GreenSunflower

I'm Back

After a much needed break, and a few emails stating how much I was missed, I am back.

During my time away, I wasn't really depressed, just making changes in life.

I am transferring to the emergency department where I work, and am really excited for a new change.

I am 8 days post ovulation and our baby dancing timing looks good, so it is possible I could be pregnant this month.

Babe and I are going to Hawaii in a short 24 days.

I am sure there will be more to say, but I just wanted to say I am here again.

Why, Oh Why

Why must managers take things so personally and retaliate? 

Why must I be so sensitive to feedback from someone with whom I have little invested?

Why must I cry when people think I do something, I did not?

Why must I want to be a nurse?

Why must I feel so overwhelmed by inappropriate criticism?

PSA For Morons Like Me

If you take 200mg of Prov1g1l, do not forget you took it and then have a triple latte, and some green tea. But if you do, pray you have At1van too, because you will need it.

Broken Dreams and Crushed Spirits

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that in nursing school, two things happened.  I was in love with nursing, I could see nothing more wonderful than being a nurse, and I was at the head of my class.

I still love the idea of nursing and actually giving patient care.  I love my babies, toddlers, kiddos, and teenagers.  I love their families.  I love that everyday I get to do something to save a life.

But nursing in reality, is something very different than the fluffy clouds they show you in books and nursing school.  In reality you are working with people. People who have a sometimes painful job, people who are insecure (as many people are), people who need to fit in, basically humans.

Once you add that negative human element, not just the caretaking role, you get something different than expected.

These people get jaded after a fairly short time, and before long they are playing favorites, speaking badly of people, and excluding whoever it makes them feel better to exclude.

Then a little bright eyed bushy tailed nurse, who was at the head of her class and shows promise shows up. She might be a little dark, but on the whole she loves nursing.  She has a nice husband, a sweet dog, she is smart, OK looking, and has her shit together.

From that point the profession as an individual and a whole decides to bring you to your knees and tear your bleeding tender heart out of your body, such that you are ready to  leave the profession and never look back.  A profession you desired more than life itself the entire time you were in nursing school.

It will make you feel like you are ready to be a cooking, cleaning, dilettante housewife.  It will make you ready to abandon your dreams and never dream again.

That is where I am.  Ready to quit.  Ready to involute and never make myself so vulnerable as to dream again.

Insecurity

I am at the point with work, where I don't know if I am just insecure and miserable because of how sensitive it makes me, or if work really is that bad. 

Tuesday night was kind of a last straw for me.  My immediate supervisor called me into her office.  I knew it wasn't going to be positive because she never sees the need to tell someone they did something positive, only when they have done something negative and though, most negative things that happen in the unit are the result of a cumulative and multidisciplinary process, they need to blame someone, this time it was me.

A month and a half ago, I had a patient for an hour in my care.  He was stable while I had him, but busy.  I didn't chart very much because I had him for a very short period of time.  I was never trained that I had to do some specific type of charting so I didn't do that.  Well I gave a scattered report to the oncoming nurse because I had gotten little report on the patient myself and only had him an hour.  The patient happened to crump but not expire that night.

My supervisor brought all of this attention. As if my lack of charting was the reason a critically ill child had a rough night.  She made it very clear that she was looking to blame me.  I could identify many places where a lot of people could have maybe made a bad mistake or a judgment that in retrospect wasn't the best.  She told me she had not gotten back to me until a month and a half later because she had to investigate the situation so she could present it to me.

Why wasn't I part of the investigation if it is really done with the purpose of us all improving our care?  It wasn't, it was figuring out how to solidly blame me, without asking me any questions during a time when I would be able to remember enough to defend myself.

I came home ready to quit.  Ready to quit because my management doesn't support new nurses constructively and because I must be a horrible nurse because I took care of my patient instead of charting.

Then insecurity hits.  And I hate that my job makes me feel insecure rather than confident, because it seeps into other parts of my life.  It makes me feel like a failure, and when you think like a failure, you will fail and I hate that too, because if you do fail, you really do feel like a failure and it cascades from there.

The good news is I am fertile right now, and Babe and I have been having well timed sex. 

I have an appointment with a counselor to talk about the drama at work.

Um.... So

Right after I wrote that last post, Babe came downstairs to talk to me about how shitty I was feeling.  And in his true style he got me realizing that I had stopped taking one of my meds in order to have safer baby dancing/making.  I think my nausea and inability to function were due to anxiety and I hadn't had anxiety like that in so long, I forgot.

I took a big dose of At1van, went back on my Ge0don (which starts working quicker than an antidepressant) and while not perfect, I feel much better.  I slept for 12 hours last night and feel caught up on my sleep. 

As much as I am going to get judged, it looks like I will have to take the Ge0don while pregnant.  My doc has said that is OK, benefits much outweigh the risks, but it just kind of sucks.

As least I am feeling better.  Time to go sew.

Lonely

This will be a post that starts a fight between Babe and I should he read it.  Because anytime I post something about how our life is less than perfect, or he is a less than perfect husband, trouble starts.

I am sorry Babe , you are not perfect.  I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you making babies, taking trips, growing old, but right now the 80 hrs a week you are working is making me feel like  a single woman.

On Friday or Saturday i was bound to ovulate soon, so we "baby danced" since Sunday, I have felt incredibly ill.  I am nauseous, I have an unstoppable migraine, and am always on the verge of tears.  Every ounce of my nurse being knows there is no way in hell, I could be pregnant and feeling this shitty within days.  But if not the easy answer, then what gives?

Of course since I have been well a mere 4 weeks since my last love affair with my couch, Babe has little patience for how shitty I feel.  I don't even think he believes I am sick. Yesterday he talked me into going into work, even after I had called in sick, because obviously I was just faking it. 

Immediately upon arriving at work, everybody started to ask what was wrong with me, as I looked horrible.  I went home a short two hours later and slept and slept. I woke up and still felt like shit.  I feel like shit right now.  I am just exhausted, but cant sleep, and feel nauseous. 

What is wrong with me and why is feeling so mysteriously sick so isolating?

I Am Fucking Ready To Quit My Job

The tat'ed up 15 yo gunshot victim, with gang members visiting?  Who cares, nurses scare them, that is why they get all pansy aggressive before you sit them on their fucking ass. 

The infant with subdural hemorrhages, who mommy's boyfriend "dropped."  Sad, but sadly common, you get a thick skin to it.

The miserable accidents at the hands of great  parents... even more sad... they don't deserve it.  But we get to me a emotional support and sort of gateway into the rest of life.

The cardiac patient, with one ventricle and screwed up vessels?  It may be six surgeries later, but they will be adults, and maybe even have kids of their own.  It is a painful but fruitful road.

New onset hardly curable brain tumor?  Horrible chemo... eventually death.  Immensely sad, but as said before we get to be a part of that family's journey.

But why I want to quit my job... the amount of mean, spiteful, cunty, gossipy, evil, sanctimonious, hypocritical estrogen floating around that place?  Makes me want to vomit. 

Do I sit around feeling excluded because I am not part of the mean girls click, or do I sit and thank my lucky stars I don't have to be taken to the side of the room, so I can hear mean thing said about other people, whom I probably consider my friend, but will pretend not to, just so I can remain part of the mean girls?

Do I cry because they talk shit about me?  Do I get pissed because they intentionally bait me, so they can drum up more stuff to gossip about?  Do I feel lesser because they openly exclude me from all their functions? 

Or

Do I blow them off?  Do I tell on them?  Do I quit?  Do I tell my manager that I am giving it one year and if the morale around the place isn't better, I am outta here?

The latter is my choice.  And I don't want to talk to my shift manager, I want to talk to the unit manager.  I want to tell her that I cant take it anymore and the thousands upon thousands of dollars they spent teaching me how to do my job is going to go right now the PICU budget drain, because they cant get people to stop being so fucking mean and conniving.

Babe made ridiculous amounts of money last year, and the year before, and the year before that... you get the picture. Working isn't even something I have to do. I do it because when that little girl who left our PICU today after 3 long weeks, hugged me and said "thank you Miss GreenSunflower", my heart melted.  I do it for the times a parent tells me they couldn't have made it through "that night" without my help, support, and knowledge.  I do it because I love families. I love to make them thrive. 

I don't love working with too many fucking women.  I don't love working with most gossipy backbiting group of people I have ever met.

I am ready to get pregnant and stay at home.  Loving families is not worth being miserable to my own, because of the bullshit at work.

Feeling Well- Why Blog? Being Green, Baby Diapers, and More

People who read this blog must think I am always suicidal and always depressed.  Hardly the case.  But I tend to blog when depressed, just to dump it out into the cyber world.

Things are going fairly well, except for the horrible hormonal nature of an unmodified reproductive cycle. 

Babe and I have a commitment to being as green as possible, without taking shorter showers:)  The thought of having a baby and using disposable diapers sickens me.  At work, the number of diapers I throw away and disposable stuff in general, makes me fee badly.  The only way I can justify it, is we throw things away to save people's lives.  Reusing many of the things we throw away, would put patients at serious risk.  So I can deal with that.

But at home with a baby, or just me and Babe?  We recycle everything.  He works from home and put 834 miles on his car last year.  My car if fairly fuel efficient and my next car is going to be a hybrid.  Babe probably wont be buying a new car, as he uses his so infrequently.  I try to use as little disposable stuff as possible, and when I do use it, I use items made from recycled items.   I try to buy unbleached products whenever possible.   

So then the idea of diapers comes into play.  About this time last year, I was baby crazy.  I bought a whole bunch of fuzzi bunz cloth diapers.  I only bought medium and large, with a big emphasis on medium.  That leaves newborn and small sized diapers.  I found the website VeryBaby, by reading its owner, Jessica's Blog.
They even have a forum to post your questions and comments.

I also bought a pattern to make my own sanitary napkins.  I cannot tell you how grossed out Babe is by this.  I bought a stainless steal mini garbage can to keep them in, which has a removable plastic container.  They wont be for heavy flow days, but rather on light flow days, when I tend to use pantyliners, which bother me when they go into a landfill.  I will still use my OB tampons (no applicator) on heavier flow days, because sitting in a pile of endometrial goo, well that still grosses me out a bit.

I got my PUL, birdseye cotton, diaper gauze, microfleece, and pattern in the mail today.  Tomorrow my serger comes.  Then I am golden to start sewing more stuff!!!!

I will post pics of my sewing as it comes along.

Update

Where do I start?

Looks like baby crazy may be back in action, this time Babe's idea, and we are both on the same page.  For Babe's superstition, I cannot say more

Boogie is cute as ever.  I totally want another dog. Babe says we need a bigger house, and if we need another dog, maybe it is time to go baby crazy.

I am back at work and I love it.  I forgot why I love it until my first day back.  The kids, the parents, my coworkers, the action, the thinking, the skills... and on and on.

I think the weight gain may have been halted by the thyroid meds.  Yippee!

Depression is at bay.  I have been feeling pretty good, haven't cried in probably a week or so. 

Mystery illness:  This is a whole subject all together.  I still have lots of pain, but it is better controlled with NSAID's.  I have much more energy since taking the thyroid med. I just don't feel right. 

I already sent in my absentee ballot and I voted for Hillary, because well, she is a woman, and any Clinton cant be bad.

Till next time...