I seriously started to talk myself out of therapy this afternoon around 1pm.  I'm still sick and making a lot of snot.  It's clear to yellow but still...I can't sit up straight and not blow my nose every 10 minutes.  But alas, I went to therapy.  I left at the break, but at least I went.  I didn't really do a lot of talking tonight.  I just sniffled and tried not to think about snot draining down my throat.  I knew that if I started to blow my nose there was no end to it so I sucked it up (literally and figuratively). 

I had an inkling of a thought of a desire to get on the treadmill this afternoon.  Of course it was after my nap and before I was to go to therapy.  Of course I talked myself out of it because it was either the treadmill or therapy.  And I knew that I could always get on the treadmill when I got home.  Or not, as the case is at this time. 

Hubby is getting card stock ready to make Christmas cards this year.  I don't really know the game plan or how he came up with the idea but I'm going with it.  I'm still floored it's December and in a little over 2 days I'm going to be 34 years old.  I don't feel old.  I don't feel a lot, really.  Oh, which reminds me...I got my FMLA papers today.  Major depression, moderate episode, I think it reads.  Don't know what that means.  But the description makes me sound dysfunctional.  I guess technically I am, but oh well.  It is what it is.  I'm tearful today.  Not sure why.  I think it's the combo of being sick and then depressed.  I always get a little tearful/homesicky when I get sick.  And whiny. 

I told myself I need to do some of the work from the handout I got in therapy tonight since I skipped the education portion.  Yeah...maybe tomorrow?  I've got nothing on Wednesday during the day...hmmm.  Just not now is what I'm thinking.  I also have to seriously think about the certification exam in March.  Dammit.

I was instructed to start blogging again.  I remember having to journal when I've been in therapy in the past.  I actually chronicled a few years of my QuarterLife Crisis.  So let's see...where did I leave off?  I guess it doesn't matter.  What matters is how I ended up here and how I ended up in therapy again.

I have been enjoying my new job that I've had for about a year now.  It is rewarding and keeps my critical thinking skills sharp.  I've had glowing reviews from peers, bosses, and patients/families.  I figured it was going to get pretty rough on the expectations when my supervisor verbalized that she would like for me to run this program as clinical coordinator in the next few years.  No pressure...

Dad came back to town two weeks ago.  He has 6 doctor's appts this month before he can have shoulder replacement surgery around Christmas.  Of course no one can take him to any of the 4 appts so I sort of blew a gasket a few days after he came back home.  I asked for FMLA on 11.19.08.  I went to EAP that same evening.  I cried at how much I had on my plate with my dad and the fact that I am at absence #6 out of 8 before termination.  We agreed that I would meet again in one week after I got the FMLA paperwork in the mail and figured out how to take my leave.  On the 20th I fell apart and sat crying all morning feeling like the room was caving in on me.  It wasn't an anxiety attack.  I didn't feel anxious.  I felt overwhelmed.  I felt tired.  I felt like I spend all my time asking other people how they feel and if they feel like hurting themselves or others.  But what about me?  No one ever asks me how I feel.  About anything.  I felt alone.  I felt doomed.  I felt like I welcomed being struck by lightening or just evaporating into thin air.  I didn't care about my patients that day or any day.  I didn't care that people were depending on me to visit them that day.  I just couldn't get unstuck from my vat of crap.  

I called and spoke with my supervisor who is coincidentally a family therapist.  I was surprised at how much hard ball she was playing with me.  She encouraged me to find that balance within myself.  She recommended  I put into place other family members that could help with my dad.  She recommended I keep some sort of normalcy by continuing to work.  I explained to her that it has always been my instinct to quit my job or move home or stop whatever I am doing to help out my elders.  It wasn't like it was expected.  It was more that something in me said "This needs to be done."  I never regretted any of the decisions.  My boss stated that I needed to break this trait, and that one day when my father dies, whenever he dies, I will be left alone.  I will have chosen to isolate myself and I will have poured out all this love and I will be left alone without anyone to love me.  **That hurt.**  A lot.  I remember telling her that I feel like  I need some help from the Stress Center and that in the past it had helped me get back on track.  She responded that not everyone in life has the luxury of just stopping their world and going into therapy and that I have to work on it on my own.  She stated that Intensive Outpatient Therapy is something we are hoping to avoid sending me to and that we would catch me before I got to that point.  She didn't seem to understand that I was crying out for help and for someone to acknowledge that I needed help.  And of all things, a family therapist missed the signs.  She told me to get myself together and get out of my robe, take a shower, reset myself and she'd call back in one hour to give me a game plan for the rest of the day (I had quite a busy day ahead of me that day and for the next).  In one hour, I had showered and had resorted to figuring out my day.  My boss informed me that she spoke with the clinical director of nursing and they had taken me off the staffing schedule for the rest of the week (Thurs and Fri).  It was highly recommended that I seek FMLA for my issues and get medical documentation for being off and needing time off as this cancellation from staffing counted against me!  What the hell?  I get taken out of the staffing schedule and they force me to take a sick day and that puts another negative hash mark on my absences?  I'm now literally two absences away from being fired from my job.

I go to the Internist on Friday who immediately sends me to the Stress Center.  I get evaluated at the Stress Center and am told to start Intensive Outpatient Therapy the following Monday.  To be honest, that whole evaluation seemed a little fuzzy for me.  I remember I couldn't answer a question about my insulin pump.  I found out the name to the feeling that I had in which I just wanted to evaporate or vanish.  It's called feeling hopeless.  

I have since talked with my boss regarding my plan of care and what I'm working on in therapy.  I've also spoken with my husband about this ordeal.  I think it's interesting that I lost my marbles after my dad gets back and we find out his colonoscopy shows no recurrence of colon cancer.  I realized I don't think I ever mourned or grieved my father's diagnosis a year ago.  I just plowed on through with my new job.  I was rockin' with my job and I coped with things by throwing my feelings into my work.  I think it's interesting that this is how I became a nurse after my mom died.  Hmmm.  Interesting...

Hubby and I agree that I just ran out of steam with everything.  In the beginning of October I was thrust into a part of town that I'm not comfortable with and was told to work my magic.  It's a shadier part of town that I can't read.  I can't read their feelings on Asians.  Hate to say it but it makes me uncomfortable.  Is it wrong for me to say, "I'm not sure I want to work here" just because I'm afraid of the bad part of town?  It doesn't help that I missed an open handgun in a home while visiting with the therapist/boss.  Then I got lost near a very bad neighborhood on the evening of Halloween going to visit another nurse's patient who was having a manic episode.  Can you tell I felt trapped in this job??  Then the looming anticipation of my father returning and his meeting/living with the new dog caused some more pressure to my plate.  I don't think I really refueled from the previous 9 months. 

So here I am blogging my heart out.  I am going to pick up my FMLA paperwork at therapy tomorrow evening.  The group leader said that I should expect something like 6 weeks of time off and she'd talk to me about it later.  That will bring us to another entry where I bitch about losing my car and laptop due to not working.  

I can't seem to shake my funk.  Of course the cause of my funk is multifactorial.  First of all we had my beloved Basset Hound euthanized on Cinco de Mayo...forever to be known as Cinco de MyAss.  My father was still in town.  So I still had the stress of him living here along with the grief of the loss of my first dog.  I was also forced to precept a new employee at work which totally put me in a funk at work.  I was just getting into my own groove and I had to put out all the stops to train someone who I don't think will do very well in this job.  I can't teach her common sense...

So anyway, my father finished his chemo treatments in early June and I sent him back home last week.  I know it sounds weird, especially since my hubby and I have had a lot of stress due to my father living with us...but I miss my dad terribly!  I am glad he is back home but I feel like my routine is missing something.  For the past 8 months I was ticked that my routine was interrupted.  And now I'm complaining because my routine is somewhat lacking in the interruption.  Does that make any sense??  I'm hoping to see my dad in August for my half brother's birthday. 

To top things off I just found out that I'm an asthmatic.  I guess it's not shocking considering I've had a history of bronchitis.  I always attributed it to my smoking and also to seasonal allergies.  I've not smoked in a long time but this allergy season has kicked me in the ass.  I've had all the classic symptoms and finally the doc this week said "This is asthma."  I just don't want any more diagnoses.  The pred is driving me crazy.  I'm thinkin' that's why I'm freaking awake at 5:30a.  Okay, so it's because I slept all afternoon but I slept all afternoon because my blood sugars were off the charts. 

I'm jonesing for another dog.  If it weren't for my hubby's pickiness of getting another dog, I'd have 17 by now.  I am constantly trolling petfinder and other sites in search of the dog that I will fall in love with.  I'm sad without a second dog in the house.  I think our current dog is also missing another dog to pal around with. 

I'm also at a loss with my relationship with my husband.  I never sat down and thought about how much having my father live with us for 8 months impacted my relationship with my husband.  I know on a daily basis we talked about it.  But to step back and look at it, I feel like the relationship got put on hold and I can't pop up the pause button.  I love him I miss him and I want to be with him and spend time with him.  But as dumb as this sounds I don't know how.  I'm not feeling well physically and emotionally and I can't connect with him like we used to.  I can't explain this.  It's bothersome to me.  I always talk about needing to go on a vacation or a weekend getaway.  But so far it hasn't happened.  I don't know.  

BLARRRGH.  

Current Mood: depressed

Let' see...Thanksgiving came and went in a flash.  Next thing I know, the Christmas tree is up.  It's cold outside.  There's holiday music on the radio.  My birthday is next week.  My hubby's is in a few weeks.  It seems like it should be festive, ya know.   

The last six weeks of my life have been forever changed.  I just can't seem to get out of my funk.  My father was diagnosed with colon cancer and had a bowel resection.  He gets a vein access device next week....the day after my birthday.  He starts chemo the following week...the day before his birthday.  I'm having health issues of my own that are going to be investigated next week the day after my birthday as well.  

My new job is going well but I'm having a hard time bringing my work home with me.  I've never had to deal with that before and I feel like I'm in grade school again.  I come home and take a mindless break for an hour or so and then dive into homework the rest of the evening.  

I just don' t have time to deal with family dynamics.  I think I have enough on my plate without having to deal with a money groveling sister who thinks dad is our payroll.  Good graces, she and her husband are both college graduates and both work.  I don't understand how they don't have any cash to buy their kids' prescription medications.  She has better health insurance than I do, and I work in healthcare (that doesn't say much, though).  

I'm in shock.  I can't understand how my sister can't see this latest development as anything more than relief that he's back in his hometown to get treatment and oh, I can get cash anytime I ask for it because Poor Me.  I admit, I've always been somewhat of the fav in the family because I'm the youngest.  And by about 8-10 years, too.  I'm Daddy's Girl.  There.  I said it.  I am shocked and scared and sad of everything that my father has to go through at this time.  There's no doubt he's scared and confused as well.  The man's never had any serious health issues so this mumbo jumbo medical speak is completely new to him.  

I just wish my sisters would see my side of things for a day.  I'm the only one that works M-F and my father is living with me and my newlywed husband.  It's causing a small amount of strain but my husband and I both agree this is the place my father needs to be.  This is his safe house where he won't be robbed by his own daughter while he sleeps!  We have been providing him education about his upcoming chemo treatments and what to expect, etc, etc.  That's also been a challenge because my father is not American by birth.  He is Chinese American, having come to the US in the 60's as an adult.  So there are a lot of cultural considerations at play with medical modalities, acceptance of disease, and also a language barrier as I am conversant in Chinese but not literate.  It's hard enough to convey medical ideas and concepts in lay terms to a Native English speaker without medical background.  Imagine trying to do the same in a different language even if you are fluent.  Cancer and chemo and surgery are just difficult topics to explain in any language.  Explanations become so literal and graphic to convey the idea.  And hearing it being spoken aloud is scary in itself.  

I'm trying to be the good daughter.  I'm trying to be supportive and emotionally available.  I'm trying to give my father the welcome he deserves for staying with us for the next several months.  I'm trying to be a family member and not a nurse.  I'm trying to be his health advocate.  And I'm trying to separate work from home when I'm on the clock.  Why can't anyone see what I'm trying to deal with? 

One food I would refuse to try is bugs.  I watch Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods show and I think I would try just about anything once...except those bugs he manages to find in markets around the world.  I can't remember where he was but he found some seasoned and dried bugs that people put on pizzas, or just munch on at the movies!

Maybe it's a texture thing?  Dunno.  The crunching.  The dry exoskeleton.  Ewww.  

I don't even eat dried shrimp, a popular Asian ingredient...and I eat my fair share of Cantonese foods!  I used to eat dried shrimp in whatever was cooked for me at home...and then as I grew older, for whatever reason, i stopped eating them and started picking them out of foods.  I think it's the texture, and that ever so small shell that I feel like they didn't peel off the shrimp!!  I just don' t like it! 

Worms are probably up there with the bugs...can't do fried worms or crunchy worms or even worms that are soft like pasta.  I think it's because I know it's pasta!!  

Things that taste like chicken, sure, why not.  I'd probably even try placenta...though I just don't know exactly how I would come across one in a culinary sense as I would reaalllly want to know who's it is that I'm chewing on.  Same concept goes for brain.  Though I would try a brain sandwich.  I hear they are delish...

Tags: refuse food, writer's block
Current Mood: hungry