Death, Dying, and Suicide

Today has been a really weird day. It is my clinicals day, so I was at the hospital just going through my routine...

0600 arrive at hospital
0645 stand-up
0700 vitals
0800 assessment on assigned pt, help nurse with her other vitals
0900 med pass, get pt breakfast

You get the idea. I was just going along, minding my own business.

Then, out of nowhere, Country Boy comes and sits down to start charting at the computer next to me! But wait, he's dead. After a double/triple/quadruple check, I noticed it was a doctor that looked just like him! Down to the facial hair, height, and his voice sounded a lot like him too. Not to mention that the way he walked and his personality were so much like CB it was insane.

Needless to say, I nearly had a freakin' heart attack. No joke. My heart was doing all sorts of weird rhythms, I got faint (even though I was already sitting down), I got flushed, nauseous, my ears started ringing, my eyesight went kinda tunnel vision-y, and then all the emotions from when I was first coping all came rushing back. It felt like a train just smashed into me head-on. I nearly lost it and could have started crying if I hadn't been conditioned to not cry in front of others.

Y'all, I thought I was doing well. I go to sleep thinking about him still. I wake up still thinking about him. Throughout the day things randomly remind me of him, so I start remembering him that way too. Still, I haven't been as bad as I was the first few days. After being able to knock myself out with a Tylenol PM and sleep my weekend away, I was beginning to focus on my pain and anger less. I thought that meant I was coping better with the whole situation. Turns out, I was just too busy with school and being embarrassed about my awkwardness with my IT boss to remember how badly this hurts. I got a rude wake-up call today with that doctor/Country Boy impersonator.

1030 a pt goes down for proceedure
1100 more meds
1115 primary starts blood transfusion and has to stay with pt for 15 minutes while I run around watching her rooms because we have 1 CNA for the entire floor (poor lady!)
1215 pt comes back from procedure and I help transfer her from gurney to bed
1245 I finally leave that pt's room to answer call lights and IV alarms going off (they just got brand new IV pumps that nobody knows how to work and they ALL insist on making as much noise as possible all at the same time
1345 I finally get a break and look at my phone... oops

So, I buried my head in my work and my nurse's work all day. I was so busy that I couldn't go to lunch with the rest of my clinical group at 1130 and my professor got upset with me. Well, that's what I've heard from several sources who also sent me multiple texts while they were with her. My phone was in my pocket and I was trying to figure out how to juggle the 8233479085847526458787 things that were all requiring my attention at the precise moment I needed to go to lunch. 2 hours later I finally got a break, checked my phone and... oh man, a billion texts and a missed phone call. Maybe I should have just ditched my primary RN and gone to lunch?

I took a lunch. I sat down, rested, had my food, and drank a bunch of water. It's not like I'm going to pass out from not eating and I'm not going to work too hard somewhere where I am essentially free labor so that I don't get any breaks and cannot get away to pee. My time for that will come when I can write my name with RN following and I have that nice paycheck and all the responsibility to complete all the patient tasks on my own. Why does my professor think I won't take care of myself? I don't even talk during lunch and it's almost harder for me to go to lunch because one of my old roommates (the one that REALLY didn't like me) and I just get nasty comments and dirty looks. That's no way to spend a lunch break. It gives me stress ulcers and heart palpitations just thinking about that torture.

For those future nursing students out there, that is what clinicals sort of looks like. Keep in mind that it was just a full moon a couple of days ago so there were behaviors today and a lot of extra work that has not been present any of the other 3 days that I've had clinicals so far. But, now you might be able to get a better picture of what you do at clinicals.



I just remembered why I titled this post as I did. The subject of suicide, death, and dying keeps coming up today and for the past week since I found out about CB taking his own life. Today, in particular, we talked about it in our clinical post-conference. I am reading about suicide in my developmental psych study guide. And I was again confronted with my mourning for CB. All of this, in addition to my already ridiculously stressful week, has just pushed me under. Guys, it's only Wednesday!