Onward and Upward Part 1

A helicopter drones overhead and I am reminded of another season in my life when flights weren’t so out of the ordinary. Nights working in the NICU were my norm and calls that might end in a helicopter flight to provide care for a sick baby were always a possibility, albeit not a welcome one. While I did not completely conquer that fear, I was able to at least contain it and do what I needed to do. Yes, it was a season, now past.

I see students over at a picnic table and I wonder how I ended up back in college. I had thought this season in my life was over as well. I have been a nurse for 16 years and after graduating at Allegany College of MD in 2003 and then Waynesburg University in 2007, I said, “ENOUGH!” My oldest daughter had informed me at that time that all I did was “go to work, go to school, and sleep.” She was right. (Except I did eat too. I love food. Not sure how she left that part out?) At that juncture in my life, I decided to set my focus more towards family and work, eliminating the school part. Did I really need the Masters degree? No.

Fast forward to 2014. I made the decision to leave the NICU and worked home pediatrics for about a year along with case management for another agency, and then did care coordination from home full-time before burning out, burning up, and breaking down in 2016. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to believe it of myself. I was ashamed and embarrassed that parts of being a nurse, a wife, a mom, a woman at that season in my life caused my anxiety to rise up unrelentingly, bulldozing and destroying who I was. I didn’t fully understand why it left me struggling to breathe, why getting out of bed each day felt like I was carrying twice my body weight on my back, why I wanted to give up. Logically, it made no sense. On the outside, I was “together”, but on the inside, a different story was being told. Anxiety and depression are sometimes sneaky like that. Or I just didn’t want to let others see that side of me.

With my family supporting me, I took time off from working 1-3 jobs at a time, and I took care of myself. I rested, I was creative, I had shoulder surgery to fix a rotator cuff repair, I started running. Yes, I was busy, but it was good. I felt like my brain rewired itself a bit, and after 7 months, I was ready to take steps back into nursing. I was cautious, maybe overly so, but I didn’t want to go back to where I had been mentally, emotionally, physically. I took a job in part-timeHome Health and in June, it will have been 2 years.

In the process of doing Home Health, I have learned much about myself. I have realized that I will always be a nurse in some sense, but that I don’t love every part of being a nurse and THAT IS OKAY! I have seen with anxiety as a roommate, sometimes loud and obnoxious and other times quietly awaiting a moment to pounce, that nursing contributed to that stress in ways I had not anticipated. In that time period of trying to learn to love being a nurse,  I learned that there is so many more ways to bring about a healing environment and that is where massage therapy jumped into my world. And there you have it.

Well, there may be just a bit more to this story and this is just the beginning.

...to be continued...onward & upward...

Love,
Dianne