An exercise in futility

It seems like everything and nothing is happening all at the same time.

I am studying most nights, trying my best to understand what is going on, and yet I am getting no where. There are lectures and tutorials on all the time, and I go to them all, but I still feel like I have gained little ground. I'm not complaining that I don't understand the coursework, or at least I don't mean to be; it's more that I can feel the pressure of the upcoming placement getting more and more intense as it looms ever-nearer, yet I still feel as unprepared for it today as I did last year.

The CP1 class is doing little but to exacerbate my paranoia. And the abbreviations are going to kill me. MRSA, VRE, GIT, URT, UTI, STI, LRT, GOR, FBI - fucking bite me.

God I'm so whiney. And repetitive.

Bleh. I was watching tv tonight and caught the end of the 7pm Project. I still can't believe that for a 110-odd kilometre stretch, there are 2 doctors. And 1800 odd vacancies for doctors in rural Australia. This isn't even beginning to factor in the amount of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals that are needed.

I am seriously in awe of the doctor they had on the show; seeing 70 odd patients a day, delivering babies, he is doing the lot. He's a friggen superman, is what he is.

Aside from the whole people-not-wanting-to-go-bush thing, I think the main problem is that there are so many people who train up in one of the major cities and then go overseas. While I think it's a great idea to get out there and travel the world, and to help those in developing nations ... we have to help ourselves first, don't we?

One of the first things I was taught at university is that, as a nurse, the most important thing I can do is to take care of myself first. Because a sick nurse is a useless nurse. And I believe it to be similar with countries; what good is it if all of the nurses and doctors who train up in Australia go over to Africa to save the people there, if the deficit of trained medical personnel is going to leave Australia struggling as a country to maintain its quality of life?

I have no idea if this is coming out right and I'm too tired and too grouchy to really care. I just think that, while helping the developing countries is vital ... we need people to care about the people living in our country as well.

There are people living in our country who struggle for clean water, sanitary living conditions and nutrition. It's a very real part of Australia, it's not just something you find in India or Zimbabwe. And it shouldn't be ignored in favour of focusing on the rest of the world.

Bah. There are so many different kinds of professions that rural Australia is desperately devoid of, and I just wish I could somehow fill each and every role.

I feel so incredibly useless, sitting here and reading my books. Sure, I donate blood and whatever. That's a good start. But it somehow seems so futile when you consider just how much work needs to be done.

And it's so. bloody. frustrating.

Mildly Mysophobic (y)

Time seems to be escaping me as of late.

It is the second week of this semester and I can barely remember the first - I can barely recall actually 'doing' the first semester.

It's apparently my birthday soon. That means it's almost time for my placement. I am not ready to professionally care for someone, or someones.

The more study I do, the more paranoid I get. I'm terrified I'm going to say hello to a patient, sneeze and kill them.

Or infect them with my pen, is the latest paranoia CP1 has given me.

Or fuck up the math and OD them on blood thinners or I-don't-know-what.

I know I'm going to be supervised, and I know the chances of my actually killing someone is slim, but that doesn't particularly assuage my fears.

Always lovely to hear is that the $50 criminal history check we were told we needed last week is no longer needed. Yeah, that's cool. Not like I have anything better to waste $50 on, after all.

But on a happier note, it turns out that my 118 tutor has a background of remote nursing and has an invested interest in indigenous health issues. I fairly nearly fell in love.

Apparently tomorrow in the first prac, we're going to be washing our hands and playing with glow-in-the-dark stuff that'll show up the bacteria on our hands. I'm pretty pumped to draw a glow-in-the-dark moustache on my face.

I think, today at least, maybe I am okay.

Day 2

My second day back at uni turned out a lot better than the first. Yesterday I was just non-stop freaking out the entire bloody time, it was awful. But today, I was calmer, probably more tired, and better able to deal with what was being thrown at me. Even if I sat through a two hour lecture without a friggen clue as to what the point of it all was.

Didn't help I had the wrong notes.

I've got blisters popping up all over my hand from writing too much, I guess, they're painful and annoying and I wish they'd turn into calluses already. Also have punctuate leukonychia on a couple of nails, which is odd.

Bleh.

I was a bit bummed in today's bioscience class, though. This semester, the lecturer is apparently planning to basically dumb everything down so we deal with as little science as possible, and just learn the basic things that are absolutely necessary for us to know.

It's a bit lame, really.

But I did have to laugh/groan when she was standing there trying to explain exactly what adenosine triphosphate entails. She's all, this part here is what we call adenosine, and connected to this are these three groups here, and each one of these is what we call phosphorus, and so there's three groups of phosphorous attached to the adenosine, so we call it adenosine TRIphosphate. Because there's three.

Like we didn't just spend an entire semester dealing with it.

Though, speaking of my course, I did giggle a lot in my head this morning when I realised for the zillionth time how ironic it is for me to undertaking a degree in nursing when I currently dislike people as a whole.

I'm tired of people expressing their opinions, then getting defensive when others disagree, and telling them that they were merely expressing their opinion as is their right, so if you don't like it that's your opinion and you should keep it to yourself.

Going by that latter statement, everybody should keep their opinions to themselves, not just those who disagree with a poorly worded statement.

And if everybody kept their opinions to themselves .. well, there'd be a lot more peace, but the world would be a very quiet place.

Conversation is built on opinion and perceptions.

Were we to keep every opinion to ourselves, nothing would ever be said.

'I felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business shirt, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.'

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Leaping and soaring, away shall I fly; away, away, away..

What's the point?
There is no point.
Does this mean we shouldn't try?
Well no, it just means we shouldn't expect much.
Doesn't that mean that it's pointless?
Yes it does, shall we repeat the conversation?
No, it's okay. There's no point.

My, oh my. I wish my mind would stop conversing with itself. It's annoying, especially when it's not particularly enthralling. I wish I could escape it, but there is no way to escape your head.
So instead, I empty it, into this, for no real reason. But an empty mind is far better than an overwhelmingly full mind.
I have nothing particularly interesting to say tonight.
I met a girl online, or rather, she found my email address off a site and contacted me. It's strange, because she is (almost) where I was 4 years ago. She is on the precipice of something horrific, and she hardly knows it. I'm trying to tell her, RUN WHILE YOU CAN, but then I remember how I received those same warnings and brushed them off completely. Is trying to tell her to get help while it's not serious then a futile idea? I'd like to think not, but I really don't know.
She's at the 'I think I have an eating disorder, but I'm not anorexic' stage. The stage where it kind of starts to twig that hey, I may have a problem here, but aw nah, it's not serious. Fuck. It.
I think there is a certain delusion associated with having an eating disorder. I know that I have it, and K- does, too. You know exactly what you're getting yourself into because it's one of the few things left you can physically focus on. Your mind is so full of numbers and facts, repetitive thoughts, a voice constantly droning on at you all day and night; all you can think about is food. Food food food. And weight. And eating disorders. You read everything you can find, you devour the information instead of calories. You realise that you're going to be deficient in everything; that your hair is going to fall out and it will sadden you greatly; that your breath will smell odd if you go into ketosis; that you are going to be cold. And I don't mean, oh it's a little chilly in here, isn't it? I mean fucking freezing, a perpetual state of utter frozenness, impossible to thaw, that sits in your bones. And you know that your concentration will shatter, your memory is going to be shot to hell. You know that there will be days in which you will be too weak to lift your head off the pillow, and yet you will still struggle to fit in those essential exercises. You know that your electrolytes are going to get completely out of whack, that your heart muscle will weaken and your brain will eat itself; you KNOW that it will fucking kill you. But there is always always ALWAYS that voice that tells you, 'You won't die. You're not that bad. Shut the fuck up and give me 20'. And you believe it. You believe, in spite of the facts, that you will not die and you will somehow be able to defy biology itself and become infinitely smaller.
And it will be grand.
Even if it is fucking stupid.
I don't know why I wrote all that, but I'm too lazy to start again.
I don't think I even have a point tonight, other than that minds are dangerous places and right now, I'd give both my kidneys to be able to escape my head.
The brain is amazing. Thought is incredible.
My brain and my thoughts just seem to not like me very much.
What a bizarre notion.

Ahh, sun ^o^

Inexplicable happiness.

Carefree laughs.

Generous smiles.

Relaxed muscles.

This moment, right here, is perfect. It won't last, but while it does ... I am in a state of bliss.

There is no reason; nothing has changed, nothing has happened to lift me right up and make me laugh at the screen of my laptop, sitting in the grounds of the university.

I just am.

Friends, sun - WARMTH - and my favourite songs playing.

No stress, no worries, no counting.

I just wish the wind would leave me be. It's killing my warmth-induced buzz.

Fuck It.

This is potentially the hardest post for me to write, yet I feel it needs to be said.

People need to become more aware that mental illness is really quite common, and that it isn't something to be shunned or ignored.

My issues are ones shared by so many others, and they need to be addressed. This blog isn't going to do that, but hey, it's a pin head of a start.

And, well, if you think of me differently because of this post, that's on you. This is me. I make no apologies for who I'm meant to be.

Over the last few years a lot of shit has happened, and I'm still trying to come to terms with a lot of it.

I guess the only place to start is at the beginning, which is hard when it's not clearly defined, so bear with me if this doesn't make complete sense.

By the start of grade 12, my mother had separated from my step father, Phil, and was filing for divorce. This was hard for a lot of reasons, the least of which that it was a rather messy break up, and he'd been my only father figure since I was 2; but nevertheless, I managed to juggle emotionally supporting my mother, living in a small house with far too many people, part time work and my school work.

At the very end of grade 12, I, rather unthinkingly, wrote my reflectional speech about what it had been like to have had an eating disorder for the past year a half. (Needless to say, I was encouraged to present this at lunchtime with only the teacher and a friend present).

Obviously, that started a chain reaction of events like a firecracker. Ms Carlin went to Mr Pokarier and Ms Itsikson, who in turn called in the district guidance counsellor, Barbara something-or-other. She sent me to a doctor to get a check up, helped me to break the news to my mother and referred me to the Child and Youth Mental Health Service (CYMHS). I went there once and met my to-be counsellor, who told me to find a different doctor and sent me to Logan Hospital for a complete physical examination. (As confused as I was yet?). So I went, and met with a doctor who actually turned out to be a psychiatrist, who did the examination, found nothing physically wrong with me other than my weight, and interviewed me.

That was when I got my first diagnosis: Anorexia nervosa.

She decided it would be best to admit me to the adolescent mental health ward in the hospital. She wanted to do it all that afternoon, but I begged off until Monday afternoon, to give me time to do my last few pieces of assessment, determined that my grades should not be determined by approximations and past results.

Monday comes, I am absolutely sick to my stomach with nerves, and go to Ms Itsikson to ask for leniency for the assessment, which she grants immediately, almost relievedly.

I say goodbye to the few friends who knew, went home to pack my bag, and returned to the hospital where I was taken to the ward.

Anyway, one week later, they've gotten 2kg on me, enough to allow me out for the formal. So mum and my sister turn up, but both have incredibly red eyes. I eye them warily, glance at my case manager who quickly ensures that I have my supplements and ushers us out the door. I get into the car, no one is telling me what's going on and why they're both crying, and then my mum's mobile rings. My sister answers and then says to my mum, 'It's the police. They want to know what to do with the car'. I stare at them, completely bewildered and concerned. So my mum looks at me in the rear view mirror of the car, and says to me: 'Fleur, Phil's dead'.

Cue utter shock.

He had killed himself the night before; carbon monoxide poisoning.

Turns out my case manager knew before I did.

A few panic attacks and a bit of crying later, I'm back in hospital.

Not long after, they caught on to the fact that the previously lowered moods had significantly worsened, surprise surprise, and that my anxieties were not decreasing, and so began to medicate me.

A few months later when they realise that this is more than grief, they give me my second diagnosis: Major depression.

After 3 months, I'm significantly heavier, on prozac to help the depression and anxiety, and released, completely unprepared, back into the world.

I go home, completely fall apart, get readmitted far too many times for anyone's good until they lower the readmission weight by 15kg and I move to the Gold Coast. I go to a new doctor who proceeds to mess around with my medication until I no longer know whether I'm coming or going, but his scales seemed to like to stay around the same number for a couple of months, which turned out to be good enough for the psychiatrist who saw me twice in the whole six months, both times in the space of a week. So I was let off the involuntary treatment order and immediately ceased all therapy, having found it more detrimental than helpful.

And anyway, here I am. Just a confused kid with too many diagnoses and not enough solutions.

I get that hardly anyone is going to read this, and even fewer will even care. But that's okay. This isn't a cry for attention, and I don't want pity. I just feel that the time has come where I am strong enough to tell my story, even if only in this weak little way, to five people at most.

But it feels good to have this out there, to have owned up to myself at last.

Self-absorbed lunacy

I am reverting. I can feel it. I can see it.

But I don't care.

Today was pretty awful, not that I particularly care to dwell. There is always tomorrow.

Until there isn't.

I was watching Medical Emergency today; there was a guy with chemical burns basically all over his body, and his mouth was affected as well, which of course means that respiratory problems are of major concern. There was a woman who'd been in a rather large train accident and had, I think it was maybe 11, bones in her face completely broken and needed surgery. There was a construction worker who had somehow shot a nail sideways clean through all 5 of his toes, was petrified of needles and needed like 6 lots of local before they could pull the nail out. There was a guy with something or other wrong with a disc in his back who was in hellish levels of pain and needed morphine on top of penthrox. It was the first time I've ever seen penthrox; I'm still kind of intrigued that you can now inhale analgesics. Anyway, my point was that, yeah today sucked for me, but my day was nothing on theirs.

And maybe I should just stop being so restraining of myself. In all of this mess, there is one thing that I know that I want, and there is no one but myself that would ever even think to encourage me in the slightest. But maybe I should just stop this twilight zone bullshit and go for it.

And do it properly.

Well, okay, maybe that wasn't entirely true. There are two things I know that I want more than anything. The other one being that, were it not for my knowing that to defer this degree any more would be to forfeit any notion of ever finishing it, I would be packing my bags and moving to France right now.

Even if my French is on par with a 3 year old, tops.

So, I have less than a week left before I go back to uni. I want to go back, and I am dreading it. I am dreading trying so effing hard that my brain just about explodes, again, and only getting a 4 to show for my efforts. I am dreading sitting in lectures and feeling so.damn.stupid., again. I am dreading that overwhelming feeling of sitting in a full lecture theatre and feeling so lost and so alone, even surrounded by so many people. I am dreading the placement and feeling the full extent of my self-doubt and petrification. I am dreading the frustrations, the fears, the emotions and the lack thereof. But I am looking forward to getting out of the house, and I am looking forward to completing the next stage of this ... thing, even if I get to the end and find I have spent three years+ on a pointless endeavour.

I need to prove to myself that I can do this. That I can persist until I win. That I can do as well as I keep saying I can.

I think it's time to stop making excuses, stop beating myself up over what I could have done, and just do. And do it until there are no realistic could have's left.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

Futurama is the only kind of Future I want to know about

The future is confusing.

It's not tangible, it's not foreseeable, it's not predictable, hell, it's not even comprehensible.

I am studying a course, and having thought about it, I am studying it mostly for the toys I get to play with at the end of the day. Provided all the nursing tasks haven't been appropriated by other health professionals.

Were it not for the crippling self-doubt, I know I would be studying something else. And I would have less of an idea of what to do with the resultant degree.

But I keep doing this; this first semester is forever tripping me up. I didn't make it through the whole first semester of the first course, I gave up half way through the first semester of the second course but completed the semester nonetheless, and I have now finished and passed the first semester of the third course, yet I feel oddly compelled to throw it away and start afresh with a new course.

I won't, but a large part of me wishes I would.

It's strange though, because in a way it feels as though my time is dwindling. Whilst everyone else around me appears to be blossoming, I feel as though I am wilting. It has never even seemed conceivable that I would make it to 25, much less past it, yet I am now about to turn 19, without a clue as to anything.

I dunno, maybe E- is right. Maybe I should just try more to live in the present. I never seem to be where I am. My head is perennially dwelling in the past or trying to somehow grasp the future and mold it in my hands to become something for which I can plan and make adjustments, comprehend and circumnavigate. It is, of course, a fool's objective.

Maybe A- was right in holding the mindfulness sessions every morning. At least they were 5 minutes in which I was truly present. Ah, the look on his face if he ever knew I even so much as thought that..

But I mean, it's all pretty pointless. I can't plan for the future outside of the next few seconds any more than anyone else, at least not with any degree of certainty that the events would progress exactly as I desired. So maybe I need to not give up, but to loosen up. Roll with what's happening now and worry about the rest later. Continue with my course and worry about the careers and the finances later.

On a more exciting note, I finally got a copy of mass effect today. I was playing it all afternoon; I'm hooked already. So awesome.

So yay video games, boo beating myself up over a 4, and hurrah for progress.

Even if it only lasts another 5 minutes.

Residue

I just want to say first up that Karli, if you read this -- you amaze and mystify me.

Tonight, I am in a twilight zone. I don't know whether today has been exceptionally good or horrifically bad, but maybe I should just take it as it was: another day, with its share of highs and lows.

I spent the first half of the day playing lab rat; it was actually a lot more fun than I make it sound. I met another nurse, who introduced me to the tube used to collect a salivary sample. Hawo, Mr. Tube. Anyway, I now have four fun little marks on my back from where the tester 'marked her spot' so she knew where to look tomorrow when they do their little biopsy. Participating in this study is proving to be really interesting.

I watched a documentary like last night or something about speech; my god it was fascinating. With the birds and what appears to be an actually innate call, and the video x-ray machines, the neurologists and the speech pathologists, and the mutation of the chromosomes.... this is what I was designed for.

Yeah, she's really coherent tonight. You would understand if you watched it.

Toy Story 3 was just incredible. I really want to go see it again in 3D, just because.

Bleh. L- keeps voicing concerns about being readmitted to the psych ward, which is reawakening my own concerns. I'm not even close to what I would have to be before they readmitted me, which is reassuring, but the threat still lingers and niggles away at my brain. L- isn't close, either, and it would be highly unlikely for them to actually readmit her, but I mean ... what is this? Why has a place that in all theory should have HELPED us left us emotionally scarred?

It's a hospital. It's a place where people are meant to get better. People aren't meant to be discharged with a new found panic attack-inducing fear of being readmitted. I mean, they're not supposed to like the idea ... but to have a reaction this extreme?

And it's not just me. It's L-, and it's K-, probably B- and C- as well. For god's sake, it's been almost two years and K- and I are still having nightmares.

Tad extreme, no?

But on the other hand, for now, we are all free. And that's worth a lot when I think back to the days of being cooped up within the same six rooms for weeks on end.

Bleh. Help schmelp.