severely depressed, chemo, grades, fic :(
May. 27th, 2006 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verushka70Well, the last month has sucked. Except for the HCL fic exchange. To the point that I scraped myself off my metaphorical mental floor, dragged myself down to the local community mental health center, and got a new sliding scale psychiatrist and therapist. New antidepressant: Cymbalta. Sounds like a Cirque du Soleil act to me. We'll see how it works -- only been on it for 2 days. Therapist is okay. Cognitive-behavioral. I'd rather just talk and vent, and he interrupts to counter my negative statements with positives and tries to reframe it all. I think I'm too depressed to really buy into it right now. Probably when the chemicals kick in, I'll be more amenable.
Went with for my mom's chemotherapy consult today. The doc didn't mince words. We'd been warned his bedside manner left a bit to be desired. OTOH I prefer a blunt assessment. Turns out that not only the surgeon was displeased with the confusion of the pathology report; so was the chemo doc. So it looks like it will be 12 weeks of chemo with 2 different agents, the same ones our 2nd opinion from outside the HMO network said they'd use. The in-network blunt doc differed with them in suggesting no radiation of the upper lung lobe where there was a 3rd cancerous nodule. He said in his 35 years of experience he's seen radiation "fry your lung." That the dose of radiation needed to kill the cancer would kill the lung, and when you've already lost a lobe, then you don't want to lose what you've got left that's healthy.
The margins around that tumor in my mom's top lobe were microscopically involved, or so the uncorrected path report says. He said that chemo might kill that off. About a 25-30% chance. Which doesn't sound very good. He said with chemo and radiation of the mediastinum (where one of the involved lymph nodes was found) could beat the cancer back for 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. So that both sounded not very good and sounded better than expected. My mother burst into tears more than a couple times in the consultation with the doc. There are no good prognoses, basically. I guess it's all very speculative and uncertain, at least partly because both he and the surgeon are irritated with the path report and the doctor who did it. But even a best case scenario isn't looking too good.
I finished finals last week and started the new class this week. I got a B and an A (the A in Pharmacology... well, if I was going to get an A in anything this semester, of course it would be the course about all the drugs...). So that puts me to a total of NUR135=B, NUR136=B, NUR137=B, NUR150(pharm)=A. A solid 3.1 or something this semester. Cumulative GPA around 3.4. So I'm not complaining, since I know I slacked off a bit in the last few weeks.
This past Monday I started NUR138, the LPN/summer bridge course which is not required (unless your GPA is below 2.5) but is strongly encouraged. I thought it would kick my ass. Well, it's putting my ass to sleep because we're sitting on our asses from 8am to about 1:30pm. And I've had to miss a few of my mom's appointments, but my sisters shockingly stepped up. Well, I expected the one to step up (she did when my dad was going downhill), but not the other. So pressure's off me a bit, fortunately.
I can say that life experience has certainly helped me a lot with the nursing courses. This 138 class is a superswift crash course in "Care Of The Developing Family" -- meaning antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum care of mom & baby. I thought it would be hellish, and some of it was, but a lot of the testing was actually on things I already knew from being my brother-in-law's backup birthing coach for my sister with the 2 sons. We finished the ob/gyn material this week and had 2 tests; I got a 91 on one (missed an A by 1 point!) and 93 on the other. I swear most of it is from things I already learned when my nephews were being gestated and later born, from attending the birthing classes with my sister and her husband (when he could make it and wasn't out of town) -- things like the causes of physiologic jaundice in the newborn, the preferred pelvis shapes for vaginal birth, and lots of other little factoids. There was a lot I didn't already know -- like various interventions for things like eclampsia (magnesium sulfate) and things -- but for some reason we didn't get tested on a lot of that. I didn't even read all the assigned readings; too exhausted by the home front cancer issues and severely depressed.
The therapist did point out that I need not describe myself as a slacker for not doing all the assigned readings as long as I'm getting more than 90% on the tests and all my grades this semester were Bs and an A. I suppose that's true; I just feel like a slacker for not reading everything and not studying very hard. I guess it comes from all those childhood report cards that stated "Not working to potential." That, and the fact that in the last month, I've just gotten so exhausted. I literally just want to sleep all the time because I just feel constantly fatigued and on the verge of physical collapse. I know what that is; it's depression. It's how my depression always manifested in the past.
Yep, too much sleeping, and eating too much -- stress eating, can't keep myself away from the chocolate and the chips. I knew I'd put on weight, but it wasn't until I sadly had to buy a DDD bra instead of my usual DD that I realized just how much weight I'd gained in the last 6 weeks or so. It's no wonder my back is killing me. Fucking DDD. They must weigh 8-10 lbs each. Or more. Might as well be lugging a toddler around my chest all day every day. Everyone who is flat chested thinks it must be so great to be big breasted. It's really not. The most comfortable position for me to read or study is laying flat on my back on the couch or in bed. Sitting up, my back slides into a hunch over my ginormous tits without me even realizing it. I prop my elbows on the table or desk but then that just makes the tension in my shoulders ten times worse by the time I go to bed. If I had the money -- and if it didn't sever the nerves in your nipples -- I'd have breast reduction in a heartbeat. The load off my back and the ability to actually jog might actually be worth the severing of those nerves. I don't know. Maybe by the time I can afford it, they'll have figured out some way of preserving the sensation while reducing the breast size...
So, yeah. Feeling like I'm "not working to potential" lately... but then I tell myself, who could, under the circumstances? I feel bad about not doing all the assigned readings for school. But then the therapist told me something interesting. He said, "You know how professional school works, right?" I was like, Uh, how? He said that the assigned readings are the things the faculty and departments show accreditation auditors, so they keep their accreditations... there's no real expectation on the part of the faculty that the student will actually be able to read all that material. It was like a little light bulb went on over my head. I thought, So that's why it seems like if you just take neurotically complete lecture notes, like I typically do, you've got almost all the material you need to study to do decently on the tests. Of course, before everything with my mom, I was trying to read all the assigned readings. But then everything just slid by the wayside and I started slacking. Or sleeping. Same diff I guess.
Sometimes I actually do feel I'm working to my potential. Like when I'm writing fic. I get totally absorbed. I'm thinking about the stories when I'm not writing them, wondering where they'll go -- or where they'll take me. Sometimes it's like the characters have their own ideas and I'm not creating their actions, I'm just transmitting them. It's a weird feeling, but I like it. It's like a very mild version of riding a roller coaster you've never ridden: you don't know quite what to expect, but you figure the ride will be worth it in the end.
Sometimes the past two semesters I've also felt I was working to my full potential when I've had a moment with a patient where we hit a groove of understanding together, or some kind of meeting of minds or personalities, and I felt I'd actually made a difference for them at that moment. Or maybe longer. I'm sure to most I was just the annoying or not-good-enough student nurse, but for a few I think I made a difference, even if just in comfort or a kind word or got their pain meds to them early before it became intolerable. Some kind of connection is made, I can't really explain what, whereby empathy is transmitted and they're soothed for a moment. Maybe it's because I've already seen so much distress in ill people in the last few years -- first with my father, now with my mom. And with myself -- I'll never forget how upsetting it was when my request to get more Vicodin (I'd used only 12 in 4 months! what is that, 3 a month?) got me treated like a drug addict, when I was simply in crushing pain. In some respects it seems like sick people just want someone to acknowledge that they are sick, or in pain, or lonely, or depressed, or whatever... but many of the senior citizens won't directly address it. So when you do, they're so grateful someone noticed.
So I've got all the peds lectures next week, some of which we covered yesterday. It was all the developmental and psychological stuff -- Erikson and Piaget. I've done research papers for previous classes that touched on both their theories, so I'm set for that. So, yay. More stuff I won't have to study very hard. Because lately all I want to do is sleep. I come home from class and I'm just exhausted and need a nap. Which turns into 3 hours in bed, from which I can hardly drag myself, and it's way past dinner then. I know this will pass, but my mother is so severely depressed -- liable to start crying at the drop of a hat, for any reason or no reason (what more reason does she need than Stage 4 lung cancer 3 years after she quit smoking? I mean, if that's not a fucking reason, I don't know what is.) And I'm trying to just be there, although too often I think I try to counter her negatives with positives and today, with the chemo consult, there was just no getting around that 25-30% cure rate. So she's more depressed than ever. And I don't know what to do, except be with her until I can't take it anymore and I have to go up to my own apartment and collapse.
I did read the Da Vinci code last weekend while I went away for a day and a half to Maquoketa State Park. Watched the Sopranos on HBO in the hotel last Saturday night. Wished that the new season of Deadwood had started so I could see one of those episodes. The last month has been so hectic and stressful school-wise, I didn't even have time to immerse myself in DVD or movie escapism. I'll rectify that a little tomorrow night when my younger sister comes down from Wisconsin to see my mom. She asked me Wednesday to buy us 2 tickets for X-Men: The Last Stand for Saturday night, so I went to fandango.com and bought 'em. So we're set for that. Wolverine. Hugh Jackman. Yeah.
My older sister told me today that she's decided "everything is gay." I was like, Elaborate. (Had I been in a Fraser moment, I'd have said, "Elucidate" ...) She said, "Well, like 'Lord Of The Rings.' So gay. Or 'Troy.' Way gay." I must have goggled, because she looked at me and said, "What?" I replied, "You're just figuring this out now? They're all built on homoerotic bonding." She was like, "Yeah, totally!" I was like, "Y'know, Batman was so very gay..." and we had a laugh, because she's 9 years older than me and she and my other sister and my brother used to watch Star Trek and Batman re-runs on our black and white TV in the frickin' seventies, and I'm 9, 8, and 6 years younger than them and I would eagerly watch both shows with them.
Even then, I just knew there was something very curious about Batman and Robin's relationship. And Kirk and Spock's...
Sometimes I forget that there were some fun memories from childhood, that it wasn't all just us waiting for my dad to flip out about something or about nothing.
Then there was the time my younger sister was learning to read, and she was sounding words out everywhere we went. And we were in the car, parked with the hazards blinking in a no parking zone while my father ran into Photo World and picked up some pictures or something. She looked at the Photo World sign and then pointed to it and said to me, "Look! Potato World!"
I dunno why that just popped into my head, but it was funny to me at the time -- and I'm only 2 years older than her, but I knew she was getting it wrong. And, y'know, it's still funny to me now. Never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Went with for my mom's chemotherapy consult today. The doc didn't mince words. We'd been warned his bedside manner left a bit to be desired. OTOH I prefer a blunt assessment. Turns out that not only the surgeon was displeased with the confusion of the pathology report; so was the chemo doc. So it looks like it will be 12 weeks of chemo with 2 different agents, the same ones our 2nd opinion from outside the HMO network said they'd use. The in-network blunt doc differed with them in suggesting no radiation of the upper lung lobe where there was a 3rd cancerous nodule. He said in his 35 years of experience he's seen radiation "fry your lung." That the dose of radiation needed to kill the cancer would kill the lung, and when you've already lost a lobe, then you don't want to lose what you've got left that's healthy.
The margins around that tumor in my mom's top lobe were microscopically involved, or so the uncorrected path report says. He said that chemo might kill that off. About a 25-30% chance. Which doesn't sound very good. He said with chemo and radiation of the mediastinum (where one of the involved lymph nodes was found) could beat the cancer back for 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. So that both sounded not very good and sounded better than expected. My mother burst into tears more than a couple times in the consultation with the doc. There are no good prognoses, basically. I guess it's all very speculative and uncertain, at least partly because both he and the surgeon are irritated with the path report and the doctor who did it. But even a best case scenario isn't looking too good.
I finished finals last week and started the new class this week. I got a B and an A (the A in Pharmacology... well, if I was going to get an A in anything this semester, of course it would be the course about all the drugs...). So that puts me to a total of NUR135=B, NUR136=B, NUR137=B, NUR150(pharm)=A. A solid 3.1 or something this semester. Cumulative GPA around 3.4. So I'm not complaining, since I know I slacked off a bit in the last few weeks.
This past Monday I started NUR138, the LPN/summer bridge course which is not required (unless your GPA is below 2.5) but is strongly encouraged. I thought it would kick my ass. Well, it's putting my ass to sleep because we're sitting on our asses from 8am to about 1:30pm. And I've had to miss a few of my mom's appointments, but my sisters shockingly stepped up. Well, I expected the one to step up (she did when my dad was going downhill), but not the other. So pressure's off me a bit, fortunately.
I can say that life experience has certainly helped me a lot with the nursing courses. This 138 class is a superswift crash course in "Care Of The Developing Family" -- meaning antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum care of mom & baby. I thought it would be hellish, and some of it was, but a lot of the testing was actually on things I already knew from being my brother-in-law's backup birthing coach for my sister with the 2 sons. We finished the ob/gyn material this week and had 2 tests; I got a 91 on one (missed an A by 1 point!) and 93 on the other. I swear most of it is from things I already learned when my nephews were being gestated and later born, from attending the birthing classes with my sister and her husband (when he could make it and wasn't out of town) -- things like the causes of physiologic jaundice in the newborn, the preferred pelvis shapes for vaginal birth, and lots of other little factoids. There was a lot I didn't already know -- like various interventions for things like eclampsia (magnesium sulfate) and things -- but for some reason we didn't get tested on a lot of that. I didn't even read all the assigned readings; too exhausted by the home front cancer issues and severely depressed.
The therapist did point out that I need not describe myself as a slacker for not doing all the assigned readings as long as I'm getting more than 90% on the tests and all my grades this semester were Bs and an A. I suppose that's true; I just feel like a slacker for not reading everything and not studying very hard. I guess it comes from all those childhood report cards that stated "Not working to potential." That, and the fact that in the last month, I've just gotten so exhausted. I literally just want to sleep all the time because I just feel constantly fatigued and on the verge of physical collapse. I know what that is; it's depression. It's how my depression always manifested in the past.
Yep, too much sleeping, and eating too much -- stress eating, can't keep myself away from the chocolate and the chips. I knew I'd put on weight, but it wasn't until I sadly had to buy a DDD bra instead of my usual DD that I realized just how much weight I'd gained in the last 6 weeks or so. It's no wonder my back is killing me. Fucking DDD. They must weigh 8-10 lbs each. Or more. Might as well be lugging a toddler around my chest all day every day. Everyone who is flat chested thinks it must be so great to be big breasted. It's really not. The most comfortable position for me to read or study is laying flat on my back on the couch or in bed. Sitting up, my back slides into a hunch over my ginormous tits without me even realizing it. I prop my elbows on the table or desk but then that just makes the tension in my shoulders ten times worse by the time I go to bed. If I had the money -- and if it didn't sever the nerves in your nipples -- I'd have breast reduction in a heartbeat. The load off my back and the ability to actually jog might actually be worth the severing of those nerves. I don't know. Maybe by the time I can afford it, they'll have figured out some way of preserving the sensation while reducing the breast size...
So, yeah. Feeling like I'm "not working to potential" lately... but then I tell myself, who could, under the circumstances? I feel bad about not doing all the assigned readings for school. But then the therapist told me something interesting. He said, "You know how professional school works, right?" I was like, Uh, how? He said that the assigned readings are the things the faculty and departments show accreditation auditors, so they keep their accreditations... there's no real expectation on the part of the faculty that the student will actually be able to read all that material. It was like a little light bulb went on over my head. I thought, So that's why it seems like if you just take neurotically complete lecture notes, like I typically do, you've got almost all the material you need to study to do decently on the tests. Of course, before everything with my mom, I was trying to read all the assigned readings. But then everything just slid by the wayside and I started slacking. Or sleeping. Same diff I guess.
Sometimes I actually do feel I'm working to my potential. Like when I'm writing fic. I get totally absorbed. I'm thinking about the stories when I'm not writing them, wondering where they'll go -- or where they'll take me. Sometimes it's like the characters have their own ideas and I'm not creating their actions, I'm just transmitting them. It's a weird feeling, but I like it. It's like a very mild version of riding a roller coaster you've never ridden: you don't know quite what to expect, but you figure the ride will be worth it in the end.
Sometimes the past two semesters I've also felt I was working to my full potential when I've had a moment with a patient where we hit a groove of understanding together, or some kind of meeting of minds or personalities, and I felt I'd actually made a difference for them at that moment. Or maybe longer. I'm sure to most I was just the annoying or not-good-enough student nurse, but for a few I think I made a difference, even if just in comfort or a kind word or got their pain meds to them early before it became intolerable. Some kind of connection is made, I can't really explain what, whereby empathy is transmitted and they're soothed for a moment. Maybe it's because I've already seen so much distress in ill people in the last few years -- first with my father, now with my mom. And with myself -- I'll never forget how upsetting it was when my request to get more Vicodin (I'd used only 12 in 4 months! what is that, 3 a month?) got me treated like a drug addict, when I was simply in crushing pain. In some respects it seems like sick people just want someone to acknowledge that they are sick, or in pain, or lonely, or depressed, or whatever... but many of the senior citizens won't directly address it. So when you do, they're so grateful someone noticed.
So I've got all the peds lectures next week, some of which we covered yesterday. It was all the developmental and psychological stuff -- Erikson and Piaget. I've done research papers for previous classes that touched on both their theories, so I'm set for that. So, yay. More stuff I won't have to study very hard. Because lately all I want to do is sleep. I come home from class and I'm just exhausted and need a nap. Which turns into 3 hours in bed, from which I can hardly drag myself, and it's way past dinner then. I know this will pass, but my mother is so severely depressed -- liable to start crying at the drop of a hat, for any reason or no reason (what more reason does she need than Stage 4 lung cancer 3 years after she quit smoking? I mean, if that's not a fucking reason, I don't know what is.) And I'm trying to just be there, although too often I think I try to counter her negatives with positives and today, with the chemo consult, there was just no getting around that 25-30% cure rate. So she's more depressed than ever. And I don't know what to do, except be with her until I can't take it anymore and I have to go up to my own apartment and collapse.
I did read the Da Vinci code last weekend while I went away for a day and a half to Maquoketa State Park. Watched the Sopranos on HBO in the hotel last Saturday night. Wished that the new season of Deadwood had started so I could see one of those episodes. The last month has been so hectic and stressful school-wise, I didn't even have time to immerse myself in DVD or movie escapism. I'll rectify that a little tomorrow night when my younger sister comes down from Wisconsin to see my mom. She asked me Wednesday to buy us 2 tickets for X-Men: The Last Stand for Saturday night, so I went to fandango.com and bought 'em. So we're set for that. Wolverine. Hugh Jackman. Yeah.
My older sister told me today that she's decided "everything is gay." I was like, Elaborate. (Had I been in a Fraser moment, I'd have said, "Elucidate" ...) She said, "Well, like 'Lord Of The Rings.' So gay. Or 'Troy.' Way gay." I must have goggled, because she looked at me and said, "What?" I replied, "You're just figuring this out now? They're all built on homoerotic bonding." She was like, "Yeah, totally!" I was like, "Y'know, Batman was so very gay..." and we had a laugh, because she's 9 years older than me and she and my other sister and my brother used to watch Star Trek and Batman re-runs on our black and white TV in the frickin' seventies, and I'm 9, 8, and 6 years younger than them and I would eagerly watch both shows with them.
Even then, I just knew there was something very curious about Batman and Robin's relationship. And Kirk and Spock's...
Sometimes I forget that there were some fun memories from childhood, that it wasn't all just us waiting for my dad to flip out about something or about nothing.
Then there was the time my younger sister was learning to read, and she was sounding words out everywhere we went. And we were in the car, parked with the hazards blinking in a no parking zone while my father ran into Photo World and picked up some pictures or something. She looked at the Photo World sign and then pointed to it and said to me, "Look! Potato World!"
I dunno why that just popped into my head, but it was funny to me at the time -- and I'm only 2 years older than her, but I knew she was getting it wrong. And, y'know, it's still funny to me now. Never fails to bring a smile to my face.