I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. I’m a professional, a healthcare professional at that. I’m a nurse, a community nurse having only qualified from university 11 months ago. And it’s emotionally demanding, intellectually challenging, physically draining at times, but the best and only job I could imagine doing.
As this is my first post, I will clarify the obvious. I have BPD. I am in the very fortunate position to have a low level disorder, and am currently at a phase in which I am self managing. Who knows how long that will last, but I’ve had it together for a few years now (depending on your definition of ‘together’), and am proud of the achievements I’ve made professionally.
Arguably I believe my bi-polar makes me a better nurse at times. Over the years there has been many variances to the relationship between my bi-polarism and I, most pretty toxic and destructive, but lately I appear to have accepted it as me and me as it and one and the same. If I make it sound complicated, it’s not. Hi, I’m a nurse, I like the colour the green, I have brown hair, am a bit overweight and have BPD. Who are you?
Now this week has been a bit of a tough one. One of the many emotional labours we face is caring for patients at end of life when they have chosen to die in their own homes. It is a wonderful feeling to honour a persons last wishes. And more often than not it all goes precisely how it should, because we all genuinely care about these people. I think people forget that by the time we get to actual end of life, we as their nurses have been in the it homes several times a day. We know the family, we have sat on the bed and held their hands and taken away some of the pain. We have seen the strongest of husbands and wives breakdown behind the bedroom door, seen children step up to be Carers and tried to provide the support they might need. But sometimes there is no family, no friends, but there is spirit and determination. I have watched a patient deteriorate and be in discomfort by their own choice, because maintaining that control was the most important thing to them. I wanted to take away the pain, but they wanted to keep control. And that is their choice. I have been battling with this today, my day off. Because I was upset that she was going to continue to say no to pain relief, that she would continue to deteriorate in pain. And I am questioning whether I am upset more because I am having to watch it or is it truly about my patient? Because all she wants is to have control during her final days, I have no right to deny her that.
The Bi-polar Nurse 