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verushka70Well, we're all coping much better through the use of antidepressants. At any rate, they say it takes up to 6 weeks for antidepressants to kick in, but Cymbalta didn't. Thank god, or I would've never survived the past 3 weeks. I think it took all of 4 days to kick in for me, and then I stopped needing 12-14 hours of sleep a day; the physical ultra-exhaustion disappeared. And my mom started Lexapro the same day I started the Cymbalta, so within a few days she had stopped weeping at the drop of a hat or turn of a phrase.
She still has weepy moments, but she's gone walking (!) and shopping (!!) and left the house a number of times since they kicked in. THANK GOD. I was really starting to think she would throw herself off the roof or something. Now she's engaged in fighting. I took her to get the Porta-Cath "installed" this past Tuesday morning because my clinicals didn't start until 5pm (yay! I love evening clinicals!). So she's set to begin chemo next Tues. And she is going to get the new chemo drug Avastin, which has already been in use for breast cancer successfully, and normally would cost about $18,000/year (which Medicare won't pay for). But the pharmaceutical company and the chemo doctor's pharmacy are going to split the cost and if the pharmacy doesn't get reimbursed, they said they will eat the cost because the doc said my mom is the PERFECT patient for this drug (lacking comorbidities as she does!) and it would boost the potential success of the chemo regimen. So, Carboplatin, Taxol, and Avastin for 3 months. Then radiation 5 days a week for 5 weeks. And she's determined to fight. And I'm not needing sleep every spare moment of the day that I'm not in class or in the hospital, so I've been of much more use to her in the last week or so since the Cymbalta kicked in.
We finished the LPN lectures on Wed. 5/31, had our last exams on Wed. 5/31 and Thu. 6/1, and I began my clinicals the very next day at 6:30am Fri 6/2. We went to one hospital for our ob/gyn clinicals on 6/2, 6/3, 6/4, & 6/5. Then we began our peds clinicals the very next day, on a totally different shift: 5pm-10:3pm, 6/6, 6/7, and 6/8.
So those of us in the unlucky rescheduled group (we lost a clinical instructor because she crushed her foot in an accident) never got a break between the classroom & clinicals -- we went straight through from Tue May 30, through Thu 6/8. At first I was kind of pissed.
Then later I was glad. All the classroom stuff was still fresh in my mind when we did the ob/gyn, so I didn't have time to forget it and the immediacy helped cement some things in my mind. And even though the rapid schedule and huge amount of material covered in this class went so fast -- I call it "dipping your toe in the OCEAN of ob/gyn and peds" -- we have already encountered more than a few things covered in our lectures. So I feel I learned a lot. And even though I dislike the peds clinical instructor -- she totally looked down on our group because of the school we came from and the ethnic makeup of our group, which is more than half Mexican-American, until we proved to her that we know our shit -- I liked the patient and the experience. (I ESPECIALLY liked the SHIFT -- I definitely intend to work 2nd or 3rd shift when I'm an RN, fuck this ultra-early morning shit!)
Last night I caught part of the movie Van Helsing on my mom's satellite. Which I'd seen when it came out on the big screen, and subsequently got on DVD for my birthday. And since I also saw X-Men: The Last Stand, I've decided that Hugh Jackman is my current favorite male specimen. Damn he's handsome. I can't decide which role I've liked him in best.
I haven't seen him in anything on stage or TV -- nor any of his Aussie-made films (which I think I should check out). But I liked his role in Someone Like You (which is also the role in which you can see the most Hughflesh, except for the anti-erotic scenes of Logan/Wolverine's creation in X2). He was romantic-hero dreamy in Kate & Leopold. He was a good tragic-hero-with-an-unknown-past in Van Helsing (and looked damn good in the long leather coat and tight-fitting cloth or leather breeches or whatever they were... I don't really care what they were... it's just, his thighs...)
And then there's Logan/Wolverine... and, having a fetish for man-beast characters (what is a vampire if not a beast with human qualities or a human with beastly qualities?), I can't not love Logan/Wolverine. Besides, Logan is such a man -- cigar-chomping, rugged lone biker that he is. If I'd been Jean, I'd have taken Logan over Scott any day. But that's just me.
Just for fun, I think I'll make a poll to see which role people have liked Hugh Jackman in best. Later: turns out I can't create a poll unless I'm a paid subscriber. Oh well.
Actually I thought the look Kate Beckinsale sported in Van Helsing was rather good, too. Very peasant-chick-meets-dominatrix. Wish I had her figure. Oh, well, supposedly Cymbalta can cause weight loss. I should be so lucky.
She still has weepy moments, but she's gone walking (!) and shopping (!!) and left the house a number of times since they kicked in. THANK GOD. I was really starting to think she would throw herself off the roof or something. Now she's engaged in fighting. I took her to get the Porta-Cath "installed" this past Tuesday morning because my clinicals didn't start until 5pm (yay! I love evening clinicals!). So she's set to begin chemo next Tues. And she is going to get the new chemo drug Avastin, which has already been in use for breast cancer successfully, and normally would cost about $18,000/year (which Medicare won't pay for). But the pharmaceutical company and the chemo doctor's pharmacy are going to split the cost and if the pharmacy doesn't get reimbursed, they said they will eat the cost because the doc said my mom is the PERFECT patient for this drug (lacking comorbidities as she does!) and it would boost the potential success of the chemo regimen. So, Carboplatin, Taxol, and Avastin for 3 months. Then radiation 5 days a week for 5 weeks. And she's determined to fight. And I'm not needing sleep every spare moment of the day that I'm not in class or in the hospital, so I've been of much more use to her in the last week or so since the Cymbalta kicked in.
We finished the LPN lectures on Wed. 5/31, had our last exams on Wed. 5/31 and Thu. 6/1, and I began my clinicals the very next day at 6:30am Fri 6/2. We went to one hospital for our ob/gyn clinicals on 6/2, 6/3, 6/4, & 6/5. Then we began our peds clinicals the very next day, on a totally different shift: 5pm-10:3pm, 6/6, 6/7, and 6/8.
So those of us in the unlucky rescheduled group (we lost a clinical instructor because she crushed her foot in an accident) never got a break between the classroom & clinicals -- we went straight through from Tue May 30, through Thu 6/8. At first I was kind of pissed.
Then later I was glad. All the classroom stuff was still fresh in my mind when we did the ob/gyn, so I didn't have time to forget it and the immediacy helped cement some things in my mind. And even though the rapid schedule and huge amount of material covered in this class went so fast -- I call it "dipping your toe in the OCEAN of ob/gyn and peds" -- we have already encountered more than a few things covered in our lectures. So I feel I learned a lot. And even though I dislike the peds clinical instructor -- she totally looked down on our group because of the school we came from and the ethnic makeup of our group, which is more than half Mexican-American, until we proved to her that we know our shit -- I liked the patient and the experience. (I ESPECIALLY liked the SHIFT -- I definitely intend to work 2nd or 3rd shift when I'm an RN, fuck this ultra-early morning shit!)
Last night I caught part of the movie Van Helsing on my mom's satellite. Which I'd seen when it came out on the big screen, and subsequently got on DVD for my birthday. And since I also saw X-Men: The Last Stand, I've decided that Hugh Jackman is my current favorite male specimen. Damn he's handsome. I can't decide which role I've liked him in best.
I haven't seen him in anything on stage or TV -- nor any of his Aussie-made films (which I think I should check out). But I liked his role in Someone Like You (which is also the role in which you can see the most Hughflesh, except for the anti-erotic scenes of Logan/Wolverine's creation in X2). He was romantic-hero dreamy in Kate & Leopold. He was a good tragic-hero-with-an-unknown-past in Van Helsing (and looked damn good in the long leather coat and tight-fitting cloth or leather breeches or whatever they were... I don't really care what they were... it's just, his thighs...)
And then there's Logan/Wolverine... and, having a fetish for man-beast characters (what is a vampire if not a beast with human qualities or a human with beastly qualities?), I can't not love Logan/Wolverine. Besides, Logan is such a man -- cigar-chomping, rugged lone biker that he is. If I'd been Jean, I'd have taken Logan over Scott any day. But that's just me.
Just for fun, I think I'll make a poll to see which role people have liked Hugh Jackman in best. Later: turns out I can't create a poll unless I'm a paid subscriber. Oh well.
Actually I thought the look Kate Beckinsale sported in Van Helsing was rather good, too. Very peasant-chick-meets-dominatrix. Wish I had her figure. Oh, well, supposedly Cymbalta can cause weight loss. I should be so lucky.