Pre-Grand Rounds

A friend of mine took this picture of me waiting for the elevators earlier tonight.

She told me I looked really skinny in it.

I wasn't pleased. Being this skinny meant I wasn't eating right, and I wasn't getting enough sleep.  And lately, I've been feeling like I've been under this burden of...not knowing. I'm doing a paper on first episode psychosis and presenting...how bad can it be?

It's all going to happen on Friday, and normally I like it when I do the work with the looming deadline,  but for the life of me, I can't seem to get much pep. I've done the first part, and submitted it, and now I have to do the harder second part, which should be done by Tuesday.

I feel so pressured...I don't even know what to do with myself. I just don't want to survive, i want to do better than I expect, Mental Health IS my big advocacy, after all.

:-( I'm doing this for a higher purpose, but sometimes I just keep forgetting the original zeal that I had, because I keep getting waylaid. Sometimes I have doubts, and I fear I will freeze up...and then talk a hundred miles a minute (which I usually do when I'm nervous).

(Personal problems, or little what nots in my personal life, little papers I have to write, little things I have to take care of will have to be put on hold. For the next few days, nothing should be of higher importance. :-( )

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Hey, a nice thing happened to me at work yesterday... I think I made my patient's home life better from now on because a little family tweaking I did. :-) Oh, and some other work-related thing happened to that I feel like patting myself in the back for. Two families will hopefully have better ways to deal with their respective "situations" from now on. That's good enough for me. :-)

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I went to Mass today by myself...my friend Loreen and her family were at the Physician's Oath-taking ceremonies, and although she invited me, I had to beg off. I had a lot of work to do. So I pretty much had the afternoon to myself. Work work work was on my mind. and then other things.

The homily was about forgiveness. Forgiving those who hurt us. The priest, funnily enough, used pop culture and incorporated the "3 Unforgivable Curses" in Harry Potter and I was like, "LOL. Say what?"

ok, so it was Cruciatus, Aveda Kedavra, and Imperio. Imperio made someone go against his or her will, Cruciatus tortured someone and Aveda Kedavra caused instant death...which was why it was so unforgivable.

So anyway, mostly, he tallked about forgiveness in light of the 9/11 bombing that happened 10 years ago, and how we should learn to forgive people... The sooner we forgive people, the sooner can healing start.

Maybe...but it takes time, either way. Forgive yes, but the hurt won't disappear overnight. We usually should be given the chance to wallow in it for a little while until we get so fed up with wallowing in it that we tend to not wallow anymore. Heart breaks included. It'll take some time to just feel sorry for yourself thinking that you're such a loser no one wants you on their team, if I do say so metaphorical. I suppose it is necessary for one to go around feeling Olats so that one knows what not to do the next time things like that happen.

(And yes, I am speaking in metaphors and similes, because like my patient's own life stories, I can't divulge too much of mine. Suffice to say, though, we all have our weaknesses, and on some days, metaphors and similes may be the only thing that stand between total catharsis AND total embarrassment.)

I rest my case...

Good night, and happy Sunday!

Love,

S.

Pain

This afternoon, I made a grown man cry.

I could not help it. I am appalled by how patients with mental illness are being treated in their own communities because they are misunderstood. This particular patient I knew was apprehended by the law, but the details of it, I cannot discuss.

The grown man was the boy's grandfather. He only cried after he realized that he shouldn't have left the boy in the care of other people who did not know any better. "Care" is not even the right word. They just let him be.

It's easy to dismiss people with mental illness as not being as big a deal, or as big an emergency as a heart attack, or a stroke...or even a fever. And you know what hurts me the most? he got beaten up, I was told...  and he didn't even know what was happening to him, or why they were doing that to him.

I know I should be objective, and not get attached, but I'm writing about this because I think people with mental illness should be given the same rights and be treated with the same respect as other "normal" people. Is it really too much to ask?

If this were your brother...or your father, or your uncle, or whomever it is you care about, could you stand to see it that they be treated like animals because nobody understood them?

People fear things that they cannot understand.

There needs to be major changes around here.. And it starts now.