hard times

In the back of my brain for the last few months I ve been toying with the idea of transferring right away into the regular nursing program. It hit me hard yesterday working with a 4th year RN student. i KNOW im good at psych, but fuck, do i want to be pushing pills? FUCK. im throwing an application in on Feb first. you will not be hearing about it until i am accepted. and if i am rejected. well. you won't hear anything. I am so conflicted. The passionless nurses i see here shoving pills into the mouths of clients... i know if it weren't for the hospital that they would be on the streets. But after working as an aide and being a student nurse on the unit i feel as if as a nurse all you do is chart, give drugs and..well where the fuck are the counseling skills that i learned going to be used?!?!? i know this hospital is different than those in the city but... i don't know. my head hurts from crying to my mom. I don't know if can do this forever, it wasn't my original plan but if i can leave this town and the hospital that runs this town..id be okay with that.

another day at the office

I was called in last minute for an evening shift on an adult psych unit that I have never worked before so I was eager to take it. I have heard a lot of good things about this particular unit. The only things I knew about it was that it was basically a long term unit, technically its called a rehabilitation unit but the patients who are there never really leave. One client has been there since he was about 13, and he is now 38. When I walked onto the unit the staff was very pleasant and willing to show me around and tell me about the clients before I got working. I was told that this unit is actually quite active and violent, after reading a few of the patents charts I noticed that most, if not all are either Schizo affective or bipolar affective, affective meaning mood and Im sure that most know the vague details of bipolar and schizophrenia disorder. But these clients don’t quite fit the criteria for these disorders and only have a few select behaviors. But yes they are quite erratic and can quickly change their mood. So I experienced my first close call this evening with one particular elderly female whom I was warned about. One of the male nurses had grabbed a unit phone and rushed out ( I later found out he was rushing out to grab a hospital van to pick up a patient on our unit who had decided to walk off hospital grounds towards the highway in the rain while he was out on privileges, he was spotted by several hospital staff) and she was being nosey, asking what he was doing and where he was going, I suppose I could have said something else but I replied back with “oh im not sure, but he is a grown man and is probably going out to do what ever” and she snapped! “YOU SNOT NOSED LITTLE SHIT, I AM OLD ENOUGH TO BE YOUR MOTHER BLAH BLAH BLAH…!!!!” She was getting up close right into my face I kept my cool and told her that I meant nothing by it and was preparing to dodge a fist to my mouth but thankfully the well seasoned and bad ass nurse told her to back off. Another bullet dodged.  After that my shift ran smoothly, not a whole lot going on, another aide came up to me and asked if I would like to play Wii with a client, she had played a few games and her arms were already hurting so I jumped to the opportunity to be paid $20 an hour to play games. This patient was one I saw around the hospital often so I felt comfortable being alone and in close quarters with him.  Game was going well, he is quite good at bowling and was calling me a lucky duck every time I got a strike, but soon those duck comments got a little weird. He started talking about ducks in a bath and how we are both ducks, and he would “wash my body” then I would “then wash his body” I immediately said “absolutely not” and the comments stopped, I quickly finished up the game and left the room (to make it even a little more awkward I unfortunately walked in on him pleasuring himself while doing rounds). I brought this up during report and one nurse immediately replied “Its that bath scene in the video”. I was a little confused but they explained that his brother had given him a pornography and odd enough the doctor said that it was acceptable as long as no bad behaviors occurred, looks like I got the video taken away. Opps!  I mean, I try to empathize with him, he is a young man with blood in his veins and he is going to need to express those feelings, but I think a playboy or more preferably the underwear section of a sears catalogue and some Vaseline would do. But his mind is no more mature than a 9 year old boy, so the pornography on his video would seem acceptable to him, and I could definitely see something terrible happen. Anyways other than those two characters there was only one other patient who had stuck out to me, not so much by their actions but by their history.  Right from the get go her life hadn’t been easy, she has experienced incest, physical abuse, drug abuse, living on the streets, schizophrenia, pregnancy and almost no normalcy in her life. She most definitely was predisposed, almost every female in her family has some sort of psychological issue.  But the way life has treated her I don’t blame her for breaking down.  She is catatonic most of the time, I hear she is quite violent, but I feel for her. And I wish that it was as easy as supporting her and telling her that everything will be okay, but she is too far gone.  I was told that this unit is the dumping grounds for all the patients that no one else can handle, but I was so impressed with how organized and well handled everything was. Over all it was a great shift and I really am loving my job. And as I sit here in the comfort of my own home I  am thankful for my supports and healthy mind.  GOOD NIGHT.

long long over due

 

I have finally finished my orientation so I have begun working in the psychiatric hospital and I realize that this is exactly what I want to be doing. Its eye opening, I feel that the diagnosis of a psychiatric illness is far more devastating than the diagnosis of a physical ailment. If you think about it, which illness is more easily accepted and understood, being told that you have cancer or being told that you have schizophrenia?  Which disease will your family and friends understand and be able to give you the support that you need?  At first going into the hospital especially when working in geriatrics I felt that if one was admitted to the hospital at that age it was basically a death sentence of sorts, but I have definitely witnessed some amazing things. I feel ignorant calling geriatric psychiatric a “death sentence” because I have talked to clients who are most definitely functional and have improved. It was heart warming working with a client who I was able to have a conversation with and they were thanking me and knew that what I was doing was beneficial to them. She was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and within 2 months her hallucinations had stopped. So there is hope out there.  But still if I was ever diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s I know for a fact that after working with these clients, I would rather die before everything fades away. Now working in adult psychiatry is a lot more interesting, the variety of psychological issues blows my mind, I am sure that all of us can be diagnosed with something and be put on a drug for it.  That’s part of the reason why I don’t think I can just stay with psychiatry. The mechanics of the drugs and how they work on the neurons of the brain are not entirely known and that kind of bothers me.  I had a great shift the other day working adult psychiatry. I was on constant with an autistic boy, I have a soft spot for autistic children due to my past experience, I feel comfortable and that once I know the individual and their quirks I will be able to have them open up to me. It was fun I took him to the gym and he rode his bike for 2 hours while I looked on and played basketball. I think one of the most mind blowing things about autism is that the individual could be having the time of their lives but you could never tell, sometimes though if they are really excited it will come through.  While in the gym a client from a unit that my roommate works on came in to ride the bike, I suspected he may have had some form of downs syndrome. I was talking to my roommate and I was very surprised by his diagnosis. He is a 28 year old male and before he came into the hospital he was a completely normal healthy individual. He had been in a bar fight and had been knocked out for literally a few seconds, he got up and everything seemed okay. Within a few weeks the family had noticed some changes in him. He was taken into the doctor, tests were done and the diagnosis was a degenerative brain disease. And with time he will become a complete vegetable. Who knows if the fight had anything to do with it, but in my mind it didn’t and these changes would have occurred with or with out the fight. Oh the mysteries of the brain. Well that is all for now. I have my first clinical tomorrow! Pray that this damn head cold goes away!