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Monday, March 30, 2015

More Suicides!?!

Dad's friend's wife just committed suicide. Nobody knew she was depressed until they found her suicide note. She sat in a closed garage with all of their cars running and I think the husband found her. I'm still numb.

It's been a year since Country Boy died.

At lunch mom wondered how nobody could tell she was depressed. I mentioned that many people don't know when others are depressed and brought up that I have been depressed since 5th or 6th grade and she didn't know. She got sad and asked if I had ever had suicidal thoughts. I told her I tried at least 5 times in 8th grade. Mom started crying. Brother was there and he didn't know what to do. I didn't either and I still feel so bad for breaking my mom's heart like that but shouldn't she know? I went and sat next to her because we were in a restaurant and I knew she needed a hug. Now she asks me how I'm doing all the time. She told me that if I ever feel sad or if I am not happy when I get married that I shouldn't try to kill myself but should call her instead. She hasn't told Dad yet. We don't know if that would help him decide to get treatment for his depression/bipolar or if it would just hurt/anger him and possibly push him over the edge.

Life is such a struggle but no excuse to kill yourself. On a selfish note, my list of suicides needs to stop growing.

Suicide Anniversary

Friends, I have made it a year since Country Boy committed suicide. Granted, I didn't learn about it until April 9, but we are celebrating me surviving a very rough year in my life.

I want to hang out with people today to keep my mind occupied but everybody's busy. Oh well, I'm surviving the day and only cried for about 30 seconds twice. That's pretty good!

I was told today by Beauty that I am made of "wife material". What is that? She said that because every guy that goes out with me is convinced he needs to marry me. Is that just because that's what guys do or is that because of me? Boyfriend told me I'm the best girlfriend he's had (out of 3-4 before me) but I don't know what that means either.

We got to go shooting this weekend and out of like 20-30 clays that we launched, I hit one. ONE! That's terrible! The first time I went shooting I hit all but 2-3 out of 20. Good gracious I've gotten worse. I also got to help feed the cows! Oh my gosh, I love cows. There are new little babies that are only about a week old and they get so excited they start running around with each other for no reason. So cute! They gave me cow kisses. I like cow kisses. The older ones also follow me around and that was even before I gave them cake/treats! Ugh, I just cannot get enough of them.

Also, I got a letter in the mail today telling me I got a scholarship for $3500! I wish I would have applied to more last year because this scholarship is usually not given for more than about $1000-$2000 so maybe I could have gotten a lot more help last year and stayed out of such huge debt. Oh well, the L-rd will provide for me to get out of my crazy debt. Yay! In order to get the scholarship, I even had to have an interview. Since I was at clinicals the only day they had the interviews, they ended up allowing me to have a phone interview. I was so scared they didn't like me or that they weren't happy about having to do it over the phone but they gave me such a big award. L-rd willing I will get lots of other scholarships and maybe be able to start paying off some of my interest on the unsubsidized loans I've had to take out.

So, my rough day is getting better and I'm much stronger than I was a year ago. My life has changed dramatically from that point. Granted, I thought my world was turned upside down because Brother told me he was moving out, a week later I broke up with the boy I was "trying" a relationship with, and then Country Boy killed himself a week after the break up. That on top of a very long, really bad bout with depression, two jobs, and a general life meltdown, I was not in a good place at all.

Monday, March 9, 2015

Pioneer Woman in the Works

I got to help butcher a cow this weekend! I didn't think I would have the stomach for it, but I actually really enjoyed the whole process. Granted, I wasn't there for the killing, skinning, or de-gutting of the poor guy, but I finally saw how hamburger, roasts, and steaks are made from the different parts of the cow. Roommate and I have been given free reign of the brain so we're going to dissect it one of these days and I got to pick out the spinal cord, several arteries, and all sorts of fun A&P stuff. So cool!

Y'all should also know that the cow wasn't supposed to be killed this early in the season, but he got kicked by one of the horses at Roommate's Grandpa's ranch (the one we go riding at), so he was put out of his pain. Sometimes, if the break is low enough, they can heal and they'll end up making really tender beef. This break was really high, though, and would never heal correctly so the cow would end up dying slowly if he hadn't been killed. That's me rationalizing the whole death a little bit, but that doesn't help me a whole lot. Mostly, it was made easier just being separated from the killing and only dealing with the meat. That's why surgeons partition off the patient's face, to help compartmentalize their job from the actual person they're working on.

Tonight I talked myself into preparing a whole trout. It was already gutted from the store, but I took off the fins, decapitated it, and figured out how to get the scales off. Then I baked a couple up and they were actually pretty tasty! I even learned how to de-bone the thing after it was already cooked.

It's scary, but I might be able to be one of those domestic ladies someday... I might even be able to live on a cattle ranch and be able to slaughter my own chickens someday... That's gonna take a lot of time, but I think I'm pretty well cut out for this pioneer woman stuff!


Thursday, March 5, 2015

Ultrasound Results

I would like to start out saying that I went to a nurse practitioner hoping for more "nursey" care because I have had bad experiences with doctors in the past. This may not have been a wise choice. I understand that she is busy but after being intensely peppered with questions for 5 minutes, being belittled in that short time, then having results read on my voicemail by a receptionist and requesting to talk to the NP and her refusing to talk to me and only answering questions through an MA, I am beyond frustrated. Sorry for the long-winded run-on but that's how I talk when I get super excited or super frustrated. I am so frustrated.

Anyway, I got the results and the NP says that I have a "simple cyst" on my right ovary and that I will need to get another ultrasound in 2-3 months. That is the exact sentence she gave the receptionist (who has a very heavy accent, might I add, and it was barely discernable) to tell me. Freaking out, because I have no idea what that means, I call back and ask to speak to the NP. No, I'm not allowed to right then but they will put a note in my chart and the MA offered to answer what questions she could and then she would have the NP call me later. The answers were not comforting at all and only left me with more questions. Why are you guys waiting so long? Is this serious? Why is nothing else happening? Why is such a passive approach being taken when this could effect my Childbearing abilities? I mean, it's my frickin' ovary!!!

I called Mom to let her know and so I could lose it a little bit. She suggested calling Mema because Mema has been a nurse for awhile and she focuses on Post Partum and NICU. Why didn't I even think of that?! So after explaining everything that's going on, she told me that it might make having kids a little harder because of the ovulation cycle going from one ovary to the other, but she says I will likely be able to have kids because it's just one ovary being effected. She told me what else to look for and what symptoms to expect. She just explained everything and calmed me down so well and in nurse talk and true nurse fashion. Mema is just so fantastic, I am so blessed!

Next day the same MA calls back that I had talked to the previous day and she tells me the NP won't talk to me and she reiterates what the NP had already had read to me the day before on my voicemail. At this point I am beyond livid. Needless to say, I should have cancelled my Well Woman exam right then but I had left class to take the call and didn't want to waste any more time fighting with them. I'll do that another day, though, because she is obviously too busy to have me as a patient. I will also be filling out a review for her because it was not okay the way she treated me.


Do y'all remember me telling you that I thought I may have type 2 Bipolar disorder? Well, one of my cousins was recently diagnoses with it and then one of my dad's cousins (one of his favorites, no less) was recently diagnosed with it too after years of searching for answers and treatment. Mema tells me that in our family, it is passed from father to daughter and mother to son. She suspects I have it because I told her my symptoms and how I went hypomanic after finally taking some herbs to treat my depression. I may end up passing it on to my son, if I have sons, and I want 2-3.

Knowing medical/health stuff is such a blessing but occasionally it's a bit of a downer. Still, I would rather know and then be able to better plan from there than go in blind and wonder what certain outcomes meant.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Intense Weekend, I Could Have Died

I spilled the beans to Boyfriend yesterday about the ultrasound. I am not sure if I started it the right way, but I said everything I wanted to say and left out what I shouldn't have said, like about breaking up with him if it's really bad.

He took it like a champ. I think he saw that I was terrified and he knows I don't cry (hardly ever and NEVER in front of anyone else) but a couple tears threatened to stream down my face. He hugged me and I was able to hide it, so I thought, but he told me it was okay for me to cry. He's a worrier too, and I am not used to relying on anyone else for strength, but somehow I can with him and he stayed strong for me and encouraged me. He told me that we would go through this together and I believe that he will/would stick with me through whatever this is. That's new for me. I'm used to being the strength for my friends and for being there for them through/at doctor appointments and scary life things. I am not equipped to let someone else do that for me but I had one friend come with me to my ultrasound and I spilled my fears to her afterwards. I laid it all out on the table with Boyfriend. Mom has gotten all of the information from the very beginning for stuff that I never talk to anyone about.

When I was on my way to his new house this weekend with Roommate in the passenger's seat next to me, we hit black ice. We were on a paved country highway, I was going about 10 mph under the speed limit and we had just passed a few on-coming cars on the two lane highway (one lane each way). I corrected the car successfully about 3-4 times before we did a 180 and ended up in a ditch backwards. If we had been 10 feet further down the road we would have rolled the car and fell off a 15 foot drop off. If we had been a minute earlier we would have hit the oncoming car and I could have killed both of us and whoever was in that car. If we had been a minute later, we would have gotten hit by a semi truck. Roommate's step-dad and cousin were at their house and they came pulled us out. If they had been looking out of their window, they could have watch the entire thing! That's how close we were to them. Praise the L-rd for His hand on us and the scare of a lifetime but support seconds away. When I got back to their house I decided not to continue on to boyfriend's house and the L-rd whispered to my heart that He wasn't going to let me die just yet. With the health scare I am currently going through, that was surprisingly comforting for the moment and I was able to sleep through the night really well when I hadn't hardly slept the night before.

Last night at work I kind of helped save my patient's life! He was on an IV of 125 mL/hr and had not voided for about 12-18 hours because the doctor had the catheter pulled the day before. This is not logical to me but whatever. The pt has dementia and was combative. When I arrived he started coughing with a really wet cough and spitting out what he coughed up. The nurse was notified and he kept suctioning the pt but did nothing besides that. I had just learned about fluid overload in class so I already had my suspicions. Almost every patient on the floor last night was off the wall! There were bed alarms going off all the time and a bunch of sitter patients without sitters because we just didn't have enough staff and yet we were over staffed according to hospital parameters.

As the night progressed I kept pointing out the cough to my nurse and I kept sitting the patient up so that he could clear his throat, but he should have been NPO because he can't swallow right now. I pointed that out and it was dismissed. At about 0400 I checked the pt's O2 sat because I was curious how he was doing, even though I had just taken vitals an hour before. His O2 was 75%! I called the nurse and was told to slap 2L on him. He went up to 86% so I called again. Half an hour later another nurse comes in and tells me to turn it up. 4L only got him to 89% for a moment and then he started desat-ing really quickly. I run to grab a non-rebreather and cranked it up to 15L but that still only held him at 86-89% with me telling him to cough over and over.

Also at about 0400 we did a bladder scan and it showed he had 1000 mL+ of urine in his bladder. The nurse was called but he didn't come in until 0500. 1600 mL drained in a matter of minutes! The nurse was not in for the rest of the night to check on him even though I had continued to report things and the other CNA's (all of which are nursing students and there were 3 more CNA's in addition to me) told him they thought the pt was fluid overloaded. Nothing got done. When the day shift nurse came on she started to do stuff but quickly got pulled away to another emergency so the day CNA/sitter came in and we took over. She is a student nurse too so we called respiratory therapy and the RT that came up was impressed that two CNA's/Nursing Students handled everything the way that we had and we had gotten to the bottom of it when our nurses were too busy with other stuff.

Thinking back, I should have reported a lot more to my RN or gone to the charge, but it didn't occur to me to do so in the moment. I take a lot of the blame for my pt last night decompensating so much, but if I had not been in nursing school and hadn't checked his O2 an hour after vitals (normally spaced 4 hours apart) then it would have been so much worse. So, I go back and forth between believing it was my fault and being frustrated that I was not listened to. I will trust myself more next time and try to better advocate for my patient. He made it through the night and I am so beyond grateful that the L-rd taught me everything I needed to know in class before experiencing what I did last night. I'll have to tell my professor and clinical instructor about it tomorrow.

Talking to mom this morning, I learned she was diagnosed with endometriosis at about my age. I don't know why she didn't tell me before today, it would have been a handy bit of info about a month ago when I called her with my symptoms... Oh well. She told me she wasn't supposed to be able to have kids. I asked if that made her happy when she found out she was pregnant with me because I had grown up feeling guilty and thinking that I ruined her big life plans because she had a baby and then got married because I was born. She told me she was so excited and very shocked because she didn't think it could happen. I've been crying all day because it was the first time I realized that she wanted me from the very beginning and I have no reason to feel guilty about being born. I don't think I've cried so much since Country Boy died and that's be a year on March 30. Well, except maybe when I had a breakdown last semester and started hyperventilating, but that was still about Country Boy. I cried hardcore for at least 2 hours that day and then it was a pretty constant threat of the damn breaking and me crying at any point after that for a couple days.

She wanted me from the very start. She says I am a miracle because wasn't supposed to get pregnant. Then the doctors wanted her to abort because they thought I had a brain tumor and I wasn't supposed to live past 2. I've been in countless situations where I was supposed to die but I always come out without a scratch. Not even a single broken bone (well, my clavicle was broken when I was born but it fixed up real quick and I can't even tell). I could have died in the near crash this weekend but didn't. The L-rd kept me alive through at least 5 suicide attempts and the last one I had taken 50 pills that were either half ibuprofen and half acetaminophen or all acetaminophen, I can't remember. I know that 10 acetaminophen ended a girl, who was my age when I tried it, in the hospital and she was sicker than a dog when she was brought into the ER. The worst thing that happened to me is that I would sleep for about 14 hours and then wake up really tired.

I don't know why G-d is keeping me around, nor do I understand why He performs so many huge miracles for me all the time, but I'm sure glad He does. He whispered to my heart that he has big plans for me but in true G-d fashion, He won't tell me what those are. That makes me laugh though, every time.





Oh, and Nurse Dee, I don't know if you got my comment on your comment awhile back but I sure wish I could hug you. I don't like giving hugs but I give them to special people. We don't know each other in person, but you are such a blessing to me. Thank you for your continued encouragement and sound advice! I think I have found the balance, for now, between being a little bit worried and keeping busy. I will keep you updated and I will email you if something happens that I need extra support on. Thank you Nurse Dee, I truly appreciate your kindness and support through this past year or two. It means so much to me.