For close to three years now I've had a secret crush on this man that goes to the same gym as me. He looks a bit like Tim Roth and Eddie Munster. Oh, how desirable you say. Well he's like 95% Tim Roth and 5% Eddie Munster but I just can't deny that 5 %, although I'm sure he would. If I were ever to talk to him say. Yes this is someone I see pretty regularly, before school started almost daily. And in those three years I've maybe had three conversations with him. Two painfully awkward ones, in the presence of my children, in the elevator and one equally maladroit attempt at chatting when I saw him by myself. Oh and two and half years ago he smiled at me in the parking lot, I had driven back to retrieve my gym bag which I had left in the parking lot. So what do I do? Smile back? Hell no. I made this strangled gasp, grabbed my bag and ran around my car in a circle (it was like a chinese fire drill with myself) . Honestly it would have been harder to look more laughable. I mean he's married with two children, so there's no reason for me to be such an idiot around him, he's not even available. But I don't know what it is, some people just turn my insides to mush (brain included) and I become this middle aged infatuated moron. How attractive. On one hand I realize that if I were to talk to him, at length, like get to know him, this whole crush might be dispelled because he could very well be dull or dumb or close-minded or not funny, so in some incredibly bizarre masochistic sense it's good that I don't talk to him. And honestly what's the likelihood that I could talk to him without potent pharmaceutical intervention? But this way he forever maintains the status of being the man at the gym that makes me weak in the knees.

so with school and my avalanche of stressors (situational and self induced) which shows no signs of slowing i don't get much quality time with the kids so i'm going to start taking either owen or oona for a few hours on saturdays so i can just have fun time with them and reconnect because i'm feeling really lost from them since school started and it's a horrible feeling. yesterday i took owen biking (that's zoo traffic in the background, don't even get me started on that since the easiest way to my home is taking the same street zoo parking is on.) and then we had hot chocolate and brownies together and it was really nice and such a welcome break from my life of late.

has anyone seen a tree with these type of thorny growths on it before?

owen and i kept talking about how nasty looking it was and he was saying if the womping willow in harry potter had these type of thorns on the ends of it it would be even nastier a tree than it already is and no amount of pumpking juice could heal the wounds such a tree might mete out.

here's owen poking at one of the more benign thorn growths.

owen's making a peace sign which you can see on the large version of this picture, probably not so clear scaled down this much.

setting the bar low

Well, lower. I've gone from needing to be the top student in my class, to needing to get high honors this term, to maybe honors is enough, to why don't I just try to get through the term where I only visit WPIC (the psychiatric rotation in our clinical term) as a student observing and not as an actual patient being admitted. I know I am setting the bar real low here but i'm sort of crossing my fingers, hoping I can do it. I have a midterm on monday which I'll be studying for in every spare minute over the next three days (when i'm not procrastinating by writing or cleaning) because the tests this term are kicking my ass! Of course, it would help matters if my heart would comply with my body when I try to relax and focus but no. Thank you very much for the support in my previous post, you don't know how much that helps right now.

american beauty

I have wanted to write for so many weeks but I don't even know where to begin. I feel so raw from everything I've been going through for the past month. My father died on September 18th. I'm thankful that I was able to see him before he died and my children got to see him too. Owen was sensitive, as usual, and frightened by my father's appearance that had become horribly distorted from the cancer and medications. Oona was unfazed and ran up to hug him then twirl through the room. I spoke with my Dad on a Monday and he was fine. By Tuesday he couldn't talk clearly to me, the cancer took over his brain that quickly. Of course it also attacked his liver so the toxins in his body just went up to the brain, adding insult to injury. Death is not tidy. I just wanted to say goodbye to him and tell him not to worry, that I loved him and I would be okay, that he didn't need to worry about me. He yelled at me when I tried to feed him lunch the day we left. I know, intellectually, that it wasn't him. He was out of it cognitively, even when he yelled it was that he didn't want that medication that he thought I was giving him. But I bawled. It was the one time his eyes were open, bright blue and seemingly clear even though what he was shouting about made no sense. It was horrible. And I don't want that to be what I remember. And his siblings keep telling me not to worry about the 'cross words I had with my dad at the end' which isn't even accurate and that I was his pride and how much he loved me and it just feels so empty. And is it just bitchy of me to feel that way? Oh and to top it off, the last day we were in Cleveland I discovered that my children were completely infested with lice. I'd wanted to stay until Saturday, which is the day my father died, but I couldn't see how I could do that with the lice in a hotel. I was overwhelmed. I came home to start the nitpicking and laundry (which took on Fantasia proportions). My first test in school was that Monday. I'm phoning it in with school, I mean I'm trying but I get these waves where I'm just crushed with how bad I feel. I have trouble eating (so I look horrible!) the past month I've been feeling like my body is in a state of a permanent panic attack. Oh and did I mention that the bulk of my student loan went towards paying for my father's cremation? I just want to sleep, if my racing heart will let me. But actually I really need to study because I've got another test tomorrow and a midterm next Monday, nursing school doesn't stop and I'm not supposed to either.

So... I started writing poetry.. Because isn't that what everybody does at a point of crisis in their lives? Someone I love gave me this book over the summer and I loved it and it made me want to write again. Even if it winds up being the poor man's version of this book. I can just write my poetry memoir, minus the anorexia, plus the bulimia and with a lot more alcohol consumption (and boyfriends!) and file it away and not have those memories gnawing at me. This poem isn't breaking properly on the blog but I can't figure out how to make that work right now. I'm just happy I was able to type a somewhat coherent post at this point.


American Beauty

My dress for prom was shiny satin, sweetheart neckline, the color
a deep fuschia. The lady at the store wore a corsage of pins on her wrist
that she plucked from to take in my waist
She deemed it amercian beauty rose through lips pressed tight
over the steel petals in her mouth. I fell for the fancier name.
My shoes were dyed to match. Junior prom and I was bringing him.
But I had on the necklace you gave me, a synthetic stone hung
from the thinnest gold chain. I never found it pretty.
But it was enough to remember the smile on your face when I opened the box
that was enough to make me happy. So Christina borrowed my pearls
and they looked lovely on her. And I became cozy with regret.
Slipped away from his hand as it climbed higher along the back
of my satin thigh as we stood under an arbor weighted
with fake roses waiting for the flash to go off.
It wasn’t fair. I’d had no shame about making out
in front of the group that shared our limo. The badness I’d been so intent on
erasing was becoming a bigger, darker mess. My handiwork
only made things worse. I realized too late that I was in
over my head. I laughed it off when he told me
once the best time in his life had come and gone
he was going to start taking chances. I couldn’t truly respond, fear
took my voice away. Later as I drove him home he wouldn’t stop.
Kissing my face, my neck, buried his face in my shoulder
to nibble at a clavicle. I took my hand off the stick, pushed him back
and chided you can’t do that or we’ll get ourselves killed. Undeterred
he continued up to my ear whispering but wouldn’t it be a great way to die.

first day of school

For owen that is. i have to wait until next wednesday for Oona's first day of kindergarten. But Owen was very excited about his first day and his new 'snazzy' pants for his first day of school. Another couple of weeks and those snazzy pants of his are going to be snazzy floods what with the way he's growing. I call him cricket and hopper lately, when I look at his long slender sticks for legs, he weighs in at 60 pounds after eating a very large meal. And the slick shoes that were dressier than his usual run of the mill velcro sneakers. Owen is a boy who likes to dress up for the occasion, whatever it is. He's actually talked about owning a tux in some not to distant future in his 8 year old head. Of course I've also come into his room, waaay past his bed time, to find him bawling worried about college, getting a job, affording a house. Yes the boy clearly takes after me with respect to spiralling out of control with catastrophic, crippling anxiety at inappropriate times (although I'm not sure if there ever is a truly appropriate time). But I don't know where the dandyisms comes from, although, now that I think of it, my Dad, his Grandpa Boo, was a bit of a clotheshorse. The man had bespoke shirts, suits and coats when he was traveling to the Far East every six weeks for work, back when I was in middle school. Those were the days.

Maybe it's just me but i think Owen's belly button bears more than a passing resemblance to a yin yang symbol. That and being born on August 8th (8/8) I think Owen would be very appreciated if he took a trip to China and, you know, went around flashing his navel and shouting out his birthday. Apparently in Chinese numerology 8 is a very auspicious number, one reason why the beijing olympics started on 8/8/08, and yes they carried the 8 to the limit with the official starting time having been 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8 pm. I also just learned (thank you wikipedia!) that 88 is bears a visual resemblance (when you look at chinese characters) to 'double joy' which is a popular decorative design for joy or happiness. But that belly button, if you can look past the bit in the middle which makes even me, his own mom, squeamish at the resemblance to brain, the outer part looks like a yin yang.

august

Owen turned 8 last sunday, on 8/8 no less. If i had my shit together a little better I might have posted something earlier but this past week I had my final in school and was sort of overwhelmed with the whole nursing school shebang. Oh, by the way, many posts ago I bemoaned the state of my hair, or lack thereof. Well I had a scalp biopsy and it turns out I have telogen effluvium which is a condition that can be brought on by stress and usually winds up correcting itself once the stressor is removed. I'm just hoping that nursing school isn't the stressor otherwise I might be profusely shedding for the next couple of years, since I'm assuming my first year on the job might be a wee bit stressful too.

But back to Owen, his birthday and that enviable torso with nary an ounce of fat on it. I had custody of Owen for his official birthday. Just writing that sentence is so sad and let me tell you if you beat yourself up or question your parenting as a stay at home mom being a single parent kicks the parental self flagellation to a whole other level. Well I got Owen and his friend E saturday evening to take them to see Sorcerer's Apprentice. Originally E was going to sleep over at our house and go to the wave pool in the morning with us but he was a little nervous about the sleep over idea so we dropped him at home and picked him up in the morning. It was a really nice birthday with Owen and his friend. They get along swimmingly and they were so cute to watch in the wave pool, bobbing and plugging their noses against oncoming waves and, my word, how did my son get so big overnight? It was nice to spend the day with just Owen and his friend. That's the hardest thing for me with single parenting. I miss out on the one on one time you can have with your children when there's another partner in parenting. It's especially hard because Owen and Oona will fight for my attention and then I yell at them to stop the fighting and my time with them has changed so radically in the past year and a half as it is. And now being in school, I love learning all the new things about medicine but the time taken away from my kids. It kills me in a very soul sucking at any remnants of self esteem I might possess sort of way. But I need to think positive. Owen and E really enjoyed themselves at the wave pool and after dropping E off in the late afternoon we came back home and played Operation. Owen was most impressed with my surgical skills. I think he thought I did so well due to being in nursing school. I got Owen a bike because he still doesn't know how to ride a bicycle, little knife of parental guilt with that admission. He's a bit nervous about the idea of falling but, well I got Oona a bike too, because she's braver and I thought that might help with Owen's nervousness. I'm hoping to get them riding by the time school rolls around for all of us. I'm also hoping that this idea isn't a recipe for disaster between the three of us; frustration, fear, new skill and easily overwhelmed parent... I'll keep you posted.

fledgling

Awesome clinical week. I got to put in a catheter on a patient yesterday, smoothly and successfully, of which I'm eternally grateful for. My patient had a significant change in mental status from tuesday to wednesday and someone I was working with ignored my repeated concerns about this. Being the lowly nursing student it is very easy to be blown off. Fortunately my instructor listened to my concerns. She got involved, a request for consult from a doctor or nurse practitioner was put in. I overheard the nurse practitioner on the phone after meeting with my patient, she didn't see a significant problem but was ordering additional blood work. When she got off the phone I mentioned that I was the student working with said patient and that there was a marked difference in mental status from tuesday to wednesday. It turns out I was very right about being concerned with my patient's altered mental status. Based on the lab results, which I looked over today, I'm pretty sure the link in the previous sentence is what afflicted my patient. They wound up transferring my patient to another unit (a step below ICU but a step above where the patient had been). I hated to see a patient's condition deteriorate but I am very happy that my assessment skills were accurate and that it resulted in helping my patient. Being so new at this I doubt almost everything I hear, see or think on the floor. I want to go with my gut but I frequently feel like I'm too inexperienced to go with the gut since I don't know what I'm doing. It's on the job training in the most terrifying sense when it's the health of people on the line. But I was right! To make a difference for the better by using my nursing skills, is infinitely better than acing any test. Plus I got to hear an amazing heart sound with my patient both days. A swishing sound, which made me question my hearing but after researching my patient's chart more and looking (and listening) to stuff online I was right with what I had heard. It's amazing to develop these skills. Well, back to reality I've got a killer test and diabetes presentation to study for.

I've been remiss. Actually I've been sucked into the quicksand that is nursing school. It's affecting my dreams, or I should say nightmares, because I have many a nightmare where I'm working in some completely unsanitary hospital trying to load and administer a heparin shot and I just can't get it right. Oh my. And I thought it was bad when I had nightmares about waitressing when I worked at a diner during my summer's home from college. I'm buoyed on by the fact I still love medicine, the more I learn the more I love it, it's endlessly fascinating to me. My patients are so wonderful. I don't really consider myself a people person because I'm sorta introverted by nature and can get painfully awkward trying to make small talk with people. On a side note someone I see all the time at my gym but never talk to given my shyness was in this small computer room with me just last week and I wanted to disappear that's how bad my shyness is, especially when this guy sees me sweat profusely in clothes that leave little to the imagination. But he actually came up and introduced himself and was really nice, which restored my faith in physicians. I being an idiot and caffeine deprived (never good to go from 5 am to 11 am without coffee) asked him nothing about himself and wound up kicking myself for being such a social idiot as soon as he left. But back to my patients. The patients I've had reaffirm my belief that most people are inherently good and kind and that they reaffirm this belief in me while they are in a position of physical vulnerability, I am indebted to them for what they teach me. My favorite patient so far, I had her a couple of weeks ago. She had a name as inspirational as her outlook on life. This woman had been through a medical nightmare and yet she was so well adjusted and emotionally sound it was dumbfounding to me. She was a retired teacher though and it came through in the how kind she was with me. At one point she commented on my photo ID being a nice picture of me (remember the drama I went through for that picture) and then she's like, 'It looks like you've lost weight.' I started saying no but I guess I have, the stress is wrecking havoc on my body, my hair, my face (I'm aiming for fixing my face with graduation, passing NCLEX and a job in hand). She was funny and smart and gentle and when I work with patients like her I'm so grateful for this career I'm choosing. I just tend to get very hard on myself for any mistake I make because, well peoples lives are on the line. But this woman told me as I was finishing my shift that I was going to make a heck of a nurse and I felt like the grinch when his heart swelled to three sizes to big. It made me feel like all the hair off my head and on the floor might be worth it in the long run.

So yeah, these pictures have nothing to do with nursing. I had the kids on sunday and wanted to take them to a wave pool but got horribly lost for an hour and a half, wound up bawling and settled for Beechwood farms which I know how to get to. It was a pretty day though and I got to take some pictures of them, it's been too long.

I'm in love with my daughter's profile

okay I've got to admit I get very neurotic when I see feathers in kids hands, especially my kids hands, when I think of where that feather has been, like on the avian ass of a carrier of a potential killer strain of influenza. Lots of speculative ofs in that sentence. Even if that's not the case it was probably lying in goose scat moments before.


I don't know what has happened to the bottom half of my face but I want it to stop NOW. I tried to crop myself out of the picture, because Owen and Oona look so cute in it, but it looked too odd cropped.



This picture was a happy accident but I liked how it looked like evening when it was the reflection in the water.

just a little pinch

I gave my first shot today. Subcutaneous heparin in the abdomen for DVT prophylaxis, since surgery can put you at risk for DVT and my patient just had a gastric bypass. She's nice as could be, doing remarkably well for her first day postop. And when I gave the shot I didn't hesitate and I didn't hurt her, aside from the pesky pinch. Thank you God! I get to do another tomorrow. Subcutaneous shots seem relatively easy. Honestly if I can do it, and I worry about everything, then they're relatively easy to do. The real challenge will come with intramuscular injections, which are your immunizations and flu shots. Longer needle, a little bit trickier in terms of the areas you inject in and apparently some nurses and nurses in training have hit bone. The person receiving the shot never realizes this because the bone has no nerves on the exterior. But for the person giving the shot, it's a feeling they never forget (one student said it's like putting your needle into a rock). Our instructor said she could always tell who hit bone during flu clinic by the look on the students face, they get wide-eyed real quick. So I've removed an IV, removed 2 foley catheters, given the subQ shot, emptied a Jackson Pratt drain and flushed an NG (nasogastric) tube. Oh and I started passing oral meds last week. It's hard to believe I'm doing all this stuff four months into school! And I've been up since 5 this morning and have to wake up at 5 tomorrow so I better stop blogging and start winding down for bed. Hope you all are well and that no one needs a catheter anytime soon.

Oh my. That seems to be the phrase that best sums up my life right now, at least the best profanity free phrase. So in this picture to the left I look like my normal self, aside from being a little glum, since stress seems to be a permanent state that I'm in lately, and a little bit skinny, side effect from all that stress. You might have thought I was joking with the losing my hair post. I have complained about my baby fine hair quite a few times before. But what I would give to have that baby fine hair of two years ago. I went to the dermatologist on friday and had a messload of blood drawn to see if there is a medical reason for my hair loss. In the past month my hair has become so thin that I spend most of my weekends crying about it. Yeah, I probably should buy a few scarves and get out more. But I cannot stress to you just how devastating this is. I mean I never had nice hair, aside from when I was a child, but at least I had hair that covered my head.

In the two weeks since my last hair rant post I've lost enough hair that you can now see my scalp pretty clearly. And if I push the hair to the other side, well it's just as obvious. It's thinning everywhere. Never before have I prayed so hard that there is something seriously medically wrong with me. Hyperthyroidism, lupus, brain tumor. I don't care how bad it is, as long as it can be treated and this hair loss can stop. I keep thinking, it would be one thing if this was happening to me but the rest of my life was not in the crap maelstrom it currently is. Okay, I know I'm not dying. But I don't have a husband or boyfriend that loves me no matter what and really how much more difficult is being bald gonna make it to find that. What the fuck did I do in a previous life (or this one for that matter) to deserve this kick in the ass of the little self confidence I possessed. I'm embarrassed to even go out. I only go to school and the gym. And I'm starting to worry about how to cover up my scalp. I so don't want to be the person people gawk at because of the way I look. Okay and on an aside, because you know I've become an alopecia expert in the month I've noticed this problem, it seems unfair that there are programs to give woman undergoing chemo wigs but nothing for people who lose hair due to other conditions. Locks of love helps children who lose hair for the many different medical conditions but there doesn't seem to be an adult equivalent of locks of love and let me tell you some of the high quality wigs can get really, crazy expensive. There are laser treatments for hair loss too, and some that get really fancy where you can add your own plasma rich protein to the laser treatment but I'm pretty sure that's waaay outside of my price range. When I think of all the expenses around this house that I can't afford how the hell will I manage to get a decent looking wig? If it gets really bad I'm just gonna shave my head and charge a really nice wig to my credit card. I'm not asking for Rapunzel locks I just want hair that covers my head.

clinical inexperience

I keep hoping that I'm eventually going to feel more comfortable during my clinical days, but so far it has yet to happen. Fortunately I actually got a good night's sleep last night, went to bed at 9:30 for my 5 am, it was dreamless, deep and blissful. But as soon as I set foot on the hospital floor this morning my body is in a constant state that I can only liken to a panic attack. But prolonged, like 7 hours prolonged. I actually did better last week when my patient was rather needy and I had to help her pretty much my whole day. I didn't realize my panic then, the day was just a blur of brief and bed changes. But this week I have a very easy patient and I'm losing my mind. How do I look busy when I have nothing to do or don't know what to do? I ask other students if they need help or else look stuff up on my patient, trying to figure out the various lab tests, burrow in my chair. I just want to disappear. I can't emphasize how dumb and out of place I feel and it's a horrible feeling to have, which it looks like I'll be having for at least another year and a half. I practically jumped up at the end of the day to help a student clean his patient, who had an episode of urinary and bowel incontinence, apparently she didn't feel right have a male student nurse clean her up. I was happy to help, after last week that's something I now have plenty of experience at. The past couple of weeks I've even seen my primary care doctor on the same unit as me but I won't even say 'hi' because 1. I've only seen him 3 times before and don't think he recognizes me and 2. In my heightened perpetual panic state I don't think I'd make the best impression. I swear they're gonna wind up calling a code on me because I'll probably drop dead of a stress related heart attack. Maybe I'm going through perimenopause right now and that's what's giving me the insane level of anxiety with this? I just keep praying that something is going to reveal itself to me, in terms of a clinical experience that I actually feel comfortable in. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's psychiatry or the OR rotation. My God what am I going to do if I get through all of nursing school and have yet to find my niche and still feel the same as I do now? I wish I could write more about my experiences but I'd be violating patient confidentiality, can't break HIPAA privacy. Well, keep your fingers crossed for me that I get a good night's sleep tonight.

Comments that I don't find all that helpful

'Don't be so nervous.'
'Don't worry.'
'You need to be more confident.'
'You look tired.'

I have spent the weekend looking up hair loss treatments instead of studying for my test tomorrow. My hair, which has always been thin, is now anorexic. The one part of my body that I've never wanted to be thin. When I put my hair up in front I'm able to see my scalp more than I used to. If my hair gets any thinner it's gonna disappear that's how thin it is. Not a lot of sure fire options, aside from wearing a wig and I think that might be problematic with the amount I sweat at the gym. Although with a wig I might finally be able to have hair past my shoulders.

Oh God. Honestly, I don't need this on top of everything else. My mom, in trying to help me out, said that you can lose your hair from an emotionally stressful event, although the hair loss usually occurs 3 - 4 months after the event. If that's true I'm gonna be hairless by fall. If I looked like a young Sinead O'Connor I could totally rock that look. But I don't and that look only works in certain circles, not good for middle aged nurse.

Okay I'm going to really make an attempt at studying now.

since i've been gone

It has been months and I've wanted to write, had so many ideas flitting through my head but, life has sort of kicked me in the ass of late. So... to update you.

Three days before my final in Basic 1 (which was back in mid-april) I learned that my father was in the hospital. My aunt Maren called me on Sunday to let me know that on Friday my dad had told her he thought he was having a stroke. So she called an ambulance and when they arrived my dad had a seizure. And I get called a couple days later. I love my father but he is an alcoholic (and a chain smoker of 46 years) and our relationship is somewhat dysfunctional, so when I got the call I was angry, upset, guilty (why do I always feel so guilty?) and very 'why couldn't my dad wait until I was done with my final to have this happen to him.' Totally irrational I know. They found a growth in his lung and brain, which they suspected was cancer but the bronchosopy was inconclusive. They needed to remove the tumor from my dad's brain because it was close to his motor center and giving him a lot of problems with his right side. That part of his body wouldn't 'listen' to his brain. So he had a craniotomy and they learned that he did, indeed, have cancer and that it's stage 4. I talked with his oncologist and found out his prognosis was 4 - 10 months. I went up to visit him while on my two week break in school and it was hard. Not only because he's dying and there are so many loose ends in our relationship that I know will never be resolved. But also because everyone in my father's circle in Cleveland is an alcoholic; my aunt, all his friends that visited him. I don't mean to be judgmental but it makes me sad to see the potential in my father, because he's so so smart and has a really engaging, charismatic personality. What demons in his head have tormented him that he chose to self medicate to the extent that it has wound up being his death sentence? And when I saw the one bedroom apartment that my father and aunt have been sharing for the past 7 1/2 years. It was shocking. I went to visit my dad for a few hours at the hospital, stopped at a grocery store and bought $30 worth of cleaning supplies and then went back to the apartment and spent close to FIVE HOURS cleaning, and I only tackled the bathroom in all that time. It was squalor. I had planned on sleeping there but wound up getting a room at the Days Inn down the street. My aunt was mortified that I was cleaning. I didn't mean to make her feel bad in any way but, I don't live in Cleveland, I'm thinking 'how can I help my dad?' and the one thing I know I can do well is clean. My aunt is a very smart, very kind woman. She offered her apartment to her younger brother and he came and took her bedroom! I love my dad but he's such an asshole in so many ways. His poor sister has been sleeping on a fucking twenty year old sorry shape couch! For seven and a half years! He didn't even offer her the bedroom when she had shingles. What the fuck?!

The next day I went to see my dad and we played scrabble a couple of times, for someone who just had brain surgery he did amazingly well. I went back to his apartment and spent the rest of that day cleaning his bedroom. There were clothes with dust piling up on them. And so many bills that he doesn't even bother to open. Back in November of 2001 when I went to visit my dad for thanksgiving I found a sheet detailing the extent of his debts, to the IRS, friends, his boss, various doctors and dentists, Indian Valley country club. $492,757.07. And let me tell you that number has grown higher since he moved to Cleveland. I tried to sort through his bills, thinning out mutiple notices of the same bill. I mean I'd think it would make you feel better, psychologically, to see just one bill from Cleveland Cardiology Associates for close to $700 than six notices of that amount. Sunday morning I went to visit my dad before I left to go back home. It was so cold and grey and all I could think was that I just wanted to get home and go to the gym (because my body has become addicted to that physical stress release).

My dad is currently in a long term care/short term rehab facility while he undergoes radiation on his brain. They moved him there because he is to weak physically to manage getting to the radiation appointments on his own. A social worker from the facility called me last because she wanted to try to talk to my dad about his full code status (which means taking all measures to keep him alive) because given his cardiomyopathy and the cancer, he's doing very poorly physically and emotionally. Apparently the radiation is taking a horrible toll on him, they bring him to his radiation treatments in an ambulette by stretcher because he is so weak. He is so weak he can't go by wheelchair anymore. When I talked with the social worker it sounded like he probably won't last for four months. She wanted to talk to him about hospice or having him sign a DNR which would be more realistic than the full code status given his health, or lack thereof. Toby very generously offered to drive the kids out to Cleveland this weekend to see my dad. I've got my first big test to study for and plan on going out to see him next week.

So school started up again on May 3rd and it was full speed ahead. Two full clinical days at the hospital and we stop over the afternoon before we start the clinicals to meet with our patient and start our paperwork. You have no idea the extent of the paperwork we have to do and hand in at the end of clinical on wednesday and after two days of waking up at 5 a.m., putting the full 7 - 3 shift in, post conference, completing two care plans, and a medical surgical database and the blue card and the pathophysiology -I can barely function. Oh and during my first week my patient got transferred at the end of my first clinical day so I got a new patient and had additional paperwork to do. I went back to the school to access the medical charts and got a text from a man I've been seeing and the message he sent was not good. Yeah, I've been in a romantic relationship of six months that no one but Elise, my mom and my therapist have known about. So I was already close to tears after talking to him on the phone. Hell, I was close to tears when I found out I was getting a new patient. But then I went to the computer lab and there was a problem accessing my new patient. I went to get the woman who deals with the computers and as we were walking back to the computer lab together I just started bawling. It was more than I could handle at that point. That night I was so strung out on nerves I didn't get to sleep until 3 a.m. and yes I had to get up two hours later.


So back to the bunny I pulled out of the hat, the clandestine relationship. I'll spare you the dramatic, dysfunctional details but basically a rubicon (his word not mine, I didn't even know what it meant until he said it and I looked it up to make sure I was inferring correctly) presented itself and he failed to act on it. And I told him I couldn't be with him anymore. But not without a week's worth of protracted roller coaster emotional emails and texts that culminated in a two hour phone call at three in the morning two days ago that ended in my heart breaking, which I didn't think a possibility at my age. Oh my. I had to take a test the first day of nursing school, where they look at your critical thinking skills (they have you retake the test at the end of school to see your progression). I aced the analysis, explanation and self-regulation. I got the highest score you could get in these areas. Why, oh why, can I not apply those skills when it comes to matters of the heart? I fell so fully, utterly, completely in love with this person and it's not that he wasn't worth it, he was more than worth it, but my love was so misplaced.

So from that break up I went to clinicals, on four hours sleep. I cannot tell you how close I was to just dropping out of the program that morning. It isn't enough that I'm overwhelmed with the clinicals on 8 hours sleep, with half that I was fried. I get so nervous with these clinical experiences, knowing I'm so inexperienced with all of this. I can't find pulses to save my life, the radial is easy but posterior tibial? dorsalis pedal? popliteal? It's maddening how hard they are for me to find, which just makes me nervous, which just makes it that much harder. It's a vicious cycle. When I came home that night I was beyond tired and beyond sad. I've cried more in the past three weeks than I would have thought possible. I am so spent. But when lying in bed praying that sleep would come, I prayed for God to help me (yes, I am agnostic and I talk to God a lot in my head but it's rare I pray out loud). But I actually got a good night's sleep that night and the next day I was a bit calmer. That morning I chatted with my patient's physical therapist, at lunch I talked more with the other students, sometimes it's hard for me because I'm at least ten years older than most of them. But the thing that really saved me that day was a conversation I had with my instructor. We talked about a lot things, being a single parent, my dad's dying. She really connected with me and took the time to help me out so much emotionally and in terms of supporting me when I voiced my concerns about whether I'm even cut out for nursing. There were a couple times when I was about to cry and I still get teary thinking about it. Now she might have just read my face (it is transparent), realized how depressed I was and thought, she had to do a psychosocial care plan on me that day. But I really felt my prayers were answered with her reaching out to me. I don't know what my concept of God is, I like to think it is the goodness inherent in everyone. I still get butterflies just thinking about clinicals but I just have to push through it and have faith that I will get better at this. There's a place for me somewhere out there in the field of nursing. Hopefully.

So I'll try to write more when I can. And I need to change that banner to spring before summer rolls along. I can take a picture of my backyard after I have mowed it with push blade reel mower, it is comical how much it resembles a bad buzz cut, what with the weeds that refuse to be cut down.