NoWhereNear

I was diagnosed bipolar 11 years ago and in that time I've gone years on meds and years off. Whenever I ask myself "Am I reacting like a 'normal' person here?" and find that maybe I'm not, I get back on the meds. Lately, after almost 3 years of being very stable w/o meds I've taken a shine to Dennis-Leary-style ranting. Since I'm not the only one who has to deal with me, no matter how clever and interesting I may think I am when I'm manic, I went ahead and got a prescription for Zoloft this week, to hopefully bring me back down to that nice Stepford Wife "Normal" everyone else has before my coworkers start complaining about my "negativity". That's just me, though. I hope you find what works for you.

To me a 10 is crazy mind-numbing think-you're-dying didn't-know-anything-could-hurt-this-bad pain. Basically I compare everything to the time I was recovering from major opened-like-a-trout abdominal surgery and something went wrong...I don't know if the morphine drip ran out or what, but I woke up screaming bloody murder in a kind of pain I never imagined existed. So now it turns out that when I rate something as around a 7, according to the little chart I'm actually at a 9. I'd hate to see anyone in the kind of pain I consider a "10". Pretty much anything I don't think might kill me rates below a 6. It's all relative. Pain sucks that way.

NEVER worry about overreacting. My little brother had a cold that he was taking a long time to recover from and my mom was going to take him to the doctor, but he didn't want to go. She decided it was no big deal. The next morning she found him semi-conscious and looking terrible. Instead of calling 911, she loaded him in the car and drove him to one of the smaller hospitals. She should have called 911 and had him taken to the big hospital. She should have made a fuss and freaked out a lot sooner. Whether it would have saved him or not, I can't say, but she wouldn't be spending the rest of her life beating herself up and feeling like she killed her son. I'm sure if you asked her, she'd tell you she'd much rather feel stupid for a little while than have to bury her 15-year-old.

You might want to consider Physician Assistant. It's more school than an RN, but it's still far less than for PreMed + Medical School. It's a nice compromise. "Are you more heavily drawn to the science aspects than the interpersonal aspects of medicine? (I'm sure there are plenty of people on this site that would go into cardiac arrest if they woke up in a hospital room to discover that some of the surgeons they worked with were their nurse!) Compassion and concern for people and their suffering are practically a job requirement for nursing. If those aren't words that would immediately come to mind when describing yourself, then you should probably look into other areas of medicine that would be a better fit for you." Also, can someone explain to me why there's a difference here? I'm not the most cuddly, warm-and-fuzzy person and I like the science aspects of medicine but I can still care if someone is suffering and want to help them. Why are these things treated as mutually exclusive? What areas of medicine DON'T require the compassion and concern?

No, really! It's totally relaxing...You don't even have to breathe for yourself, they have fancy machines that'll do it for you! You don't have to get up to go to the bathroom, or eat or anything. If it's something you need to do, they have a tube that'll do it FOR YOU! Yay! Good times! (/sarcasm)

This is an article written by someone an internet marketing company to get people to fill out forms to go to the colleges promoted when you click the links in the article. Every time someone fills out one of those forms, the company makes money. Would you fill out the form if the ad said: "You can have an exciting career in the healthcare field where you make $8/hr, get called on your days off, risk being bitten, slapped and urinated on, and are disrespected by patients, their families, and management! Sign up today to spend $20,000 at a private college to get your "degree" to become a CNA!" I don't know...if it were me writing the article, I think I might have at least added that you get to wear scrubs instead of a suit and tie. That's a just about indisputable perk. :wink2:

A number of people have started as nurses and then became PAs. I'm actually considering doing something along those lines. My tentative plan is to get my ADN, then do the RN to BSN bridge while I'm working as an RN. By the time I get the BSN, I've have been working as a nurse for awhile. Then, if I'm inclined to apply for the PA master's program, I already have the BSN and two years of medical experience (both requirements for entry to the program I'm considering). Also, you say it's just a "small" part of you that wants to go the nursing route. To me that's a pretty major indicator that it might not be what would make you happiest. Life if too short to settle.:wink2:

I start my pre-nursing classes in the fall, but I suppose my reasons will still be the same when I actually become a nurse as they are now. Me: Born almost 3 months early, lots of time in the NICU, followed by 2 years of surgeries and hospital trips, then another major surgery a few years ago. My Mom: ICU about half a dozen times at this point. Last time, we were told she wouldn't make it or would be brain damaged. Somehow, she's fine other than some memory loss. My Little Brother: Died in the ICU after a very sudden onset of acute pancreatitis. They spent 20 minutes trying to revive my brother, even though as soon as they got a look at him in the ER, we were told he probably wasn't coming home. I guess they try harder when it's a kid. (2 weeks shy of his 15th birthday). A lot of health care workers have put a lot of time and energy into my family. (Who HAS this kind of luck? Seriously?!) That's not counting stitches, broken bones, and all the other trips to the ER you make when there are 3 little boys in your family. I figured, the money is good, medicine is interesting, and I REALLY ought to do something to "pay it forward". Also, I hate pantyhose, so I'm pretty excited about wearing scrubs.

I have had a horrible phobia of headwounds for years. Just the insinuation in a movie (gun to someone's head etc.) was enough to make me dizzy, and my heart pound. Since I've decided to go into nursing, I figured I'd better fix it. A friend of mine who's about to finish his grad program in counseling suggested this book (I apologize if I'm not allowed to post this. I swear I'm not getting paid to promote the book or anything!): http://www.amazon.com/What-You-Change-Cant-Self-Improvement/dp/0449909719 I've been sloooowly desensitizing myself, as suggested by the book. At first it was hard just to peek for a second at a minor abrasion on someone's head. Now I can handle most headwound images, including video footage of actual brain surgeries. I still can't handle absurdly graphic headwounds in movies (no Scanners for me!) but I'm getting there.

Headwounds. I have a severe phobia of headwounds. Even insinuated headwounds in movies (someone with a gun in their mouth/held to the head) used to get to me. I've been trying like crazy to desensitize myself, since I decided to go into nursing. (Still a pre-pre-nursing student, so I have a little time.) I can say with pride that I can now deal with the photo on the Meningitis page of Wikipedia (pretty graphic autopsy photo of a head w/ the top of the skull off, showing the brain) and I watched Pulp Fiction without looking away when they shot Marvin. :w00t: It's a start. Nothing else fazes me so far. I raised three boys. Snot,poo and blood don't scare me much.

Grace90: Yeah, my brother was challenged too, so we had a heck of a time telling when anything was wrong with him, because he wouldn't say anything. It took two days once to figure out that he had a concussion and he once walked around for a week with a broken toe before my mom saw it and freaked out. I'm glad your kiddo ended up being okay. That had to have been so scary for you!

For the record, laypeople don't always know when it's an emergency. My brother was sluggish and just kind of out of it after getting over a cold. My mom tried to get him into their regular doc, and he didn't want to go (typical difficult teenager), so they didn't. No big deal, he's just taking awhile to get over a normal cold, right? The next day she found him laying in his room looking BAD. She didn't call 911. She loaded him into the car and drove him herself up to the hospital where he died 12 hours later of pancreatitis. My mom's also driven herself to the hospital and been promptly parked in the ICU when she got there. She really hates to bother people/overreact, so she waits until things are BAD. So, when I get to be a nurse, if I end up working in the ER, I'm going to try to look at it like this: Would I rather have someone not-too-sick come in overly worried about nothing, OR would I rather see someone die because they didn't want to bother us or seem alarmist?

I should preface this with the fact that I'm not a nurse, but I do have a LOT of experience with the ICU. My mom has been in about half a dozen times--the last time for almost a week. (diabetes, COPD, Congestive Heart Failure...she's a mess). Now, I don't know how long your dad has been in the ICU, but apparently (No one warned me this could happen, and I wish to God someone had, because it was very distressing!) after someone has been in the ICU for a few days, they sometimes develop a temporary "dementia" due to the stress their body is under, and the fact that they don't get proper sleep because of the lighting and noise. My mom was unconscious for a few days on the ventilator, then she was awake, but still had a tube down her throat, so she couldn't talk. We brought her a little dry-erase board, and she kept writing over and over that she was scared, the nurses were trying to hurt her, she needed to be moved to another facility because she wasn't safe, etc. She was VERY agitated and paranoid. A nurse friend explained the ICU dementia thing to my husband after he told her how upset I was when I got home from seeing my mom. She assured us it would go away once my mom was out of the ICU, maybe even a little sooner. Within a few days my mom was totally back to normal and didn't remember any of it. I don't know if this is the case with your dad. Maybe some of the ICU nurses here can chime in and let me know if I'm totally off-base, but I know my experience was awful and it was a HUGE relief to find out that it was a fairly common, temporary thing. (You can google "ICU dementia" or "ICU delirium" and find a bit more information. Good luck with your dad. Hang in there!

I'll be starting my pre-nursing classes next fall, but have been talking to a lot of people and doing a lot of research. I've been told in no uncertain terms by one nurse I know (she has been in the profession for about 40 years now) to learn what I need to learn, do bedside nursing for a little while, but in the meantime, pursue further education in order to get a nice admin job somewhere. I don't know that it's good advice for me, as I'm completely fascinated by all things medical and am looking forward to the challenge and a job that makes me run my a** off (not that I might not change my mind completely when it's time for clinicals, I suppose). But maybe that's something you could look into? I'm under the impression from everything I've read on these boards that there's a LOT you can do with a nursing education. If you do a search of these forums for "leaving nursing" you'll see a LOT of post with suggestions for jobs that don't involve direct patient care. (Try not to read the original posts though, they get to be kind of a downer.)

I've always wondered why the potential long-term effects of surviving a suicide attempt aren't covered more thoroughly in suicide-prevention materials/classes. A lot of people (especially teenagers) tend to think that if it works, they're dead, and if it doesn't they'll be fine. I consider the idea that I could live through an attempt and come out the other end disfigured, brain-damaged, on dialysis, blind or god-only-knows what else to be a good deterrent. I think if people were presented with a list that describes what can go wrong with each of the more common methods it might give some people pause. There's a book called Suicide: Methods and Consequences by Geo Stone that does some of this, though not for the purpose of preventing suicide (quite the contrary, actually) but between reading that and meeting a man who was blind after a failed attempt, I can say with absolute certainty that I will be the last person you ever see trying to off myself.