Indian American Love Child

My heart is so heavy right now. I haven't had a shift like last nights in so long. I am absolutely mentally, physically, and emotionally spent. I spent two nights working with this very young patient who kept getting progressively sicker. Really nice and supportive parents, and pretty nice decent guy who just happened to be stuck in a crappy situation. The first night I worked with him, it was busy but manageable. But last night was honestly a shit show. I worked my butt off just to keep things from going south, and despite my greatest efforts things went super south. I have never cried in the middle of code, and there I was tear drop after tear drop. This young man  expressed his wishes to me, and we literally did the opposite. Of course, we thought it was in his best interest, but really what ended up happening was horrible. I can't write about it here for HIPAA reasons, but I don't even have to, because I know I will never forget this night. And then on top of all that....

Life has a really strange way of working out. The older I get, the more I realize everything happens for a reason. Even though I will be leaving California on very bittersweet terms, and god knows I will miss it terribly, I think I finally understand why things might have worked out the way they did and why I am leaving. I am leaving to fulfill a dream. I am moving to NYC in a little over a month, and if there was ever a time for me to move to New York, it is most definitely NOW. After California. I feel so much more zen (go ahead and call the hippie police on me), and in a healthier place. If I lived in NYC even as little as two years ago, I would have been outta control. Going out all the time, endless mindless dates, getting trapped in the shallow "social scene", but now I think I will truly enjoy NYC for all the right reasons. Truthfully, some of things I used to love about New York has lost its appeal...like the hustle and bustle, the everyday grind, the constant sti...

I had to make some difficult decisions the past couple of weeks about everything from my career and residence to my relationship. After a lot of soul searching, and a pretty tough conversation with S, I decided I am going to leave California and move back to the East coast. When the pain of the S situation subsided a little, a whole new kind of sadness set in. I didn't realize how much I have fallen in love with San Diego. My heart literally hurts when I think of leaving. This totally boggles me. I spent the last nine months enjoying myself out here, but not without serious bouts of missing NYC/home. And now, I have the opportunity to leave and move to NYC, a city I have dreamed about living in since I was a teenager, and I am still not happy. Even the thought of being closer to my friends and family, who i spent the last 10 months missing isn't making me happier. When I was trying to independently decide whether to stay in SD or not, I couldn't tell if I liked SD becau...

God, I seriously hate being a woman sometimes. For starters, it is a crap ton of work. Just the other day, I literally spent 8 hours behind hair management alone! Waxing, coloring, shaving, trimming... I mean, what an ordeal! But worse than any female physical maintenance is the emotions and thoughts that come along with being a female. After to talking to many a men and woman on a very personal level over the years, I am going to go ahead and make the safe assumption that is pretty much a female problem. Men surely have emotions/thoughts but not to the extent that women do. And I seriously envy that.  This past weekend was a prime example of emotion/thought overload. I had one freaking weekend alone, and it threw my mind into hyper drive. First I was bored. Then I was sad because so many of my friends had left. Then I was mad because I felt like I was waiting on someone. Then I was happy because I did end up meeting up with my some of my friends. Then I was bored and sad a...

I am going to preface this post by saying it is hella loud where I am at, and I can barely hear my own thoughts, yet alone put them into coherent sentences. Nevertheless, I feel the need to write, and I just feel like I have so many emotions/moments to chronicle. Anyways, where do I start?! I guess I will start with work! Next week ends my first travel assignment! I honestly do not know where seven months have gone! It feels like yesterday I was sitting in orientation learning about snake bite protocols! Nervous, excited, unsure about the next couple of months would have in store for me...I never expected this. Nursing in California, or in particular Palomar Medical Center, has really given me insight into what nursing practice should really be like. Patient ratios, lift teams, resource nurses, and so many other resources make nursing not only way more manageable (far less burn out), but more importantly, so much safer! The acuity at Palomar was a little bit less than what I a...

The world just learned of terrorist attacks in Belgium- three explosions in major metro hubs of Brussels. Though it is too soon to say for sure, news sources are saying it is in retaliation for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a man associated with the Paris attacks. Now I won't pretend to know the intricacies associated with this attack or the one in Paris, but I will say the little I do know, hurts my heart and saddens me to my core.  I think working as a nurse has made me somewhat immune to the culture of fear. I see horrible things unexpectedly happen to people everyday, and it has taught me that no matter how carefully you live your life, whatever is meant to happen, will. And so for that reason, I won't let fear of what ifs dictate my life. But that's not how most people live, and respectfully so. It is very disheartening to know that there will people afraid to ride the metro to work from now on. Or to let their kids hang out with friends of  a certain race or...

I just got back from Capital Hill last week, where I got to attend this amazing program called NIWI or Nurse In Washington Internship. The primary focus of the internship was to help nurses better understand the legislative process, and how nurses can use this process to invoke policy change on both a state and national level. It was a fascinating program from which I learned a great deal. But I think what I enjoyed the most, was meeting so many amazing nurses from all around the country. Nurses who had enough initials behind their name to form a small sentence. Nurses on the boards of some huge nursing organizations, and passionately represented their respective specialties. Nurses who had ventured outside the realm of traditional nursing and gone into politics, business, law, etc. It was the most professionally inspiring experience I have had in a long time! I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it, and I left the program having a clearer idea of what I needed to do to achieve my fut...