Well I got through my first day back at work; problem is I didn’t make it to my second. I thought I was doing so well. Thought I was feeling the best I had in years. I was doing reasonably okay until I had a run in with one of the nursing coordinators, her comments were not directly aimed at me & I was assured that she had a reputation of being a bit of a ‘dragon’. But I took it personally & the agitation started & pretty soon I was fighting back the tears. On my tea break I sat on the couch by myself, hoping & praying with every fibre in my being that no one would ask me how I was I going, or look too closely & discover that I was on the verge of crying. I knew that if I started I just wouldn’t be able to stop so I tensed up my body so tight & stared blankly at the TV till it was time to go back to work.
My heart just about breaks for the patients on the ward; it’s so sad to see them reduced to this ‘shell’. Their bodies being slowly overtaken by the cancer – invading them, like a virus to the host, till all that remains is ‘the cancer’. And it slowly becomes all that people do see - your existence reduced to a series of attempts to ‘appease’ the cancer.
Each time I went to a sink to wash my hands I would catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror – my eyes were red, my face flushed. When my shift was over & it was time to return home I walked to the train station & found that due to maintenance that the trains were cancelled till further notice. And that did it, I started to come apart. I walked back down to the street to get a cab & while I was waiting the thoughts started. A group of drunkard youths were nearby, initially I was frightened but then the thought came into my head that if they beat me up, if they assaulted me, they’d be doing me a favour. I’d have a legitimate reason to look the way I felt. I got home, my husband asked me how the night had gone & I sat there and sobbed – tears streaming down my face till the collar of my shirt was wet. The thoughts which I believed had left me returned & suddenly everyday household items became potential weapons of self destruction – like the Phillips-head screw driver that lay on the bench begging me to pick it up & plunge it into my neck.....into my heart. And so my husband, playing nursemaid, dished out my antipsychotics & anxiolytics.
And so it goes, I’m back full circle to where I started. I will contact my psychiatrist today & no doubt my medications will increase yet again. Maybe the doctor is right, maybe it is time to consider something different to nursing, especially palliative care nursing. I don’t know. I don’t know anything……..
My heart just about breaks for the patients on the ward; it’s so sad to see them reduced to this ‘shell’. Their bodies being slowly overtaken by the cancer – invading them, like a virus to the host, till all that remains is ‘the cancer’. And it slowly becomes all that people do see - your existence reduced to a series of attempts to ‘appease’ the cancer.
Each time I went to a sink to wash my hands I would catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror – my eyes were red, my face flushed. When my shift was over & it was time to return home I walked to the train station & found that due to maintenance that the trains were cancelled till further notice. And that did it, I started to come apart. I walked back down to the street to get a cab & while I was waiting the thoughts started. A group of drunkard youths were nearby, initially I was frightened but then the thought came into my head that if they beat me up, if they assaulted me, they’d be doing me a favour. I’d have a legitimate reason to look the way I felt. I got home, my husband asked me how the night had gone & I sat there and sobbed – tears streaming down my face till the collar of my shirt was wet. The thoughts which I believed had left me returned & suddenly everyday household items became potential weapons of self destruction – like the Phillips-head screw driver that lay on the bench begging me to pick it up & plunge it into my neck.....into my heart. And so my husband, playing nursemaid, dished out my antipsychotics & anxiolytics.
And so it goes, I’m back full circle to where I started. I will contact my psychiatrist today & no doubt my medications will increase yet again. Maybe the doctor is right, maybe it is time to consider something different to nursing, especially palliative care nursing. I don’t know. I don’t know anything……..
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