Tuesday 9/26/23 Birthday

 Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 45. I'm not one of those people who are upset about aging, but man - I'm getting close to 50! Holy cow! I spent the day at work. And, not surprisingly, it was a shit show. Again. I'm so sick of it always being this way. Even did compressions on a baby for 3.5 minutes. Happy birthday to me. But what was nice was I came home from work to find that Jer had decorated a little bit for my birthday, gotten me a card and a cake and my favorite candy bar and gotten my a cute little succulent. That was nice. I was glad for that - it helped.

This morning I talked with a gal from Post University about their PMHNP program (psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner). And I just ordered my transcripts from UCCS (where I got my BSN from). This is terrifying y'all. I'm doing it. I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to become a nurse practitioner. In mental health. Oh MAN this is scary. But I can do it. I know I can. I just need to convince myself of that. And that's hard. So hard. I have low self esteem. I never think I'm good enough. I have imposter syndrome. So convincing myself that I can go back to school, to get my NP, is tough. But I'm determined. I've talked with some people at work about it and they all think I should do it and that I would be good at being a mental health practitioner. This gives me hope. Other people believe I can do it, maybe I can believe that myself. I have a lot of work to do - both before I enroll and after (obviously after - I'll be in school!). I could start as early as October 16th. Wow. Maybe that's too soon. Maybe November would be better. I don't know. I just know that I'm scared and excited. Schooling will require 16-20 hours a week. Which is a lot. Especially on top of working full time. All of my free time is going to be spent studying. Wow. Courses are 8 weeks, one course at a time. Which feels more doable. Sort of. A regular semester is 16 weeks, so it's still like I'm taking 2 classes a semester, they're just not concurrent. Two years and 10 months to complete. Wow. I mean, the time is going to pass no matter what, I might as well be doing something with it, right? This is crazy.

I'm going to stop now. I have a headache and things to do. And I'm a ball of anxiety. Mild anxiety, but anxiety none the less.  

Wednesday 9/20/23 Stuff n Stuff

 Welp, here we are again, hanging out on my blog. I'm in a 3 day stretch of being off from work and it's glorious. I worked Sunday and Monday, and I work Friday. And I don't want to go in on Friday. It's still a literal dumpster fire at work. An understaffed shit show. And I'm so tired and burnt out. Monday made me not want to do my job anymore. We had 8 deliveries before 1pm and it was getting unsafe. My coworker and I voiced our concerns, only to be shot down by management, saying we were not in the position to make that decision. Basically saying that our concerns didn't matter and they weren't going to even look into them. Wow, okay. Thanks for that. Thanks for making us feel valued. 

I'm thinking more and more that I want to go back to school for my PMHNP (psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner). I've been researching schools and talking with coworkers who are getting their NP right now. Most of them are getting their family practice NP, so my trajectory will be a bit different, but at least I'm getting an idea. The prospect of going back to school is truly terrifying. I'm scared. It's going to be hard and different and costly. It's going to take time. It's going to take a lot of effort. And it's really, really scary. I haven't been in school for over 17 years. I haven't yet worked in psych but it's what I want my NP in. So that's scary too. I have no experience in psych. How much harder will that make my schooling? I have personal experience . . . but no working experience. Oy. I'm almost paralyzed with fear. I read a quote today that said, "if nothing changed over the next 10 years, would you be happy?" And it got me thinking, would I be happy? No, I don't think I would be. In my private life, yes, because my private life is good. But my work life? No. I've been doing the same thing for 15 years. The past 4 or so years have been trying. Have been difficult. And the burnout is real, y'all. I'm finding myself not enjoying my job. I'm more cynical and angry. I have less empathy and tolerance and patience. I don't like who I am when I'm at work. I don't feel valued or appreciated. Even by coworkers. I feel like I'm done. Like I need to move on, find something else. And that something else just happens to involve more education. But I'm scared. 

I just finished an online psychiatric first aid course. Just a little something I figured I'd try, test the waters I guess you could say. And I did fine. It would be cool to take a psychology class or two to get a feel of what being back in school is like, but I'm not really finding anything online that I don't have to be enrolled in college to take. I think it would be helpful. I need to relearn APA format for writing papers. I haven't written a paper in FOREVER. Can I even write a paper?? My coworker says she has a paper to write about every other week. They're not long papers - 2-5 pages - but still. That's a lot of papers for someone who hasn't written anything in almost 20 years. So scary. But I can do hard things, right? Sure I can. Sure I can. Nothing changes if nothing changes. I'm leaning more and more on taking the leap. Going back to school. It'll just be hard. I'll still have to work full time, which sucks. But there's no way around that. I'll have to make it work. At least I don't have small children to take care of. Ayden takes care of himself (now if he would just start driving . . .). 

Okay. That's all for today. I'm waiting for a call from Chamberlain University to discuss their PMHNP program. So scary.

Thursday 12/3/20 Doc appt and a Christmas Fox

 Let's just get down to it.

I had an appointment yesterday with a urologist for urodynamic testing because I'm having trouble peeing (probably TMI, you're welcome). So yeah, especially at night, sometimes it takes several minutes of sitting on the toilet before I can actually go. Which is freaking annoying, to say the least. So I saw a urologist and she recommended this test. Urodynamic testing, in case you don't know, consists of putting a catheter in the urethra and in the rectum (along with several electrodes) to measure muscle contractility and some other stuff (like strength of your stream, how much you pee after your bladder is filled, etc). Let me tell you, it's uncomfortable. 

So they insert the catheters and begin filling my bladder with water. They fill it until I feel like I can't absolutely hold it for any longer and have to pee. Then they have you pee around the catheter. Which is actually kind of difficult to do because 1. you're peeing around a catheter, 2. you're not peeing into an actual toilet, and 3. because I have trouble peeing. So I wasn't able to pee much and what I did go I had to force out. But, thankfully, the urologist was able to get the info she needed from the test. And what did we find out? My bladder muscle is weak and isn't contracting like it should, making it difficult for me to pee and to empty my bladder. Fantastic. And she had a theory as to why this is happening - my Wellbutrin. 

I was started on Wellbutrin last June or July and started having trouble peeing in August. Apparently, antidepressants can cause the bladder muscle to weaken and not contract. So I have four options: 1. try going off my Wellbutrin and see if this helps, 2. go on another medication that could help me pee (only works in about 50% of people), 3. straight cath myself instead of actually peeing (um, NO), or 4. have surgery to implant a stimulator that forces my bladder to contract so I can pee. I'm choosing to try going off my Wellbutrin and see if that helps. I see my psychiatrist on the 14th and I'll talk to him about it then. To be honest, I'm scared to death to go off the Wellbutrin because I've been doing so well and I don't want to backslide mood wise. But I also don't want to go on another medication - especially if it only works in 50% of people - and I certainly don't want to cath myself or have surgery. I probably couldn't even have the surgery if I wanted it because of covid. 

So yeah. I'm going to try going off of Wellbutrin, as scary as that is. And I'll pray that I don't backslide and that it actually helps with being able to pee. Ugh. My body and brain hate me. 

In other news, I painted a fox with a santa hat and people really liked it. Enough so that I painted 3 more of the same picture because people were wanting it and I don't have a print shop as of right now. 

The original painting is the one in the upper left. The other three are my copycats. Pretty darn good, yeah? So I need to find a print shop so that I can make prints of my popular paintings, and I need to start charging more for the originals. Because I can't keep doing this. It's just dumb. 

Oh yeah - and at work now it's mandatory for us to float to other units to help out. We've never had to float before and it's a little nerve wracking. I haven't done med/surg nursing in 13 years. As of right now we're only supposed to be "helping hands" - meaning we're not supposed to take an assignment. But that could all change depending on how high the covid numbers get. I'm not looking forward to this, but I'm also not letting it ruin my mood. It is what it is, even if it's scary.