Life after monitoring

Nurses Recovery

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Hi everybody:

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm having a hard time envisioning rebuilding my life after this monitoring program. It has set me back financially, educationally, emotionally and has damaged my career. I'm 55 so maybe part of this is a sense of fatalism that comes with age but this program has really damaged me. I'm withdrawn, paranoid and not optimistic about the future. I'm taking all the necessary steps to put my life in order. For example, I'm registered for my last semester of my CRNP studies after having to take a year off. What are your plans? Has this experience changed you? For the better or worse?

I wish you all a happy day!!!

You had a prescription and they still put you in a monitoring program? Why? Didn't they give you a chance to produce the prescription? WOW!!! That's terrible.

I self reported too (back in Feb 2016). Now I know it's just a matter of time before I receive "my fate". I really wish every case was looked at individually and not just a cookie cutter program.

Yes, I made a mistake, but doesn't 20 years of nursing with no problems / never been fired from a job, and no criminal record count???

Sorry, I'm just venting. I'm ready to get into a monitoring program so I can get started and finished with it.

Thankful I have a nursing job in dialysis right now with an active license and been there a year - surely that will help but who knows - time will tell.

God bless all of you!

Damn right it counts!!! You self-reported a year ago and got yourself in a monitoring-program friendly jab that you have been practicing safely in for over a year. Of course I have no idea how the super-geniuses who actually run the cookie cutter are gonna react to this. Them forcing you into a position to go to rehab / lose your job or whatever would simply be spiteful after all this clean time and successful employment. However, you doing the right thing and acting responsibility counts if not to anybody else then to you. I'll pray that things go well for you

Thanks bunches! I'm not in a monitoring program as of yet. I applied but never heard anything back . Surely I will hear soon. I've completed a rehab program and attending AA/NA meetings and have all the paperwork. This forum is such a great support group! I'm praying for you as well bud

thank you

Specializes in CRNA, Finally retired.
I'm 53 and newly (10 months) divorced. When I agreed to the monitoring contract, it was so that I could continue to work as a nurse. Now, after 2 years, I'm just trying to keep plodding along, keeping my head down, one day at a time, to get to the end, and once I'm out, I'm going to try to semi-retire. I can't afford to completely retire but I will go PRN and start doing some traveling that I've been wanting to do for a very long time (personal, not travel nursing). I am sick of the nursing profession and just want out, or as "out" as I can afford to be. I only keep going in the program because I need the financial security of knowing that I can come back and work as a nurse again at any time if I decide I need to. I also have a pride component, I don't want people I know to able to look up my name on the board of nursing website and see that my license has been revoked.

This program has shattered my self confidence. I used to be very confident and assertive. Now I feel like I walk around trying to be invisible. I'm paranoid about getting caught with vanilla extract in my system, and I've learned to be grateful for whatever crappy job anyone will give me. That's good, gratitude, I get that, but I used to feel that any facility would be lucky to have me work there, I've got great experience, but now I'm just grateful for the few people who were willing to hire me despite the ridiculous paperwork, restrictions, etc. And I have that awful sick feeling of humiliation in the pit of my stomach when I think of all the unsuccessful interviews I had, people who were not willing to deal with the TPAPN stuff, people who I had to tell all about why I was in TPAPN, so they can know all the juicy details and tell anyone else they know that also knows me (ER is an incredibly small world). Fun times in the gossip mill, at my expense. I had a thirst for knowledge before, reading journals, attending annual conferences, reading email distribution lists for emergency nursing. Now I just delete those emails, I throw away the journals and I don't attend the conferences. I'd have to get permission to go from TPAPN and I don't want to do anything to get me on their radar. No special requests, no reason to even know my name. I wouldn't go to the conferences anyway, because I'd encounter people who know me and my history.

I've learned humility, peeing in a cup at the lab. Humility is good sometimes, I get that. But for me, it comes at the expense of self confidence. I was so confident before. Now I feel like a low life, grateful to anyone for allowing me to work.

I just want out of nursing with my license intact.

Reading through all of this post, I can't be sure that it's all the fault of TPAPN. I mean, loss of self confidence would happen to anyone who's been fired, right? I diverted, I got caught, got fired. Of course I'm ashamed to talk about it, of course I avoid situations where I have to see any former colleagues who knew. That's really not the fault of TPAPN, to be fair. It's how all in my face, for THREE years, my disgrace is, that's really gotten to me. If I'd just gotten fired, I could've moved on, learned and not done it ever again. I hope I'd be smart enough to do that. But would I? Idk. Maybe I needed a dose of humiliation, financial burdens, time consuming IOP and AA meetings, paperwork and more paperwork etc, to ensure I'd stay clean. But a year would've been sufficient, thank you very much.

Can we perform a shame-ectomy for you? Do you think you could ever let go of this burden?

Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.

I don't really think about it too much anymore beyond the occasional orifice-puckering feeling that I've forgotten to check in or submit some useless piece of paperwork or other stupid hoop. I "graduated" in June and am still sober. I am incredibly grateful to be sober. I'd probably be dead if I hadn't gotten sober - I'd had an escalating series of drunkenly taking meds/insulin/whatever to harm myself and probably would have eventually done it, still not sure how I survived the insulin thing - and I needed the structure (at least at first) of the monitoring program to get sober.

I am thinking about changing jobs and might run into my monitoring program job pigeonholing me but...meh. I sometimes think I'd like to go back to school for an advanced nursing degree but get twitchy even thinking about that with my DUI. (Same goes with moving states tbh.) But I am sitting in a riad in Morocco right now. Life is pretty good considering where it was when I was drinking and early on in monitoring.

Specializes in ER, ICU/CCU, Open Heart OR Recovery, Etc.

I have been out of the monitoring program for a year, having successfully graduated. As to life after monitoring? A resounding YES. While I'm still wrangling with the BON in another state, I have found satisfaction, dignity, and self respect in another avenue. It took me a long time to move past the shame, guilt, loss of self worth and loss of self respect that was my career in nursing. I am grateful for the experiences, some painful and some not; but the most precious one being that I'm able to have a measure of success doing something else. I no longer feel like I don't belong anywhere else but in nursing.

Specializes in Emergency.
Damn right it counts!!! You self-reported a year ago and got yourself in a monitoring-program friendly jab that you have been practicing safely in for over a year. Of course I have no idea how the super-geniuses who actually run the cookie cutter are gonna react to this. Them forcing you into a position to go to rehab / lose your job or whatever would simply be spiteful after all this clean time and successful employment. However, you doing the right thing and acting responsibility counts if not to anybody else then to you. I'll pray that things go well for you

Oh...c'mon now...where I come from the "magic" number they randomly choose is 2 years of "clean time" (would they count this if people didn't bathe???) Certainly I will need many hot showers to wash away the disgust associated with this abomination

Oh I'm not saying forget this garbage. I'll take the pure hatred from exposure to this program and the rehab industry associated with it to my grave. I'm just saying don't let it ruin the rest of your life. Nobody deserves that. There are people out there trying to make a change in these programs when they are done. I wish I could say I'd be one of them but the punitive nature of this nonsense springs from how nurses actually treat each other in my opinion and will never change. I just want to survive this and get on with life. Showers won't wash this off but being another jaded mean person ain't what I want to be

Specializes in CRNA, Finally retired.

It has been 4 years since I had good access into current research but remember that 2 separate studies confirmed that 5 years out of initial tx. provedto be the most common time for relapse. Hence why some states requires 5 years participation in monitoring programs. So many participants were victims of sexyal abuse and these problems aren't resolved in a mere 2 years.

I don't think anybody is resolving anything in treatment they are leveraged into. I don't consider myself the n any form or treatment or recovery whatsoever. I'm merely doing what I have to do to maintain my career. After this is done. I won't drink and drive again but if I want to I'll damn sure drink

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