The End Is Near

Of my nursing career. I've been stretching it out as long as I could, but I don't think I'm going to be able to do it much longer.

Don't know if I've mentioned here that I have a neurological intention tremor - it's affected my left hand for most of my adult life - went thru school with it, did Iv's for many years with it. In early 2000 it started affecting my right hand, and I had to give up doing IV's. At that time, I worked in ICU, and, amazingly, no one else was troubled by it - my supervisor told me I did enough other things well, and my co-workers were always good about doing IV's for me.
Despite that, in 2002, I went to post-op day surgery with the understanding that I wouldn't be able to do IV's - which is OK, because they are already started earlier in the day. Loved my job - mostly patient education - did well for 2 years, when all of a sudden the dept. manager decided that I must be retrained to do IV's. You can't retrain someone with a neurological condition to do something that they are unable to do - things got ugly - I sued her - blah, blah, blah. Nothing much came of it other than they left my job alone, but made life miserable, so I left.

I thought LTC was the answer, but didn't realize how much HANDWRITING was involved - and my handwriting has been getting progressively worse lately - my neurologist has upped my meds - without success - he's been after me for awhile to go on disability, but I just hate to give in to that.

Last Sunday nite I worked, and my hand was shaking so much that I was contracting the muscles in my whole arm to try to stop it so that I could write - and ended up having pain clear up into my neck. That arm still hurts. I ordered a special ink pen online for people with tremors - it cost me $25 - I hope it helps some.