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.

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.

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?

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...

The Good News And Some Of The Bad

I thought I was severely depressed again.  I am in some sense.  I thought I was 6 years ago, needing ECT depressed, so I went and saw my psychiatrist.

It was an interesting appt.  He started out by asking me a million questions about my life at this point in time, which is weird if you have ever been to a psychiatrist.  They are often asking a couple questions, like a protocol of questions, then they tell you to take a pill.

We went through my job, how it is stressful, but fulfilling. How when I am there, I am on, I am thinking, and I am in peak form.  My pdoc agreed that my job was probably not the problem.

My dad and I are on the outs.  My pdoc thinks that is normal, given my history with my dad, and really that isn't pulling me down that much because I am 27 and am in no way ingratiated to him, so I can walk away until that relationship stops hurting so damn bad.

Then we got to my life when I am not with my family, not with Babe, and not at work.  What do I do?  When my pdoc asked me that, I had to fumble to think what I do.  My answer?  "I shop,"  I explained how my entire nursing salary is my personal disposable income due to how Babe has chosen to work our finances, and I have passively assented.  I really could think of nothing else to say.  Because really I do nothing but mindlessly spend money in my free time.

My pdoc thought about it for a while and says that usually when people are physiologically depressed, it happens in all parts of their life, as it has happened in mine in the distant and recent past.   The sluggish thinking, the fatigue, the tearfulness, the suicidality... there is no reprieve from it. 

But me... I have a reprieve.  I have my entire life, where I do not have free time, in which I am not depressed, maybe a little low in energy, maybe a little anxious, but not suffocated by depression.

He told me to find a therapist and create more meaning in my life outside of work.

I already feel better.  He didn't say there is nothing I can do, just drug yourself into oblivion until the dark cloud passes, he gave me a mission.  One I can probably fulfill.

Why Does Life Suck Like This?

Yesterday on the way to work, I felt happy.  I was excited to go.  I was excited to think through and plan a patient's care.  I was excited to meet a family and support them.

There were no families bedside and both of my patients were so developmentally delayed that they couldn't do much else but sit in the bed and grunt and scream every time I came near.  Not nearly the fulfilling day I had hoped.

But that isn't what got me down.  After work a bunch of us were meeting for an after dinner drink.  My friend and I were going to go together, then she called her husband.  He didn't want her driving that far with me if we were going to go drinking.  The reason?  How drunk I got at my graduation party.

I don't know if I wrote about it here or not, but at my graduation party, I got the drunkest I have ever been.  I was having a good time until I woke the next morning and one of my friends was mad at me, and then now on of my friend's husbands doesn't want her riding with me if I have had anything to drink.

She and I both know that I never drive drunk, or even a  little inebriated at that.  As Babe said, he never ever worries about me drunk driving because I never have even tried to do it, in the 5+ years he had known me and I also always get more than a couple in drinks in me, only when it is safe to do so for me and those around me.

I was so hurt and I didn't want to drive a ways by myself, so I just ducked out of drinks and came home last night crying.  I felt so hurt that my integrity and ability to be safe was questioned.

That of course led me plummeting down into a suicidal pit.  Poor Babe, I don't know how me does it.  How he deals with me. 

First Rain

This morning I woke up, called my mom and asked if Boogie could go over there and play with Sasha (their dog), she informed me that is was "pouring rain" outside.  I got out of bed and took a look... it was in fact raining.  Then Boogie ran in and left little wet paw prints all over the house.  It was really cute.  She is really cute. I love that little dog so much.

In other news, I am still pretty depressed.  Babe gave the big no on a house I loved, and I don't want to tell him how depressed I am because 1)I don't want him to think I am manipulating him using my mood, 2)he is stressed to the max with work, as it is his busy season and I don't want to add to that.

But really, every night I go to bed really suicidal, just praying to sleep, so tomorrow I can wake up and start the cycle of "its better in the morning, and bad at night."

No depressing cases at work, interpersonal at work going alright, I am just depressed.  I really hate that there is no real middle ground for me.  I am either suicidal or doing alright.  Sometimes I wonder if I am bipolar, but then remember that I don't really have those highs, just OK and really shitty.

My self mutilation is really out of control too.  I do it in places that most people don't see, because I don't want people to know I hurt so much, I hurt myself.  I don't even know if Babe wonders why we haven't had sex in a very long time, or that he hasn't seen me naked for a while.  I am usually an always naked person, so maybe he noticed and didn't say anything, or maybe he is too busy to notice.

So, right now, I am just isolated and depressed, in my self enforced isolation. I know that doesn't help me, but I am tired of leaning on people because I cant keep it together. 

Here We Are Again

So, I thought maybe I wasn't feeling so hot because of things at work.  I quickly worked to get that resolved.  Things at work are a ton better and unlike when I was training, the cases I have on my own, are far less horrific, and just place sad.  There is a big difference to be had.  Plus the interpersonal issues are getting resolved. 

I thought I would feel better.

I started taking my psych meds at a half dose thinking that would make me feel better, even if not the full dose, at least I would be less drowsy.

I did eat some gluten over the weekend, and felt a little depressed, but thought it would resolve when the diarrhea did.

Then I fell in love with a house that Babe and I could buy, should he like it... he didn't.  My Christmas tree will not lie in the northwest corner with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge passed it.

I got over it....then today... today... I just want to fucking die.  Like on the verge of tears all during work... crying for no good reason on the way home... depressed.

And really I cant figure out why I feel that way.  It just goes to show me that my depression is related to nothing other than my really fucked up brain, who does not work right for any period of time.

The current rash of patients with brain tumors?  What if I got one that killed me in months?  The fact that the thought brings me some kind of relief... that maybe life could take me out without me having to kill myself, so my loved ones wouldn't feel bitter, but just sad... is horrible.

That is where I am at.  I am so tired of being here again and again.

So...

I am still feeling depressed.  I started titrating up my "anti-get psycho and want to die meds."   It will be a few days before I know if it is working.  It isn't an SSR1, so it doesn't take a millennia to get at least some response.  Don't email me and ask me what works quicker than that, because everything has its drawbacks, and really waiting two weeks for an an SSR1 to work is worth it, if you are not suicidal and have tried every fucking psych med under the sun, leaving ECT your only option. 

I just sat for 45 min in a hot shower, thinking about how crazy this is, that I have everything I want, yet I am strategizing on ways to end this hellish debacle, I call my life. 

So to ease the pain, I pick, and pick, and pick, and pick at my skin.  Pick until there are parts of my body that are only scabs and healing scabs.  Babe hates the picking.  Not because I make my most intimate (and unseen by the public) parts scarrish hell, or scabbed minefield.  But because it signifies my pain.

I feel relieved afterward.  It is better than a couple glasses of wine. But a couple glasses of wine and the picking?  Heaven.  At least until the endorphins wear off and it is back to wanting to die... broaching on wanting to kill myself. 

Babe keeps telling everyone that it is my job that is making me feel this way.  I cannot deny that working in the PICU this last week made me feel like shit for many reasons, but feeling like this is not uncommon in many other times of my life, that are less stress or even happy.  So while I can admit that my job may have ignited this depressive inferno, it can't keep it going like my fucked up brain can.   I am not going to quit a job I love because it set me off once.  If I end up getting set off again and again, it may be time to change.  But nursing school often made me feel like this... does that mean I shouldn't have gotten my degree?  No.  In fact quitting because of depression would have been a failure.  Persevering despite depression, is an accomplishment and by the end of nursing school, it wasn't causing me the distress it used to.  So I can only hope that I will acclimate to the PICU in the same way. 

But tonight, I just want to go to bed.  I just want to get asleep, because most of the time when I am asleep, I am not thinking of/dreaming of my suicide.  I am just asleep, or more likely have some weird sex dream about someone that doesn't exist, or I would never think of sharing my bed, much less my vagina with.  So I want to go there.  I want to sleep. But you can only sleep for so long.  Eventually you have to get up and face the world.  Today, I am at the end of my "facing the world" energy.  I need sleep.  Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow my puppy and hubby will smile at me and I will find the strength to fight another day to love living life enough and in a way that those that love me deserve.

I Fail... Again.

Back in May I stopped taking some of my meds.  I was stable, for a while.  Today I picked up the prescription for the med, even my doctor consented me to stop taking.  I took it tonight, I will call my pdoc in the morning and let him know I started it again.  Let him know that I am depressed again.  Let him know that I spent all weekend reviewing human anatomy in my mind and trying to think of the best way to kill myself.  A way so that I wont wake up. I have woken up 3 times after downing some benzos and opiates.  It doesn't work, a little romazicon and narcan and you are back to the heaven that being lethally depressed is.  I wont even go into to the detailed plans I thought of, with the help of the access and knowledge being a nurse gives you.

I haven't been this depressed in over six months.  Maybe I should be triumphing in that fact.  Maybe I should realize that in 2004, I had my last ECT treatment, and now in 2007, I am going over six months in between episodes of sucidiality.  It really is an accomplishment.

But the only thing I am thinking, is I am 1)crazy, 2)fat, 3)have a very strong personality, 4)fairly lazy, 5) a horrible wife, 6) a horrible daughter and sister, 7)A total and complete failure, that I cannot control my mood and instead spend time planning my death.  Crying hysterically while Babe sits by my side begging me to tell him why I am so upset, because is all he wants to do is fix it.  In fact, he will do just about ANYTHING to get me to stop feeling like I want to die.  Money and time no object. 

Unfortunately, even having a husband who would give his entire life savings, heck probably  his own life, to end my lifetime of depression, does not make it go away.  Just like meds and therapy don't. 

Admittedly, I had a horrible week.  For an incredible number of reasons.  I am going to need a therapist to have the job I have, at least for a little while, because I have no coping skills for all the horror and pain this world can throw at people, much less children. 

I don't want to quit my job, I love it.  There have been many times this weekend I thought of just quitting nursing.  Becoming a real stay at home wife, getting a personal trainer, so I will have a nice body, and just spend my time, spending my husband's money, and looking pretty. 

I know this wont work.  Unfortunately I have been cursed with a personality, intelligence, and drive.  These things only serve to make me miserable of course.  Because I cant seem to use them without failing in the fact that I am severely mentally ill.

I always hear men talk about dating "crazy" women.  I am actually crazy.  I don't think I am that bad. I could actually be a good mate.  These men don't know what a crazy woman has.  She has darkness and bite.  She has complexity and understanding for things in this world that pretty, sane women don't.  Not that I am really all that fun, and admittedly I have never suffered from psychosis.

I am babbling at this point.  I am just really depressed. I want to die.