Ironic

The patient I mentioned yesterday, the one who I feel is probably symbolic of me in my therapy at this point? One of her goals is to walk across the room, do everything involved in going to the bathroom with someone standing there in case, then walking back.

Today I spent 45 minutes doing this one time with her. Every time we started to move from step a to step b she'd plop down.

There's a little voice that I have noticed becoming stronger and stronger with every year of therapy experience. I have learned if I hear that voice it is right. Today that voice said "this woman is going to try to fall". I say "try to fall" because she really was, she was throwing herself towards the floor. I even made a contingency plan in my head, but I didn't want to give her a chance to get out of doing the work so I didn't do what I really wanted to do, which was get a 2nd person. Plus, she is able to walk, so it's not like this was that risky.

Except she did try to throw herself on the floor. The experience voice was exactly right and I had positioned myself exactly right in anticipation so that I caught her and the only damage is a few sore muscles.

The frustration is really high now. And I know that's what I've been doing to myself and my own therapist. If you asked him I bet he'd even be able to find ways I've been throwing myself on the floor at him. (Which is just not very polite :). So I think I'm going to tell him that the topic which I am struggling with and am so angry and bitter about (it's work, ok, I hate secrets and if work is going to read this they are, and I don't think this is going to shock anyone; I am pretty sure that I have reached the end of my ability to function in the setting I'm in. I hear hospitals are more structured so I'm probably looking to change to that arena sometime after my doctor feels I'm stable enough--it may be a year. Emilijia, feel free to tell me all about it; I've always been in nursing homes or long term psych.) that even I hate to listen to me, and I'm taking it off the table for a while. Probably a month or more. I think I'm so tired of trying to fix something unfixable that I am completely resentful, and well, I am having tantrums and throwing myself on the floor in rage.

This was some day....I got in the shower exactly when they started flushing the town water lines, so I got a shower in water with dirty stuff pelting me, hard. A raccoon had drug trash across my lawn and I had no time to clean it up. I was late to get a blood draw done. The first ATM I went to was broken. The 2nd told me I am low on cash, anticipated due to lower work hours lately. I had busy, busy patients I couldn't find or who were sick. Several were being cared for by Nurse Atrocious who didn't even know they were sick. I found out one of my patients is going through pain med withdrawl and she had taken a pill from a stash in her purse. That's the 2nd time that's happened this year and I never encountered that before this facility. I spent a lot of time with her sobbing. Another woman threw up on me. I wasn't even working with her, just there in time to catch the puke. I tried to take a shortcut that doubled my ride home.

Yet I don't want to say that the time is coming that I am leaving all that.....