Sleep or Die

Hello Everyone!

So, this is the first day in..........22 days, that I have to myself. No-plans-whatsoever.  Not only do I not have plans, but its my first free space day in a long time. The past 3 weeks or so have been booked to the very last second. In order from spent most time doing to least time doing, let me attempt:

1. Working
2. Running silly errands
3. driving people places
4. visiting people in far away places (driving)
5. Holiday (easter was in there somewhere)
6. spending valuable time with friends, dating occasionally
7. eating.
8. sleep.

My point here is that sleep came last on the list. Being on night shift is great...when you don't have any thing to do the next day and you can sleep to your hearts content. But night shift is not great when you hit your 32nd hour awake and you really begin to reconsider your job choice.


So, needless to say I have learned a lot about the effects of sleep deprivation over the last month or so, and thats not from doing any research whatsoever. Just personal living.

Then one of my lovely followers/readers/passerbys sent me an infographic about sleep deprivation (how ever did he know?). I read it and it all made sense, not just with what I learned in nursing school but with what I was feeling. He kindly asked if I could share it, and I will do so at the end of the post so look for it.

But I wanted to be scholarly and document the sleep deprivations I was experiencing of my own. You know, in case the world ends but the internet survives (could that happen?) and the next alien/humanspecies to live can look back on our internet and when they get really tired they can google (if they have google) sleep deprivation and then realize that they are totally-not-alone. Phew! Anyway, moving on.... o_0


From my experience , I have noticed that there are phases of fatigue, that I go through at least. One day I would be fascinatingly interested to be a part of a bigger study to see if this applies to everyone.

- Lets say I wake up at 4 pm, I slept all day in preparation to go to work. (For non-night shifters, pretend I'm asking you to wake up at 4am, got it?)
- I work a 7pm- 7am shift. sometimes I have to stay at work as late as 9am. (For non-night shifters, pretend you woke up at 4am and then worked 7am-7pm, til as late as maybe even 9pm)
- At this stage in fatigue (stage 1) I get very hyper. Especially around people. I could probably pass for being on crack because I giggle a lot and run around in circles (not all the time, just sometimes- lol). I know a lot of people do this when approaching fatigue. Especially kids.
- Normally, I would go to sleep after I get home and then sleep for 7-8 hours and there is no problem. However, once in a blue moon there are times where something either planned or not planned requires your attention more so than sleep. Okay. No problem. (for non-night shifters, 9pm might be a little late to go out and do something, but its do-able, right? Right. No problem).
-But then, that thing you have to do? It either goes really late unexpectedly or it was planned that way and you were stupid enough to do it. This is where dangerous things happen because you start hitting your second wind, adrenaline gets used up trying to carry you through. You think- "Pshh I stayed up all night but I'm still awake so I can stay awake ALL DAY YAY!!!!!!"   -_ -    So lets say that thing goes until 3pm. (For non-night shifters, this is your 3am. remember you stayed awake all day working. YOu're pretty tired and cranky, right?)
-This is when I would say I enter Stage 2. This is when I notice the effects taking place in my brain/body but they might not be as noticeable to other people.


These effects include (Stage 2):
- You notice yourself start to space out. Sometimes at inopportune times. Like, driving. Or, cooking. You are doing whatever you are doing, and realize 7 minutes later that you've been off on some other planet for a while and you have to snap yourself back into place.
- You suddenly find it really hard to pay attention to people. Especially in conversations that you wouldn't particularly find interesting if you were wide awake, but you would be polite and listen anyway. But now- you still have enough energy to stare at the person and nod and smile and throw in the occasional "Yeah" or "oh, really?" but you realize that you literally have no clue what the person has said within the past 8 minutes and really, you don't care. Your attention span decreases. In order to get your attention, the house should be burning down or someone should have an expresso shot in their hands, for you. There have been times where I said to myself,  "hey, this is kind of important, I should listen to what this person is saying." And I start to...but then I find that I have been on Venus and didn't catch anything in the last couple minutes and she's still talking. At THAT point, its like- why bother paying attention now? And you go back to Venus.
- It starts becoming really easy to lose your patience. Suddenly stupid people are the arch-enemy and they deserve to see your ultimate wrath and you have to use your last bit of energy to do your best to not blow up at all of them. Suddenly petty, silly matters that awake people are concerned about seem really, really, really stupid to you and you're not even sure why Earth exists anymore.


-At this point, you're wondering why you're still alive. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Its like 4pm now, its almost time where you can leave whatever you are doing, and go to sleep without being a total outcast. (Non night shifters, this is your 4 am).

-Now you are entering stage 3. I call Stage 3 when you've hit 24 hours awake. The rest after is all stage 3 until you can make it into a bed. This is the scary stage and the stage I hate making it too, because I hate the person I become.

Stage 3 Effects that I have noticed:
- decreased appetite. You don't even have enough energy to eat. Literally, all you can realistically do is sit there. Nod. Smile. Stare into space. Wait. Think about sleep.
- You have heard me talk about emotional shutdown in a prior blog, but here you go into what I call "Physical shutdown". And this is the part I hate. Someone is asking you a question, or trying to talk to you, maybe even someone you love dearly (a family member or significant other), and you find that you can't even respond. You want to. You do. You have a response thought of in your head, but the energy that it takes to open your mouth and actually respond and have a conversation, that energy is too valuable. That last bit is focused solely on things like walking, safety. Survival mode kicks in and your body is exerting all its thinking power to actually save energy. I hate this because people that are awake and haven't been awake for 30 hours don't understand why you are quiet. They think maybe you are mad at them or something is wrong, with them. They get mad at you for not taking part in the social activity going on or conversation. And even so, you really, really don't care.
- You start dreaming when you are awake. Literally I didn't know this could happen but it is one hell of a phenomenon. There was one or two times I hit around 7pm (non night shift 7 am-27 hours awake) that I had a "space out" moment- but when I snapped out of it- I realized I actually just had a complete dream in my head. Plot, setting, new characters, the whole thing. But I was still awake, my eyes were open. The whole time.
- Being that you haven't eaten and you're in stage 3 (more than 24 hours) you start getting really dizzy, so beware of that.
- Simple things start to not make sense anymore. You start to have memory impairment, short term mostly affected. You feel like you have dementia because you approach a red light and you don't immediately understand that red light means stop. Someone hands you a fork and you think to yourself, what am I supposed to do with this? Scary. On that note- don't drive in stage 3 unless your or someones life depends on it.
- You know that feeling where you walk into a room and can't remember what you did that for? That happens all-the-time.
- Your thinking time slows dramatically. Normally when someone asks you, "What is 2 +2?" Your answer is almost instinct, its practically memorized- it requires no thinking whatsoever. You spit out "4" before they finish the question. But in stage 3, you have to actually think about the question and your response might not verbally surface until 10 seconds.


I have made it to 32 hours. I went to bed at 11 pm once in this said scenario. (Remember that's like asking you to get up at 4am, work until 9 am, stay awake all night and then go to bed at 11am.) But that was a dire circumstance and If you are in stage 3, I say get to bed as soon as possible. If you are waiting for it to be socially acceptable (if you still care about social norms) OR if you are concerned about sleeping through the entire night, I say after 8pm you are good to go. Its socially acceptable and you will sleep through the night and even sleep in.

I do think that it is possible to stay up past 40, with adrenaline. Meaning, in dire circumstances. Like you're in the army, or other militia and its been one attack after another, or maybe you stay awake 40 hours when your child is born. Or you are a survivor or a health care worker of a catastrophe, you just keep on going and going. I believe that when I'm in stage 3, I think I could snap out of it all and go do CPR on someone if I had to. I could still bring myself back to full capacity if I wanted to. But that's all adrenaline and I wouldn't do that for just anything, obviously. It would be a dire circumstance.

I have noticed a little bit of a questionable stage 4- but this is when you are sleeping. Stage 4 only hits when I have repeatedly been exhausted- I have lets say hit stage 3 one day and then didn't sleep enough to recover, or did it again the next day, or even no stage 3's but a lot of stage 2s. Regardless, you're not getting enough sleep. Stage 4 involves the main effect of being so tired, so friggen exhausted- that you aren't getting restful sleep. Its tricky though to explain because it doesn't always happen. And sometimes I get very restful sleep in terms of staying asleep, but I realize my dreamscape has been full of nightmares and a lot of them, or even just a lot of annoying dreams. So Stage 4 I guess is more long term. Suddenly when you're awake you can't recall if blips of memory that are coming to you happened in your dreamscape, or real life and its pretty confusing. The more tired you are during sleep, the more your dreams have the ability to trick you into they are reality.

So those are my personal effects I've noticed. Those effects are all short term and can be fixed with a healthy dose of Vitamin C, Calcium, probiotic, protein, electrolytes, and 16 hours of sleep. But long term? I don't know. I don't want to know. But the infographic touches on that. Pretty scary stuff. I think night shift screws a lot of things up, but you can stay healthy if you just make sure you get sound sleep during the day and make sure you plan for recovery time.



If you are wondering what my opinion is on substances to pick you back up (i.e. coffee, caffeine, 5 hour energy) I say BE CAREFUL. I use 5 hr energy myself, but only during stage 0 (during my work shift) and only sometimes. Be extremelyyyyyy careful with using it in stage 2 and I say not to use it in stage 3. Caffeine can only carry you so far and the effects can have dangerous symptoms on your already vulnerable body. Also, if consumed in stage 3, you might appreciate the short term benefits but the benefit will disappear shortly and the caffeine will still be in your system, meaning when you do finally get to sleep you might even have trouble sleeping. Be careful!

Phew, long post! Thanks for reading, I hope you found it interesting and helpful to all..I know all fellow night shifters out there know exactly what I'm talking about!

 Here is the infographic I received :



Via: YourLocalSecurity.com


~WNB 



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Bluebird

How the hell, does a broken heart get back together when it's torn apart? And teach itself to start beating again?

-Christina Perri



I'm so tired of these dreams.

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Is this Normal?

I know, to a certain extent, that it's normal to have dreams about what you do a lot of during the day. Also, to dream at night about what stresses you out during the day. For example, when I was sixteen and just starting out as a cashier, I dreamt all the time about running random things through the line and encountering the strangest problems and not being able to solve it. That's normal....I think. But the next one isn't. I don't think.

First of all, I havent worked since Tuesday. So you'd think my brain would not be focusing on the hospital on a Thursday night. Think again.

I woke up in the middle of the night, startled and stressed. I was under the extreme hazy delusion, that I was actually somehow at work, but I still sort of knew i was in my bed sleeping too. Well I was so convinced that since I spent the night prior moving into my apartment (real life) and shopping at walmart til pretty late, that I completely forgot to give out my patients bedtime meds. Now this was really important to me, because 1) I couldn't give them at that point because I couldn't just wake up my patients at 3 am and explain to them this was supposed to be given at 10pm, my bad. 2) I couldn't give them in the morning, because a lot of them were to help my patients sleep, OR they would conflict with the morning meds....so my only option was to not give them at all and chart that I was an idiot and completely forgot to give meds at night because I was busy moving in. I was about to get up and do this, until I FINALLY realized (like, five whole minutes later) that I was in bed, sleeping, I was not at work, I hadn't been at work, and I was not responsible for ANY meds that day or night, and I could go back to sleep.


First of all- I LOVE reaching that point when exiting a nightmare when you're like, "oh...everything is alright. I can go back to sleep..."

But seriously...how did I fall so FAR under the delusIion that I was somehow responsible for those meds? Why did It take me so long to figure out it was a dream? I was legit about to get up and *somehow* go give meds. Weird.

Can you tell I'm stressed out much about going to night shift? :-/



-WNB

What is Heaven?

I'm writing a very important book. Its going to be so ridiculously involved that despite planning since high school, I'm still planning the book. I have a couple scenes written but nothing extensive. A big question that revolves around the center of the book, is, what is heaven?


My answer, and one of the answers of many that arise in the book, is that heaven is many things, and heaven is different for every single being on this planet. Heaven is what you want it to be. Nobody is not happy in their heaven.

I don't think that you necessarily design your heaven. You don't sit in a waiting room and pick out everything you want and the architecture of it all and then you wait for it to be designed and then you go....I mean of course thats a possibility, but I think it runs more along the lines of you arrive to heaven and everything is just...exactly the way you want, even things you didnt even know you wanted until they were yours. Heaven doesn't have to make sense. For example, I hope my heaven is a bookstore that extends for miles and miles and miles and there is a neverending string of books. Outside the bookstore, if I so choose to ever leave, will be a beach, and it will always be just the perfect weather that I'm looking for. There will be a little cafe on the beach, with lots of green tea always available. And rice krispies.

Next to this bookstore and a beach, there will be mountainous hills with natury birds chirping and sun shining through the tops of the wooded trees...in the middle of it all will be a lake, and a kayak for me to roam around in, take daily naps. The distant sound of children playing will be on the shore.  Next to all this even more so, is a cute little town from the 1950s, where everyone I need to see or want to see is there, and everything is perfect. Not necessarily the human standard version of perfect, but my perfect. Sometimes one persons version of perfect is what someone else considers a flaw. 



But, thats all for when we pass away from this planet. But what about heaven on Earth? Does it exist? My answer is yes.


Heaven on Earth is when you are lost. Sometimes actually, literally lost, but also--sometimes just emotionally and mentally lost. Lets say you are in the woods, on a hiking trail. You are by yourself. Maybe you do know where you're going (you're on a trail) but your soul doesn't really know....its sort of just in limbo, wandering around. You keep walking and walking and walking just to find something, anything. You start to hear some distant, happy voices. You have to make a decision..do you stick to the trail or do you seize the day and go see who those voices belong to? You decide to seize the day and you set off to follow the happy voices. Through some thick brush and thorny thorns, you eventually come to a clearing, a lake. The lake has a beach, with tiny rippling currents washing upon it. There are lots of people there, having a picnic, plenty of food. People are kayaking, canoeing, tubing, there are children laughing and playing and swimming in the water. They see you and gladly invite you to join. Grab a hot dog! They say. Or grab a kayak and go for it! They say. And you do. Because you made the decision to leave the boring trail you were on and you found this new....unexpected, place that you didnt even know existed. And now, you're here. And you're not dreaming. But it seems so surreal, so surreal in fact that you walk slowly and carefully, because you don't want to "wake yourself up" from this apparant dream. So you forget your life you left behind on that trail, just for the next couple hours. You know you'll go back to it. And you'll tell your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, son, daughter, mother, father, whomever, all about the amazing unexpected day you had. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you'll eventually return to the trail and that little cozy niche in the woods will always be your secret. Your secret place to go back to.



The other day I was driving home from Long Island, New york. It was the first sunny day after two hurricanes had graced their presence upon us. I was ho humming, driving along the boring highway (think about the trail), and was stuck in some pretty heavy traffic. All of the sudden, I look up and I see a sign for "Jones Beach, this way" so I made the split second decision (I literally thought about it and made up my mind in all of about 10 seconds) to turn the car that way. Once on the new highway heading directly towards the beach, I felt estatic! Free! I thought to myself, am I crazy?? What, I'm just going to go to the beach by myself and sit there and walk around and smell and feel the ocean.....yes! Yes I am! Who cares!? Despite having absolutely no original intention of going to the beach on my way home, there I was. I had been to this beach before, quite some time ago and it represents some very good memories with many loved ones. So it felt so good to be heading back.

Once parked and out of my car, I started walking to the water. There was just the perfect amount of people there. The perfect sounds. Seagulls, the waves, people playing some frisbee, splashing in the water. And just the wind was perfect even. As soon as I stepped onto that sand, I knew I had found a miniature Heaven on Earth. It was surreal indeed, and I wasn't sure if I was even dreaming or not. One minute you're driving home to New Jersey and the next you're standing on a beautiful beach, with your toes in the water, looking at the atlantic ocean.

I've encountered a few "heaven on Earth's" in my life, and they will always be treasured in my heart. Some I will never get to go back to, but will forever remain in my memory. But sometimes thats the best part about finding a Heaven on Earth- sometimes it only exists that one time.  If you try and find it again, sometimes you won't. Sometimes it will change. Thats the magic of it. Heaven is always changing.


Have you ever found a Heaven on Earth? Its different for everyone. For some, its under a car fixing it. For others its driving across America on a complete whim. For some, its taking the next flight to wherever and finding peace and a new life in that new town. It can be anything!

Here are some glorious pictures from my little beach heaven excursion:

With so much love,

~A writer in a nurse's body

Dreaming Again

Does it ever happen to you where you just can't seem to shake off a dream? No matter how much you think about it and say, OK, i think I can move on now- It just keeps lingering in your thoughts?

I don't know. I have this recurring theme that comes in my dreams (not all the time, but often enough) and it hasn't happened in quite some time. Except this week its come back twice.

Maybe my dreams are lingering because I am dreaming this week, period. I haven't been dreaming a lot at all (or at least, remembering them) and then this week I've had three strong ones already.

But there is nothing you can do to shake it, except to just continue living life and eventually it will fade from your memory. I even sat down (literally, I sat down) prior to writing this entry and thought about the deep psychology meaning of this dream. Thinking that maybe if I could get down to its meaning, It would go away. No luck. Therefore, blog must be written. Lol.


No but really, does this ever happen to you? Maybe not necessarily the dream sequence keeps returning, but the same feeling you had in the dream, keeps being reciprocated to real life, and you think, why do I keep feeling this emotion for no reason? Why do I feel like I have unfinished business? And then you realize its again, surprise, linked back to that dream(s).

Don't get me wrong, I love to dream. If I could take a pill or something that let me dream  every night and remember them all, I so would. I find dreams fascinating and very meaningful....but annoying, at times. They are annoying when you were so convinced that the dream world was real and then you wake up and realize it was all fake, and, welcome to the real real world. Ahh I'm going all Inceptiony on you!

The best is when you are in that waking up stage and are lost in that half-sub-conscious state and you know what you have to do to get ready for the day, and you go through all the motions, and then you wake up 45 minutes later, 15 minutes past your alarm clock, and realize you haven't done any of that yet. Love those mornings (not). I once went as far to actually dream about driving down the highway and going in to work (in the dream state....it was all so real, why wouldn't I believe it?) and then woke up and realized I was still in bed. *sigh*




But anyway...taking the NCLEX thursday (ah!) so I probably won't be posting much until then. Or maybe I will, depends how much I am procrastinating. Like right now. I do want to post about another awesome photoshoot, but we'll see about that.


But for now, over and out (is that what they say?),


~WNB


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Blessed

Dreaming is such a special thing....it allows us to go on special journeys we can't actually do in real life on this earth. It allows us to talk to people we can't normally talk to, for various reasons. It allows us to do whatever we what to do, see whomever our subconscious wants us to see.


Last night, I was blessed enough in my dream to have been able to say goodbye, one last time to my grandmother.

Let me explain. It was truly an eerie dream and I wouldn't even be blogging about it if it weren't for it continuously popping back into my head. This coming weekend will be her memorial service, and lots and lots of relatives I know and that she knew will be attending. It will be a time not for mourning, per say but for a celebration of her wonderful life and time with us. It will be a time to spend time with other family and truly express how much we love one another through thick and thin.

Thats sort of what this dream was. It was the memorial weekend for her, just as it is coming, and everyone I expect to be there, was there. My families funny antics all happened, we laughed, we cried, we played jokes and pranks on one another. We were family. Most of all--my grandmother was there. In the dream, it was my understanding that although I knew we were there for her memorial services, that she had come back and had been revived and was in full health, full walking condition and everything, and was able to spend the weekend, and the weekend alone with us. We played board games. I saw her laugh one more time and smile once more in my sleep. She laughed at the childrens jokes once more, her giggly full-hearted laugh with her rosy cheeks.

Most importantly, we each got to say goodbye in the dream. I did. I got to see her once more.


Do you believe that ghosts can do this ? Do you believe they can "tap in" to our dream world and show themselves, for times like this ? Do you believe in any of that or do you think this was merely just a glimmer  of my subconscious envisioning her? Either way, I think, it doesn't matter. My mind conjured up a new experience with her, made from combining my subconscious already knows about her prior, and used all that to let me have one more memory, even if it is in a dream. One more memory.



I woke up happy.



~ WNB


Do you believe?

Following Your Dream

Well, I leave tomorrow! WHAT? I cannot believe I have waited for this day, longed for this day for so long, in dreaming and in actuality-and it is actually finally here!

I can confidently say that I have dreamed about the day of setting foot in Europe more so than my own wedding day. I have really only given minimal thought to the aspects of my wedding day, but Europe....I have dreamed about this for as long as I can remember.

Which reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies of all time, Tangled, that really hit home with me. It is when the two main characters, Rapunzel and Flynn are sitting in the boat waiting for the moment when she finally attains her lifelong dream of seeing the lanterns that are lit for the princess (her) every year.

Flynn Rider: You OK?
Rapunzel: I'm terrified.
Flynn Rider: ...Why?
Rapunzel: I've been looking out of a window for eighteen years, dreaming about what I might feel like when those lights rise in the sky. What if it's not everything I dreamed it would be?
 Flynn Rider: It will be.
Rapunzel: And what if it is? What do I do then?
Flynn Rider: Well,that's the good part I guess. You get to go find a new dream.
Here is a lovely video of it, on youtube:

This scene PERFECTLY describes everything that is racing through my head. I mean, this is my DREAM.  My life long dream.....I can completely relate with her fear of, what if its not everything she dreamed it would be? And, what if it is? Then what?.... I guess I can say I am blessed enough to be reaching one of my dreams at the age of 22 (and I'll be turning 23 in Paris!) and I can pick a new dream from there...probably something more to do with travelling the world!

I am so excited . Of course a volcano has decided to erupt today next to the Airport I am scheduled to connect in 6 am Tuesday, and the airport is closed until tomorrow noon. So, fun. Hopefully that won't be our first disaster. Luckily though (thank all my guardian angels) that I am flying with a couple others in the tour scheduled to leave from NY. I don't know what I would do if my flight was cancelled and I had to rebook for another time...or wait in the airport for a whole day like some stories you hear on TV. Ah!

Anyway, All stress aside, lets focus on the POSITIVES! 

1) I will get to see a VOLCANO on my trip from the air! WOOT! 


No really though In all seriousness- Hopefully I will be able to blog every night-providing that my hotel I'm in has wifi. If it doesn't, then, no blog for you. My goal is to blog every night even if its just to touch in, announce I'm alive, post a picture and a little blurb. BUT, do expect and prepare (get some popcorn maybe?) for some really long blog entries. One of my flaws is that I can talk  type and talk type and talk  type forever and forget that my blog entry is astronomically long and painful to read. So I will TRY to find a happy balance of not too long but long enough to adequately describe my experiences :-)

If you would like to know where I'll be at and what I'm doing each day just in case I won't be able to blog every night, here is my itinerary:

Day one (5/23): 830 pm flight. Yay day one!
Day two: arrival in Amsterdam, hotel by 3pm. Dinner scheduled tentatively at their version of the Hard Rock Cafe. After that, relax hotel time/free time in Amsterdam/walking tour.
Day three: Sightseeing tour of Amsterdam.

•  Anne Frank House
• Dam Square
• Amstel River
• Rembrandtplein

Day Four: Biking the dutch countryside!!!! WOOT!  2 1/2 hour Bike ride! OMFG! :D
Day Five: Transferring over to Heidelberg, Germany's oldest college town.

• Heidelberg's Palace
• Neckar Valley
• Marktplatz (where witches were burned at the stake back in the day....)
• Heidelberg Castle Wine Barrel

Day Six: Transfer to Munich, walking tour of Munich.

• Frauenkirche
• Marienplatz
• Hofbräuhaus (Germany's most famous beer hall)

Day Seven: Travelling to Venice, stopping midway in Innsbruck for a small tour.
Free time in Venice at night.
Day Eight: Touring through Venice

• St. Mark's Square
• Grand Canal
• Doges' Palace

Free time in Venice at night
Day Nine: Traveling to Switzerland, while stopping in Verona for a couple hours.  Arrive in Lucerne at night.
Day Ten: Tour of Lucerne!

• Löwendenkmal
• Kapellbrücke

Day Eleven: Travelling via train from Zurich, to Paris.  Arrive in Paris at night.
In Paris:

• Latin Quarter
• Notre Dame Cathedral
• Evening Seine Cruise (woot!)
• Climbing the Eiffel Tower at night

Day Twelve: Walking tour of Paris, mostly just free time.
Day Thirteen: Eurostar train to London!!!!! OMG!!

• Walking Tour of London
• Haunted Pub ghost walk- So excited for this.

Day Fourteen: Double Decker bus tour in London all day. Free time in london at night.
Day Fifteen: Last Day, flying home :-(


I AM SO EXCITED!!!! TOMORROW!!!  <3 my NEXT blog entry will be live from Amsterdam (probably). Unless I'm drastically bored in the airport and something strikes me as interesting enough to write about.

< 3 Wish me luck, see you when I get back!


~ A Writer in a Nurse's Body

LOVE

Dark Waterway Slide Thing Dream

I have been trying to gather more details about this dream, all day. I hate that--having a dream and only remembering a slither or two from it.

I know I had a rather long dream last night. I know there were many complex parts and plot lines...and yet I can only remember doing one thing. Maybe writing it out will bring more back.

I was swimming, leisurely. In some sort of....big open area. The walls were high above, it was as if we were in a cave with a natural pool of water inside. The water was black, or at least just dark from the lack of sunlight. But I wasn't scared. I think I was with a group of people-some sort of tour- and it was time to leave. Except that entailed us swimming under water and leaving through some sort of tunnel. I was the last to leave. I found the tunnel and entered, and all the sudden I am in this massive force of current-that is pushing me through this tunnel of water. It Is pitch black. Except I wasn't scared. I trusted whatever was guiding me- I trusted the people I was with that they deemed this safe, that they made it through before me. But I remember thinking, how long am I expected to hold my breath? I can't go much longer. I can't keep fighting, keep swimming. But I have to. I have to get to the surface. And then I saw the surface light, but it was small and I still had so much swimming to do. I just wanted to breathe. I didn't understand why a tunnel current that was supposed to be fun was tumbling me upside down in the water. Why I couldn't breathe.

Then I made it. I remember being out of the water, talking to a friend (unknown who) and I told them that it was fun except for the fact that I wasn't prepared for it being that long and..dark..and that I should have taken a bigger breath.

She laughed. "their was air in the tunnel. All you had to do was stop fighting and come up for air while the current took you to the top."

Although that concept is not logical in real life, it made a lot of sense in the dream. Also, I think it is really symbolic for what is going on in my life. I do feel like I'm in a black dark tunnel current and I am running out of air. I'm desperately swimming towards happiness..towards a place in my life where I officially know what's coming next and that I will be happy with it. I'm desperately swimming towards having a plan. Maybe I just need to stop swimming and come up for air on the way to reaching the light...whatever that means.

A Little Off Topic, but...

I have been having the strangest dreams lately. Which is funny and frustrating all at the same time. First of all, my dream interpretation book (in all seriousness! Don't laugh), is at home, and therefore not accessible until Friday. Therefore I can not interpret the dreams I am about to unleash to your innocent minds. But I can try. Second of all, It is also frustrating because I can go for an entire month without having a single dream and then KABAM! I dream every night. Which is good, I like LOVE dreaming, I just hate the inconsistency. And my dreams tend to not kid-around, either. No, they are serious. Well at least in my mind they have extreme significance. Then I share my strange dreams with friends or family and I am usually laughed at or accused of being on drugs...

But I really don't care. Because I can't be responsible for what I dream, it's just what I dream. Whether or not they should be taken seriously....Who knows. But goodness knows, I certainly can't think of *anything* else to write about today.

Two nights ago I had a dream that I was in some sort of house. Someone else's house. Someone else I did not know. I knew in my mind that I was there to save this woman. She was in an abusive relationship, that I knew. I saw her standing outside her bedroom door. Then her abusive (husband? boyfriend?) stood outside of another door, asking her to come in, and she had to choose between the safety of her own bedroom or the room with the man in it. I tried screaming out to her to choose the safe room, to not go with him. But she chose him. They went in the room. They shut the door. Someone locked it. I ran to the door, knocking on it to come back out. I heard screaming inside. Suddenly I was aware of the fact that a lot more people knew about this other than just me, and there were policemen and firemen (I don't know why- she wasn't on fire), waiting outside to save her. But it was up to me, I felt, in the dream. Up to me to get her out. I pried on the door, using anything I could to get the door open despite the lock. I had to save her.

Being that it was two nights ago and my memory is not great, and being the fact that dreams tend to "skip around", I am not entirely sure how I got her out. But I'm pretty sure she came out on her own, but she was badly beaten and could not stand on her own. So (somehow) I picked her up. I can remember her vividly. She was wearing a long white dress and had long red-blondish hair, kind of wavy. Pretty. I felt bad for her. But I had her in my arms (I still don't know how-I'm not strong, but I guess in dreams you can do anything). So I carried her out of the house and suddenly there was this massive pile of rocks, and on the other side of the rocks were the policemen, the rest of the community, etc. They told me to take it easy, to not overwhelm her or scare her by bringing her around too many people after this traumatic experience. So I let her sit down on "my side" of the pile of rocks and somehow pulled a bottle of water out of nowhere to give to her to drink. And then the dream was over....

All of yesterday, I had no clue what any of this meant. But brainstorming now, I realize it is probably an emphasization (new word) on my readiness and anxiety (at the same time) to begin my student public health nursing clinical...I will be visiting people's homes. So you can see how that appeared in the dream, being in a person's house that I do not know. I don't expect to be actually saving someone from an abusive relationship in my real clinical, but I will be there to get them out of other types of problems, health care related. I am nervous to start next week. But, I'm also eager to start after learning a lot more (in lecture) about what community health is, and what it could be....I'm starting to think that maybe I could really like being a public health nurse. But I plan to talk about that in another blog. Perhaps tomorrow.

Anyway, my second dream is freaky and I have no idea where it came from other than stress. As you can infer from my last blog update, I was up late finishing my poster presentation (OH BY THE WAY THAT WENT WELL! Only 3 more times to go!), and I had been working on that in my common area. Well, in my dream, I was still working on my presentation, and suddenly I owned an Ipad (thats beside the point) and the iPad was recording, white noise. Even though you can't technically record white noise while you, a human being, alive, is in the room. Because on playback you'll just hear yourself. But hey, it was a dream, remember? So while recording this white noise, I was somehow convinced that what I was hearing could be nothing but a ghost in the room with me. And I got the eerie feeling that it was not a friendly ghost. I started screaming out "Who's There?" and woke myself up by doing so. Needless to say, when I had to pee in the middle of the night I was very scared. I'm still scared actually. And, my room has been freezing all day today despite my heat at 100%.

*eerie*.

And no I have no idea where that dream came from. Dreams. Sometimes they come out of nowhere.

But seriously....someone comment on this and enlighten me. Does anyone else dream about other people, that they have never met or seen? Is this a common occurence? I have these explicit and detailed dreams about people I've never met but in the dream they mean so much to me. I don't understand it. So does this happen to you? I'd really like to know.

Sorry for the incessant amount of rambling that happened in this post. I was really, really, in a blog-writing post mood and I wracked my brain and this was the only thing I found even remotely interesting to talk write about.

So, thank you for sticking with me and reading. I promise sometime soon I will have a meaningful and profound post. Or maybe a funny one. Or any type of post that is worth reading. Look forward to it....

With Love,

A Dream-Writer in a Nurse's Body

Related Posts:

Ghost!

Readers Beware: This May be A Long Post

Does Anyone Else Do This?

A Nice Message

Picture of the Week (On time!)

YAY ITS TIME FOR THE PICTURE OF THE WEEK! Be excited, be excited beeeee exxxcccitteed!

Okay. I apologize. I had a headache all night and this morning so from my meekly little bed I texted my dad, and I was like "Please get me excedrin? I am dying. I really am. And an icepack? I love youuuu." So I took 3 excedrin and DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH CAFFEINE THEY HAVE?

A_LOT! a boatload.

So excuse my minor hyperness.

OKAY. Picture time!

Okay So I took this picture about a month ago. At my school. It was kind of our first snow fall, back when snow and I were still friends. It was frigid and therefore I was unhappy but when I turned the corner to go to the dining hall, I saw this beautiful assortment of snow and colors. I first snapped a picture for my dad, the weatherman, to brag about the fact that we got snow and home didnt, but then I realized that it was a pretty picture and I was all like, "I'm going to make this picture of the week".. And here it is. A lovely picture.

Okay the following has absolutely nothing to do with picture of the week but I don't want to make it a new blog post so I'm adding it to this one. As you all know, (probably) by now, is that I am oddly obsessed with dreams. I have this fantastic and hilarious dream interpretation book and you can pretty much look up anything you want in it that you dreamed about and it will tell you what that means. One time, (this is real life. not a dream), when my family and I were on vacation in New Hampshire, we stopped at this Mom & Pop type diner to get coffee and food and fuel up so we could keep driving or sightseeing or whatever we were doing. At the time, I was even more obsessed than usual with dreams because I had just gotten the dream book so I literally looked up everything. I even made charts, analyzing my 12 year old dreams. So I'm all like "Look everyone I can look up your dream" even though no one in my family cared. But, the waitress at the time, cared. She sat down next to us and was all like, "CAN YOU INTERPRET MY DREAM, PLEASE?" I forget the dream now but it had something to do with fixing a tooth. It wasn't in my book and I was all like, "I'm sorry." My family quickly finished their coffee and we booked it real fast out of there. End of story. Sorry for the anticlimactic ending. I just realized the memory seemed funnier and more dramatic in my head.

Point of story, last night I had a dream that my old dance teacher, who I'm pretty sure is also a Nazi, or a warrior of some kind, or an ex-militant executive, or Satan perhaps, was attacking me with a wooden stick, in my basement. In her dance leotard. How messed up is that? Needless to say, since it was my basement and I knew a secret way out, I tricked her and took the secret way and was totally like, "there is no way she just saw me do that and there is no way she would think to go up the normal staircase and end up in the same place as me and attack me again, because this is my dream and I am escaping." I also had a dream that I travelled to London and it was awesome. like, even awesomer than I ever would have expected. And it was totally not raining. It was gorgeous. Even though I would still think London was the best place on Earth (do you need to capitalize earth?) even if it rained every day. Which, I've heard, that it does. Back to point...This is my dream interpretation:

ATTACK:
Being attacked and not harmed: Will soon have good fortune. (woot!)
ESCAPE:
Escaping from accident or injury: Good things will come in life.

I think these results are pretty consistent with the message that 2011 will be AWESOME!

I also had a dream (this was all last night, I kid you not) that I was fixing a toilet on stage and everyone was watching and it was very stressful. But fixing toilets were not in the book. Unfortunately. But if it was, I'm pretty sure it would also say 2011 will be awesome.

IF you want me to interpret your dream for you, I totally will. Just comment with some keywords in your dream. Or type the whole thing out. I don't care. The weirder they are, the better. I would never judge. I just got attacked by my old dance teacher. With a stick. Beat that!

I'm sorry the second half of this had nothing to do with picture of the week. my bad. Its the hyperness. :-)

~WNB

Empire State of Mind

So yesterday I got to travel into the Big Apple, New York City, "Center of the Universe". I love the city, and I love being there, mostly because I love to watch the type of people in the city. But I could never live there. And boy, was it crowded. But here are some edited pictures I took and love and I hope you love too: (And consider this picture of the week, too!)

And my FAVORITE:

This is now the opening screen to my iPhone. :-)

Based off of friend's recent experiences as well, (she had a run-in with Elmo), characters seem to be very common to come across in New York City. The funny part is people walk right along side of them and often don't give them a second glance, because really-what else is new in NYC? Everywhere you look there is something eccentric and odd. And then there was the tourists (me) taking pictures of Minnie. But it was adorable, because guess who she was waving to? Thats right, you guessed it...MICKEY. It was so cute. She started off by making a phone call on the booth behind her, it was so random. And then she turned around to wave to Mickey. We also saw Bugs Bunny while eating lunch. Just randomly walking down the street, with groceries in his hand. I'm serious!

So anyway, as for an update on my life: I learned how to drive stick-shift (Manual!) Whhhhaaaa? YES. I learned a long time ago and get a lesson every now and then, but I usually suck, and its usually in a high-school parking lot. But this time, it was later on at night and my friend who own's the truck suggested that I drive us home....And as nervous as I was, I totally did it! I drove! A manual! Truck! And I only stalled once. I gave myself an A- on my driving experience, but my friend-instructor gave me a B, lol.

But the point of this is that this same friend has taught me something very important that relates to a recent post about being frustrated that I feel I am missing a manual on life. That I don't know how to do anything and therefore am too afraid to try. I told him I felt like this, and this person said flat out, "Do you know how I learned? I just did it. You make mistakes, you screw up and try it again." And with my successful driving experience, after just relaxing and winging it, that made so much more sense and I felt that I could definitely learn how to do more in life. So next challenge that comes along, I am excited to take it. If I don't know how to do something, I'm going to just try. I can figure it out. I guess my biggest fear is that I don't want to cause mass destruction or harm to anyone else in the process of "figuring things out". It's one thing when you are installing a coffee maker by yourself (that was a random example) but its another when you want to learn how to make a fireplace and you burn the entire house down (again, completely random-this never happened).  So I have to find an even balance of being courageous enough to try, but smart enough to know when not to try or too ask for help...Good lesson of the week :-)

New topic:
I am very frustrated lately. I cannot seem to hold on to my dreams. Every day, I wake up and there is this fragment of my dream...barely hanging there, and I catch a small glimpse of it, and the minute I try to grab on to the rest, it goes away. I think its a lot like fishing. Some of the "fragments" I get I know lead to bad dreams I had, and some others I knew were good...either way, I like to remember my dreams and I get frustrated when I don't. And the whole keeping a pencil by your bed is silly. Well its not silly, maybe it works for some but not for me. I am delusional when I am woken up and a pencil and a piece of paper would make no sense to me at whatever time I woke up. So, oh well.

Well I'm totally exhausted. I got all my christmas shopping done today, YAY for productivity.

With love,

~A Writer in a Nurse's Body

Readers Beware: This May Be a Long Post

I have a lot on my mind and most of it is not going to have anything to do with one another- but I don't want to split it into 300 blogs because then...well, there would be way too many December 6th blogs. So, I'm just gonna paragraphize it and go from thought to thought...bear with me.



You're walking somewhere. Or you're sitting on a bench People-watching. You see someone that is smiling for no reason and you think- How wonderful. You know the feeling that person is feeling- we have all been there, on that euphoria so high that you catch yourself smiling from ear-to-ear in the middle of the store, or walking down the hallway. I like to think that when I see this happen to people, they just got a really sweet text from the person they have a super crush on, or just started dating...or they just remembered a really happy memory. I love watching people when they are staring at their phone and then all the sudden light up from ear to ear and get all giddy. I find happiness in watching people that are in love. I know and miss that euphoria.


If you are anything like me, you believe in the supernatural. The paranormal. The impossible. Magic. Special people are out there with hidden talents that are unheard of. There are like 300 billion people (I think even more), so, it's possible. Humans are not just humans. There is so much more to us! We are not just a carrier, a storage depot for living organs so that we can live here and die and that's it. We are a part of something so much bigger, and we all have "hidden talents", even if it is something really small or something huge that you have to keep a secret. Or not a secret. Some people make businesses out of it. Like, psychics. Others are unsure if what they can do is even a "hidden talent", or if it is something most humans can do. OK so keep this paragraph in mind, I will come back to it- but first want to stray on something a little off topic.
Keeping these hidden talents in mind, do you ever believe that it is possible for certain people to "implant" dreams to you? To literally create and design your dream upon their choosing? To "walk in" to your dream....to make you see a situation unfold that you would have never before thought possible, for their benefit? No, I am not talking about the movie Inception, even though it sounds a lot like it. I am talking about the feeling we have all had. You don't give someone any second thoughts until one morning, you wake up and realize they had a starring role in your dream. The dream could have been about anything, but they were the main point of it. Or maybe they weren't. Maybe you just felt their presence, and liked it. Or didn't like it. Regardless, it makes you think about them twice now, doesn't it? And what makes it even stranger and what prompted this entire thought, is the next day after that dream, you are still thinking about that person, and you look at them, and they are looking straight at you.



So, really. Couldn't it be possible? What are the chances that that person, who you talk to very little or never thought about in a certain way, suddenly pops into your dream and the next day, they are looking at you too? This has happened countless times. What if...just what if, there was a group of people out there that could actually manipulate dreams. I don't know how. But they could somehow shed a light on themselves that they want you to see...maybe they like you and want you to notice them. It sounds crazy, but I've witnessed a lot more crazy than that. It could be possible. We have uncovered so much in dream research, why couldn't it be possible? You never know. Sometimes after a dream such as this, I see them the next day and it almost feels as if they are looking at me differently too. And I think, "what if they had the same exact dream I did?" I think that is more likely than my previous "what if". How would we know any different if that were or were not true? Chances are this is not a person you talk to often or know well enough to ask, "Hey, was I in your dream last night too?" who knows, maybe you both dreamt about each other, on the same night, and who would ever know the difference? There have been so many times that after this type of dream, the next day when I see them, I wish I could tell them about it, just to record their reaction, and then if it went awry, I could erase their memory, walk away and pretend I never even mentioned it.

Dreams are funny, and extremely interesting. We still have so much to learn. I'm still waiting for the day we can find a way to record our dreams, and pop them into our iphone or TV and watch what our subconcious has created...and maybe throw in a bag of popcorn. Thats when dream interpretation will really start to get interesting...just think about that.

OK so back to the place where I told you to save that train of thought-I do believe I have a "hidden talent" ( I quote it because it sounds so silly- I just don't know how else to explain it). And for the first time today, someone else that I respect very much noticed I have it too, which took me by complete surprise. I consider myself an empath- meaning that I am extremely intuitive of peoples thoughts, but more importantly, feelings. I can instantly pick up feelings from people within seconds of being with someone, or walking into a room, I know the energy. I can usually go as far to dispell a certain energy, but this takes some time, and work. You need a lot of practice to do this, and natural skill, and it helps if you really know the person you are trying to dispell this too. For example, think of Jasper- from "Twilight"- how he can make others feel calm? Or any emotion he wants? He can also pick up how they are feeling and carries all others emotions on his shoulders. That is exactly what an empath is. I read nonverbal actions far better than I do what you are saying verbally. If in a group of people that are talking to one another, I am the silent one- not because I am shy- but because I am watching very closely. And not just watching the person that is talking, but watching everyone in the room, everyone in the circle that is talking to eachother. Watching for saddness, happiness, peoples reactions. I take all this in. I think I have always been like this, but like all talents, it has strengthened and presented itself further over time. I think as a young teenager, I sensed I had this but didn't know what to call it, or if it was even normal or abnormal. I think everyone has a little bit of empathy in them, some are just on a way higher spectrum. I never use it for harm. I never make someone feel bad on purpose. But i do use it a lot in nursing, and this is where the person noticed I do this today. I had my clinical evaluation 1:1 meeting with my professor today, who has known me for a whole year now. She said flat out that my highest, most respectable strength in this program was that she noticed I had the ability to read my patients and fellow students emotiions in the group, and was able to create a calming nature in the room, with my patient and with my fellow students. I wish I could explain it better...the best way to say it simply is that 99.5% of the time, I know exactly how you are feeling, even if I have never been through what you are going through. You have been to war and back (for example), and I haven't. And by being with you, talking to you, I get a little piece of what war was like, for you. This is where all the veterans jump on me because anyone that has not been to war can never understand it. I'm just giving an example.

OK I have like 4 main more topics but my battery is dying, and my fingers hurt, and I know they will never be read if I make this blog any longer. So, I'll tuck them away in my future blog entry place and they will come back.

If you made it this far, thank you, and you are awesome and deserve a cookie. Thanks for bearing with me.

~A Writer in a Nurse's Body

Does Anyone Else Do This?

Does anyone else have dreams about other people, with you as a "fly on the wall", speechless, motionless, just watching? Dreams about people you don't know, never seen, never met? I have these dreams occaisonally. I know their names, sometimes, even though I have never met them in real life.

Last night was one of these and I consider it a nightmare. I woke up nauseous because of the images I saw in the dream, which I consider too horrid to even repeat in a blog. Why? I don't know who these people are in my dream, why do I dream of them? Does this happen to anyone else?

A Nice Message

Someone special to me, came to me in a dream last night and told me I would get what I had been praying for....

The other night I was praying that I passed my test.

Yesterday I prayed for a good doctor and someone to believe me. (WHich I got).

I Hope I passed my test, and I'll keep praying til I do....


Thank you..

Dream

Another "dream" last night... The same one I always have. Havent had it in a long time though. When will I ever shake it? :-/ it's getting to the point now where in the dream, I ask myself, Is this one a dream or is this real life? Is it actually happening? And I pinch myself--and I don't wake up. And I think- this is not a dream. I'm stuck. This is actually happening. And it feels so real. It's only when you wake up that you think back and say boy- that was strange.

It feels more and more real every time. When will they go away? I've stopped recording them- i feel it only encourages my mind to keep bringing it back.

Zombie.

Thats what I feel like. I am so tired. Something is happening to me. I'm not sure if its emotional, physical or both this time. But its definitely not good. I need....I dont know. Im just so tired. I wish sleep helped, but I tried that. Just makes me more tired. Some of it is emotional. I didnt have work today, I didnt have anywhere to be...I did get out of the house and went to lunch and read a pretty interesting book...and that was OK, I was fine. Then I came home, and thought that my Panera salad may have had a peanut in it (I'm allergic) because my throat felt like it was closing up (slowly). So I took 2 benadryl (sp?). I had also taken 2 excedrin for my headache about 90 minutes earlier, and my multivitamin 30 minutes prior. So, poor life choices, too many drugs at once...My body went into total malfunction mode. Benadryl does not normally affect me, I took 4 once for a bee sting and was wide awake. But today, between the feeling like i was going to vomit a days worth of food and feeling tired, I told my mom I was going to go nap. This was at...1. I slept til 5:30. I kept waking up intermittently, and just couldn't bring myself to get out of bed...Part of me was tired (physically), but half of it was also..I just didn't want to get up. I just didnt want to do anything. I couldnt bring myself to move. THat can't be from the freakin Benadryl. Eventually, I did talk myself into getting up...I told myself that I had to do the Elliptical, maybe go for a swim...eat something...(I do talk to myself-outloud- when no one is home-lol), so I got up, made myself some food but couldnt gather up enough energy to go on elliptical or swim. I just dont want to do anything. I told myself I could compromise with myself and instead of exercising, I'd come up and clean my room......and what am I doing instead? I walked in the room, and plopped on to the bed, and came on my blog. Oy. This happened the other day...I forget what day it was. Saturday I think? I had woken up, ate breakfast, felt fine, and then started feeling tired again, so went for a nap. Slept til 2, til I had to go to work. So tired. I just kept coming in and out of sleep and nightmares, and dreams, and couldnt pull myself out of bed. Its so unhealthy. Seriously. I had a dream that day (It was more like 50 dreams all strung together), that my friend tom had texted me during this zombie state I was in, and told me that enough was enough and that I had to stop with this depression and get out of the house. I listened to him (meanwhile- I thought this was real life- not a dream), so (in my dream), I got out of bed and met him at this theater, and there were all these people there. Suddenly we were seniors in high school again, and we were sitting in this theater, waiting to hear what parts we were going to be playing in the next school play. Tom then got this huge award for something, and I didnt get a part. and I remember standing against this wall, with all these people, and tom walked past me to get his award and didnt notice me standing there. In the same string of dreams that day, I was running in my development, and suddenly there was all this construction, it kept road-blocking me, and I had to keep making detours. If that isnt a subconcsious view of my life then I don't know what is. In the same string, I had this dream that I woke up from my zombie state and saw these pills at the bottom of my bed, and I read them and they said "sleeping pills", and I remembered thinking to myself "Oh, thats why Im so sleepy, I thought they were my vitamins"... I texted a lot of people in this dreamstate, all the while I thought it was all real. When I really woke up my phone was empty- no texts, it was all a dream... Who knows, maybe I'm still dreaming. How do we know? Wow, look at me going all Inception-y. Ahh great movie.

No but really even just as I'm typing this I am falling asleep. I friggen just slept 4+ hours! But all my muscles feel tired. My arms, they feel heavy and weak. Everything. Ive considered Iron deficiency...I wish I could test my own Iron, but I need a doctor order blood test to do that. I think thats the problem. or it could be anyway. I forgot to take my vitamin this morning, and yesterday morning, and forgot to take it saturday too. THe vitamin has Iron in it, and the week and a half that I was able to take it everyday without forgetting, I felt amazing. THis is how I felt when I was on the Prozac for the week and a half i was on it like 2 months ago. I stopped taking it because I felt like an exhausted Zombie.

On a good note, my headaches and stomachaches have been ASTOUNDINGLY better! I've been staying away from Dairy and tomato products (ketchup, pasta sauce, tomatos, etc.) which seem to attack my stomach, and Ive been taking a multivitamin for my head, and when I forget to take it, I get the headache back. Maybe I'm just totally deficient in all my vitamins and thats the answer to all my problems.

I'm going to go try taking a shower so that *maybe* I can pull off staying up til 11. Woah there, lets dream big.

And maybe clean my room, like I was supposed to.

tomorrow will be the same. Nothing to do....Just a "relax" day. THats the problem. Nothing to do...but I DO have things to do...get ready for school, homework, I could paint, I could read, go swimming, elliptical, write, b &N, ANYTHING! I just have to make a gate around my bed and all couches and not let myself SLEEP. Its a no win, because If i had filled up tuesdays and wednesdays with something to do (work of some kind), i would have been miserable because then I get no-time off, no relax Julie time....and I despise my job, so I dont want to be there either. But at least it keeps me going, keeps me awake and moving, focused on other people other than myself.

OK, shower time. I hope. SHowers usually help.

I have so much more to say. Maybe I'll make another long post tonight or tomorrow lol. Can i just keep typing?

Going Crazy.

Everything right now is just so…. L

I can't get this haunting dream out of my head. Why does this always happen to me?

I swear dreams mean something…I KNOW they do. But I just can't figure this one out. A series of them…similar. Not ready to talk about it yet.

*According to you….

Psssyyyychhh!!!

Ok so my dreams...I usually don't and won't talk about them. I very much so believe in the power dreams have, the power unique to every individual. For some, they have the power to show clips of the future. For others, dreams bring people back to certain memories, so rich and real that they wake up and wish they could go back again. Other dreams bring an opportunity to talk to someone you miss, whether they still roam on this planet or not. Others let you try an experience that maybe you always wanted to try or were too scared to try, and boy does it feel real. Others let you have a conversation with a celebrity, or someone you've been wanting (or avoiding) to talk to. Others just recreate an image of what your underlying subconscious is trying to say, just in a sometimes funny or scary fashion.

Well last night I had this dream that I was at work. (If you don't already know, I am currently employed working as a nurse aide in a hospital). It was busy on the floor, I had been seeing a lot of patients. I started not to feel well, and I realized that Matthew was on the floor too...as some type of employee (aide, security, transfer..etc.). Whatever he was, he was working with the same patient I had to see. Matthew asked me to bring him something, across the room. Except when I tried to walk, I felt so, so drunk. Now mind you, I've never been drunk so I can't actually say that thats what it felt like in the dream, but If i had to guess what it felt like, I'd say that. Everything was spinning, and I couldn't seem to put one foot in front of the other, it was surreal. Everything was so funny...I remember laughing a lot at the fact I couldn't manage to walk across the room. In my dream however, I knew that I wasn't drunk. I was at work, I hadn't had anything to drink. To me, It felt like a medical condition, that something was terribly wrong with my body (neurological). That's when I asked Matt to carry me away. To my surprise, he did. He brought me into an empty hospital bed and let me lay down. I wanted him to lie with me, but before I could remember anything else, I guess I fell asleep because the next thing I know, I wake up (Still in the dream!) and Matthew is lying on the floor. I am still in the hospital, but my bed had moved to this crammed space where all these back up supplies were kept. I slowly got up, since I had felt a lot better. Then Matt disappeared, and the door to the room opened, with a stretcher coming through with a patient on it. I immediately got up and went to help transfer admit this patient...I did my assessment, did the usual, got him comfortable. It was an older man AAOX3, so I wasn't too alarmed. THen i realized his bed didn't have a fitted sheet, so I asked Matt to grab me one from our supplies cart. But they were gone, so i ran to our closet and they were gone too. Then I realized the bed I had been sleeping on hadn't had one either. Then this nurse came running to me and told me patients weren't allowed to help with admissions or roam the halls without permission, and that I was supposed to be in bed. We were on a psych ward. There was no matt, it was an aide that had carried me to my own bed, everything was a hallucination...The "drunk" was a side effect to a knock-out medication. Then I woke up. For real.

I know...This is why I usually don't share my dreams because people think I'm on drugs. I always have had the gift(I think its a gift anyway) of having magnificently vivid dreams. They mean a lot to me. This one...well, you can see why they give me a lot to think about when I wake up. My rationale for it is that it is a reflection of my underlying fear of going to the psych ward this semester for clinical rotation. I know I shouldn't be afraid. Out of all people in my class even, I should be the least afraid, right? I have had multiple nurses, patients, co-aides tell me that I am so great with psych patients. I have this natural ability to calm them down, when they aren't too far gone. I can calm anxiety attacks down very well. I can help dementia patients come back to reality even for just five minutes. It comes natural to me...the psych ward this semester shouldnt be anything I'm not used to one bit...but that doesn't mean I'm not scared. I've mentioned this in another blog before, I hate patients being unpredictable...One minute they can be completely calm and the next they lash out and grab you. Some of our nurses and aides have been sent to the ER from this. Scratches, bites...they come easy and all of us have our scars. Its not that I'm scared of being hurt...thats not it. I guess I don't know what my true primary fear is. Something I have to think about. Maybe that will help my anxiety in terms of this coming semester (for Med Surg and psych).

Well, I have to go read for my Psych class now actually. Corny introduction stuff (yay).

For now, with love,

~A Writer in a Nurse's Body

<3

Writing from the Twilight Zone

That's exactly how I feel. Things lately have been...very strange. I don't think I could explain it if I tried. Everything I come upon seems to have connections...I am having a very difficult time finding myself in time. I seem to be having difficulty separating dream from reality. For instance, I will have a flash of a memory of someone doing something, someone I have never met. And yet it will be very vivid. Or I'll have a memory of me doing something that I either don't remember doing or can't tell if I dreamt it or really did it. You can imagine how this might get frustrating. . . Yesterday, I had a very interesting dream that I cannot talk about it. But it meant a lot to me and had me thinking the entire day. It's dreams like this that keep me going and hold me back (very much so) at the very same time. But after that dream, every single song I heard on the radio, or that came up on my iPod during shuffle, or wherever I heard music, had a connection to that dream. Even I would switch channels on the radio and the next song would have a connection/meaning. So needless to say I stopped trying to escape it and just laughed at it.

Also, I had spent the later part of 2009 (especially December) being depressed. I had at first tried to climb out of it but no one was there to pull me out. I had too much on my shoulders, I was trying to help too many people at once. I can't save the world...and yet somehow, I keep trying. I get depressed when I fail at anything, and well..you know. Anyone will fail if they try and save everyone at once. I guess I just can't grasp the concept that you can't save everyone and you have to just let it go. I still don't grasp it. Maybe in time. I'll have to grasp it soon if I ever can be a good nurse. Meaning, some of my patients won't make it. If I am ever going to save myself from Major Burnout, I have to learn to let it go, that I did all I could, and that is all. Mostly the problem has been multiple friends coming to me with their problems all at once. Now don't me wrong, I love to hear my friend's problems and do my best to help. But when their problem is out of my hands, there is nothing i can do but listen, and that isn't enough for me. I would do anything for my friends, but I can't do everything. Especially when they are all coming to me at once. Everyone has had a shitty entire 2009 it seems. My boyfriend, my best friends...all with problems that I simply just don't know how to handle and yet they expect me too. What do you do then? But anyway...

So like I said, 2009 (the end) was not good. At first I blamed the entire 2009 , but came to my senses when I saw some pictures I had taken throughout the year and realized I did have a lot of nice moments, regardless of how short lived they may have been. But the beginning of 2010...Something has definitely changed. I don't know how to describe it. It sort of all started Monday at work. Sunday at work, by the end of the day, I was feeling like I did in 09. But Monday, (with the same exact problems I had Sunday), something had changed. I was looking on the bright side of things for once. I was solving my problems left and right. I was power-nursing....so to speak. I felt on top of the world...I was being pro-active for my patients, I was doing everything I could for them and felt awesome about it. Its days like those that make me want to go back to work. Especially when I see in my patients eyes that I had made a difference for them. In particular, I will discuss this one patient. I have been working 4 day rotations this whole break. This particular patient came in on the first day of this rotation, I was there with her right from the very start of her admission. She was a nice patient, never caused any trouble for me. Through out the days, I would come and chat with her when I could, but she usually had company. However on Monday, when I went in to do her blood sugar testing, I noticed as soon as I walked into the room that something was wrong with her. I didn't say anything at first and just tried talking with her. She immediately let on further that she was feeling very sad (I didn't know why). I did the usual, tried to make her feel better, tried to ask what was wrong, etc., as I continued to do her blood sugar. But I didnt get much out of her. When I was done, she had asked me for a drink of water, which I gave her, but I noticed it was warm and empty from before. I asked her if she would like some nice ice water, to which she brightly lit up and said yes, that would be wonderful. I told her as soon as I finished the other patient's blood sugars (Prioritizing) I promised I would bring her some ice water. Another patient down the hall also wanted some water, to which I promised the same thing. So after I was done, I brought both waters, to the first patient first. But she was sleeping (this was 30 mins later). So I quietly put the water down, I decided it best to just let her sleep since she was upset earlier. I gave the water to the second patient and on my way back, I noticed patient one was awake. I went in and offered her the water I had brought in. She looked surprised. She told me, "You came back. I didn't think you'd come back. You're the first one to have actually come back." It was then. I left the room and I was astounded. I knew, then, that I could definitely be the nurse that I knew I had to be.

Well thats it for now. I have places to be, people to see...:)

I have a lot more to say, so tune in later....

~A Writer In A Nurse's Body