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.