ugly cry

I mentioned last night to Jason that I didn't know when the floodgates were going to open - I've been so stressed and felt like I never had an opportunity to be authentically, outwardly grieving (or that I missed the opportunity). Well, that question got answered today.

I've been stressing out about starting my acute mental health (aka psych) clinicals, and today was the start day. I had an exam in another class, then proceeded to finish that class completely in a daze, unable to concentrate while my professor (a really good one, too) explained all sorts of EKG readings, which is already sort of complicated and not easy to grasp on first hearing. Ran through a quick lunch, then went to the hospital, where we had about two hours of talks from case managers, social workers, and nurses on the types of patients we'd see, the really severe cases suffering from severe depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc. I think I was already dazed and stressed out... and then we went to orient to the actual floor itself. Now, our clinical instructor is a tiny, soft-spoken woman, and as she's trying to introduce us to the floor and the area, people in our group kept talking. It's a sore spot of mine, so I became, quite apparently, the villain and shushed in a general direction. One of my classmates (and someone I considered a friend) turned on me and said pointedly,"you know Anne, I am SO over you shushing me every day. Go stand up front or something."

I've seen the Seinfeld episode on shushers. I've heard them in class, at clinicals, even at the movie theater. I don't like them either, and I didn't think I'd morphed into one. And maybe on another day, in another situation, I might have had a handy smart remark to give back to her, or else extended grace to both of us since we're all so stressed, or whatever. But instead, I immediately wanted to cry, I felt like such a piece of shit. And this horrible, not-so-little voice in my head starts mocking me: "You are so hostile and mean that you kill life inside of you and alienate your friends." I know that sounds extreme and mean to myself and a pity party and whatever, but I felt so low, so at the end of my rope, at that very moment, that I looked at the patients around me and felt I should be right in there with them.

I ended up in the nurses' lounge area, waiting for the ladies room to come free, and the tears wouldn't stop no matter how hard I tried, and of course my instructor had to walk in at that moment, and I ended up sitting for 15 minutes with the "ugly cry", the kind where you gasp for air and snot runs down your face, and though I didn't get into everything - the baby, the shushing, the anxiety - I just said how stressed I was and how behind I felt. She was very sympathetic and sweet and just let me cry and reassured me that I would be fine in this clinical, that all students are apprehensive at the start. So I collected myself together enough to stop hyperventilating and got out on the floor, and it was fine, but I was so drained and exhausted that I think I just didn't care about anything that might happen with a patient!

I thought I would feel better after my ugly cry. I don't feel on the verge of tears anymore, but I don't feel any better, just drained. I want my stress to go away. I want an apology from my friend. I want to apologize to my friend. Most of all, I want some answers - especially the reasoning behind this loss I've faced when I already had a difficult load on my plate to start with.

what I've not wanted to write

I've been away from blogging for a bit. One of those insane realities you face when you write a public blog - even if you have a readership you can count on your hand - is that when something huge affects your life, it's sort of hard NOT to write about it, even if you don't really want to write about it. And I haven't wanted to write about this, really, but perhaps saying it gets it out from underneath dark shadows.

Right before the New Year, Jason and I found out we were pregnant. Took the pregnancy test after feeling very hormonal, achy, and becoming the Human Disposall of All Things Unhealthy... and it was positive. Spent a few days in shock, and then several more after that dreaming of baby names, looking at online baby registries, sticking out my stomach to see what being pregnant in a few more months might look like. Since I've always been irregular with my monthly cycles, my OB ordered an ultrasound, and Jason and I spent a sleepless weekend, brimming with excitement because even if we just saw a little dot, we would be seeing our new Little One.

Ultrasound day: couldn't see anything but a shady gray area. OB informs me that we have either caught the pregnancy too early (so nothing notable to see) or something might be wrong, like an early pregnancy failure. And she felt compelled at that point to quote me miscarriage statistics, presumably to cover her own ass for liability, and I just sort of sat there, shaking and dumbfounded. Pregnancies aren't supposed to go wrong, and how many times had I heard from my parents that neither side of the family ever had pregnancy problems? Another ultrasound was ordered for two weeks later.

Next ultrasound comes... and the ultrasound tech, a terminally chipper person, points out the yolk sac (bigger than last time), my ovaries, my uterus, my cervix. When it comes to measuring what looks like a little kidney bean, I get excited: look at it! But the ultrasound tech sounds less chipper, and the text at the bottom of the TV screen says "Fetal HR ?". The question mark never gets replaced, but the one inside my heart does.

Ten minutes later, I found out I miscarried. I've had no bleeding, no cramping, but I've miscarried - the medical term they used was "missed abortion", which means the baby stopped developing for whatever reason but I'm still carrying it inside of me, and my body is still recognizing itself as pregnant, so I'm still producing hormones (hence the increased, er, yolk sac). I don't remember much after that: I was fighting as hard as I could not to cry because my OB is this no-nonsense kind of woman who, upon the last time I cried when I heard there might be a problem, started interrogating me with questions like, "What are you most afraid of?" which made me want to staple things to her head.

Today, technically, I am still pregnant. I still have this Little One, lifeless, in my body. I still have the hormones. And I have no resolution. I had scheduled a D&C to get it over with, but the only time they could do it was during a week of exams and clinicals at school, and even though I am training to be a nurse, the idea of general anesthesia, sharp scraping instruments, and questionable recovery symptoms when I needed to be mentally alert for school just scared me, so I cancelled it. I am supposed to "expel" this tissue on my own, sometime between immediately and 6 weeks from now. Six weeks seems like a lifetime. And in the meantime, I may have blamed the hormones for fatigue and cravings, but I've stopped my regular running and eaten everything in sight, so I'm feeling and looking worse.

Friends have been extremely supportive. Family has loved on me. Jason has been a saint, even though he is grieving, too. Ironically, I've heard the insensitive stock phrases every woman who experiences miscarriage fears to hear: "you'll get pregnant again" and, in my particular case, "at least you know you can get pregnant at all". Even more ironic is that those phrases came out of MY mouth, not anyone else's. I'll have many moments of sanity and regular life, but occasionally I'll see a late-pregnancy mom-to-be with her proud belly or I'll hear a song and it will unleash this flood of emotion that I cannot control. One of my favorite violin recordings is Pinchas Zukerman playing Vaughan-Williams' "The Lark Ascending", and when I heard it on the radio one morning heading to class, I wept. If you listen, the repeating violin motif, which literally sounds like a bird taking off into the sky, just made me think of this Little One and perhaps its own soul taking off into flight - corny, I know, but I cried and cried. Never mind that the song already reminded me of another poignant time in my life, living in Princeton and trying to prove myself (to myself) as a singer. (Side note: even now, the sensory memories of that time are so vivid when I hear the piece... I can smell the house I lived in, the combination of old creaky wood floors, fresh air, and the slightly musty smell of houses which are older than your grandparents)

Life continues on: some days easier, and other days feel like a giant step backwards. It's not something I like to talk about, unless I run across one of the several or so friends who have confessed their own miscarriage/child loss stories to me, friends that don't get that scrunched, uncomfortable stance of one who feels bad for you but has NO idea what to say. And not all of those friends, either - I still have several people, even an especially dear one who had suffered a similar situation just weeks before I did, that I haven't yet spoken to... because I think I'm afraid of opening the gates and seeing what happens. There's also a kind of embarrassment that sets in regarding the people you told about the pregnancy (when it was still a positive, much-anticipated event), because they were just as excited as you, and having to share the bad news... you just can't erase the memories of going out to dinner with your dad and giving him a picture frame that says "Grandpa" or the excited conversations over milkshakes you had with your mom the night you found out.

For everyone who has kept me in their prayers and offered support: thank you. Forgive me if I have dropped off the face of the earth or else acted as if nothing was ever wrong. It still hurts a lot, and it's just not a sharp learning curve for me.

you have to laugh

I can't decide if I am cold-hearted or, as the author describes, ready to shop for bassinets by laughing at this:

Picture Day

And this one gets better each time I look at it. #2 and #64 are among my favorites:

Scared of Santa

i got mad math skillz, bay-bee

First, I receive this ominous posting from our professor on the class discussion board:

"I'm afraid I have very bad, and, I have to say, surprising news. I have corrected the med exams from Orlando and Cocoa, and no one has passed. I don't believe that that has ever happened."

Then, 10 minutes later, I see this:

"An awful lot of you missed question 16 on the exam which caused me to look at the exam and key. Indeed the key was changed to make the doses given to BID instead of TID. Unfortunately, the change was never made on the exam. So those of you who got that wrong will now have it graded as right. Therefore there will be people who pass the exam, but still a lot who have not. I will email those who passed."

Then, 5 minutes later, I get the little envelope icon on my screen, and this e-mail pops up:

"Congratulations. You received a perfect score on your med test. You may now pass meds in clinical with proper supervision. Please copy this and show it to your clinical instructor."

random stuff for today

Although I'm usually pretty random about everything, actually. So this isn't anything new.

My skills checkoffs this morning went fine. I was nervous initially: when I met one of my instructors yesterday during orientation, I discovered that this person was not only the one who would check me off on skills in the morning, but she was also a huge, huge Buckeyes fan - she had on a massive "buckeyes" necklace. And this morning when my alarm went off, the first thing I heard was the DJ announcer guy yelling, "The Gators WON! The Gators WON!" Truthfully, I am not a football kind of girl, and I guess if I had to root for a team, I'd pick the Gators only because my brother went there and I almost went there myself. But I was NOT looking forward to coming into my 90-minute checkoff experience with a huge Buckeyes fan when the Buckeyes had just been royally spanked the night before. This woman, possibly bitter, would hold the power over whether I could continue in the program or not!

Thankfully, whatever disappointment she may have had last night had already faded by the time she saw me, and she was very easygoing and relaxed about the process. Whew. I passed with flying colors.

And another cool event: my dearest friend Rachel started her own blog for her family today, and under her links section, she refers to me as "Super Anne". I had to take a moment to preen a little bit after I read that - she thinks I am super! I think she is super. Go look at her blog and tell her so, too.

not so bad, really

First day of school: it was doable. Attempt 1 (out of a possible 3) of my calculations test turned out well, I think, except for one question where my thought process (and my answer) was interrupted by the dripping, snuckly sniffing of the guy next to me. I just wanted to tell him to suck it all up, but instead, I just heard this half-assed sucking of the snot up his nostrils... ugh. Nothing like destroying concentration with nasal congestion. Anyway, I feel that even despite distraction, I'll only have a few problems to make up. Whew.

Tomorrow is the skills checkoff - 10:30am, which is nice since I won't have to get up at the crack of dawn, but I'll have the afternoon to recuperate (whether I pass or fail!).

Short post - gotta go study. Wish me luck!

do i hafta?

School starts Monday. And it starts with a bang, the kind of slap-yer-ass welcome I've come to expect from UCF School of Nursing. Before I get too comfortable in the rigors of the semester, I am greeted bright and early on Monday morning with a dosage calculations test: you must pass this with 100% or else be removed from the program. Then, the next two days consist of skills checkoffs: remember all those things you did in the lab, maybe once each, like inserting a foley catheter and trach suctioning? Well, you have to remember and pass those, too, stuff you haven't done in over a month because you were busy doing all those Christmasy/New Year's things (and, for some of us, working our side jobs). Not passing these skills also means your place in the program is jeopardized. Then, at the end of the week, there's a comprehensive psych exam, filled with content you barely understood last semester because the teacher talked rapidly and in hushed tones, and you just couldn't hear her over the girl next to you who would not, in the name of all that is holy, stop pressing the buttons on her cell phone, making all sorts of high-pitched beeps and "woo-woo-woos". If you don't pass this exam, you don't get kicked out, but you are blessed with a mountainload of homework and paperwork on top of an already-crammed semester.

To those of you intimately acquainted with nursing school, I'm sure this is all bringing a smile to your face - or, if you are in the thick of it with me, making you just as anxious as I am. And for you readers not familiar with all of this, yes, it does seem a little extreme and barbaric. I understand the logic behind it all: no one wants the nurse who is bad with decimal places, because there's a big difference between 0.1 mg and 10 mg, and you could potentially kill your patient if your math is off. Still, must we do this all in one week? Sheesh.

I know that these next months will really test the strength and breadth of my inner character: no one said this would be easy, and more than a few people have mentioned how hard nursing school is, particularly when you shove it down into a condensed form like this. And I know that personally, the challenge of these two semesters is a bit greater for me: I'm trying to graduate with a degree, keep my marriage intact, keep my health somewhat intact and at least not undo all the good work I've done so far to lose weight. I have to say how grateful I am for the long runs I take about 3-4 a week, for the ability to just pound the pavement and have great "me" time to think.

For many reasons I cannot fully unfold just yet, Weight Watchers is going on hiatus. Not that I plan to park myself at the nearest Bob Evans and habitually gorge myself, no - I've come too far for that - but the weekly weigh-ins, the night-before panic and deprivation, the sectioning of my weight loss into neat little weekly segments... it's on hold for now. Weight Watchers, like any weight loss program I've done, has always inspired a brand of neuroticism in myself that I don't like, and no matter how much I try and convince myself otherwise, if I do not lose weight one week (or not as much as I think I should), I am despondent and the neurotic thoughts escalate. It's not fun. For now, I'm continuing running because I love it, adding yoga for flexibility and strength, and trying to apply the good principles I've learned regarding food, even when I'm not running to a meeting center each week.

weird, disturbing

Our neighbor next door passed away. He was pretty young - in his 40's - and had apparently been under chemotherapy. We came home from work last Friday night to find our apartment surrounded by cop cars and the medical examiner's van, where they stayed most of the night until they finally wheeled out the body, covered in a sheet, and took off. We asked the coroner guy what was the cause of death; he said he didn't know for sure, but it looked like he bled pretty well out of his chemo port. Today, we found out he'd had a stroke, though I'm not sure of the mechanics of how that makes one bleed profusely onto the carpet. I'd made the mistake on New Year's Day of peeking my head around the fence corner, thinking that in a few days they'd already cleaned the place up. Nope. Even from the street, you could see the massive dried area where the poor guy had bled out... and it made me nauseous and disturbed and upset all at once.

I think it disturbed me, not because it happened so close to us, but how easily it could have been me or Jason or my brother or whomever. This guy lived alone, and, I'm ashamed to say, not once in the year and a half living next door did Jason or I ever introduce ourselves or say hello when we (rarely) crossed paths outside our fence doors. Once, I was babysitting the Boo when I did run into him... and he sort of creeped me out, for whatever reason, so I answered in as few monosyllabic words as I could and scooted out of there with my young charge. He lived alone, unmarried, with a small yappy dog and a very loud stereo, and the only reason anyone found him was because his mother didn't receive her daily call from him and sent the security guy to go check on him.

Death makes me intensely examine my own situation, and it also lends itself to glorifying the deceased: suddenly, this man who I only remembered prior to this as having the ugliest feet in America and who made me feel uncomfortable is now, magically, this angelic, humble saint whom I failed by not being intimately involved in his daily life, because if I had been, maybe he wouldn't be dead now. I mean, I don't even know his name, but man alive, I am sorry he is gone.

It just makes me thankful for the bed I climb into every night next to the man I happily married and the good health I carry, along with a legion of caring friends and family. But I am sad it was too late for this man. Requiescat in pace, dear stranger.

a to z

I've seen this on several blogs so I thought I would join in. This was an indirect tag. I encourage anyone else who wants to participate to consider yourself tagged also!

A is for age: 29 - I will turn the big 3-0 in May.

B is for beer: Not a huge beer drinker - if I have some, it's usually Strongbow or Killian's.

C is for career: I am, quite happily, a nurse-in-training - I graduate this August.

D is for my dog’s name: No dogs. I have a stinker cat named Missy, and I might possibly consider a small dog in the future. Big dogs make me cry.

E is for essential item used everyday: Aside from the obvious essentials (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, etc), it's my cell phone and my laptop, no contest.

F is for favorite color: Pink. All the way. But I like lots of others, too, like sage green and chocolate brown and robins-egg blue and purple...

G is for game: Scattergories, Outburst, Taboo - anything encouraging making a fool of yourself in front of others :-)

H is for hometown: Birmingham, Alabama (that's right, y'all - I'm a suthenah!)

I is for instruments: singing, piano, violin, viola (just 4th grade), cello (just 6th grade), trumpet (disastrous attempt in college), and hopefully harp soon.

J is for favorite juice: definitely apple, ice-cold.

K is for who’s butt I’d like to kick: each and every exam, including the NCLEX, that I will take over the next 9 months before finally becoming an RN

L is for last place I ate: Rossi's - big ol' chicken parmigiana sub.

M is for marriage: Married a year and a half - best thing I ever did.

N is for my name: Anne Carol. Carol is my mom's name, and Anne was just a favorite name of my parents.

O is for overnight hospital stays: Not yet.

P is for people I was with today: My husband, briefly, before he crawled out of bed to go to work.

Q is for quote: "Just because you can reproduce doesn't mean you should."

R is for biggest regret: God has really worked through every situation and decision of my life... so I'm not sure I would change anything.

S is for sport: I like to run, if you can consider that a sport. Otherwise, I am the most athletically-disinclined person EVER.

T is for traveled to: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island (briefly), Massachusetts, Illinois (stopover in Chicago), Texas (stopover in Dallas), Alberta CA, Dominican Republic

U is for current underwear: Yes, I'm wearing some and I hope you are too; just don't tell us if you aren't!

V is for vegetable: Of raw veggies, I like lettuce of all types, carrots, cucumbers, grape tomatoes; cooked, I like grean beans, edamame, corn, and broccoli

W is for wish: That my heart becomes more united with God's will, that I continue to run and put my health first, and that the remaining two semesters of school do not completely break me

X is for x-rays: I'm sure I had some as a child, but I don't really know when or for what

Y is for youthful ambition not fulfilled: Well, I wanted to be a giraffe when I was young. Hasn't exactly happened yet, but I am hopeful.

Z is for zodiac: Western: Taurus. Chinese: snake (haha).

my Boo

She kills me.


My boo and I

This morning, I called into work, but wouldn't you know it, that darned cat hopped right onto the bed at exactly 6am, just as I had fallen back asleep and the normal time I would have crawled out of bed, and started yowling. I mean, the neighbors probably heard her and wondered what sort of sadistic kitty abuse I was performing on her. I tried to get her to cuddle with me. I tried to push her off the bed. I even got up, went downstairs with her little paws eagerly trotting after me, and checked to make sure she was stocked up on food, water, and an unexploding litter box. All good. Go back upstairs, only to find her back on the bed, yowling at me as if to let me know I have officially and egregiously Missed My Alarm and I must get up NOW so that she may do whatever she does when Jason and I are not around to interrupt her. Mind you, she never does this yowling thing on weekends, even when Jason has to get up early and leave to do whatever he has to do. But she was intent on getting me up. So I did. I putzed around a bit, then went back to bed after an acceptable amount of time, and I guess she had decided I wasn't really going anywhere today, so she hopped onto the bed, kneaded a cushy spot on the comforter next to my butt, and snuggled with me for the rest of the morning.

And when I finally did get up, she yawned, looked at me offensively, and made a half-meow, informing me that I had Disturbed Her Beauty Sleep and I was no longer welcome. Oh, really?