Rapid Cycling

I was going to remove the last post, but figured:  Fuck it. It is what is it is. And it's the truth.

Well, I've had me a little Louis Jadot, it's midnight, the house is quiet on this Saturday evening.

It is what is it is.

I am who I am.

Let the games begin.

I miss having someone near me, and I mean really NEAR me, to share in my workday antics and anecdotes, who is not a co-worker. Someone who can still be shocked by my stories of just how clinically insane people can be and how I can still love these people with all of my heart. A co-worker will, and HAS, told me that "loving" them is not really beneficial on a clinical level. This might be true....but I doubt it. What is more therapeutic than LOVING someone despite the fact that they are delusional, crazy, out there, completely incongruous with reality. I don't have to join in their delusion to love them. 

I just love them. 

What better nurse can you have? The one sticking a needle in your ass, hopefully helping you to carry through with the rest of your week when you forget to take your pills, or take them incorrectly. Those pills you eye suspiciously and hide in your cookie jar or toss down into the sewer. My injection will stay with you for a week or so, peak in intensity around day 3 after the shot, and carry you through until the next one so you don't go completely psychotic and wind up in a very bad place if you were relying on pills alone.

What better nurse can you have than the one who draws up the thick serum in a sesame seed oil base, the better to dissipate slowly over time, through the largest muscle in the human body, the gluteus, and ever so slowly release itself into your bloodstream..all the while your nurse is saying a prayer: Please Work. Please help so-and-so maintain a decent level of functioning. Please help him/her to NOT go bananas this week and get evicted from his apartment, start a fight, get arrested, neglect himself, etc.

Until you see just how much these people need this kind of treatment it's hard to understand. This isn't just depression or anxiety or trouble adjusting to life stressor. This is some major biological illness going on. It's hard to explain without getting too clinical, but these people are not headed for "remission."

Remission is a wonderful goal, if sought early on. But we're talking about people in their 40's and up, who have been institutionalized for most of their lives. They need their shots like they need oxygen. For most of them this is their life-long therapy.

Occasionally, I will share with them the fact that I had such bad allergies that I myself needed weekly shots for nearly ten years, and that I understand how it is. Some shots melt into the flesh like a hot knife through butter, and others just hit that particular nerve ending that wakes them up and stays with them throughout the day. In the summer, you have a lot of bleeders due to vaso-dilation and in the winter, when every thing's a bit tighter, you don't see so much blood.  But it's all subject to the mysterious locations under the skin that are either inauspicious or favorable. 

So you never really know what you're going to get.

Some people only need the shot for the short-term and they graduate away from it as they become less psychotic and more able to take oral medication exactly the way they should. Others are going to need it forever and ever. Like most everything, schizophrenia exists on a spectrum. Our treatments are highly individualized. I've seen younger people do the shot for a couple of years until their symptoms pretty much remitted and they could carry on with just oral meds and keep their live together. I've seen younger people with more heavier baggage in life do great with seeing us every two weeks for a shot. I've seen mostly fairly old people come in every week for their Haldol or Prolixin and do pretty darn good until the next time they were due to see us again.

Sorry to get so nursey on ya'll, but I am finding that work is carrying me through so much of what I myself carry. I live for Monday mornings. I do the very best I can during the weekend, and come the beginning of the work week, I am raring to go. 

I have made a lot of weird and tough decisions in my life but if there is one thing I chose to do correctly, it was to be a psychiatric nurse. I am proud of my daughters, I love both dearly, but the only other thing I have left right now, besides myself that is 100% good for me is my career.

The story of how I fell into this job is not something I want to revisit now-but thank God it happened that way. I was able to deal with a somewhat difficult pregnancy while working at CBH. I was able to look after a very sick husband while working here. Because of the flexibility I was able to handle so many issues at home and still complete my work. 

It really made me feel like Superwoman.

Have I mentioned lately how great it has been to be back at the best job I have ever had?  Despite the tragedy, the year in Florida that just plain sucked, despite the continued feeling of loneliness I experience...to be back in my desk is probably the greatest thing I have ever pulled off in my entire life-aside from delivering two healthy baby girls into this world. 

So maybe I have some weird inter-personal shit going on. This will resolve itself. I don't know what the outcome of that will be.

These thing I do know right now:  the girls are OK, we are back in NJ, work is more than good, there will be more money in the bank soon, and life is tolerable. 

LOVE YOUZ GUYZ.....

es