Why I'm a psych nurse, or I why I couldn't be any other kind.

[NurseDaddy2006]

It's been a long road to get here.

Last night I had a dream that I was bad at my job and was being replaced, passed over for promotion, and then locked down by the powers that be on a subway platform with an environmental toxin that induced craziness. How's that for madness inducing? My dreams often feel so real that I wake up in quite the mood.

Thankfully there was some positivity at work this morning, and I was able to get out of my funk. If I'm anything, it's resillient.

Life's been no bed of roses. I'm a psych nurse today because that's the best kind of nurse for me to be. All the other things I've done in life I did because I had a knack for them. Some innate talent that served me well even if I didn't have the edumication to go along with it. When I went to nursing school as an adult, after being so many different things in life, I feared I could not be taught. Me? Taught something I didn't already have a knack for? Couldn't do guitar lessons, even with a musical ear. Couldn't stand art class, even with my keen asthetics. Writing? I can write but don't ask me to explain the rules of the English language. I play riffs on guitar or fills on drums that sound right to me. Same with writing.

Not to mention that I had a learning disability I didn't know about until I was 34. As an adult with a clue on how my brain worked, I got my 4.0GPA and got into nursing school. Too bad with a half a day left before graduating I screwed up and got the boot. I had to retake the whole last semester. See my name here at AllNurses? 2006 isn't entirely correct. Sure I got my LPN in the interim, but I didnt graduate and become an RN until 2007 because of my mistake.

See, my wife and I tried to have kids two years after we got married. 10 years and many failed attempts at treatments later, not to mention numerous miscarriages, we conceived. Only we lost our miracle boy two weeks before he was due. We managed to get lucky eight months later, and we have a miracle son if there ever was one. No more after him, just 4 more miscarriages. So when I lost my job in IT I became a stay-at-home dad. I decided to go to school to be a nurse shortly after. Toward the end I made the mistake of arranging to do my mother/baby rotation at the same hospital where we'd lost our son. I didn't see how volitile a situation that would be. It was to be the final rotation of clinicals, the long days, and I was convinced I was going to make a bad situation into something I could use to help others. With a day and a half before graduating, I talked to a mom about a twin she'd lost. I wasn't supposed to. I was so obssessed with helping, that I crossed too many boundaries.

But now that time has gone by, I can see it needed to happen. Obssessed was a critical word in that last sentence of the previous paragraph. Shortly after being forced to withdraw, I had a conversation with an uncle that led to futher understanding of my actions. Like him and other members of my family, I am "Pure-O". I've got the obssessional component of OCD. So this, combined with all the other things I deal with, has been a major contributor to my being distracted, not "in the moment", unable to focus, stop worrying, etc. Meds help. No longer do I spend days so bent out of shape that nobody can stand to be around me. Now it's just a few hours tops.

When I did graduate, Magna Cum Laude, it was a year after I was supposed to, but with a newfound understanding that life would be different from that point on. As soon as I got hired to work a med surge floor I knew I wanted to get out. I wasn't going to be able to work mother/baby and be there for those dads going through what I went through, but if I could get onto a psych unit, I'd be in the right place.

6 months later, I transferred to psych. I'm the nurse patients felt comfortable with. I was the one who was asked why the other nurses seemed to talk down to the patients. I spent time out on the floor, instead of hiding in the nurses station. I liked working with the patients. The staff, on the other hand...

At my new job, I am a resource. I work on a team with a couple of social workers and a psychologist, and we provide training and consultation to the staff that provide direct care and case management to our 1600 or so consumers. We also get called in when consumers have issues their case managers can't seem to help them with. People are always telling me that they've never had a nurse here that can connect so well with the consumers, and they're thankful for that. Makes me feel like I'm in the right place in nursing.

Doing something I apparently have a knack for.

ND

[Yosemite, RN, ASN, EMT-I]

Wow! Very heartening! ND, what a great tale of success. All my best wishes to you!

[Guest717236]

Thanks for sharing your story, looks like it was a long road

but you are in the right place in nursing.

Best wishes!

[Davey Do]

NurseDaddy2006:

Yeah. I 2nd that emotion.

I'm not even sure why I enjoyed reading your submission so much, but I did. Perhaps because it conveyed sincerity without being preachy. Even though it was a mouthful.

Thanks for sharing.

Dave

[NurseDaddy2006]

Thanks for the replies. Sometimes I find writing about how I got here helps me figure out where I am at the moment.

[mentalhealthRN]

Glad to hear you found your place. However, I couldn't help but wonder why in the world you were prohibited from having this conversation with that mom about the twin she lost. I assume you didn't force her to talk about it when she insisted she didn't want to. Maybe you did.....not sure. That just seemed a bit odd to me. I would think if you were caring for a mom who was there for a delivery and she appeared to be affected during this time by a past loss of a baby, that it would be appropriate to help her through that...talking to her and being therapeutic to her in coping with this painful memory that the birth of another baby is bringing up.

[NurseDaddy2006]

Glad to hear you found your place. However, I couldn't help but wonder why in the world you were prohibited from having this conversation with that mom about the twin she lost. I assume you didn't force her to talk about it when she insisted she didn't want to. Maybe you did.....not sure. That just seemed a bit odd to me. I would think if you were caring for a mom who was there for a delivery and she appeared to be affected during this time by a past loss of a baby, that it would be appropriate to help her through that...talking to her and being therapeutic to her in coping with this painful memory that the birth of another baby is bringing up.

It's a long story, but suffice it to say that my instructors felt I'd stepped outside the boundaries of my role as a student nurse, after the nurses on the unit told them about the conversation I'd had with the patient. I thought I was helping, given my history and experience of living after loss, and I told them of the thanks I got from that mom after our conversation, but the faculty would not change their minds and I had to withdraw or get an F. I had a 92 average going into the finals. I also had to tell everyone that knew I was about to graduate that I might not, ever, if they didn't let me back in to take the last semester over. I also had to go on the celebratory cruise our family and friends had all booked, though I wasn't much fun to be around.

People told me "sue them!", "appeal!", go the top and demand blah blah blah. Put it this way... those that tried that never got back in. I kept my mouth shut, accepted a seat a year later, breezed through the last semester, made sure my mother/baby rotation was at another hospital and the first rotation to go through, and kept my mouth shut when a patient on a med surge rotation told me she'd had a tough year because she lost her son (I was being tested for my resolve). I said "that must have been tough for you" and went about the rest of my duties.

I think that what happened to me just adds to my ability to never let any sort of stigma cloud my impressions and assessments of the people I provide services to.

ND