1. Early last week I got a letter from the hospital where my orthopedic surgeon works. He has ordered an ultrasound of my right leg to make sure there isn't something undesirable going on with the muscles in that leg. I have been experiencing a lot of pain over the past few months. This pain is different from the pain I normally have. We suspect it caused by my fibula bowing as it take some of my weight (the fibula is a non-weight bearing bone, but my tibia is currently broken and it is shorter than my fibula, so at least some of my weight goes into my fibula instead of the IM nail/giant metal rod holding my tibia together. As a result, my fibula is bending and we think that is what is causing all of my pain. A better explanation can be found in the link here). My surgeon briefly mentioned doing an ultrasound at my appointment on August 25ths, but we didn't spend much time talking about it so I didn't expect it would actually happen. But it is! It has been scheduled for November 1st. This is two days after I return from my trip to Holland. It's good to get it done, but the timing kind of sucks. I see my surgeon next week Friday to sign consent forms for surgery. That is about two weeks before I go on holiday. So one of the last big things I have to do before my trip is see my surgeon, and pretty much the first thing to do after the trip is the ultrasound. Life kind of has an odd way of reminding me of the fact that my tibia is still broken. It's more like shoving it in my face, but there is nothing I can do about it, so I will just get on with it and make the most of a not so great situation. I am glad that my surgeon is being so thorough about everything. After everything my leg has been through (and as a result, everything that I have been through), we rather err on the side of caution and find out if something is wrong now than let it grow into a much bigger problem.
2. This past Tuesday I was supposed to have my final day of training at work. This means being paired with another (obviously more experienced) nurse who shows me how things work on the unit and helps me get adjusted to things. I wasn't expecting to have this training shift. My final day of training was actually supposed to be last week, but the charge nurse offered me one more. I'm not one to turn down a shift, especially with a big trip coming up soon. Nobody is going to say no to more money (or more training)! I gladly accepted it. But, surprise! We were short staffed on Tuesday. The charge nurse called pretty much everybody who was available to see if someone would come in for the day, but nobody would. What was the solution? Throw the newbie off the deep end and see if she sinks or swims! Okay, to be fair, I was assigned the easiest part of the unit. The charge nurse did that on purpose because she recognized that I was supposed to have a training shift and the news that I would be on my own was completely unexpected. But an easy day turned into a rather hectic one with two discharges and two new admissions! Fortunately I handled it all. But I did kind of feel like I was forced to jump of the proverbial cliff. I was also thrilled for seven pm to come around and to go home. I've heard a lot of new nurses describe their first few months as followed: they were terrified walking into work before each shift started and relieved when it ended and nobody had died; the first months often had them wondering if they had made a mistake in their career choices. Another description I can relate too was a nurse who said she felt proud in her uniform, but the moment she got on the unit she felt like an imposter and that everyone would eventually find out she was a fraud, not a nurse at all. Fortunately, I held everything together. I'm going to stick with the advice several nurses have given me: If nobody dies, there's no need to panic! Looking back, it might not have been a bad thing to be thrown into my first solo shift alone. That was supposed to happen this Friday and I had been dreading it all weekend. At least now it is out of the way. You only have one first day as a nurse and then you only ever have one first day of being a nurse on her own, and I have now done both!
3. The magazine I ordered from South Korea has finally arrived! I am really thrilled about this, because I had ordered it as the start of July and wasn't expecting it to come anymore. It is part one of a three part series in a cross stitching magazine for the butterfly quilt I am working on. I was feeling pretty bummed out that I wouldn't have the completed series, but now I do.
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| I've almost completed the four bottom most squares. |
5. While at the bookstore this evening, mum got me some lovely sewing magazines. These are great because not only do they show you pictures of projects or provide information about where you can buy the material or kits to make them, but they also give actual instructions and the patterns necessary to make things!
For starters, the cultural differences were overwhelming. I mean, I'm a Dutch girl living in Canada; he was born and raised in India and now lives in the US. Culturally, things were difficult. Not insurmountable, but definitely a challenge.
On top of that was the long distance nature of the relationship. It was fine at first, but as time went on... I don't know. I'm the type of person that just needs a good hug and some physical contact (holding hands, cuddling). We were only seeing each other every 1-2 months. This wasn't really anyones fault - he was busy with work and I was finishing up school, but that doesn't change the fact that we weren't seeing each other as often as I would have liked. Every time we spent time together was amazing - everything felt so happy and just right. But then one of us would have to go home, and I was left with this empty, longing, loneliness. Missing him was too difficult; it was exhausting. It felt like an emotional roller coaster - I would have the anticipation of seeing him build up, than peak when I saw him, and then it would crash when he went home, only to slowly build up again in the weeks prior to seeing each other again. The distance and lack of physical contact was getting hard. I wanted nothing more than to move closer to him and work on building a life together. All of my goals focused around that - save up for a car, look for jobs close to the US/Canada boarder, apply to those jobs and move there. I wanted to be closer to him so badly.
This last bit is mixed in with and leads to the third issue - planning for the future. I was planning to be closer to him. I was hoping to get married in a few years, to have that little house with the white picket fence that you hear so often about, to have children. There were things we wanted together - a living room with bookcases lining every wall, a koi pond, to travel together. He wants to go to school. That effectively puts the relationship on hold or something for the next three years. Not only do we stay long-distance for that entire time (which also means my need for physical contact doesn't get fulfilled) but my own ideas for the future are put on hold. The relationship was my priority, but I didn't feel like it was a priority to him - that's what school was, and still is. I felt like my needs were being put on the side. I understand why he wants to go to school, and I respect it, but what about what I want and what I need in terms of the relationship? Right at the moment that I start to want more and feel like I want things to become more serious and state that I am finding the long-distance nature of things increasingly difficult, he wants to go back to school and that means I get to see even less of him than I already was. Maybe I should have seen this coming. I mean, I new he wanted to go back to school when I first met him. Maybe I was to inexperienced to see that it couldn't work. I just really hoped we could figure out a solution. I mean, even when I was thinking about going back to school to bridge from RPN to RN, my priority was still the relationship - I would move closer to him and both work and go to school part time so that I would have plenty of time for him/the relationship. But he will be in school full-time if he gets accepted into his first program of choice and he might have to move even farther away.
I have no doubt that he cared about me and wanted to be with me. I do, however, feel like I was ready for more in the relationship and he wasn't. I also feel like three years is a long time to ask somebody to wait, especially when you've already been with someone for over a year and that person is telling you that they are ready for more. Maybe it was just bad timing; maybe if we had met two or three years from now things could have worked out. I don't know. I just wish he could have been honest with me, and to himself. Relationships are supposed to get more serious as people develop more feelings for each other. I didn't think that seriousness was going to develop while he was at school for three more years, and I couldn't handle seeing even less of him and putting my needs and wants for the future on hold while he did what he wanted to do. To some extent, relationships are about compromise, or finding a path that makes everybody happy. What he wanted didn't include compromise - he would both go school and a have girlfriend to spend time with on time off; I would be left waiting. I feel like I would have been a treat throughout his hectic school schedule; meanwhile I would be desperately waiting for those few precious days with him.
So the relationship ended, and I've never felt so horrible and conflicted in my life. I've also never cried so much. I worry every day that it was the wrong choice and that I will never find someone like him again. But I also know that I want somebody whose priorities will be the relationship and building a life together, just like those things are my priority when I am in a relationship.
Anyways, my mum bought me the magazines to help cheer me up and distract me. There are some lovely toy penguin patterns in them that I am really excited to try out! On top of that, the one magazine gives advice on starting your own business. I'm going to be working part time for a while, with my leg being broken and surgery in the new year, so I will have lots of free time on my hands. And my mum and I have mentioned possibly starting a small business selling handmade items before. This is the perfect time to give it a shot! I am thinking that I might start with some cross stitch buttons and go from there.
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