Trash

  Only two weeks of this bullshit left and I’m out. Clinicals pretty much sucked this week. There are some nurses that want to get irritated when I can’t give them a fucking immediate answer, as if I’ve been there for ten years or something. I don’t care if they have the more stressful job; I didn’t make you become a damn nurse, and if you don’t like being one, who the hell is stopping you from quiting? They’re no good to anyone with the kind of negativity I left behind today. I have enough of that.

I would not recommend this course to anyone unless they’re ready to deal with feeling like they want to put a bullet through their head. I’m about ready to pick a date and time to jump. Anything would seem better than trying to fit into something you’re just not made for.

There’s nothing I can hold onto. Not one friend stuck around from my past, I can’t connect with anyone new in the present. What good was I ever? No one knows how to help me because I could never bring myself to ask for it. I’m alone in trying to disappear. I’m weaker than I already assumed myself; I don’t believe when others tell me I am smart or that I have talent; It can’t save me or anyone else, for all that it could mean. We all still die. And we all still suffer as we wait in line.

I don’t want to wake up again. I don’t have anything more to give.

A good ending for once…..

This week has been a long one. It started out with taking two tests a day in class over med terms, transcription and another day’s test over some chapter details she went over. With how much she looks at our work and the proper way we’re supposed to do things, I could tell early on in the week that everyone in my class including me were feeling stressed and high strung. I was given feedback on a chapter I completed and got so angry I left for the restroom just to hide away for a second, and when I heard the alarm ring for break soon after, I headed straight for the lunch room to cool down.

When the others joined me there for break I was asked if I was okay. I said yes but it was a complete lie as usual when people ask me that, and as I said it I was pulling back the pin on the back of my ID badge, thinking about stabbing it in my wrist right then and there. I was pretty upset, but I am glad I didn’t do that (of course) as I reflect on it. I came home and said I don’t want to give this period of time I have left in this class any blood. Maybe I’ve shed a few tears, as almost every person in my class has by now, but I will not give the pressure I feel from myself or others any of my blood. It sounds weird when I say it like this, but it really clicked in me, and I calmed down and finished the work I needed done.

The week, I’m very glad to say, ended really well. Today was my second clinical day on the nursing unit and I did everything I told myself I had to get around to getting experience with. I assigned PCAs to the patients as well as nurses on the call light system, I helped clean out patient charts and broke them down, I put in multiple doctors’ orders with help from my preceptor with the software, I transfered calls for the first time, I called in two patient consults for doctors (I spoke to four different strangers in the span of about 15-20 minutes), and I got to see another HUC in action during a real code while on a different floor for a short time.

I was hoping that after how bad I took the first day, that I could only get better, I could only go up from where I’ve been. There’s still a lot for me to learn and get used to, but at least at the moment I have some confidence about what I am doing. 

I have a portrait I’m finishing this weekend, then I’ll do some writing after I finish my cover letter they want from us next week. I think there’s only 15 or 16 school related days left. I am counting down, anticipating the end off all this. And it’s helping just in the way I expected it to.

Until then…

Today was our computer training at the hospital I’m taking my clinicals at. It’s not complicated, but since the system they use is so ancient, it’s challenging to catch on to. We use a lot of the function keys (F9 and F12 and others) to enter doctor’s orders. I guess it’s just something I need to take my time with.

Anyway, I’ve gotten myself a calendar to count down the last days of school. It’s the only thing that I know is really going to  make this easier for me. The end is so close….

I am working on a new portrait and I have to make a few changed to the painting I did last week, but I’ll be done with it very soon. It’s a design I really like, because I drew the outline one day back in March when I was having a hard time coping with this course I’ve been taking. Besides those things, I’m going to have to get back into writing more with my spare time. I miss writing. It feels like I’ve closed off a whole part of myself; a part that kept my tears in, and helped me understand my moods. Yeah, I miss it a lot lately. But I’m a little scared to see how bad my writing is now that I’ve taken such a long break from it…lol.

I’m coming up with some new things on my keyboard as well. That’s been a major stress reliever. My twin brother got out of jail last week and there’s been nothing that I can say has really changed in his behavior. I’m tired of being around him honestly. It’s a feeling where I’ve sort of lost faith in him. He’s not the person I thought he was and it’s just disappointing to have to watch, making everything else a little harder to deal with.

June 8th is the day I will be finished. Twenty school days, not including Memorial Day….I’m just waiting it out until then.

Well, I survived

First day of clinicals…. The woman training me was so fast. The entire time I just didn’t want to get in her way, you know? Being a HUC is ridiculous if there’s only one person to do all that work on the unit.

Things were going just fine up until I messed up when answering a call light for a patient needing to use the bathroom. I didn’t have the sense to right down the damn room number to remember who it came from. I could have taken this mistake had the patient just been asking for water or a random question, but the bathroom? How could I screw up something that important?

And so I freaked out and had to leave the unit for a few minutes. Had my instructor not been there watching my every move, I would have left the whole hospital and walked home for all I cared in that moment.

My instructor help calm me down, but she obviously noticed how little mistakes can easily bring tears to my eyes. I know it’s stupid and irrational, but my mind seems to draw negative conclusions at lightning speed. It was an acute sense of embarrassment, uselessness, inadequacy and of being someone undeserving, and was just too much to cope with when I’m already stressed beyond a healthy degree. I wanted to honestly tell her that it’s either I cry or I hurt myself, so which would you fucking prefer? I’ve been ready to quit this course since I started it, and I told her I don’t even care about a job at this point, it’s only about finishing.  

She flatly stated that I’m so hard on myself, then asked me if I take anything and if I see someone for the issues I’m having. I said yes and moved on from it. Now she knows it’s definitely not just shyness; there are a whole lot of other things I’m fighting to manage. Being good academically in this class means nothing if I can’t apply what I’ve learned. I envy the other girls who, while they don’t have the best grades, have the better personality and actually get involved as if they’ve known the people they’re training with their whole life. But I can’t be easy on myself on a daily basis, let alone in a nursing unit where people rely and expect so much from me.   

I went back to the unit and told my trainer that I was sorry for leaving, that she did nothing wrong and gave a lie with “I’ve just had a death in the family…” as an explanation. She was cool about it and knows I’ll be seeing her in two weeks (after our computer training for this hospital). Really though, I shouldn’t be allowed to go back. I don’t feel I belong anywhere except dead anyhow these days.

Today was the first time in a month it seems that I felt as if I really wanted to just hurt. An image of my knife popped in my head as I sat there on the unit finishing out the day stapling papers together. I’m still thinking about it, but for some reason the thought of waiting until after graduation seems sweeter than right now, as bad as it sounds.

I just do not feel good. It’s hard to do anything when I’m not even on my own side, you know? I’m not even on my own side….