GreenSunflower

This Is Why I Write This Blog

I don't have my email on this site right now, this comment alone makes me want to put it up again.

sorry, but this is not a comment.  This was the only way I knew how to contact you.

I have been reading you blog for awhile now.  I was fortunate to find it through links on other blogs. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, despite the awful comment, you are an inspiration. 

I have been recently diagnosed with depression.  Although it is not as severe as yours, it is still very difficult living with it.  I have not yet come to accept it as an "illness." No matter what my psychiatrist and therapist say; it's still a foreign concept.

You have inspired my to share my journey with others. I hope to inspire as you have inspired.  And at the same time, I hope to learn about this condition and myself.

I am so proud of what you have accomplished and I am so happy that you have a great husband who takes care of you when needed.  I am going to school right now, and it is very difficult for me to focus, concentrate, and even care about my classes since I'm so wrapped up in my depression.  But I know I can do this, because I have read you struggles and I know I can go through it.

I'll be starting a blog also.  I haven't started one yet. But I would like to share it with you since you have been sharing yours with me and the world.  I will also be using typepad.  It looks much easier to use compared to the others I have checked out!

I know that being mentally ill sucks, you are not an ill person, in need of the same care, as anyone with a chronic illness is, but you are crazy.  Everybody makes it out like everybody is sane, and the fact that you will admit to being anything but mentally perfect, makes you crazy.

I maybe crazy by that definition.  I am also an RN, a wife, a doggie mommy, a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a cook, and a friend.  I do all of these successfully while being crazy.  The thought that being mentally ill somehow precludes you from being a functioning human being with value, makes me upset.

So I post the intimate details of my life on this site, so people can see that I have a life and I often want to kill myself.  The two are not mutually exclusive. 

I graduated with honors from a BSN program, I got a job people fight for, and I have a husband that many would want, all while being chronically suicidal.  That doesn't seem possible does it?  Well it is.  Is it hard?  Harder than it is for most people?  Yes and yes.

Evidently this person saw that and also hopefully saw she is not alone, and that she is not on the fringe of human kind.

That is exactly why I write this site.  Mental illness is hard, it is debilitating, but it can also be adapted to, worked with, and used to make you a better, more successful human being.

I Was Totally Unaware That This Site Could Do So Much

Recently someone commented here about my emotional instability, named the hospital I work at, and then proceeded to tell me that they read my blog to feel better about themselves, but also said that I make too much of my pain and suffering.

I dont think there is anyone who reads this blog and doesnt know I struggle.  I put all this mental illness stuff up to show people that dark thoughts happen, depression happens, and is survivable.  I often get comments about how I shouldnt be a nurse, or I dont deserve to live in someway because my mental health suffers.  These people have never seen me at work, nor do they understand my capabilities as a nurse.  Those that both know my mental health issues, and know me as a nurse, do not find the two incompatible.  I have to value this opinion more than those of nameless commenters.

Lots of people know where I work.  I still think it isnt right to name it on my website, when I so obviously keep it off here.  The fact that you know the name so well, and not just like most people, tells me I know you, and that makes me sad.

My sitemeter tells me you spent 15 minutes reading my blog, after doing a google search for it.  I must ask why you look so hard for something to make yourself feel better.  Wouldn't working out, or say finding joy in your own life be better?  This blog is my emotional outhouse.  All the dark and crappy gets laid here.  Yes, I am fat, but I am a fairly happy fat person when you meet me.  Being fat hardly qualifies me to make someone feel better. Yes, I am depressed, and that sucks, it sucks really bad.  I suffer greatly for it, but at the same time, despite the horrible depression, I have managed to accomplish a lot in my life.  More than one person has said my life in enviable and those that know me best, are able to say it with meaning.  I have built a life of meaning and success.  If you look to my website to make you feel better, it tells me you haven't done the same.

When I was less adapted to my depression and less successful in life, I used to take a similar pleasure in the sorrows of others, but now that my life means so much to me, the failures of others do not, simply because I have plenty to make me feel good without the downtrodden woes of others.

And you say my life is so sad, it makes you feel better, but you also say I whine.  I will be the first to admit that my problems in life are not as large as others, but also that others do not suffer as much as I do.  You may think that my problems are self inflicted and I can stop them if I want to.  I am sorry if you feel that way, and may you never be cursed with an illness that people do not understand well, such that they ridicule you.

And as far as Babe goes, he will tell anyone that will listen that my struggles, new or old make me who I am.  They make me a woman with what he calls "the wow factor."  They make me a consummate individual with sympathy for that I may not understand.

I have stripped my blog yet again.  Those that need my email have it.  You may think you have won.  You haven't, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so I have prevented you from hurting me.

May life treat you well, may you never stumble to the laughter of others, and may you find happiness in yourself, rather than those around you. 

I Get My First Hate Mail!!

I wrote this post the other day.  It seemed pretty uncontroversial to me, but I got this comment in response:

YOU are the kind of RN I do not want to be, the cocky I'm better than you! Do you even care about your patient's? I read your comments about MA's & CNA's on PharmD. Please hold your head in shame, or cover your head with a bag. These people work just as hard as you do, if not harder. So they don't have the education you claim you have, it doesn't make them any less than you. I use to be a CNA; and I realize and empathize how hard it is for CNA's, and the workload a lot of them have. I will not be a hard ass like you. Isn't everyone in the medical field there for one main reason, the patients? From housekeeping to the physician's. Or has the 20+ dollars a hour fogged your memory...what a waste!

First, I don't even know which blog PharmD is, but that is not the point.  I wanted to keep it private, so I emailed him/her back, but it got returned, so I will post my reply here.

I would venture to say you are not really in the thick of actual nursing school.  Because if you were, you would know why RN's take pride in the fact that they are not a CNA/MA and that they are an RN, which is a totally different profession.  If you were really well into a nursing program, you would realize this.  It is comical for a CNA or MA to call themselves nurse.  Take vitals, giving IM's, and maybe starting IV's or doing any other skill a monkey could be taught, does not a critical thinking, care planning nurse make. 

I am sorry you think I dont care about my patients.  If you read my blog further, you would know my husband makes a lot of money and I dont have to work AT ALL. I do nursing because I love my patients, my families, and my coworkers.  I love the profession with every part of my being. I work in a pediatric intensive care unit and come home somedays crying.  Most people have not seen and will never see, what is my daily job.  No matter who you are, watching a neonate get compressions, is not fun. But doing those compressions, or giving that epi/NaHCO3/atropine/dopa/vec and getting that kid back, is the best gift you can get from life. 

And just for the record, MA's dont do chest compression in a code, they dont dose epi, and they dont start a dopa drip.  Nurses do. Because it is important, and needs a lot of education. It is so much more than priming a line and hooking it up or prepping a bristojet and pushing it.

Get off your humble pie high horse, get a little experience in actual nursing school and come back.

I know I am a bitch, but I also know that a lot  people who are RN's will know what I am talking about. I know a lot of people with hard earned licenses will also understand.