Lame

So essentially I’m very lame and have no very good excuses as to where I’ve been for the past few weeks. School has been totally kicking by butt time commitment wise (and therefore emotion wise) Today I spent no less than 10 straight hours on this beautiful sunny day hunkered down in Panera typing up THIRTEEN pages of notes for my midterm in Pathophysiology which is on Tuesday. Pathophysiology is a little overwhelming as I expected and I’d like to meet whoever had the bright idea to make this class into an “accelerated format” class and make the students responsible for 14 weeks worth of lessons, including 14 separate online tests, the mid-term, final, class presentation, and online discussion board questions in an 8 week time period. Our mid-term on Tuesday, 4 weeks into the class, covers the first 600 pages in our text book. Nice. And the final… 4 weeks from then our final will be covering the next 8 online tests and 800some pages in the book.

Make my statistics class accelerated — we’ve learned nothing in that class!

I’ve also been working nights because they’ve decided we should work 6 offshifts each month now. Out of a total of 12. I also had a traumatic shift one of those nights where I made my first major med-error as a nurse. Hopefully last, although a few people have assured me that’s just wishful thinking. I had a patient who was being boarded in the ER for the night because there were no beds. She was a sick cancer patient who was in for pain control. Very sweet, I tried to take good care of her and everytime I walked in asking her how her pain was an reinforcing that I had her narcotics in my pocket and could give them whenever she needed them (probably better for her than being admitted to a floor room because she was my only patient for most of the night). Anyway. The floor doc came down and wrote orders for her sometime around 3/330am. I looked them over, morning labs, regular diet, PRN (as needed) med, Daily med, Daily med, patch to get changed each sunday. She was assigned a bed about 630am so she left before change of shift.

I was driving home about 8am and I got a call from the daylight charge nurse asking if I had given her metformin in the middle of the night because the floor was “all fired up” about this med not having been given. I said “nooo, I only saw daily meds” – anyway long story short, apparently one of the meds was ordered “daily with a dose now” and I totally missed it. And to make matters worse I found out the next week that it wasn’t metformin (oral diabetes medication) but atenolol (blood pressure medication). I felt like the worst person alive. Her pressure had been up through the night but the ER doc had finally written for some nitropaste which brought it down, plus she was in pain which can elevate pressure too. I mean nothing bad happened, when she went to the floor her pressure was about 130/80… but I still felt just AWEFUL. It’s totally inexcusable regardless… but it’s not even like I was busy or doing something else. I just didn’t see it? I looked through the list and just never saw it. Oh god, I was in tears for days. Plus I was convinced I was going to be fired.

I had a long talk about it with my preceptor, which I think was good for her too because she was having a lot of guilt about that cardiac arrest patient from the other week, but the summary of her advice was “You have to look at how your patient was, what was her pressure when she went to the floor?” I said 130/80, and she said “well then it doesn’t matter, shit happens and no one died” and my mother kept telling me “it’s bad, but it’s a learning experience, it would have been worse if you had given her the WRONG med, or too much of something… nothing bad happened to the patient”. Ugh, I hope to never go through that again! The guilt was terrible… for weeks! Everyone has assured me I won’t be fired. The charge nurse that day said she was pretty sure our boss was most upset that the floor called him at home, on his day off, at 730am. It’s been a few weeks, and I haven’t got a pink slip yet, so hopefully I’m okay.

I also totally fell off the shrinking-jeans wagon for ahem, all of March… which is now spilling over into April. I’ve just been too busy to go to the gym, and have been induldging my food wants just a LITTLE too much. A little because I want to, but I’m sure a little has to do with stress… I need to get back on that. Of course, then there’s this mid-term.

Note To Self

On your next day off do not turn on the computer or television. They are time warps and will suck away your whole day.

I set my alarm for 8am AND actually got up at 8 feeling well rested (I was so tired after work yesterday I was fast asleep by 10 and slept the whole night without even getting up to pee) then I made the mistake of turning the computer on to quickly *wink wink* read all of your blogs over breakfast. The whole rest of my day off I managed to do nothing but waste time on the computer, order new checks, and make dinner — where did the other 10 hours of my day go????

Indecision

I’ve been doing lots of thinking. I know I’ve mentioned that I’m currently in an RN-BSN program and on track to roll that over into an MSN program to be a Nurse Practitioner in a few years… I’m pretty sure I’ve also mentioned that my mother is bribing me to apply to an anesthesia school of nursing (her profession) by paying my application fee. I’m also pretty sure I’ve mentioned that they get, oh, 600+ applicants for 25 or so spots. So I’m not exactly holding my breath about getting in, nor am I putting anything on hold for the nurse practitioner program, because I’m kind of just assuming I’m not going to get in. In the past 6 months or so Hubbin and I have been seriously discussing trying for a baby this summer. I’m starting to get to the point that I just want one. And thinking about it all the time. I’m sure it’s more logical and everything for me to wait a few years to finish school first… but it’s just that I want one. I’m starting to be attracted to all things baby. It used to be maybe once a month I’d be drooling over other peoples babies, but now I’m thinking about one on an almost daily basis.

It’s still a debate in our house whether we’ll have 1 or 2 children, Hubbin and I are both only children (he wants 1, I want 2), but there’s part of me that wants one now… to give me more time to think about a 2nd later… and I’m a little worried that if I wait till I’m 32ish and totally done with school for the 1st I won’t have enough time to fully consider a 2nd.

I didn’t realize how much I was looking forward to trying this summer until we had a serious discussion about waiting to see if I got into anesthesia school before we tried. Because Hubbin fully believes I’ll get in. I’m working on my application now, but I still might not find out one way or the other until next winter, to start in the fall of 2010… and I was a little disappointed thinking about it. I had an afternoon off this week after my yearly gyne appointment, where we briefly talked about “maybe” and I spent a good hour in Babies R Us just wandering around thinking about it. My friend is having a baby in April and her shower is in two weeks so I went looking for a gift off her registry, but ended up just wandering around thinking… “baby, no baby, baby, no baby”, for not even kidding, an hour and a half.

Part of the issue is this nurse practitioner program I’m in is part time, and at least until the end of the program is only one day a week… which isn’t too bad… Three days a week in the ER, and one at school… and while I’d prefer to be done with school before having a baby so far this program doesn’t seem overwhelming enough to completely talk me out of waiting till I’m done. The anesthesia program however, would be extremely time intensive for about 2.5 years. …so that if by some long shot I got into that program… I guess truthfully I’d rather not have a newborn at home to be worrying about or feel like I’m neglecting.

Sometimes I wish Hubbin and I were both just content to not have extra money. We’re doing just fine, but we both want me back in school so in the long run I’ll have a much better income potential, but sometimes I wish we didn’t care about having extra money to do fun things or buy nice things…

Lots of pros and cons and unknowns to all of it. And sometimes I just can’t help it, rational or not, I want a baby right now.

Confession

I can’t believe I’m going to admit this, but I was actually looking forward to going to the gym today so I could weigh myself.

I feel like I’ve been losing weight on my diet, but I wanted to see the number just for proof. Weigh-in Wednesday is coming soon 🙂

 

***update***

I think I gained back at least a pound tonight at the Japanese steak house for the party…

Lost

Gosh, it’s so hard to tell a story when you’re so far behind…. thinking about the energy it would take to start at the beginning exhausts me. I also don’t really relish the idea of typing out the whole story because, like I said, I know what I’d say to someone if I read this story. The story kind of makes me sound like a sucker which I don’t like either. And I’m sure you’re all going to read this and think Hubbin’ is a total asshole, there’s just too many emotions involved for me to think that at this point. So… please refrain from straight-up “he’s a jerk, leave him” comments because like I said before I’m still really hoping this will all work out.

The summary is that this isn’t a new problem (sucker) and it’s not that we’re fighting… He’s committed one of those unforgivable offenses. I wonder if we were fighting if it would make it easier to decide what to do? The problem is that he’s got himself into trouble talking to girls online. There, I said it. Hubbin’ is cheating on me in the new-aged-computer-fashion.

I guess I’m suspicious by nature, my only other long-term serious boyfriend lied (a lot) but the first text message from a girl I stumbled on by accident. Our friends were on vacation and were to be coming home that day and Hubbin was out mowing the lawn when his cellphone started chirping, so I picked it up to see the message, assuming it was his friend. And this is the part I hate to admit… that was before we got married. Ugh. Shame you can’t see into the future, ehh? At first he tried to deny it, that lasted all of 10 minutes because, well, I had seen different already. He sent a reply text message in my presences that he had plans with his fiance that night. I’m sure it won’t shock you that the immediate response was “I didn’t know you were engaged?” …. So he quit talking to her. Obviously more drawn out but this is the abbreviated version.

…but I never quit snooping. I know, snooping is wrong. But what he’s doing is more wrong. Don’t worry, I told him those exact words.

Now it’s much worse. Much, much worse. Once again, the surface was discovered by snooping, gosh a couple months ago now. Different girl, worse problem. I knoooooooow. I know what you’re thinking. Once a cheater always a cheater, god I’ve made the same comment to friends too. That’s why I can’t talk to anyone. I could tell you word for word what’d they’d say. You got married too fast, Once a cheater always a cheater, Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me. I KNOW. I feel like a fool. My close friends from high school never really liked him much to begin with, I’m sure my mother would insist I pack up immediately and move back in with her (for all eternity)… my dad might kill him… might…

And I’ve spent the past few weeks thinking, where would I go if I moved out? How would I ever find someone so perfect for me again? I can’t imagine it’s even possible, he’s everything I’ve ever wanted in another person save for the now possibly unfixable trust issue standing between us.

I knew some of this from snooping, but during our very emotional conversation the other night He really just let it all out. He said he decided the only hope of me ever trusting him again was to tell the whole entire truth. It was really really hard to listen to. From our previous talks over the past few weeks he told me he felt rushed to get married because his father was dying. Now he’s not sure he made the right decision, he’s not sure a happy comfortable life is what he’s meant to lead. He feels stuffy here.

So she lives in east europe. He’s never met her in person but he first started talking to her online, mmmm 4? 5 years ago? fuck. I was extra suspicious because I know he’s going to europe this summer because the best man in our wedding is getting married. I asked him if he had planned to meet her. He said he did. He said they talked for a real long time years ago and she always wanted him to come visit, but he chickened out… they quit talking after that. Then she found his number/email/whocares and sent him a message last spring. Isn’t that wonderful? Brings warm fuzzy tears to your eyes doesn’t it? And he’s been talking to her since. He’s started into this whole “what if” frame of mind, and feels like he just can’t know for sure about us until he’s met her face to face. Do you see why I didn’t want to type this out? I feel like such a moron.

Now he’s spent the past week trying to make me smile and I’ve spent the past week crying at the drop of a hat. I have to chock back tears at work, anytime I’m sitting and left to think for too long I want to cry. In the car. Shower. Lunch break. Plus I feel like a fraud. After the Christmas party everyone was saying how cute and charming he is. What do you say to that?

I, obviously, want to work things out and have a happy marriage. I meant it when I got married. He wants to work things out too, I told him it’s awfully hard for me to work at building our relationship when I know he’s building a relationship with someone else too. But, I mean telling him to quit talking to her isn’t going to solve the problem is it? Telling him he can’t go this summer isn’t going to make me feel any better.

I don’t know what would make me feel better. I can’t imagine moving out would really make me feel better either? I feel lost, a mess. I don’t know what to do, I just want everything to be better. I’ve known for a few months things weren’t quite right, but I was really hoping that I could be done with nursing school before I had to really deal with them. I’m just so hurt, and feel like the only one who can make me feel better is Hubbin’… and he does a little, it’s certainly not for lack of trying… He tells me he thinks he wants a future with me, he’s just not sure. I just don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust him again.

Anxiety

I’m so anxious. Occasionally I think I’m depressed but I think the heart of the issue is anxiety. Sometimes I think I should talk to someone about being on medication.  On a scale of 1-10 I would rate my current anxiety level an 11.  I nearly started spontaneously crying 3 times today while Christmas shopping and once during our dinner date. I’ve tried to tell Hubbin but he keeps asking “What are you anxious about?” I keep saying “everything”. It’s hard to explain. The simple fact of existing right now is making me feel anxious. I really hoped that when my final ended on Monday I would feel relief… I haven’t yet.

Today was my first of two days off since school ended Monday. I did, by the way, score precisely what I predicted I would: 87% on the final, so I finished the class with an 87%, smack dab in the middle of B. Today I was jolted out of bed by a combination of my alarm at 7:45am and a simultaneous text message from Hubbin asking me to drop his laptop computer cord off at work for him by 8:20am between classes. As I had planned to hit the snooze button at least once, brew some coffee and waltz out of the house at 8:30 for my 10am eye appointment (on the other side of town) I had a mad dash to leave the house. Followed by a day of Christmas shopping. I’m not ready for Christmas, no I mean really. I’m just not in the mood at all. I’m not happy or festive, I’ve done nothing to prepare (before today) and we’re hosting Christmas at our house. Fabulous.

Therapeutic Communication

So I’ll admit I’m not the best with the therapeutic communication business. I’m more of the type of person that would say “oh? You see little green men in the corner? You’re right. And the little green men say it’s time for you to take your pill and go to bed”….

(PS for those of you non-nursing types the ‘therapuetic response’ would be ‘I don’t see the little green men, but I’m sure that’s scary for you’…. and the next time your senile grandma tells you she needs to go home because her father’s worried about her you’ll know that the therapeutic response is ‘it’s 2007 your father died 23 years ago’ –orient to reality– which results in 45minutes of desperate tears of: ‘why didn’t anyone tell me he died’… therapeutic. Right. -But I digress…)

…Last night at the mental institution we had another 4 hours (FOUR HOURS) to sit and practice therapeutic communication with whichever crazies (That’s the PC term 😉 ) were sitting in the TV room. I don’t know about you but I have trouble sitting and talking for 4 hours straight with someone I like, let alone someone I don’t know. Turns out I would get to practice my therapeutic communication afterall. I’m sitting next to a fellow nursing student, my age, female, and we start chit chatting (she’s not so into the mental health rotation either) and she says “So remember how sick I was last week?”

(…and here’s where I need to interject that no student nurse will ever willingly miss clinical for illness. You have to pay a fine, and make up the hours, and risk failing out of the program… I’ve only known one person to miss clinical for being sick and that’s because she was admitted to the hospital. If you recall I even dragged my sorry butt to clinical 3 days post-op while I was still bleeding from the ass…)

I said I did and then she proceeded to tell me “I found out why. I was 6 weeks pregnant and just found out last week” I attempted to hide my surprise because I was still a little unclear “you are?!” “I was” “wait, you are?” (you may be able to see where this is going faster than I did because my brain just does not function rapidly these days) “I was 6 weeks pregnant, I got an abortion yesterday”. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve never actually known anyone first hand who got an abortion and didn’t really know how to react. While I don’t think I’d make the same decision even in the same circumstances I’ve long maintained I don’t think that’s something you can know what you would do until you’re in the situation and godforbid you ever have to think about something like that.

We ended up talking about it for quite a while and she told me she was horrified when she found out and there was no question in her decision. She told another girl in our group last week when she found out and told the girl she wasn’t going to keep it. The girl told her “well if you’re not going to keep it just don’t even tell anyone” I said “that was probably very good advice because that’s something people feel very opinionated about in this country” (the girl I’m speaking with who got the abortion is from Africa) She talked about it with her boyfriend (of 3 years) and told him this was what she wanted. Her boyfriend has a job in Chicago and she didn’t want to go through a pregnancy/baby without him here. She told me she was not emotionally, mentally, or financially ready for this. Her due date could have delayed her graduating till the following year and that’s just not an option.

So we talked about everything from how she was feeling to her thinking about getting an IUD so she would not have to worry about this happening again. Even by the time I got home late that night I was still in disbelief: “Wow, I can’t believe she actually told me all of this” because when it comes right down to it, I still barely know her. I hope it helped her to be able to talk about it with someone, and to let someone know how much she was hurting that night.

I told Hubbin when I got home and honestly didn’t know how he would react. I wonder sometimes how I would feel and how he would react if I ended up pregnant before I finished school. Obviously we’d end up with a baby, but still, I wonder what emotions would be most prominent at first. –Although I know his mother would be excited enough for all of us– I think I’d be scared, I’m pretty sure I’d cry. (Even though I still sometimes wish on my way to clinical at night we could go back to the post-partum unit and I could bathe the babies and long to take one home again) I feel so overwhelmed with everything that’s going on in my life already that it was still possible for me to be sympathetic with her decision even though I sometimes get caught up in the emotions of wanting my own baby right this minute.

Breathless

Poor Hubbin. He sent me to bed early last night because I have a busy day. He woke me up at 12:30am out of sheer frustration, as in near tears, because he just flat out can’t breathe. He went to see the allergist about two months ago and of course tested positive for every single thing they tested him for. (His only mild reaction was to dogs which is one of my worst. Henceforth there shall only reptillian or aquatic pets.) I feel so bad for him. He had to take today off work because he couldn’t breathe enough to fall asleep and if you can’t sleep it’s hard to be an enthusiastic highschool teacher. He is supposed to start getting allergy shots but had to wait for the dust around his health insurance to settle after the teachers negotiated a new contract this year. He takes Zyrtec daily, often takes Benedryl at night too, his allergist told him it was fine to take an expectorant regularly to keep from drowning and his allergist gave him an albuterol inhalor. I was convined he had undiagnosed asthma because it’s always the breathing that’s an issue but the allergist said he didn’t have asthma.

He’s going to try and get another appointment today with the allergist, and I told him to please just start getting the shots, at this point it doesn’t matter how much they’ll cost out of pocket, this is rediculous. The poor guy hasn’t slept in bed with me for more than a year and a half. He sleeps in the living room on the leather sofa that he can wipe down with disinfectant before sleeping with only a blanket he runs through the washer every other day. No pillow, that would be too many dust mites. I almost never confess to people that he sleeps in the living room every night because the reactions I get are just ghastly.

The problem is there’s just nothing left that we can do! We bought a house without carpeting, we don’t have cloth ANYTHING, he changes the airfilter on the furnace at least once a month, the air purifier is always running… I mean what’s left? Amputating his lungs? Something is just not right when you wake up at night with nightmares you have lung cancer!

I spoke with my mom, who’s already a nurse, not just a nurse in training like me and she agrees with me that he should get a TB test, and probably needs to be seeing a pulmonologist as well as an allergist because this is far above and beyond a runny nose.

No offense to anyone out there but I think allergists are kind of witch doctors anyway, at least that’s what my experience with them has led me to believe. I went to one a few times about 10 years ago for this recurrent rash I kept getting around my eyes and had a complete work up only to have the allergist’s official statement be “Well my hunch is you’re allergic to something, I just don’t know what”…. Really? That’s why I showed up at the fucking allergist in the first place!

Here’s hoping poor Hubbin can get in to see SOMEONE who can do SOMETHING today.

I wasn’t always this smart

When I was little my friend and I thought you pooped out babies. Playing house always involved a trip to the bathroom before there was a new babydoll involved.

I also didn’t know boys had buttcracks. Remember the movie coneheads? That’s what I always envisioned until I spied on my friend in bathroom when I was 5.

You know those factory smoke stacks? With the billowing white smoke coming out? I used to think that’s how clouds were made.

I also thought tornados were solid. You could be just feet away from it but as long as it didn’t touch you, you would be ok.

Grumpy Pants

I had a rotten day yesterday. Nothing, persay, happened I was just emotional and feeling rotten. I will attribute approximately 50% of this to PMS, 25% to generalized anxiety, and 25% to this:

I’ve finally decided after dealing with my fissure this problem I don’t like to talk about publicly for so long and trying alllllll the little creams and lotions and shots they can perscribe it’s time to buckle down and have the surgery to fix it. I am not happy about this. Sure, it’s a little “outpatient” “one day” procedure and you know, compared to a heart transplant or lobotomy is no big deal…. but it is to me. Especially given the experience I had with my colonoscopy.

I just hope it works and I hope I don’t have any lasting side effects from the surgery. My preop appointment is on the 7th. I don’t have a surgery date yet and frankly that’s another source of anxiety because my fall class starts in August and even though it’s a “one day” thing I have class 4 nights a week and have no idea when I’m going to be able to squeeze in surgery. Hopefully they operate on Fridays.