Author: redheadgirl612

A three year old little girl stands in the lobby of a hospital. It smells odd. She’s there to have surgery. She doesn’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds painful. Like a doctor’s visit, with needles and stuff involved. Before she gets to the elevator with her parents, three sisters (nuns) walk in front of her. It’s a weird memory she’ll carry with her for the rest of her life. She walks into the elevator with her parents. They are holding her tiny hands in theirs. They get out on the 5th floor. A nurse greets them and takes them to the room. This is where the little girl will spend the next several days. There’s a bed against the wall. It can move in all sorts of directions, different from her bed at home. She already misses her dog. There’s a knock at the door. It’s her doctor. He’s a tall, lanky man with dark hair and kind eyes. He talks with her parents about surgery, but she doesn’t understand what they are saying. She won’t understand until many years later. Soon, a dinner tray arrives. She gets to eat in the bed, but the food tastes nothing like her mom’s.

The next day, nurses come and take her to the operating room. Her parents must stay behind in her room. In the operating room, it’s very cold. The nurse gives her medicine that makes her sleepy. When she wakes, she’s not yet in her room, but the nurse is there, giving her medicine because it hurts. She falls back asleep.

When she wakes again, she’s back in the hospital room. Her grandparents are there to visit with her. They’ve brought toys for her to play with. She later forgot what toys they brought, but in the moment, it was like having another Christmas. The nurse brings her Jello. She also brings a shot. The little girl doesn’t like shots. The nurse makes her turn over and gives the shot. It hurts, a lot. It’s the first of many in the next few days.

The next day, her other grandparents visit. They bring more toys. It’s Christmas again! Her brother is going to be jealous that she has so many new toys. She misses her dog.

She just wants to go home. After a few days, and more shots, they finally let her go home. She does not know it yet, but she will have this surgery again in two years, then eleven years after that, and one more time as an adult.

She also doesn’t know that this first hospital experience will shape her life in a profound way. It will set her on her lifelong path. It is the impetus that makes her decide to become a nurse.

This was 1977. The three year old girl was me.

I admit it. I’ve not been that positive about life lately. Life is stressful. Work is stressful. A lot of unexpected events have occurred, a big one being Hurricane Helene. Anyone who knows anything about South Carolina knows that we’ve had some serious storms. What people may not realize is that the Upstate, where I live, is 3-4 hours away from the beach. Most storms might bring us rain. One called Hugo, gave us rain, wind, and power outages. Nothing could have prepared our area, or western NC, eastern TN, or Georgia, for Helene. She destroyed everything in her path, 700+ miles from where she made landfall.

Out of the devastation came something remarkable. People have come together with a singular purpose, to help the area recover in whatever way they can. As Southerners and Appalachian folks, we are used to helping each other. The people coming from outside our area to help has been amazing. What they have done, and are still doing, is nothing short of a miracle.

For a country that is supposedly divided, we sure look like we are working together. I don’t think we are doomed to fail as humans. My issues, though still present, seem minuscle at this time. There is still hope.

I’m in the “Get off my lawn” phase of life. Maybe it’s 27 years of being a nurse and dealing with craziness on a daily basis. Maybe it’s because I’ve had proverbial crap thrown at me and it stuck. I’m really ready to let it go, though. I don’t like this phase. I feel like I used to be nice. I think I used to care. I do still care what the important people in my life think of me. So, how do I get back to who I used to be?

Once we get to a certain point in life, we all have some emotional baggage. What matters is what you do with that baggage. Some people choose to carry it around like an overstuffed suitcase. I chose that path for many years. Then I made a conscious decision to deal with it head on. I have been working on myself for a few years now, trying to figure out what has allowed me to be in bad relationships, make bad choices and experience heartache. What about me let people walk all over me. By understanding what is vulnerable about me, I hope to avoid the same habits and pitfalls. So I’ve decided to finally let go of the baggage that had been weighing me down for years. I thought about just packing it away into the recesses of my brain, but it would be too easy to pick it back up and mull over it again. So I just think I’ll burn it. Good riddance.

There are so many things I’ve wanted to write about in 2023. I’ve started half a dozen blogs, only to leave them as a draft after a sentence or two. 2023 brought major writer’s block, in spite of my having lots of ideas. It was overall a good year, the best in a very long time. There will likely be some more posts about 2023, now that the words seem to be flowing freely out of my head.

There have been many highlights this year. I switched jobs to one I really enjoy. I work with a great group of people and am reconnected with my favorite coworker from my previous job. No matter how bad things get, I am thankful for great coworkers and healthcare providers.

I also reconnected with a long time friend from high school. It’s like no time has passed. We meet for lunch and talk about our lives, kids, etc. I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to be more involved in the lives of my friends. I stumble at it, but I keep trying.

In June, we took a vacation that is the best one I’ve ever had. It was a RV adventure on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was cool to see wonders of nature from my child’s perspective. (The details are for another post)

The best part of 2023 is that the boys and I are settled into our safe haven of a home. There is peace here, well as much peace as one can have with two teenagers in the house. I went through Autumn and the holidays without falling into depression. We even decorated for Christmas, which is out of our norm. It’s amazing what happiness can do for a person.

Now that we’ve entered 2024, my dreams for this year are to continue the joys of 2023. I hope for peace and happiness.

I think I am quickly reaching another crossroads in my life, this time in my career. I am a RN and have been for almost 21 years. I’ve done lots of great things in my career. I’ve also experienced burnout and mental health challenges, as have my fellow healthcare professionals. In fact, this is becoming a major topic of discussion in the medical field as a whole, as our jobs are more difficult and there are increasing incidences of violence, from patients and within our own community of professionals.

As for my own story, I was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder at age 33, after a severe bout of postpartum anxiety and depression combined with an abusive spouse caused the once hidden symptoms of hypomania to rear their ugly head. As for workplace violence, I’ve encountered it in nearly every setting in which I’ve worked as a RN. There were the adult patients who tried to pull my hair. One patient threatened to kill me for telling him that he was not allowed to smoke in his hospital room. Even in pediatrics, I’ve encountered irate parents who wanted to harm us in one way or another. I know many others in my field who have similar stories.

So how do we fix the problem? I really don’t know. I do know that I am becoming increasingly burned out as a bedside RN, with the overwhelming levels of responsibility and terrible work hours. My ideal job would be some kind of mental health advocate for healthcare professionals. I just don’t know yet where to begin or what it will look like.

July 3rd will be 6 months since our house burned down. Six months since we lost everything. How long does it take to stop grieving the loss? I still feel homeless. I still feel like none of this stuff is mine. Just yesterday I was thinking of how much I wanted to nap under the quilt my Granny Tucker made me. It was white with squares lined in baby blue and pink. Inside each square was a butterfly and tulip, made from pieces of different cloth. I slept under that quilt every night from age 7 to 18. Mom gave it to me when I moved away from home. That quilt is gone now. So is my wedding dress. It was a steal on Amazon. I think I paid $15. It was white lace and tea length. I felt so pretty and Phillip says I looked so pretty too. Gone too is the first wedding ring set he bought for me. It had a heart-shaped center stone and the band had blue sapphires. The wedding band his grandfather willed to him is gone, too. I lost the boys’ baby books with their photos and ultrasound pictures. The oval stained glass window Mom made for me is gone. We have no books. We lost our Bibles. We lost my toy box that Grandaddy Hayes made me and the hutch he made is gone, too. These are just “things”, but they are really more than that. They represent my life, our life. Maybe I should be over this by now. Maybe it’s stupidly sentimental to cry. Maybe I’m just having a bad day. After all, we all did make it out alive, which is a blessing. But the hurt is still real and the tears still flow.

I want to preface this post by saying thank you for the outpouring of love and support we’ve received since our devastating house fire. We are blessed that so many care about us.

I’m not a materialistic person. I know things can be replaced and have been. The most important thing is that we all got out of the fire alive and unharmed. But I am feeling stabs of sadness at knowing there are things we can’t replace. Every time I remember something else unique or special that we lost, I feel a lump in my throat. The fact that we lost our nest, our haven, that definitely hurts. I don’t really care that the TVs are gone or that the couch has been reduced to springs. What hurts me is that I lost the quilt my grandmother made me for my childhood bed. It was pink and blue with butterflies and flowers. It hurts that the furniture my grandfather made is gone. My Daisy Award and statue disintegrated. My husband lost all of his Air Force patches and service medals. He lost his grandfather’s wedding band. I lost the sentimental pieces of jewelry he had made for me, like the mother’s ring and necklace with the children’s names on it. Eli lost Woosey, the worn out plushie dog he’s slept with every night since he was born. Caleb lost his weighted blanket and plushie hippo.

So yes, while I am grateful and feel blessed by what we do have and the generosity of others, I can’t help but be a little sad at the same time.

My son has inadvertently discovered Creepypasta characters Jeff the Killer and Slenderman. I don’t know how he found out about these monsters of horror fiction, but he did and he thinks it’s all real. He’s nine years old and very sensitive so this has been traumatic for him. Therefore, I am pissed. What kind of lunatics create this bullshit and perpetuate it on the internet where kids can see it? 

I decided to do some research and what I’ve found is so disturbing, it would give me nightmares! I found all kinds of sites dedicated to Jeff the Killer specifically, since this is the character that has my son frightened and traumatized. I am incensed to find no websites boycotting Jeff the Killer. Do parents not know about this? 

As a mother, I have failed my child in allowing too much exposure to the internet. That has been remedied. However, my son still thinks this is real. He is traumatized to the point that he is having fear-driven hallucinations day and night of this character being in our house. He jumps at every noise. He turns on every single light in the house every day and night. He can’t sleep. He can’t be in a room alone. He can’t go outside. He’s regressing behaviorally. All of this because of a damn internet character. This mama is mad and going to do something about it.