“Free me from a divided life that I might be the same person on the inside that I am on the outside.”
~Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Relationships (devotional prayer)~

I resonate with this but I would change around the words. Instead I would say, “Free me from a divided life that I might be the same person on the outside that I am on the inside.” That is my struggle and where I feel the oppression. For as much as I think I am an open and vulnerable person, there are a lot of things I refrain from saying. There are a lot of ways I hide myself and refuse to come forward as my truest, most genuine self.

Two recent experiences come to mind. Over the weekend at work there was an incident on another wing where a resident needed an antibiotic. It needed to be administered through the PICC line in his arm which is something that in this facility, only RN’s are qualified and authorized to do. The evening staffing includes one nurse per wing. The two most difficult wings were being covered by LPN’s who could not hang antibiotics.

There is some sense in all of this. The 30+ year LPN has more experience in skills and assessment than the less than 5-years of experience RN who has been more comfortably working in long term care for coming up on two years. Long story short, I had to spend an hour sorting out a situation where a resident didn’t get his antibiotic because part of his PICC line was broken off and his daughter had tried to fix it herself.

And in my head there was this part of me that was like, “This is an easy fix. All we need to do is replace the injection port with our own port taken from the in-house supplies.” But stuffed on top of all of that was 1) the initial lack of enthusiasm over having to mess with another person’s problem, 2) The fear of not wanting to screw something up, and 3) the lack of comfort, confidence, and knowledge in how to use the facility’s IV pumps.

The second incident occurred at Thrive. I thought I was a doing a new patient assessment for a person wanting to begin individual therapy services. He walked in–a black man. Immediately my heart sunk thinking this could be the day I died. But somewhere in me also is a person who does not see color, not as a reason to fear or favor a person. He wasn’t coming for therapy. He needed a mental health assessment.

Which he had willingly submitted to do for some authorities. I’m thinking, gulping, “This is not what I am here for, I don’t even know if I am qualified to do this.” And I again I faced the same thing, 1) the initial lack of enthusiasm over having to do this task, 2) the fear of being killed by the man, and 3) the lack of comfort, confidence, and knowledge of how to officially do a mental health assessment that someone else is going to read.

Namely, whatever authorities need to read it, and also my supervisor because he is the one who has to sign it. And I was mad at him for putting me in this un- asked for situation. And I still have not, on my own, ever uploaded the new patient info from the computer system and had it go smoothly without any issues. And thankfully he was free in his office to be able to show me what else I needed to do or it would’ve been left out.

One time in group he said to a patient, “Show me a woman who does not expect a man to be the hero, and I’ll show you a woman who’s done an awful lot of work.” That sounded pretty cliche to me. But then I thought about more, wondering, “How do I expect the man to be my hero”? The main thing I came up with is that we (I) can expect for men to have an unlimited, superhuman capacity to deal with our (my) bull@*&^.

Because if they (he) can deal with my weakness then that means they (he) love(s) me. And people have shown up for me, and people have tolerated me. And somewhere inside of me is this person who wants to show up more truly to my genuine abilities. To say, “You know what, I’ve got this, and I will do a good job.” And then in turn whatever it is I do will help a person, and they will be able to rest easier because the load is halved.

The CNA held the phone while I Facetimed with the nursing supervisor on call and she talked me through how to program the pump. She would come in the morning to replace the dressing and re-enter the orders to make adjustments for the time. Maybe I will be able to do that another time without it being a bigger deal but for now I was relieved that she would handle it herself and that I still could be there in the meantime.