As a 51-year-old mother of two. I work full-time as a Charge Nurse. I have recently discovered a whole new world of education.
I have long wanted to take courses that would improve my knowledge base. However, the cost and time has made this an impossibility for me. Both of my children are in college, and I am the sole breadwinner in our household.
It is sad to realize that the cost of education has increased over 500 percent. Though the ability to find a job after college has decreased.
For me the ability to obtain free college knowledge is an awesome prospect. I look forward to taking my first class.
Stories and information about brain and spinal cord injury. We are all exposed to stories every day that no one ever thinks up. Snippets of my life and what ever is on my mind. Please feel free to post any questions if you have a brain or spinal cord injury I will try and respond weekly. I have 20 years of experience as a Neurosurgery Nurse. I am not a doctor, so I can offer support and help, but you need to contact your physician for his or her medical opinion.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Saturday, March 2, 2013
What is the deal with all the crazy people?
Everyday I go into work and I am amazed at how many wonderful people I meet. Patients who are threatened by life choices. Families who's lives are changed by the diseases that are encountered.
On the other side there are people who come in, fake seizures, drug seekers, people who simply cannot make there way in a normal life. People whose sense of logic and common sense are driven by the need to smoke, take drugs and create unrelenting havoc on the people who are around them and who are trying to help them, honestly I simply do not understand!
On the other side there are people who come in, fake seizures, drug seekers, people who simply cannot make there way in a normal life. People whose sense of logic and common sense are driven by the need to smoke, take drugs and create unrelenting havoc on the people who are around them and who are trying to help them, honestly I simply do not understand!
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Diary Blog look back on my life and divorce..
It is amazing where life leads you. I am 50 this year. I thought I would be at some other place in my life by now. Instead, this year has brought me to bankruptcy. My ex-husband told my children he was moving out of the country, which I do not believe that he did, but he did manage to not pay child support for the past three years. He does manage to show up a few times a year to see them, not me, he knows how I feel about him. After we divorced, I found out he had been having an affair. The woman he had been with called me and talked to me on mothers day one year. She told me how guilty she had felt and she wanted to get it out in the open.
It was not surprise. I had known her for years and long suspected. He had always denied anything, but it was a relief to finally know that I was not crazy.
It has tainted me. My trust has been blown. I have had to piece things slowly together.
I am increasingly lucky with how well my kids have turned out. My daughter and my son are such wonderful people. My son is particularly empathic and caring. I hope he will make a wonderful partner for someone someday. My daughter can be full of charm and working through her own demons as do we all. She will be a wonderful person when she realizes how much she has to offer.
Now days I am mostly Buddhist in my thinking and philosophy. I only wish I were better at letting go of my own demons that my marriage left me with. I hope to forgive and release. But that will be the day he decides he needs something from me again. Ever vigilant.
It was not surprise. I had known her for years and long suspected. He had always denied anything, but it was a relief to finally know that I was not crazy.
It has tainted me. My trust has been blown. I have had to piece things slowly together.
I am increasingly lucky with how well my kids have turned out. My daughter and my son are such wonderful people. My son is particularly empathic and caring. I hope he will make a wonderful partner for someone someday. My daughter can be full of charm and working through her own demons as do we all. She will be a wonderful person when she realizes how much she has to offer.
Now days I am mostly Buddhist in my thinking and philosophy. I only wish I were better at letting go of my own demons that my marriage left me with. I hope to forgive and release. But that will be the day he decides he needs something from me again. Ever vigilant.
Insomnia
Insomnia
So long I sleep the sleep
The pain it ebbs and flows
Sometimes I feel still awake
Sometimes I never know.
I dream the dream of patients
I see them one by one
The pain sometimes so searing hot
Nothing can be done.
It is such a better thing
To sleep and run away.
Ah the dreams they are so sweet
I long for better days.
So long I sleep the sleep
The pain it ebbs and flows
Sometimes I feel still awake
Sometimes I never know.
So long I sleep the sleep
The pain it ebbs and flows
Sometimes I feel still awake
Sometimes I never know.
I dream the dream of patients
I see them one by one
The pain sometimes so searing hot
Nothing can be done.
It is such a better thing
To sleep and run away.
Ah the dreams they are so sweet
I long for better days.
So long I sleep the sleep
The pain it ebbs and flows
Sometimes I feel still awake
Sometimes I never know.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
TIME FOR A CHANGE.
Well I have made the decision to move on. I have officially left working at Courage Center. I will miss a few people, and the patients, but I think it is time to move on.
I am officially going to Fairview University Medical Center. Neuroscience of course, as you all know is my thing.
I look forward to the future with hope and excitement.
Right now I am just resting and recovering from my long on coming burnout! Sometimes companies cut back so much that they push their employees to be responsible for 2 and sometimes 3 jobs. For those of us who are willing and want to do the best they can, we take on the challenge to do as much as we can. Even if this means we work 60 to 70 hour work weeks. That is what I and several other people were trying to do and they still are trying to do.
There is something wrong when the people above you know you are doing this, but will not admit this to their senior people. Or admit that they are burning out their staff. But I digress. All I am saying is I stood up for my people, was met with a wall and unwillingness to listen. Now I am happy to be moving on.
The problem with this mentality is that management did not want to know that their employees were doing this. After you do this for so long, you don't realize how tired you get. You just keep on doing. I take full responsibility for hanging in so long.
Change is necessary for growth.
I am officially going to Fairview University Medical Center. Neuroscience of course, as you all know is my thing.
I look forward to the future with hope and excitement.
Right now I am just resting and recovering from my long on coming burnout! Sometimes companies cut back so much that they push their employees to be responsible for 2 and sometimes 3 jobs. For those of us who are willing and want to do the best they can, we take on the challenge to do as much as we can. Even if this means we work 60 to 70 hour work weeks. That is what I and several other people were trying to do and they still are trying to do.
There is something wrong when the people above you know you are doing this, but will not admit this to their senior people. Or admit that they are burning out their staff. But I digress. All I am saying is I stood up for my people, was met with a wall and unwillingness to listen. Now I am happy to be moving on.
The problem with this mentality is that management did not want to know that their employees were doing this. After you do this for so long, you don't realize how tired you get. You just keep on doing. I take full responsibility for hanging in so long.
Change is necessary for growth.
How to trudge through the medical system - my personal saga.
Wow, the past 2 weeks have been an emotional roller-coaster for my family. My partner Ed has been suffering from depression for the last few years, which has turned into a never ending presence in our life. Ed lost his job at a local Big Box store, and things just went down hill from there. He has always suffered from some sort of depressive tendency, but would joke his way through things so he never seemed that bad.
We started to see a psychiatrist that used to work with me and is now over at the University Hospital. Ed was put on various medications which only helped to some degree or another.
Several months ago Ed started to have palpitations, which we thought were an exacerbation of his anxiety and depressive disorder. He developed a tremor, and during this time, after he started one of the medications (Effexor), he began to have high cholesterol and diabetes, which he did not have a year ago.
Ed is a Big Boy. One would expect that he would have some of this at his age (50 years old). However, things just came on so fast. Neither our Primary Care nor the Endocrine doctor believed any of this was caused by the medication, so we began treating Ed with the standard oral diabetic medication. Metformin, Gemfibrizole, Glimberide, and ultimately insulin. He is on Amiltrypteline for migraine and supposedly sleep (a laugh, as he never sleeps). The only thing that has been sort of OK has been his blood pressure on Atenolol.
In between all of this, the Effexor is doing nothing, so we start a "medication wean off the Effexor" and start a new drug call Nortryptiline. The anxiety and palpitations get worse, he actually gets mean. He broke his laptop in half in frustration. He became a more reclusive person, more depressed, more anxious, and mean!
One day when we were in the car to go for lab work Ed says to me, "don't get a bee in your bonnet, but I don't think you should leave me alone today". Ed was feeling suicidal. We continued on to the doctors office we checked in for the lab and I politely sold the woman behind the counter that we needed to see a doctor, when asked why, I told her Ed was having some severe anxiety issue. We saw a new young very nice 12 year old doctor. (I am being facetious). She did a depression and anxiety profile, which basically means you check of boxes to various questions on 2 little sheets of paper and viola you are severely depressed.
She recommends that we go to the Crisis ER. Which Ed declines, saying he wants to go home. At this time he is barely moving. He has become a big ball of anxiety and only wants to go home and to bed. The doctor finally gives him a prescription for ativan, and calls his psychiatrist and lets us go home.
We see our psychiatrist the next day. We begin discussion on other medication options. We talked about MAO inhibitors and new diet restrictions. We ultimately discussed the option of ECT, for those of you out there it is electroconvulsant therapy. I can get into an explanation of that later. None of the medications have worked for Ed's severe anxiety and there is some hope with the ECT. (I also should say, believe it or not, Ed has been turned down for Social Security Disability and the appeal. Ed has not worked in 2 years, I have been the sole provider). The doctor starts Ed on an anti-anxiety medication Clonazepam 1 mg 3 times a day.
The following Monday we went in for an History and Physical for the Electroconvulsant therapy. They draw labs, do an EKG. And low and behold, at this point things become more wacky. The technician does Ed's EKG 3 times. (His previous EKG from about 6 months prior is completely fine). This EKG, shows an elevated ST segment and a left bundle branch block. For those of you out there who are not medical, he could be in the middle of a cardiac event and he could throw a clot and have a heart attack or stroke. Mind you I said could be.
We get sent home, Ed gets even more anxious, and we get sent to go for a Cardiac CT Angiogram (I will explain all of these procedures at the end, because as I am writing this, I realize that if you are reading this you might not know what any of this is). He also goes for a swallow study because during his conversation with the doctor he told her that he is having trouble swallowing some of his pills and when he eats crunchy foods it causes him to cough.
The ECT is now on hold.
The swallow study revealed he could go through the ECT, but oh by the way there is this rod like growth in the back of your throat that needs to be worked up further (Not what a man with severe anxiety wants to hear, now he is thinking cancer, and I don't know). I try to discuss this with my primary who says she cannot talk to me about it as it is out of her area of expertise and we need to return to the ENT. (Can we say more money out of pocket, what is the deal with not being able to get information, what is the point of having a primary care doctor). Naturally, it becomes difficult to get hold of the ENT, which I still have not spoken to.
In the mean time, the weekend rolls around. My son celebrated his 17th birthday. Sunday night, Ed says, I am not feeling so well, I am having some chest pain. My daughter and I take a begrudging Ed to Abbott NW ER, which I would recommend to anyone. They are really great. The doctors and staff were caring and understanding. They repeat the EKG, the changes that were there before are no longer there. It is a normal EKG. He is given sub-lingual nitro under his tongue and the chest pain starts to resolve. Ed really does not want to stay in the hospital. He knows our money is tight, and we have exhausted out financial resources. (I will probably be filing bankruptcy soon, I am like that commercial that says I am up to my eyeballs in debt, please help).
They draw a lab called a triponin which is a marker for a heart attack. It comes back negative which means he is not having a heart attack at this moment in time.
We are discharged home and they call us the next morning to schedule him for a cardiologist appointment the first week in November. The ECT is still on hold. Ed is now not on any meds for his depression.
I have been home with him for 3 days now and he is getting worse. I think he only came out of our dark bedroom to get some water, and eat some food I had prepared. He is barely talking, and I am worried.
I will call our doctor today, maybe we can get him on something with not so many side effects like Celexa, which is a drug that we use frequently on my patients.
We started to see a psychiatrist that used to work with me and is now over at the University Hospital. Ed was put on various medications which only helped to some degree or another.
Several months ago Ed started to have palpitations, which we thought were an exacerbation of his anxiety and depressive disorder. He developed a tremor, and during this time, after he started one of the medications (Effexor), he began to have high cholesterol and diabetes, which he did not have a year ago.
Ed is a Big Boy. One would expect that he would have some of this at his age (50 years old). However, things just came on so fast. Neither our Primary Care nor the Endocrine doctor believed any of this was caused by the medication, so we began treating Ed with the standard oral diabetic medication. Metformin, Gemfibrizole, Glimberide, and ultimately insulin. He is on Amiltrypteline for migraine and supposedly sleep (a laugh, as he never sleeps). The only thing that has been sort of OK has been his blood pressure on Atenolol.
In between all of this, the Effexor is doing nothing, so we start a "medication wean off the Effexor" and start a new drug call Nortryptiline. The anxiety and palpitations get worse, he actually gets mean. He broke his laptop in half in frustration. He became a more reclusive person, more depressed, more anxious, and mean!
One day when we were in the car to go for lab work Ed says to me, "don't get a bee in your bonnet, but I don't think you should leave me alone today". Ed was feeling suicidal. We continued on to the doctors office we checked in for the lab and I politely sold the woman behind the counter that we needed to see a doctor, when asked why, I told her Ed was having some severe anxiety issue. We saw a new young very nice 12 year old doctor. (I am being facetious). She did a depression and anxiety profile, which basically means you check of boxes to various questions on 2 little sheets of paper and viola you are severely depressed.
She recommends that we go to the Crisis ER. Which Ed declines, saying he wants to go home. At this time he is barely moving. He has become a big ball of anxiety and only wants to go home and to bed. The doctor finally gives him a prescription for ativan, and calls his psychiatrist and lets us go home.
We see our psychiatrist the next day. We begin discussion on other medication options. We talked about MAO inhibitors and new diet restrictions. We ultimately discussed the option of ECT, for those of you out there it is electroconvulsant therapy. I can get into an explanation of that later. None of the medications have worked for Ed's severe anxiety and there is some hope with the ECT. (I also should say, believe it or not, Ed has been turned down for Social Security Disability and the appeal. Ed has not worked in 2 years, I have been the sole provider). The doctor starts Ed on an anti-anxiety medication Clonazepam 1 mg 3 times a day.
The following Monday we went in for an History and Physical for the Electroconvulsant therapy. They draw labs, do an EKG. And low and behold, at this point things become more wacky. The technician does Ed's EKG 3 times. (His previous EKG from about 6 months prior is completely fine). This EKG, shows an elevated ST segment and a left bundle branch block. For those of you out there who are not medical, he could be in the middle of a cardiac event and he could throw a clot and have a heart attack or stroke. Mind you I said could be.
We get sent home, Ed gets even more anxious, and we get sent to go for a Cardiac CT Angiogram (I will explain all of these procedures at the end, because as I am writing this, I realize that if you are reading this you might not know what any of this is). He also goes for a swallow study because during his conversation with the doctor he told her that he is having trouble swallowing some of his pills and when he eats crunchy foods it causes him to cough.
The ECT is now on hold.
The swallow study revealed he could go through the ECT, but oh by the way there is this rod like growth in the back of your throat that needs to be worked up further (Not what a man with severe anxiety wants to hear, now he is thinking cancer, and I don't know). I try to discuss this with my primary who says she cannot talk to me about it as it is out of her area of expertise and we need to return to the ENT. (Can we say more money out of pocket, what is the deal with not being able to get information, what is the point of having a primary care doctor). Naturally, it becomes difficult to get hold of the ENT, which I still have not spoken to.
In the mean time, the weekend rolls around. My son celebrated his 17th birthday. Sunday night, Ed says, I am not feeling so well, I am having some chest pain. My daughter and I take a begrudging Ed to Abbott NW ER, which I would recommend to anyone. They are really great. The doctors and staff were caring and understanding. They repeat the EKG, the changes that were there before are no longer there. It is a normal EKG. He is given sub-lingual nitro under his tongue and the chest pain starts to resolve. Ed really does not want to stay in the hospital. He knows our money is tight, and we have exhausted out financial resources. (I will probably be filing bankruptcy soon, I am like that commercial that says I am up to my eyeballs in debt, please help).
They draw a lab called a triponin which is a marker for a heart attack. It comes back negative which means he is not having a heart attack at this moment in time.
We are discharged home and they call us the next morning to schedule him for a cardiologist appointment the first week in November. The ECT is still on hold. Ed is now not on any meds for his depression.
I have been home with him for 3 days now and he is getting worse. I think he only came out of our dark bedroom to get some water, and eat some food I had prepared. He is barely talking, and I am worried.
I will call our doctor today, maybe we can get him on something with not so many side effects like Celexa, which is a drug that we use frequently on my patients.
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