A little more background...a continuation... My more recent history

I left the last post about my background a little suspenseful...mostly just for fun and for the sake of breaking things up a bit. After testing positive for COVID in January 2021, I returned to work after 10 days of quarantine as directed. I was too new of an employee to have sick hours available and the company was too small to be required to compensate me for acquiring COVID on the job. So, even if I would have benefited from a little more time off, I couldn't really afford that financially... after all, I had school payments to make in addition to normal life expenses. My online instructor didn't give me an extension for my home work during the 10 day stretch either, so I basically slept and woke up long enough to eat occasionally and get my assignments completed during my quarantine. My husband, who also tested positive for COVID, thankfully was able to manage the kids (who didn't get very ill) pretty independently because I was fairly useless! I finally started feeling slightly more human about 7 days after I tested positive.

When I did return to work, I was needed on night shift on Med/Surg for at least a couple weeks. I had successfully avoided working Med/Surg the entirety of my RN career thus far, so I was less than thrilled. But the little hospital I was working at was desperate because of the toll COVID was taking on their already limited staffing situation. I was ok with it as long as they gave me an actual shift of orientation before starting. I would also be scheduled with their more experienced travelers on night shift which provided me the reassurance I needed to get back in the working game.

I was blessed with some pleasant, but painful experiences in my first couple shifts back. One of my favorite patients that I'd established a relationship with in my first few weeks on this job was admitted to Med/Surg for comfort care my first night back, and I was assigned to be his nurse!

Coming from the ED, it was more of a rarity for me to have much of a personal bond with a dying patient. I was well aquatinted with death in my work setting, but not with death that impacted me in an overly emotional way. (Not to sound like I don't take death seriously, you just establish a personal boundary with how you process it, so it doesn't interfere with your ability to go care for the next patient awaiting your attention behind the next current or wall).

I considered it a special privilege to care for this patient and his family. I was fortunate to have time on my shift to give the patient and family a little extra attention, praying with them and learning more about the patient's life. The patient was minimally responsive the whole time I was there. The wife was determined to be with him and awake for his last breath, so she refused to sleep. I understood her reasoning, as they had recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary and she knew little of life without the man. But I felt poorly for her because he didn't pass until around 1100 the next morning, so she really could have benefited from a little rest throughout the night.

It is fascinating to me that you just never really can tell sometimes how quickly (or slowly) some will take to pass. They can display the signs of nearness of death for prolonged periods of time before actually taking their final breath. Their episodes of apnea grow longer, causing the suspense of anticipating their last breath any moment, until they take yet another long gasp of air. This can sometimes go on for hours. While others will appear almost perfectly "normal" before suddenly arresting and catch you totally by surprise.

This family impacted me more emotionally than probably any other in my career up to this point. Sadly, my time at that hospital was short after that because I had pretty major concentration and mental limitations after I had COVID. It started taking me about 4 times as long to get through homework assignments. I started having difficulty sleeping which is something that is rare for me to struggle with. I then became pretty panicky and concerned that my ability to respond in the event of a medical emergency on the job may be inhibited or impaired.

With the input from counselors and mentors, this dynamic quickly lead to the decision to take a break from my BSN program, shortly after, followed by taking a leave of absence from work. I didn't handle all the sudden change very gracefully. I had been struggling intermittently with symptoms of depression and chronic fatigue since the beginning of the COVID crisis (honestly, probably longer than that). The deepest depression of my life, so far and hopefully ever, settled in.

I expected to be relieved of the burden of school and work for a temporary season, but instead I was ridden with shame and insecurity that I may never be able to return to "life as I once knew it," (not that I've painted a picture of glorious and abundant living per say). However, I've learned a thing or two in this past season of weakness, brokenness, and inability to "fix myself."

When you are in the throws of depression, it is hard to rationalize with yourself or convince yourself that there is hope for life to get better at some point. For most of my life, I wasn't well acquainted with being physically unable to "pull myself up by the boot straps" and move on or overcome the challenge at hand. I had a lot of pride in my ability to do those things actually. I also find the majority of my strength in times of struggle from my faith and spirituality. This was also feeling weak and less than sufficient for a time.

Knowing my "hope" was in something bigger than myself, a belief I have held for a long time, was not even providing me a sense of comfort during this season. This only made me feel worse! I was utterly disappointed with myself and the seemingly hopeless pit of despair I couldn't figure out how to climb out of on my own. I was even seeking more help and support in some ways than I ever had before from sources like counseling, medical providers, and online self-help resources. I was taking health supplements, prescribed medication (pretty much against my will), and doing all the things I knew were supposed to be helpful for someone in my situation, at least based off the things I was very familiar with educating my own patients about.

At the same time, I was retreating and withdrawing from some of my more common interactions and relationships because I didn't want people to see me in this state of existence. I had done such a good job of preventing people in my life from seeing "my mess" that I couldn't bear the thought of them seeing me now when I felt like more of a mess than ever before. After all, self-reliance and my lack of need for others was something I also have a lot of pride in. I think a lot of humans and nurses can probably relate to that concept.

After about a month of time off from work and school and seeing very little improvement in my mood, motivation, or ability to carry out normal daily functions like showering, feeding myself, cleaning/housework, or running errands, I decided I should probably at least consider what kind of work I would be able to start doing when the time came. There was a brief window of time where I even doubted my ability to go back to being a nurse at all. Something monotonous and simple seemed appealing but still kind of depressing since that was far from what normally interested me.

I determined I needed to make a decision even if I didn't feel "great" about it because the likelihood of me "feeling" good about much was slim at this point. I knew I wasn't having a normal response internally to things that normally would bring me joy or excitement. I was practicing thankfulness. I knew what I believed to be true, but there was still this inability for my body, mind and emotions to respond the way they used to to life.

The medication didn't seem to be doing a lot, but it wasn't making things worse, so I stayed the course with that. I was getting adequate rest, more than I probably needed, but I never woke up feeling rested or energized. I had very little sense of direction. We (my husband and I) had been hoping to have another baby sometime in the near future, but that seemed unreasonable knowing I wasn't even caring properly for myself, let alone the other two children we already had.

I reached out to my contacts at the local clinic to see if they had any need for an RN. Clinic work had little appeal to me, but getting a paycheck again certainly did. I was fairly desperate and had pretty limited options considering my mental and physical state. Hospital work was definitely out of the question. Thankfully, the clinic was open to discussion about a job that I might fit into even though they weren't currently flying a position. Finding RN's with interest in the clinic setting in our area was pretty rare historically, but they rarely turned down a nurse that might be interested in coming on board.

They conveniently had an RN who was going to be going out on maternity leave about the time I was hoping to start, so they knew they could at least use me temporarily. That was good enough for me. The clinic was also applying for grant funding to start a new program that they could use a nurse's help with if they received funding. So there was potential. I got one day of training with the outgoing RN before she had to unexpectedly be off work sooner than planned because of pregnancy complications.

I felt like a fish out of water for quite some time at the clinic. There wasn't really anyone available to train me, and I was still lacking confidence in my abilities. Progress felt very slow to me. I knew I had a history of doing well and a host of skill sets in the nursing field, but I was lost in how to effectively apply myself in a meaningful and efficient way. Fortunately, they were pleased with what little I felt like I had to offer in comparison to my past, and they didn't have past history with me to compare my current performance to.

I was still feeling pretty poor physically and mentally when I found out I was pregnant. We had stopped efforts to "try" to get pregnant a few months prior, but we clearly weren't doing enough to successfully prevent it either. I wasn't disappointed because I had really wanted another baby at some point, but I still had pretty minimal excitability generally. I was a little concerned I might never feel better after discovering I was pregnant, but I also felt like "what could it hurt?" I felt like I was seeing little improvement (although it was there, just still very difficult for me to see) from the efforts I had been making thus far.

Finally, about 6 months after being diagnosed with COVID and about 12 weeks into my pregnancy, I noticed significant change. I realized I was able to start multi-tasking again and my concentration was improving! Was it the depression resolving or lingering symptoms from COVID starting to dissipate? A combination of the two perhaps? Persistent/ongoing treatment doing it's job? I didn't really care what the answer was, I was just relieved (a huge understatement) to start recognizing myself again! I regained confidence in the knowledge I had to share and found ways to start applying myself at work where I thought I could be more useful.

This confidence, and probably an overcompensation for several months of silence/limited interaction with people, may have startled some in my new work environment as I started to talk and engage more directly and more often. They didn't really know anything but the reserved/depressed version of me, so I received various reactions to this behavior. Not my first encounter with this dynamic, however, so I at least didn't take the feedback too personally (like I'm very prone to do).

Today, I'm finishing this post, I started drafting a few weeks ago, on my first day off of work due to being put on medical disability for the duration of my pregnancy. Although my mental, physical, and emotional state drastically improved in many ways as I entered my second trimester, I developed some other somewhat alarming physical symptoms that we are still in the process of monitoring and evaluating. Thankfully, we haven't discovered anything too scary, but the tachycardia and associated symptoms are severe enough for the recommendation to be for me to rest and reduce activity and stress as much as possible until this baby arrives.

So, here I am, determined to enjoy my extra time off with my family and do the best I can to care for myself and the little life growing inside of me.