Well, well, well...it's been 5 years since my last post...
Ah, friends.
Where to begin?
I'm not sure whom is even looking at this blog anymore, and maybe it will serve as a warning to anyone wanting to go into this miserable profession in some distant future of googling "ICU" or "Anesthesia" or "CRNA."
I can tell you what my life is right now.
For the last few months, I've been waking up, and goofing off on the computer--sometimes buying things on ebay, sometimes selling (mostly selling lately) and sometimes laying out the outline for a book I want to write.
The subject of this book is the reality of the nursing profession, as I've experienced it.
There are so many myths and ideas...none of them made clear to you BEFORE you head down this path.
I honestly have to say that one friend (ONE!) and my own mom tried to dissuade me. I should have listened.
12 years ago, I sat in this very spot, on the computer, recently laid off from my job as an architecture intern. I was months away from taking my first of many licensing exams. The though paralyzed me with fear--everyone fails and has to retest, over and over, so I wasn't looking forward to it. At the time, the toughest thing I did was take statics, or physics, or structures...I had never been truly tested (as I have been now!)
12 years older, and what have I got?
About $168,000 worth of student loan debt.
No job.
No student loan "forgiveness" as they tell you you'll be getting once you're a nurse.
Prospects? A few, but not very good ones.
I just submitted an application for a job working with former military personnel (those hospitals with good benefits, but not great pay, that provide medical care for former uniformed persons? those two initials victor, alpha...you get it) and this job was for providing advice over the phone, answering questions.
For this job you need at LEAST three years of CRITICAL CARE BEDSIDE EXPERIENCE. Wow, just to talk on the phone--see what I mean? to do anything as a nurse, you always need to be stepping down. I'm GROSSLY overqualified for this job, but I probably won't get it--why? because somewhere, out in the midwest or the deep south, someone with 35 years experience of being an ER nurse, or having her hand in a cracked open chest, doing heart massage in the OR, or something like this will decide he or she would like to be in San Francisco, and THEY will get the job--they need one too. Their knees are ruined, their backs are ruined, oh yes, did I mention we're all working with herniated disks somewhere in our spine, and nerve damage, and often, we're more fucked up than the patients we're taking care of, whining at us about chronic pain issues when we're standing on burning feet, working 6 twelve hour shifts in a row, not getting to go take a lunch or pee break because they keep hitting the call light crying for pain meds because they really want to sleep, and are not in any pain, and you just want to smother them with a pillow?
Ah, but I digress...Not every day is like this in the ICU. Some days are ok. Other days, you get yelled at by patients, patients' famillies, doctors, your charge nurse, a co-worker, a lab tech, a lunch tray deliverer...why everyone working at the hospital is so miserable, I have no idea...but it's a shit storm.
I just resigned from a position that SHOULD have been ideal. It's about 1/2 mile from my house, the pay was great, but I worked with two people who made my life a living hell and it jeopordized patient safety so I just resigned. I thought, "fuck this...I still have my per diem job at the General" (but that was then!)
So, as I'm recovering from working at the horrid community hospital, my OTHER boss (at the per diem job) gets a bug up his butt about how I am no longer working 40 hours a week for HIM, (without benefits, thanks) and that I was only giving him the minimum availability that I needed to by law...(because I was working 40 hours at the horrid community hospital) and so he got mad and gave me an ultimatum--either I need you more hours, or I'm going to have to close your position and hire someone who can give me more availability. So, I gave him more, and he decided that it wasn't enough,and that was that--my position was closed, and it's all perfectly legal...they can do this if you're PER DIEM--you're working without a contract.
So, there's nothing bad about it...it's not like being fired, but I still have no job.
So, everything I don't need is going up on ebay, and I'm spending my days applying for jobs that my advanced certifications (CCRN, CPAN, and TNCC) scream that I'm overqualified for, but someone with way many more years at the bedside than I will probably end up with.
Welcome to nursing.
Now, bend over so we can kick you repeatedly in the ass.
oh, everyone loves nurses.
Except other nurses.
Not sure if it's the time difference, or the fact that I had a list of "to do" things for today that kept running through my mind in that same pesky way a bag of marbles, dropped on the floor runs in every direction--I'm that tired...I've no idea what that sentence just said.
Basically, I fell asleep at around 3 am, and got up around 6, when my light timer was (evidently) set to go off. Either I did this to ensure I wouldn't miss my flight back in July, or, I have it all screwey since I unplugged it over the summer break. In any case, I slept another 3 hours last night.
Add that to the 3 I slept the night before, and you get 6! Almost enough for one night (sigh)
I'm off to my first class today--Pharmacology of Anesthetics. I'm nervous, anxious, and have a great need for sleep.
My best friend, Jean, is also in town and I want to see her since I didn't get to see her when I was home on break.
The good thing is that I don't have class again until Monday--but the bad thing is there are a million things to do and already tons to read and study before then.
Advanced Clinical Pharmacology Notes. Somehow, I survived!
So it's the end of semester one. I'm usually so amped up, and busy, that when the end comes I never know what to do with myself. So now, I've been washing the floors, doing laundry, washing the refridgerator, spring cleaning in general.
I leave for home Saturday--my driver, Jose picks me up at 6:30 am, and hopefully, there won't be a thunderstorm (though, it would be a first when I'm flying) and we won't get delayed and stuck on the tarmac for hours and hours (like last time!)
I'm so looking forward to going home and seeing my fellas :) I've missed them so.
But I go home with a sense of relief and accomplishment; I was afraid about the chemo having ruined my chances to study, to learn to retain info, to go to school in general--I'm releived to know that I CAN do this. I can.
Not that it won't be tough, but it's not like I have mashed potatoes for brains, as I feared would happen after the chemo.
It's a balmy overcast day in New York. I don't mind it so much this time around--I guess cancer taught me to suffer through things that are temporary with a bit of patience.
Sunday morning I wake up at home, and all this will be like a dream.
Finals week How I study for pharmacology. Each lecture is 4 hours long, each test covers two lectures: drugs, their mechanisms of action, reactions, side effects, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, special issues, considerations, contraindications and indications...this is just the drugs, and there's also the physiological issues she'll ask us about, and drug/drug interactions and dosing and what-not...
No matter what I do, I can't get to sleep at a "decent hour."
The other night, the fire alarms kept going off starting at 1:30 am and I think they might have gone off about another 20 or 30 times before morning. I went out for the first one, and the second one. We evacuate the building and stand on the wet sidewalk and watch the tall FDNY saunter into our building with gigantic axes.
Then they saunter out--they knew it was an alarm malfunction, and so did we.
The turn out for the second alarm was much smaller, and less than half an hour after coming in from the second one, the third one went off, then the fourth, fifth, etc.
By that point, I put the pillow over my head and kept sleeping.
It's amazing the things you learn to sleep through.
So, essentially, when I get back to the Bay Area, I won't have any time adjusting to do, since I wake up around 10:00 am here, and go to sleep between 1:00 and 3:00 am.
The weather's been holding out--not too unbearably hot just yet. I'm hoping it holds out for the real heat until the end of the semester, so I can miss most of it.
Anniversaries this week: Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my first biopsy. I remember thinking to myself, "it's Bastille Day...nothing bad happens on Bastille Day."
Wednesday the 16th marks the one year anniversary of getting the phonecall saying the results of the biopsy was "a little bit of cancer, there." I remember thinking how this poor MD was trying to soften in, by saying it was a little bit--something we nurses are taught, clearly, is how not to do this sort of thing to patients--not to give them false hope, not to de-personalize it (it's not "the breast" it's "YOUR breast", etc) Physicians don't get this as part of their training, it seems. I don't hold it against him, I just remember the moment. Clearly.
I had all my hair. I was in a tee shirt and underpants because the phone woke me--I was sleeping days and working nights. I was kneeling in the doorway to the kitchen, because I had called George on my cell phone to "be with me" while I got the results. He overheard everything.
That day was only just a year ago, yet it seems frozen in time...so long ago, yet only just yesterday. If I had known then just how hard the year ahead was going to be, I don't know if I'd have had the courage to go through with it.
Fortunately, we never have to do more than just one thing at a time, be present in more than just this one moment before us, so it was possible--however, looking back at the whole...makes me want to not look back, much.
I have classes until 8 pm toinght.
I did really badly on my first pharmacology test (got the lowest score in the class) because I didn't know we were having a test--the professors, who pride themselves on sneakiness buried the syllabus with the test dates in a folder called "class files" online, and so I didn't see it (I was looking under "Syllabus" Silly me.
I did significantly better on the midterm, studied my butt off, and now there's only the final to worry about.
Other classes to worry about now are Medical Genetics, in which I have to write a term paper on my pedigree (the tree you draw out from yourself to your great grandparents indicating life-span, illnesses, and death.) Obviously, I have been working with a geneticist at UCSF, and have the information at hand, but the actual writing of the paper is proving to be difficult. I really dislike writing, lately. Maybe it's the subject (cancer in my family genetics) or maybe it's just the APA style formatting that's killing me. I'm not sure.
In any case, I'm counting the days until I can go home! (Nineteen!)
I was having a problem with my upstairs neighbor/wrestler/pro-bowler who was running around, crashing into things and so forth bdtween midnight and 6 am. The other night, I didn't get to sleep til 5:30 am, having to call the campus security people twice. I wrote an email to the campus housing coordinator and got a reply back that they wanted to talk to me, so I went in (rather than edit my paper, due that morning) and met with the director of student housing and the coordinator.
They were very sympathetic and nice, and the director said at the end "I'm going to personally go over there and have a talk with them" and they also posted, slid under the door, and mailed notices warning them that they were in violation of the housing contract, etc. Well, whatever she said, it worked. I slept like a baby that night and last night. Though I can still hear someone walking around, it's normal, not loud crashes and bangs and running around like an imbecile at 4:30 am.
Needless to say, my grades have suffered.
I did pretty badly on a test, though, it was mostly because it snuck up on me and I didn't know about it. Though I had been studying, there was not the level of pre-test study that would have normally gone on, so I did very badly.
Another problem I'm having is that I don't know how to write a scholarly paper. I've received back an assignment and basically they minced it all up...as if I had been a 5 year old and tried to write something.
Partly, this was my fault for trusting the professor when she said it was just an opinion paper about an article we read. So, I found a news article regarding San Francisco's "Healthy SF" initiative, and how Kaiser hospital has just joined, and how great this is.
I got back something that basically said my paper had nothing to do with the article I ahd included. What the...
So, I have to step it up several notches. Lisa doesn't know the meaning of quit.
I'm off today to spend the day at a study cubicle of the library in preparation for my next Advanced Pharmacology exam, and to read about a thousand pages of journal articles that were assigned reading for Genetics and Health and Social Policy classes.
Outside, it's muggy. Overcast and hot--it will likely rain again today. Only a few weeks now 'til I'm done and can go home!
Here I am, back in New York. A terrible flight home (more than 3 hours delayed) and an ok flight back, though both were middle seats and I hate those. I guess it's better than the window, though.
I've only been back about half an hour and already I miss George and Rutger so much I want to cry. It didn't seem this bad the first time I came (two weeks ago) but now, maybe because the novelty's worn off, I really just want to be done with this semester and go home for a long while.
My driver, Jose, asked me for advice regarding a friend who had had brain surgery and 4 or 5 days post op had a stroke...what can you say to that? I think people latch on to the fact that you're in health care and just have questions, you know.
I did lots of reading both at home and on the plane, but I bet it wasn't enough. I still don't feel buried but I guess that will come soon enough...tomorrow I have my 8 hour day and then tuesday is my friday. Then I'll hit the bricks running and knock out a few more assignments and so forth.
We have a great big group project/presentation and we chose emergency contraception as a topic...I hate group projects, I hope these guys are good at writing papers because I feel like my skills have waned considerably.
Ah well. Tomorrow is Monday.
It's hot and muggy in New York, but that's a given.
I spent $700 on one of the last few seats left on a flight direct from JFK to SFO. I called my driver, Jose, and he said it was no problem to pick me up at 6 am, in front of my dorm.
The night before, I was in class. Mondays, my day is 8 solid hours of sitting in lecture, staring at powerpoint slides, as Pink Floyd said "ticking away the moments that make up the dull day..."
I went home, made flashcards of my pharmacology lecture, and had a little dinner. I took breaks to pack my bags (not much packing, really...just text books, and flash cards, and my laptop)
When 3 am rolled around, I knew I had to get some rest, but I was so worried that I would oversleep and miss Jose and my flight. I realized that though I had been there nearly 2 weeks, I had not yet used my alarm clock, a mild-mannered, weak little "tweet-tweet" sort of alarm. I set my phone alarms (all 5 or 6 of them) to buzz and ring as loud as I could make them, and I set the phone under my pillow. I drank a liter of water, ensuring I'd wake up at least a couple times,a nd I slept with the window shade all the way up--hoping light might wake me.
Between the ambulances baking up and the sirens, the thunderstorm that rolled through (WTF?) and my worry, I didn't get more than 20 minutes sleep.
Jose was on time, there was no traffic, and I was waiting at my gate with an hour to spare, relaxedly sipping coffee and having a blueberry scone (all bad carbs)
As soon as we get seated on the plane, the pilot's voice tells us there's a storm ahead of us, and all flights in New York have been grounded. Over the next 3 hours, they came over the intercom to tell us that flight had resumed, only to tell us they had re-halted take offs.
Finally, in the air, with a 6 hour flight in front of me, and a middle row seat, I made the most of it--I read my homework until my eyes gave out, then I napped for 15 minutes, then I started over.
I did all my genetics reading on that 9 hour flight.
I went to the bathroom, however, and discovered I had gotten what looked like my period. GREAT. I haven't had one since December of last year...and NOW??? I have to get one NOW???
So, I started to worry that the tamoxifen I have been taking every other day to start out with did some ovary stimulating (as 10 mg/day seem to do according to my drug book) and when I got home I took another 20 mg pill, though I had taken one the day before. So, now I'm taking it daily as they had intended, and I hope it won't make me sick. I only took it every other day for a little over a week, as my oncologist had recommended starting it.
So, with the delay, I was certain I would miss my dentist's appointment. When we got our first notice of delay, I called the office and let them know I was grounded, and they managed to switch my appointment with someone at 4. At the airport, George met me with my premedication (Amoxicillin mega dose for my Ventricular Septal Defect--to prevent endocarditis from having dental work done...my life sucks)
My dentist takes a look at it and agrees he's glad I came home to have him do the tooth, because now he knows what's under the filling. He said he thought I'd eventually need a crown in a year or so, but that he'd try to do a filling. I love this guy...I'm still walking around with a filling from when I was 16 yeras old, and my old dentist said I needed a root canal, but said, let's try this first, and put something into my tooth to numb it, put a temp filling in and let me walk around with it for a while, then filled it.
I ended up having that filling replaced (it was amalgam) and this dentist (who bought out the practice of my old dentist) said it was barely any tooth...all filling, and that he thought it was amazing it didn't end up needing a root canal. So, that filling has been with me (in two different forms) for 34 years already. I told him I bet the filling he did yesterday would last longer than he thinks it will.
I have to go back today and have another filling put in on the other side (I don't want to take a chance and break another tooth!)
These stupid cavities, I get because I go a long while between flossing--when iwas in ETP, I think I might have flossed 4 times. I get a small cavity between teeth and it goes unnoticed until I'm eating popcorn. I knew about these two, and was going to have them filled a month ago but then Rutger had his seizure and I had to cancel my appointment. I never got it rescheduled so I was planning on coming back in August to do it...little did I know I'd break a tooth and find myself back here emergency-style.
So, I've been doing great in my school work, academically, but I'm not the most lucky of people.
I was chillin' last night, watching an episode of "I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here" online and eating popcorn, when I broke a tooth. I guess I underestimated when the dentist said I had two cavities how bad they were.
So, it doesn't hurt, but I am worried about going to see a dentist here in New York--I've had issues with my VSD (ventricular septal defect) so they make me premedicate with a handfull of amoxicillin, and I have a low blood pressure and I'm usually tachycardic at baseline, so most dentists use Epinephrine in the shot they give you with the novocaine, because it speeds up the absorption, cutting down on your time in the chair, and making them able to move more people through the chair in one day. I can't have the Epi since it makes me so tachycardic that I pass out (no blood perfusion to the brain and I get short of breath, etc)
So, I called my dentist at home, and several other people...my friend Rebecca to ask if she's got a dentist, and the school's emergency health center.
My dentist told me going to an ER won't do it because they'll treat the pain, not fix the problem--so that's out.
So I booked a flight to SFO for tuesday. I have to miss my health and social policies class (and we've got a big group project happening, not good) so I'm sure I will be hurt by going home, but what can I do? I can't wait for it to get impacted or infected.
For now, I am not having any pain and I'm eating soft foods and rinsing with salt water...
This is the view from my window right now--it's 10:00, it looks hot outside, but at least the traffic is light.
As bad as last year was, I thought nothing could be worse--yet somehow, I'm scared of going back to school. Possibly intimidation from knowing these are some heavy courses I'm taking (Medical Genetics, Advanced Pharmacology, and Health and Social Policy.) I've got two days of classes, and Mondays will be my "long day" (classes starting at 1:00 and ending at 8:00 pm without a break for dinner.
I have to go straighten out my registration issues--Friday they confiscated my old ID badge and wouldn't give me a new one until I register. I can't register without the dean of anesthesia signing off on an add/drop slip for me, and I have to go down there and face her (she's a scary dragon) and get my form. Then it will likely be a day of walking around, from building to building, back and forth trying to find the right department and red tape and hoops to jump through.
New York, and specifically, Columbia University, is unlike anything I've ever experienced before.
But I'm here, and I'm alive, so I can't be sad about that (as much as I could be miserable, hating it here, and missing George and Rutger, like the first time around. Somehow, last year's experiences have hardened me--at least it's not cancer, I keep saying to myself.
Still, it's the gepographical equivalent of cancer--New York.
:)
Ok, I had to get one shot at New York in there, somewhere
They say all good things must come to an end, yadda yadda. We both knew this day would come.
Over the past couple of years (God, has it really been that long?) I’ve been using this blog to get things off my chest. I’ve shared my hopes, fears, and doubts. I seem to start writing with confusion, but by the time I’ve reached the end of the entry, I’m clearer on what I think about something…how I REALLY feel about something. It’s been cathartic. And I’ve gotten some wonderful feedback and support from my closest friends.
There’s a reason this blog was named “The sleep-deprived ramblings of a former intern architect who decides to return to school to learn to be an anesthetist. (part 1)” It implies there are chapters, with beginnings and ends. A progression forward. Transitions.
I’ve recently come to a crossroads; an epiphany of sorts.
I have been thinking long and hard about what to do come September. Most of what I’ve thought, all the back and forth, has been poured out here, with sincerity, for anyone to read. I’m fairly open about what I think.
I have decided to wrap up this blog. I just need some space, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m not sure if it’s permanent, or a trial separation. But, for now, I am going to try not writing and see if my ability to think and reason things out for myself, without the benefit of the self-indulgent blah-blah-blah that has heretofore been helping me clarify what my own thoughts are.
It somehow just feels like the end of this blog, for reasons I can’t really go into.
Although, I tried to take it again to post what it said we had in common (besides the sex, I mean) but then I came up with David Beckham.
THREE times. Don't tell Posh.
(ah here it is: the two of you share a love of practical jokes, classic styles, and ambitious pursuits. Like George, you're creative and focused. Not only are you a dreamer, you're a doer who gets things done.)
