Even though I have three exams next week and two 8-hour shift clinicals this weekend…I’m just sitting here reading One Piece. I started reading it maybe two days ago? And I’m almost all the way caught up. It’s taken me three days to catch up to almost 15 years worth of manga. I’m glad I have my priorities straight. Not.
Happy Chinese New Year!
Or well, “Lunar” New Year if you want to be PC about it.
I called home today, which is New Year’s Eve, almost just as important as New Year’s itself. Most of my family got together today for the “reunion dinner” and to eat fish and ‘tang yuan’. Oh how I miss it. This is my first Chinese New Year away from home – although nothing much to complain about. Our family never really follows a lot of the “traditions” for New Years. Although I am terrible because not only do I not follow the traditions – I also tend to do the exact opposite and break them.
I didn’t clean the apartment at all today – took out the trash, if that counts? My room is as messy as ever – usually I try to at least clean up my room. I rarely ever clean up the apartment since I’ve never lived with Chinese (or Asian, for that matter) roommates since I started college and graduate school. I washed my hair today – which is something you’re not supposed to do because it means you’re washing away the good luck. Although it’s only New Year’s Eve…does that even count? I have no idea. Honestly, I had to Google what year it is this year. Dragon. It’s the year of the Dragon.
See? Terrible. My future children will be as Chinese as their non-Chinese classmates. All they’ll know about Chinese New Year is whatever their public school will teach them during their “multi-cultural appreciation days”.
On the plus side, spoke to both my grandparents and family to wish them a Happy New Year. Was supposed to webcam with them today but it’s almost midnight for me and I’m old, lazy and tired.
Simulations
Today I had my first simulation for the psychiatrics “module”. It is unlike the simulations we have with med-surg, where a team of us work together with assigned roles and a dummy (think Grey’s Anatomy but less high-tech and like 80% less real) to figure out the appropriate diagnosis, medications and nursing care required for some assigned scenario. For psych, we actually spend a little bit of time one-on-one with an actor/actress hired to act out a specific character so we can have a chance to experience of a “real-life” psychiatric patient interview might be like.
It was a very humbling experience, as is everything I’ve done in nursing school thus far. As I watched the three others go before me in their 5-10 minutes (I’m assuming, I wasn’t watching the clock), I gathered that the woman sitting in front of us was depressed and paranoid. Her story was that of a woman with suicidal intentions who had been divorced and had custody of her children taken away from her two years ago. I admit, almost all the questions that I asked seemed pretty stupid now that I think back to it.
But in the end, our teacher stopped us and pointed out something very obvious: None of us were willing to use the word suicide or suicidal. I didn’t use it because one of the girls before me had asked the question, “Do you mean killing yourself?” I assumed that it was equal to asking about suicide – but it isn’t. It is interesting to know that as a society, we all avoid this topic without actively thinking about it. We don’t even bother naming it. And that is what our patients must struggle with the most. When they get the feeling that no one understands them, I get why. Because everyone else around them aren’t even willing to acknowledge their feelings. We may trick ourselves into thinking we understand them but honestly, we don’t.
Others also recognized that the woman was displaying symptoms of borderline personality disorder – I noticed the symptoms but had no idea what psychiatric diagnosis they fell under. My teacher told us that people with borderline personality disorder have multiple suicide attempts – others may label their attempts as “attention seeking” and not “death seeking”.
People who admit to you in a clinical setting that they are suicidal and reveal to you their plan most likely will not die because of suicide. They are more likely to die of something like everyone else – MI, accident, etc. Something I’ve always been afraid of: People who want to die will never tell you. And you will have no way of knowing.
The woman also started to cry at one point and I didn’t know what to do. I fell silent but my mind was blank as to what I could possibly say next that wasn’t wrong. I get very anxious when my thoughts and actions are being observed, analyzed. My non-verbal and verbal statements towards this actress-patient was probably all kinds of wrong.
I fell silent and ran out of ideas fairly quickly into the “interview”. Mostly because I was trying not to cry myself. I don’t know why I do this – I’m one of those people who will cry if I see other people crying, whether I really know why their crying or not.
And I felt ashamed. When my teacher was giving us feedback, on how all of us avoided the question and ended up guiding the conversation to something else altogether, I really wanted to cry. Because I felt terrible that I was one of those people who ignored the patient. I was acting like one of those people who want to try and “fix” things when the patient is clearly not in a state where it is appropriate to tell them that I can “fix their lives” – because in reality, I cannot. It is not my job to fix their lives.
Our only job for a patient with suicidal thoughts is to listen, to understand, to be with them through this moment of their lives. These people are not ready to “fix” their lives yet.
I was ashamed because that was how I treat my sister when she threatens to leave us. It’s the main reason why I started to cry too. I’m just ashamed for everything I do right now. For how selfish I am.
How heartless.
Bothered.
Is it wrong that I am bothered by the fact that our “Racial Disparities in Healthcare” seminar focused only on the disparities between Caucasians and African Americans? It bothers me that most discussions often disregard the inequalities that exist with other minorities.