WHAT’S GOING ON?
6-14-04 FLASHING CONSPIRACY
Well it is lights out at Focus, and I am wired and racing and I can’t slow down. I am tired, I truly am. This is the part that I hate; the part of no sleep. Is it the caffeine? My intake has been no different, who knows. The excitement of a breakthrough! There has been no breakthrough.
All of me is pulsing. Pulsing so hard I feel like a bass speaker at a motherfucking rave. And my organs are going to bounce right out of me. But at the same time a tingling sensation is radiating through my body from my core to my extremities and then to the tips of my fingers and toes; over and over and over, and back again. There is a big pit in the bottom of my stomach, and a burning that just won’t quit, as if I had been starved for more than a year, I cannot swallow, I feel as if there are two golf balls in my throat.
This is me. This is me awake and manic and miserable my first night at this hospital.
I am not sure why but every time I close my eyes I see flashes of this abstract shape, sort of like a bean stalk but without the beans and with some sort of horizontal crescents going up and down the stalk. It’s no wonder that I cannot sleep.
It is something along the lines of that sketch. I don’t know where these things are coming from. It’s appearing like a flash of lightning, and then it is gone, but it is happening over and over again very, very rapidly. Am I tripping off these new fucking meds? Did they drug me so that I am having fucking hallucinations so they have a fucking reason to hold me here longer? It must be some sort of conspiracy against the new patients like me. FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! What am I going to do? I suppose as long as I do not tell anyone of this ever happening then they will have no real reason to keep me here. Or maybe this is real? Oh god I am so confused, the lack of sleep is really starting to fuck with my head.
2-24-2011
That was a very frantic, paranoid, and panicked journal entry I had written during my first of many sleepless nights in the psychiatric hospital.
6 years later, here I am, in the middle of my first term as a nursing student.
“I can hardly believe it.”
Since beginning the actual nursing program this past January, I’ve had these “Oh My Gawd I’m really here and doing this” kinda moments. And they come, of course, at some of the most inopportune times.
For instance, last Wednesday, while I’m in the middle of my first timed, Nursing Techniques Simulation Exam I totally froze. Not because I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was in disbelief that I had actually made it to that exact moment in my life. After all that I’ve unknowingly gone through in high school, and especially in college on the road to learning of and living with this bipolar crap… Like all my major changes at Lees McRae… First semester, sports medicine; second semester, psychology; third semester, accidentally finding business as a major, and excelling… but then having to quit collegiate soccer and losing my scholarship. It goes on, transferring to AppState, losing nearly all my credits the first time, retaking almost half of my business courses, changing my major to management, to marketing, withdrawing from Appstate the first time, going back to Appstate, withdrawing again and being forced to move back to FL and in with my parents from living on my own in NC. Transferring to FSCJ, changing major to nursing, beginning prerequisites for any and all FL nursing programs that may accept me, withdrawing from FSCJ, going back, withdrawing, going back, withdrawing…
And sprinkled somewhere throughout all of this madness there were Psychiatrists, therapists, over 10 psychiatric hospitalizations, numerous therapy sessions, uncountable med changes, devastating physical, emotional, and life changes, some so drastic that even more therapy was needed to alleviate the 'oh so lovely' stages of grief that accompanied nearly every aspect of this manic depressive roller coaster.
This hardly gives light to the many detours of my life. So here I am in my simulation exam. I was to give a subQ and IM injection as well as demonstrate a sterile CVL dressing change. So, I’m somewhere between my subQ and IM injections... I finish talking through and successfully demonstrating the subcutaneous injection of heparin on this mannequin and injection pad as my mind goes blank while I’m still holding the needle. I completely freeze, with my clinical instructor’s eyes watching my every move, and waiting for me to continue. But my mind is miles away for what seems like a very long time, but really it is only maybe 3 seconds, if even. I mentally relive the roller coaster ride, known as my life, in a flash. I then, answer myself in my head as I very slowly set down the needle… “Yes, you are here and you are doing this…” I stall mumbling “uhm… uhm…” and begin reorganizing my thought process as I am simultaneously reorganizing my supplies on the bedside table. “One down and two to go, can you believe it?” asks my instructor. I say, “No, I really can’t.” as I think to myself, wow, that was close. She really has no idea of my level of disbelief right now.
My level of disbelief went up when my instructor stated that I received a perfect score for the entire simulation. It's hard to think of where I was only a few years ago, and where I am today, which is one step closer to being able to give back to others what so many have given to me on my journey to wellness. For this I am eternally grateful.
