Semester Three, Week Six

I almost drowned this summer.

I remember bobbing along in the wave pool, both my legs having an untimely muscle spasm, while I was rendered helpless.

All I could do was float, hold my breath as the waves sucked me under and replenish my oxygen supply when I graced the surface before being pulled under again.

I remember having no fear, knowing the situation was precarious, dangerous, life-threatening.

I remember grasping on to the hooks on the side of the pool but being swept away by the waves with each attempt.

That's what this semester is like for me, I've finally realized.

I'm drowning.

I failed my psych exam this week. The content on substance abuse got me good.

But I still have hope: I have an 85% in the class, and all that's left is a final.

The exam was like the tidal wave; I think "I got this" when really, I'm powerless to the current underneath me, sweeping me away.

Next week is anxiety provoking: Psych final, Pharm test #2, begin med-surg, and another clinical exam coming my way.

I can do the math. I swear up and down that I can. I've been practicing problems. I know what I'm doing, and yet this week, the anxiety of my future was momentarily overpowering.

I was studying pharmacology and simply overwhelmed by the content. Adrenergic? Cholinergic? Sympathomimetic? What. The. Heck.

I almost took an over the counter anxiety reducer (who knows what it would do)
I almost took a shot of alcohol (I don't really drink, but I rationed; maybe it'll help)

My heart was racing, my stomach was sinking, my thoughts were rampant. Am I losing my mind or what?

It's the drowning sensation.

I realized the only thing I wasn't doing, and the only thing that would help was to lie in surrender to my Maker. To pray Scripture out loud. To surround myself with the One who knows me, who created me, who has not given me a Spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline.

It was eye-opening, humbling.

This battle isn't mine. I just think it is, act like it is. This battle is the Lord's. If He wants me to become a nurse, in His timing, I won't be, can't be stopped. It's His will, after all.

Naturally, surrendering is challenging. But I find my life when I lay it down.

Why, oh why, can't I remember this with every breath that I am?

~

I finished my psych rotation today. Termination, as they say, is hard. This rotation, though, taught me about mental health, and mental illness. I'm really sad for the milieu I leave behind, knowing that for them, their lives are (for the most part) going to be a continuous battle.

One client I connected well with, (we'll call him John) taught me that just because you have a mental illness, it's not what defines you. It's not what makes you. It's a part of who you are, but it's not your definition. John and I spoke today about being sensitive, and what that really means. He said it's actually being "connected" and I liked that, one, because I've been called sensitive my whole life, and two, it was practical.

John has great ambitions for life, and I wish I could follow his story in the months and years to come. But, I can't. So, just like the residents I "left behind" during my first semester, so too, are the clients I leave behind at the mental health hospital.

I hope to never forget what the milieu was like; the clients talking to themselves, getting irate over their meals, having hallucinations, security needing to be called on a daily basis. The 9 am meetings, where the clients rated their overall well-being on a scale of 1-10. The stretching led by clients that often involved very little stretching, but did include random body movements. Their coffee break; watery coffee served in small Styrofoam cups. Shadowing a physician as he held individual meetings with the clients, and taught me therapeutic communication, reading lab work, and deciphering fact from fiction. Group therapy, where hallucinations and interruptions abounded, and hours of conversations held at the small round table in the corner of the milieu.

It was an experience that expanded and stretched me, as a student nurse, but more than that, as a human being.  

I liked mental health nursing a lot more than I thought I would, and I think I'll miss it, too.

Mental health is a continuum, as they say.