Each time I see the posts about Robin Williams' suicide, it's like a slap in the face. I find it difficult to look at the images, read the articles, and tolerate the comments people put on the sites- defending him for what he did, saying it was ok because he was depressed, that it is an option for people who struggle.
I've been struggling with my father's suicide for two years, unable to come out of the closet and talk about it, because of the stigma of mental illness and what suicide does to a family. Suicide rips a family apart with secrets, inability to speak about the person who died unless you speak in code, and general isolation for everyone involved, because suicide is just something you don't talk about.
What I don't understand is what makes it ok for a celebrity to commit suicide and not a family member. A few weeks ago I had a confrontation with a family member because I talked to my children about what my father did and she hadn't told her children. I have family members who won't talk about it at all. She was afraid I was going to poison her children with the news.
The way I look at it, suicide became a part of my life when I was three, when my father lost his grip on reality. He was a paranoid schizophrenic most of his life and attempted suicide three times when I was a child. What that does to a child is tell her that not only is her father going to leave, he is going to kill himself to do it.
I can't imagine what the emotional toll did to my mother when I was growing up, but I am starting to have an idea. I had a huge amount of my childhood I blocked out, and now I know why. The constant emotional draining and chaos that my father inflicted on all of us traumatized me at a very early age.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Book about patients
I keep saying I am going to write a book... a book about all the people I have taken care of... anonymously of course. It has crossed my mind in the last few days that people seriously do not understand each other, or humanity. What human beings are really like. Once you have taken care of them, it is easier to get an idea about what they are really like...
As a nurse you care for everyone. Sickness has no economical or social boundaries. It doesn't matter if your patient is in maximum security prison and has been shackled to the hospital bed with two guards standing by it and one by the door, or if he is a rock star leader of his community with the same guards at the door, but for a different reason... both of them can have a heart attack or get cancer. And yes, I have cared for both.
Patients can be really anyone. It was the alcoholics and drug addicts that took up most of my time, and they were rarely truly sick. Their illnesses were usually something secondary to their addiction, like the man whose toe and then foot had to be amputated because he was an alcoholic and ignored an infection. Then there was the woman with chirrosis of the liver who pulled out her IV repeatedly and left the hospital to buy liquor, the drug addict who asked for a cocktail so powerful at bedtime med time that she literally passed out and had to be reversed, and the patient who had bladder cancer and had a bladder created but was so drunk off Dilaudid all the time that she could barely function... these were the people who wasted the time of the people who were really sick.
The paraplegic who got into a screaming argument with me because she was on four narcotics and we can't give those all at once in the hospital- where was her pain anyway?
Then there were the husbands. Some men really can't handle their wives or mothers or girlfriends being sick, and they leave. Never show up. Or come halfheartedly and can't stay. Men with the opposite issue who can't stand to see their wives in a hospital bed and take it out on everyone- every nurse who walks in the door gets an earful of verbal abuse.
Speaking of abuse... then there are the families. A daughter who comes in at 7am right when I get on shift and demands to know why the night nurse didn't medicate her mother for pain, when she did at 6am, and screams at the top of her lungs until you find the doctor on call and give her some more, or the daughter who does the same thing and then calls you a liar and screams at you all the way down the hall... these were the people I got to work with.
As a nurse you care for everyone. Sickness has no economical or social boundaries. It doesn't matter if your patient is in maximum security prison and has been shackled to the hospital bed with two guards standing by it and one by the door, or if he is a rock star leader of his community with the same guards at the door, but for a different reason... both of them can have a heart attack or get cancer. And yes, I have cared for both.
Patients can be really anyone. It was the alcoholics and drug addicts that took up most of my time, and they were rarely truly sick. Their illnesses were usually something secondary to their addiction, like the man whose toe and then foot had to be amputated because he was an alcoholic and ignored an infection. Then there was the woman with chirrosis of the liver who pulled out her IV repeatedly and left the hospital to buy liquor, the drug addict who asked for a cocktail so powerful at bedtime med time that she literally passed out and had to be reversed, and the patient who had bladder cancer and had a bladder created but was so drunk off Dilaudid all the time that she could barely function... these were the people who wasted the time of the people who were really sick.
The paraplegic who got into a screaming argument with me because she was on four narcotics and we can't give those all at once in the hospital- where was her pain anyway?
Then there were the husbands. Some men really can't handle their wives or mothers or girlfriends being sick, and they leave. Never show up. Or come halfheartedly and can't stay. Men with the opposite issue who can't stand to see their wives in a hospital bed and take it out on everyone- every nurse who walks in the door gets an earful of verbal abuse.
Speaking of abuse... then there are the families. A daughter who comes in at 7am right when I get on shift and demands to know why the night nurse didn't medicate her mother for pain, when she did at 6am, and screams at the top of her lungs until you find the doctor on call and give her some more, or the daughter who does the same thing and then calls you a liar and screams at you all the way down the hall... these were the people I got to work with.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Soul Lessons
There are quite a few unpublished posts on this blog from the last three years, posts that just sounded wrong, or inauthentic, or just plain whiny. I would write them and look at them again later and want to just trash them, but I kept them. I thought maybe they were part of my process. In 2010 I started on the road to energy healing, Healing Touch and Reiki... and when you start pursuing the path you need to heal yourself first.
Each piece of life and writing and journaling is a little bit of clarity. However it wasn't until after my father died almost 18 months ago that the pieces started to click into place. Everything that I had ever been through started to make sense. My whole life was like a jigsaw puzzle that started to come together into a clear picture. Gluing the parts together seemed simple, as if my inner or higher self knew all along what it would all mean, and my conscious mind was just starting to get it.
When my father died, I pushed my grief down way, way below my feet, into the Earth. I buried it so deeply that I would either never find it again or never have to touch it. We were prepared for his death. He was sick for years, his mental illness got the best of him, he had tried to end his life before, he didn't want to live past 65 when his disability ran out, and he wanted to leave money for his daughters. The reasons went on and on, and they all made sense.
Monday, July 22, 2013
What suicide does to your psyche
My father killed himself. Actually, he shot himself in the head with his father's gun. Right through the palate.
Right when I am coming into a time in my life that I can say what I need to say, to the people I need to say it to, I am having to be silent on this issue. I really don't like it. I am not sure what it is about the above statements that scares people so much.
Yes, it is an ingracious way to die. I really don't think that is the problem though. I think it is our society's fear of mental illness and what they believe the ramifications are if you have a family member who kills himself.
Does that make my family crazy? Well, yes, and no. When someone you love commits suicide, you go over and over in your head what you could have done. You rehash over and over again the events that lead up to the death. And then you beat yourself up for what you didn't do. And the kicker is, unless you have people who understand to talk to about it, you are not going to discuss your process with anyone.
When our father committed suicide, my sister and I were unknowingly initiated into a club. In case you didn't know, there is a club out there of people who have had a family member die by suicide. Our first person to talk to us about it was the woman at the funeral home who set up the internment and lettering on the grave. She had been through a loved one's suicide, and she said that people will come forward once they know.
That is the other thing about not being able to talk about the manner in which your parent dies. If others don't know, your support doesn't show up. I have been surprised by the number of people who have approached or talked to me about their own losses from suicide. One of my friends has become one of my very good friends, now that we have unfortunately suffered the same loss.
You also lose a lot in the process. Suddenly you are part of a group that understands, and everyone outside of that group does not. Your closest friend in the world really doesn't understand because they haven't been through what you are going through. Suicide affects you for the rest of your life, because family members are left wondering what they could have done for a long time, sometimes until their own death.
Like another parent's death, you start to live more. You start to want to do things that you were afraid to do because you know life is finite. You start to appreciate others and life more. If your parent was mentally ill, you really look at yourself and your mental quirks and try to figure out if there is a solution to any problems you inherited.
If your parent died by suicide there is a darker side to the equation. When someone complains about bouncing a check, or their husband coming home late, or missing an appointment, there is a side of you that says, "I'm sorry, my father shot himself in the head and I am still dealing with that. What exactly is your problem??" It may look callous, but it is reality. The consequences of grieving a suicide are much deeper than what appears on the surface.
From what I know my father's road into mental illness started with a mental break when I was three. He was hallucinating and paranoid and thought people were coming to kill him. He tried to commit suicide three times when I was a tween. From what I understand the first attempt put him in the hospital and out of our home because he was supposed to be watching me and my sister.
There were nuances to his mental illness that were clues he was considering attempting suicide, that I didn't know about. There were signs and paths he had been down before, but because they were part of a mental illness, they were taboo subjects.
Right when I am coming into a time in my life that I can say what I need to say, to the people I need to say it to, I am having to be silent on this issue. I really don't like it. I am not sure what it is about the above statements that scares people so much.
Yes, it is an ingracious way to die. I really don't think that is the problem though. I think it is our society's fear of mental illness and what they believe the ramifications are if you have a family member who kills himself.
Does that make my family crazy? Well, yes, and no. When someone you love commits suicide, you go over and over in your head what you could have done. You rehash over and over again the events that lead up to the death. And then you beat yourself up for what you didn't do. And the kicker is, unless you have people who understand to talk to about it, you are not going to discuss your process with anyone.
When our father committed suicide, my sister and I were unknowingly initiated into a club. In case you didn't know, there is a club out there of people who have had a family member die by suicide. Our first person to talk to us about it was the woman at the funeral home who set up the internment and lettering on the grave. She had been through a loved one's suicide, and she said that people will come forward once they know.
That is the other thing about not being able to talk about the manner in which your parent dies. If others don't know, your support doesn't show up. I have been surprised by the number of people who have approached or talked to me about their own losses from suicide. One of my friends has become one of my very good friends, now that we have unfortunately suffered the same loss.
You also lose a lot in the process. Suddenly you are part of a group that understands, and everyone outside of that group does not. Your closest friend in the world really doesn't understand because they haven't been through what you are going through. Suicide affects you for the rest of your life, because family members are left wondering what they could have done for a long time, sometimes until their own death.
Like another parent's death, you start to live more. You start to want to do things that you were afraid to do because you know life is finite. You start to appreciate others and life more. If your parent was mentally ill, you really look at yourself and your mental quirks and try to figure out if there is a solution to any problems you inherited.
If your parent died by suicide there is a darker side to the equation. When someone complains about bouncing a check, or their husband coming home late, or missing an appointment, there is a side of you that says, "I'm sorry, my father shot himself in the head and I am still dealing with that. What exactly is your problem??" It may look callous, but it is reality. The consequences of grieving a suicide are much deeper than what appears on the surface.
From what I know my father's road into mental illness started with a mental break when I was three. He was hallucinating and paranoid and thought people were coming to kill him. He tried to commit suicide three times when I was a tween. From what I understand the first attempt put him in the hospital and out of our home because he was supposed to be watching me and my sister.
There were nuances to his mental illness that were clues he was considering attempting suicide, that I didn't know about. There were signs and paths he had been down before, but because they were part of a mental illness, they were taboo subjects.
Monday, April 15, 2013
What life is like...
are you afraid to go to the gym because you don't know how to work the machines?
are you scared to go to the grocery store because you'll forget something and have to go back because you panicked the first time you thought of your list and forgot half of it?
do you panic when you are riding your bike and think that maybe the garage door opener in your pocket has a battery that is dead and your neighbors aren't home?
No?
This is how I lived.
are you scared to go to the grocery store because you'll forget something and have to go back because you panicked the first time you thought of your list and forgot half of it?
do you panic when you are riding your bike and think that maybe the garage door opener in your pocket has a battery that is dead and your neighbors aren't home?
No?
This is how I lived.
Friday, June 22, 2012
The Help
Before I read The Help, I had one of those epic Facebook discussions on a friend's wall, about the racial divide in the South, how people up north don't get it (she is a professor at Drake in Iowa), and had all these ideas and indignance that I needed to share. I grew up in a racially, culturally, and socioeconomically divided city. Black people went to public schools, which were terribly underfunded and in a sad state- some of them didn't even have air conditioning. The whites that could afford it went to private school, mostly Catholic. There was little to no mixing. Whites had their golf and tennis clubs, neighborhoods, Mardi Gras clubs and parades, and suburbs. Blacks had theirs.
New Orleans East was built as a haven for whites, with big homes and was far enough from the city... and then it was populated with blacks looking to get out of the inner city. The white people then headed for the Northshore of Lake Ponchartrain, and build out in that area exploded. What I never understood, and still do not understand, was the disparity of it all. It is unfair in a lot of ways, but white people have not yet understood what they have done to themselves. Segregating their kids into private schools and then paying taxes on public schools is paying twice. Giving no oversight or funding to public schools means that the graduates of those schools have no skills when they graduate, some of them can't even read and write. This is the job pool that white employers have to draw from for their businesses, and spend extra money training things that could have been learned in high school. Also, moving across the lake means an hour commute to and from the city, and an hour and a half to the CBD.
New Orleans East was built as a haven for whites, with big homes and was far enough from the city... and then it was populated with blacks looking to get out of the inner city. The white people then headed for the Northshore of Lake Ponchartrain, and build out in that area exploded. What I never understood, and still do not understand, was the disparity of it all. It is unfair in a lot of ways, but white people have not yet understood what they have done to themselves. Segregating their kids into private schools and then paying taxes on public schools is paying twice. Giving no oversight or funding to public schools means that the graduates of those schools have no skills when they graduate, some of them can't even read and write. This is the job pool that white employers have to draw from for their businesses, and spend extra money training things that could have been learned in high school. Also, moving across the lake means an hour commute to and from the city, and an hour and a half to the CBD.
Friday, September 2, 2011
What the heck just happened?
Suddenly, I find myself the mother of three children in school. How exactly did that happen?
Sometimes these things happen when life just flows- opportunities come along that seem too good to pass up. I had looked at the Montessori Kindergarten at a private preschool, that was originally going to be affiliated with the Charter school, in April. I decided that it wouldn't be a good fit based on the teachers and Justin's learning style, which didn't seem to fit into their way of doing things. So when the kids got into the lottery, I didn't bother to register.
Well, over the summer a few things happened with the Board of Directors and a new Principal/Director was hired as well as all of the teachers. I know two people on the board and kept up with the goings-on at the school. Everything seemed to be falling into place for the school so in August we decided to look at the school for Elle, because we felt she needed to be around more kids every day her own age, and because she needed some formal instruction in math. We were falling further and further behind in the curriculum because it didn't fit her.
Sometimes these things happen when life just flows- opportunities come along that seem too good to pass up. I had looked at the Montessori Kindergarten at a private preschool, that was originally going to be affiliated with the Charter school, in April. I decided that it wouldn't be a good fit based on the teachers and Justin's learning style, which didn't seem to fit into their way of doing things. So when the kids got into the lottery, I didn't bother to register.
Well, over the summer a few things happened with the Board of Directors and a new Principal/Director was hired as well as all of the teachers. I know two people on the board and kept up with the goings-on at the school. Everything seemed to be falling into place for the school so in August we decided to look at the school for Elle, because we felt she needed to be around more kids every day her own age, and because she needed some formal instruction in math. We were falling further and further behind in the curriculum because it didn't fit her.
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