the theater at the end of December.)

Nothing like a little foreshadowing to give life more interest and depth, right?!