jason

definitely had the best time with jason last night. our plans changed so we ended up just talking for like 6 hours straight. i can't think of many other people that i do that with.

we have so much in common it's almost scary.....like...we're just really on the same page it seems.


and the storyline we came up with.....hilarious. hahahahaha. i haven't laughed that hard in awhile.


ah, good times.

old city

at a bar called Eulogy in Old City this past weekend with libby, mary, jason, and jordan. :)

update

things have been pretty busy around here lately. this is a picture from this past weekend when jordan was here visiting. tracy, jordan, and i went to constitution center for some christmas festivities. and we stopped in washington sq. on the way back (hence the picture). today was the first of our finals....pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. it went really really well. i feel confident about it. :) tomorrow is our psychiatric pharmacology final and then wednesday we have 2 also. then i get to go home!!!! i can't wait. i just love christmas. and i'm going to love having 2 weeks off to mentally and physically relax and recooperate.
these are some pics from when i hung out with J 2 weeks ago and we played with his the camera on his new mac. haha. it was funny...

music

i could listen to his voice forever.

he's amazing...

and i'm so in love with him.

love

it's the little things i love so much...

try

i try really hard.

psychological competency in healthcare workers dealing with psych patients

but really. i sometimes wonder if healthcare ppl are in a position at all to tell others what to do.

there is an incredibly high incidence of codependent traits among healthcare professionals.

does anyone else find that to be ironic?

we're telling other people, like abusers (of any kind) that they are codependent and need to go to therapy for this, and the reality is, we tell everyone what they should be doing to get better.
we take it on ourselves. we view it as our responsibility to society and the public.

and the very nature of our profession means that it tends to attract emotionally unstable codependent individuals.
how can one offer completely neutral and professional psychiatric therapy and help if they have their own psychiatric issues?

freud got into this a bit, as did some other psychologists/psychiatrists.
the qualifications and health background mentally for someone to be considered "competent" to help/advise psychiatric patients.

psychology

who are we to decide if someone is safe?

our "#1 priority as the nurse is to make sure we keep the patient safe, even when they can't keep themselves safe."

i'd like to know how and why this is our job. and how and why the medical professionals have adopted this as part of their "duty." is it really my job to take on someone's well being as my own responsibility? i mean, sure, to an extent. but how far do i go without becoming unhealthy, without becoming codependent as a patient care provider?
we think we can "fix" people and cure them. we think it's our responsiblity to get rid of diseases.
isnt' that a bit realistic of us to expect of ourselves?
surely we can make our best attempt to help someone in our efforts, but i believe that when we assume it as our duty to be responsible for them and their health, and whether or not they get better, we've gone too far as practitioners. it seems to cross over a unhealthy boundary.


i think it's awfully presumptious of us to think that we know what's better for people than they do and that since they can't adequately make good decisions, we need to do it for them.
sure, that has a place in medicine, but on a philosophical level, where do you draw the line? and what makes someone like me able to know what's better or more right for a certain patient than what they think themselves? who am i to say that?
if i'm saying someone is clinically insane and incapable of deciding what's best for themselves....how do we decide what insane is?
isnt' it all relative?
being obsessed with learning psychiatry and diagnosing patients and working with that population could be a type of insanity. a type of insanity that is telling another person that they in fact are the insane one's incapable of decision making. how is that right?

that's just it, insanity isn't clearly defined.
who are the doctors to decide these things?
of course, the education argument. they were trained, yadda yadda yadda.
sure. but isn't it all about perception?

what i might perceive as insane is not necessarily what another person perceives as insane.

someone might perceive me as insane, while i may think i'm completely competent and qualified to make decisions for someone that i consider to be insane.


i don't know.
just another thing i thought about today.

overbearing women

something i thought about today...

i know women were oppressed for a very long time. and to a certain extent they still are. and i don't agree with women who stay in submissive roles....but.... can it go to the other extreme too?
lately i've begun noticing women who have no tolerance from anything less than what they deam appropriate from a man. i mean, sure, it's great to have expectations and to not "settle," but have some people gone too far?
i wonder if some women have ended up being overly defensive and rigid and super critical of men in general, to the point of unfairness, to the point of having unrealistic expectations and oppressing men in a sense.

i mean, sure i believe women should stand up for themselves. but i don't think that simply being a woman means you should do that constantly. there are times to admit you're wrong, even to a man. there are times to admit the man might have a point. and you shouldn't ignore that just because you're a woman and you "deserve whatever you want." if you become that kind of a person, you've become what you were avoiding in the first place. if you wanted to avoid male domination, becoming a female dominator isn't exactly the healthiest way to do that.

just a thought...

publishing an article

today, mary bouchard said she wants us to publish our sex ed presentation in the form of an article.

so i'll hopefully get published this year....

very cool.
especially if i do end up going into public health. ;)

my one manic psych patient

one of our patients in the psych ward started clanging this past week.
it was hysterical.

the best part is, Bush is what precipitated the clanging. so he clanged about bush.
he's obsessed with bush. hm, i guess that would be a delusion of reference. since he claims to have talked to bush about marrying his mother. he's dying to marry bush's mother. yes, delusion of reference i'm quite sure. ha ha. let's hope i can learn all these delusions and illusions and hallucinations and everything else for psych before finals in a little over a week!

fortunately all my finals will be entirely on psych. which i'm excited about because it means that it's only one concept/topic to focus on. that helps me immensely.

but...it's an insane amt. of powerpoints, and she won't give a real studyguide. so basically i need to do a TOOOOOONNNNNNNN of work to get ready.

am i wrong?

maybe i've been all wrong.
i don't know.


i don't know what to think.
maybe i need to be more patient?
i think i've been really patient with a lot of things. but maybe it hasn't been enough. maybe i need to do MORE of it. but i am not the one who changed the plan.
the plan was changed on me. so it's not like i brought up something completely ridiculous that i just decided was a good idea one day. we had talked about this. we were fine with this earlier.
i'm just not sure what changed.

i guess i jsut take ppl seriously. when they say they'd like to do something, i believe it and get used to the idea. even if i had never really expected it or thought of the possiblity before. so i adjust to the whole thing and then you change it on me? *sigh*

i took you seriously.
you said you were ready. now you're rethinking that.
and all the while you're playing with my emotions and it hurts my trust in you that you never seem to stick to your word.

wendy

i just had the first normal conversation i've had with wendy in years.

crazy.
but nice.

long distance

long distance relationships are crappy.

sure, sometimes they're unavoidable, but... nontheless, crappy.

how you show your love in a long distance relationship is completely different from that of a normal relationship.
you can't show the person how much you love them, in the same ways that you want to, while your hundreds of miles apart. you just can't.
in a long distance relationship you show love through patience, understanding, trust, and by planning visits to see one another.
while this is nice, it's not for me. i want to show and demonstrate my love in a different way.
with my current relationship i feel like i've been patient and all of those things for a really long time.
not only that, but i've only actually gotten to enjoy being with the person i'm with for 8 months total. i've spent 15 months doing a long distance setup, and i'm tired of it.
i've done long distance with him from
-massachusetts to harrisburg
-philly to harrisburg
-harrisburg to baltimore
-and most recently, philly to massachusetts

that's a lot of long distance. frankly i'm ready to be near the person i love, for awhile. i've put up with all this distance crap for so long so that we could eventually be together. now i just want to do that.
and in all honesty, it's amazing we've done as well as we have from so many hours away for so long. 2 hours wasn't bad, i was actually pretty comfortable with that. but 6 hours is bad.
i'm older now though, my life circumstances are changing......and i'm just not really willing to continue doing a long distance relationship. i've stuck it out long enough. i've been really really patient. about a lot of things. it's time to start to move forward. it's time to get the payback for all that hard work and effort.

frankly, i'm really really tired of having to work so hard at our relationship. it's not that i don't love him. it's not that i don't want to be with him. i'm tired of the effort it takes to keep this kind of thing going from 300 miles away. I want it to be easy. the reason we always have to work so hard is because keeping a long distance relationship going is certainly not easy. all relationships require constant attention and effort -- but not like this.
it's all the little things too...like...

figuring out how to make someone feel loved from 300 miles away.
figuring out how to feel apart of your loved one's life from so far away.
realizing that you completely put all of your trust in someone who's that far away.
realizing the need for extremely good communication skills.
and being able to realize and keep in mind, the big picture.

sure, it's healthy to our relationship that we've learned these skills, but there comes a time when you need to draw the line. you can only be happy doing that kind of thing for so long.

i want to be with him now. i want to live together.
i'm tired of having to work so hard and expend so much energy.
i want to live with him. i want to actually see him everyday. i want to sleep with him everynight.
i want us to live with our cat, and get a dog.
i want to go grocery shopping together.
i want to take showers together.
i want to sleep together.
i want to cook together.
i want to watch TV together.
and still have our own time to ourselves, and our work.

but, i've lived on my own for 2 years now. i'm really ready for a change.

i want the stress that we've had for two years (which is what it'll be by the time i finish school) trying to make this thing work, to be done. we both need to rest and enjoy each other. i want to try this out. if it doesn't work out, then fine. but i feel 99% confident in it. it's something you just know i guess. i know it will work. after what we've been through there's no question. this is the easy part now. it's not like we've jumped into it without understanding what we're getting ourselves into. we've done the hard part. this is the easy part now. we've done enough work and tweaking and everything.

can we just be together already?

i need you to have confidence in me

the other thing is.......time is flying.
we're already to december. c
hristmas will be here before you know it.
and spring always FLIES.....especially this year.

i feel ready to be done here. mentally i'm already on to the next step of my life.
in the words of a friend "we've spent the last couple months hashing out issues so that the future can be good." it's true. the issues have been dealt with. nothing is really an issue anymore except this distance thing. which there's nothing that can be done about. so i've gotten to where i need to be. now i just need to be there.

the thing i need most right now, more than anything, is to not feel like people are getting cold feet on me. cos this is a huge move for me. this is a big deal. i've never done anything of this magnitude before. i need help. i need support. the last thing i can handle right now is other people not being confident in "the plan" or having cold feet about "the plan," because i'm trying so hard to have all the confidence in the world right now about a change of this nature. but when my support network starts doubting things, and starts getting cold feet, it sends me into a state of freaking out. i need my support system TO have confidence right now. i need that more than anything.....i don't have parents that support me. so this is everything to me... i'm feeling just awful lately without that confidence from the people i care about and respect most. i need you to be confident in me. confident that things will work out. confident enough to give it a chance.
i need it. i can't do this move without it. i can't do this distance without it. i need that support.....


......and i have been lost lately without it.

job app's

ok.
so far this is what i have....

i've applied to the following positions @ Childrens Hospital Boston:
1.psychiatry unit
2.med/surg ICU
3.neuroscience unit
4.cardiac ICU
5.organ transplant unit
6.emergency dept.

i've also applied to the following @ Hershey Medical Center:
1. emergency dept.
2. Surgical ICU

and i've applied to the "graduate nurse" program @ Mass General which basically means my resume gets sent to all their dept's i think. and i specified on it that i wanted ICU/critical care experience.

all i have left to do now is apply to Penn -- i still might add more boston one's i want if i can find them. maybe Saint Elizabeth's. we'll see. Actually, I've even toyed with applying to the only hospital on the cape (cod that is)... i dunno. there is a hospital in amherst too...

I'm back to thinking I would like to do the nurse anesthetist program primarily but perhaps pursue a public health degree later on. SO I would be getting my PhD in nursing anesthesia. Well, it's not exactly a PhD b/c it's not researched based. It's going to be a clinical doctorate, so it would be labeled as something else. but you get the idea. basically i'd be a doctor. of nursing. :-D



I feel really really anxious right now because I have no idea where I'm going to be in 6 months and I feel like I have to know now. I hate not having a plan. I hate not knowing what i'm doing. I thought I had it all figured out but about a month ago things changed on me. Now I've been forced back into a state of disequilibrium and insecurity again. I want to know where I'm going in 5 months. I need to know. I don't feel secure if I don't! And I feel that I really need to feel secure right now while I'm having all these academic demands being placed on me as well as trying to maintain a long distance (6hrs) relationship all year. For my peace of mind I have to know what the hell is going on! Everything I've had to be doing lately is future oriented. So of course I've been thinking in the "future" mindset lately. I have to. My parents keep asking a million questions that I don't have the answers to. It's really frustrating. I'm scared. I could really use some reassurance.