Taking off the glasses

Living with Dysthemia is never easy, but it’s particularly challenging when the illness is affecting you and you don’t even realise it. Sometimes it feels like you are wearing a really bad pair of glasses that amplify your faults, diminish your strengths and makes you see things in other people that just aren’t there. Take yesterday for example. I was just finishing up the first week of my new clinical practicum. New clinicals are always challenging because everything is, well, new: new department, new teacher, new students, and new ways of doing things. This one was particularly challenging since it had been 6 months since the last clinical (talk about feeling rusty), it was at a different hospital AND in a different language (English vs French). Add to all that the exhaustion of long shifts, late nights of research to prep for the following day and sleepless nights filled with anxiety.

By the end of my shift yesterday I was in tears. I felt like I was doing everything wrong and couldn’t seem to get the hang of even the most basic things like bathing my patient. Warning TMI (too much information) ahead... when you have to change your semi-comatose patient’s sheet because you’ve managed to spread bodily fluids everywhere, you know your technique is definitely lacking. :-( I felt completely incompetent and awkward, I felt like all the other students were breezing through everything and were way more experienced than me. I was really regretting taking a desk job over the summer instead of one as an orderly. When my teacher talked about issues during the day at the end of the shift, I was certain they were all about me.

Even with Mr. Perfect I thought I was doing things wrong. After work I drove to Truro to drop off my car (which has been sold by the way – yay). I felt like Mr. Perfect was frustrated to have to give me a drive back home, even though he was in Nova Scotia already for work. I was sure he was upset with me because I had sold my car and would now be “burdening” him with my lack of transportation. I managed to convince myself that he was keeping some kind of frustration from me, which resulted in me asking (over and over again), “is anything wrong?”

I ended up sleeping in the spare bedroom just so I could cry myself to sleep. I didn’t want to Mr. Perfect to know I couldn't keep it together. This morning wasn’t much better. Even though I had been working on my weekly report every night this week, I still had hours of work to do before my noon deadline. My head ached and I was completely overwhelmed by the 30 pages or so of work that needed to be completed.

I only realised I had been “wearing my Dysthemia glasses” for the last two days when Mr. Perfect asked me if I had taken my medication. I had, but the question seemed to send an alarm bell in the back of my mind. I suddenly realised I wasn’t an incompetent nurse or a horrible girlfriend... I was in a fog of Dysthemia. It’s incredible how it can distort your perceptions and make you imagine the most ridiculous things. I’ve since been able to “remove my glasses”, but I need to remind myself of my illness whenever my exhaustion or stress makes me doubt myself. It’s odd to think than anyone would need to be reminded of an illness. We’ve also planned to go for a run this afternoon, which I know will help greatly.