A Little Flaky Around the Edges

…yep, that’s me.

I’ve been on a nice, even keel since going back to what appears to be my “normal” AP dose, for which I’m incredibly grateful. It’s amazing what a difference it makes in the way I think and feel. Today I was even able to learn some new things at work that I’m going to be doing while the nurse who usually does them is out of the country for a month, and I believe I’ll be able to do it well once I get a couple of days in.

There’s only one small problem (isn’t there always?): our facility is one of the only three buildings in the entire company that does these quality assurance/quality improvement measures consistently, and the administrator is reportedly a little nervous about keeping our standing with the QA/QI nurse being gone that long and a substitute taking her place.

Naturally, my faulty brain wiring translates this into “he’s nervous because he’s having to trust this job to someone he thinks is a flake”. That may or may not be true, but it’s how my thought processes work. And to be honest, if the situation were reversed and I had to put a wild card in the QA/QI position, I’d be worried too.

Naw, no pressure there. And it doesn’t help that I have a confidence problem. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad for the opportunity to redeem myself, if only temporarily. But I know how the world works, and sometimes it feels as though I’m walking around with a sign plastered across my forehead labeling me “UNSTABLE” in bright red letters.

I still believe I did the right thing by taking myself off the floor and admitting that I can’t do it anymore. But there are always casualties incurred when one fights this kind of battle, and once again, it was the trust of my superiors at work. It happened at my last job and ended catastrophically. Now it’s happened at this one, although the outcome is better and my current employer at least gives me the chance to be useful in ways that I can handle.

But I don’t care how many times I’ve been told “It’s not your fault, it’s a medical condition”—I’m sick to death of losing bits and pieces of me to this illness. My once-sterling reputation in the health care community has been shredded, and that’s just the stuff that’s happened since I was actually diagnosed. It doesn’t take a long look back into my history to be able to see a pattern of difficulties that has escalated in both frequency and impact with the passage of time.

Believe me, I don’t want to be seen as a flake. This is why I take all those pills and go to therapy, even though I’ve really had to reshuffle my priorities to be able to afford mental health care (“Honey, we can’t pay the cable bill this week—I’m gonna be out of Geodon by Monday”). But while I may be a little flaky around the edges, I’m also determined to do a GREAT job with the QA/QI position while my co-worker is in Kenya on her mission trip.

After all, I’m an optimist, like a robin with one end of a ten-foot earthworm in its beak…..it only takes a nibble to keep me trying!