It Wasn't A Cold

It was/is strep.  [slow clap]  Braaaa-vo.

I've "probably had it for 4-6 weeks" before I was Dxed a week ago.  This is what grad school has done to me that I worked for 1.5 months with freakin' strep and just pushed through it.  Okay, okay, we're gonna make it.  Words like "final" and "evaluation" are being used and emailed.  It just sucks that words like "streptococcus," "amoxicillin," and "Difulcan" are being uttered with the same gravitas.

8 more work days.
10 more calendar days.
11 more days til I see my sweetheart.
12 days til we leave for home.

I thought I would spend my last two weeks leisurely reading in the test library.  Instead I will be working extremely hard on the reports and College application I planned to have done by now.

Peace, turkeys.
Psyche

Summer Cold

Thunder Bay is not a warm place.  Generally there are 2 weeks of some pretty awesome summer, though.  Not so much this year. 

Also, I have the dreaded "summer cold."  All this makes me feel better about the fact that I have not taken down the xmas tree decorations from this fake plant in my apartment.

Nothing profound to say, I'm just plain old sick.  Send soup.

26 more days to go.

Twenty-nine Today

Okay.  29 more days to go...

I cried in supervision because, well, Dr. D. is awesome.  She's been a healing relationship for me and I'm going to really miss her.  After some of the experiences I've had, being able to come into supervision and freely discuss countertransference issues and my fears and faults has been amazing.  I wasn't sure I was going to graduate having had this experience.  Then along came Dr. D.  I want another year with her, not going away from her.  Sigh...

And when I teared up in supervision, she did too.  It was wonderful.  I'll probably have 2 or 3 more sessions with her.  I hope I can be this to someone during my career.

:)

Tomorrow will be August

You didn't need me to tell you that, of course.  But there it is.  As of tomorrow there are 31 days to go until I have satisfied the requirements of this PhD.  Queue the recording of Johnny Cash singing "10 More Minutes to Go" in my head.  It's not actually as morbid as that, you know, but there is a sort of "death" coming.

The death of student-dom.  At 42, I don't think it's come too early.  It's just that there are some things to which I've grown accustomed.  For example, saying, "Actually..." and then correcting my friends, it being socially acceptable to bring Tupperware to every party so I can take home the extra food, and having access to all the electronic journals.

I'll miss it being someone else's fault, ultimately, if I really screw something up.  The fact that my "mistakes" have real and serious consequences is hitting me right in my terror centre.  As I start to wind up with clients/patients up here, I realize that I really mean something to some of these folks.  That's not something I'm super-used-to facing.  I don't mean to insinuate that I don't think I mean anything to my friends and small family.  I know I do.  This is different.  I became meaningful through my work.  It might be a little bit like bringing yourself to life.  It's weird and hopeful and scary and disorienting and exhausting and boring and discombobulating.  It's a lot of pressure to "get it right" in such a young science.  Going through the PhD has taught me that I now know more about what I don't know.  That's humbling.

Soon The Student will become The Professional.  In 31 days.  Well, 31 days + 1800 hours of supervised practice + jurisprudence + EEEP + orals.  So maybe it'll be more of a transition after all.

Thunder Day

6am - wake up and feed cats separate meals with different medications.  Get bitten by cats.  Supervise feedings because they have different medical problems and each cat's food is detrimental to the other.

6:15 - stab cat #2 with a needle full of insulin

6:30 - make own breakfast and get ready for the day

830 - arrive at Service Ontario to update license plate sticker that husband let expire.  Oscillate between anger and laughing re: husband who said he'd replace sticker and "mail it up" to Thunder Bay and to "just avoid the cops."
8:35 -  delight in the lack of lineup at Service Ontario in small cities/towns.  Realize ownership and registration are not in glove box as anticipated.
8:45 - walk out with new sticker
8:46 - go back into Service Ontario to correct mistake on receipt re: license plate number
9:30 - realize lines do form at Service Ontario in small cities and that you just embarrassed yourself trying to convince all the workers (and everyone listening) that they wrote down the wrong license plate then realize you've been trying to convince them of your old plate number not your new one and skulk out feeling like dork in  your bright purple coat that a random stranger in line says he has noticed multiple times around town and will "totally remember you all the time now."

9:35 - score an early appointment with your chiropractor because you are right across the street.

10:00 - suggest to the pharmacist and reception at your doctor's office in Toronto that they talk to each other about why their faxes aren't working and just fill your Rx instead of using you as a go between.

10:30 - stifle urge to murder an old woman for repeatedly "trying out" every noise her phone makes at Tim Hortons.

11:00 - FINALLY pick up your Rx. Go to work.

11:05 - Be at work two hours early trying to get shit done without people interrupting you.  Get interrupted multiple times.  But it's fine.

1:00pm - multi-disciplinary meeting.

3:30 - Tx client 9/10 on the challenge-ometer

4:30 - Tx client 9.5/10 on the challeng-ometer

5:30 - run home to stab cat #2 with insulin needle.  Supervise feeding.

5:50 - take cats bowls away from them because they are bullshitters and can't be trusted.

6:00 - run DBT skills group with introverted co-leader that you love dearly and hyper-extroverted supervisor that you desperately want to be your friend.

8:00 - debrief.

8:40 - go get groceries.
9:00 - and wine!

9:30 - get home to find cat vomiting directly into your good flats.
9:31 - clean up, put away groceries, drink wine, return a few emails, realize you have a writing meeting at 7:30am that you haven't prepared for and a parent session that you are likewise unprepared for in the afternoon.  Decide nothing matters and you are just going to finish the internship so you can say you have a PhD but then really just run a cupcake shop.

10:35 - realize you haven't blogged in a while or done anything fun today.  Did you eat dinner?  Do the coldcuts at group count?  Should you eat jellybeans now?  Why did you just buy jellybeans and fragrance free fabric softener?  Didn't you get any food?  WTF?

10:36 - realize there is no way you will get enough sleep tonight as you have to get up at 5:30 and decide to have another glass of wine with your magnesium supplement and sure this banana is still good.

Lying on the Floor Listening to Comedy on Netflix

This past Tuesday was the first time since I've been up here that I left work and didn't have to do anything that evening.  I didn't have to run home and deal with writing or cleaning or go get groceries.  I didn't have to prep a session for the next day.  I didn't have to keep a health appointment.  So I left work and got in my car.  I sat there for 20 minutes unable to decide what to do next.  So I wandered around the mall for a while and went home.  After feeding the cat, I basically laid around on the carpet with Netflix on in the background.  Apparently Dave Chappelle put out a couple of specials...

So did a dude named Neal Brennan.  It's called "3 Mics."  It's him on stage with three microphones.  At the left one, he does 1-liners, at the right one, he does standup, and at the middle one he does "emotional stuff."  He's a pretty good comedian but not amazing.  I didn't like the 1-liners and was about to change the program when he started at the middle mic.  Yeah... wow, shit got deep fast.  Then I couldn't look away.

I identify with him.

...

But I don't have jokes the way he does.  I don't have that way of feeling like I'm "winning at life" for a few minutes.  I mean, I love humour but I'm not a comedian.  I don't get to make people laugh the way he does.  Sometimes I get to help people feel or heal - but I think I'll leave that thought there for now.

I'm still not sure what I want to do for my supervised practice year, although I've applied to a few places already.  I don't feel pulled extremely strongly to anything in particular, but feel like I still have a lot to learn.  Apparently, this is a sign of being ready to be done the PhD: realizing that you really still don't know a lot... but you know how to think.  I thought I would know a lot more and feel a lot more prepared when I started this whole thing a million years ago... but this is good too.  And I guess if I don't know what I "really want to do," that might mean that I could be really happy doing clinical in a wide variety of different sites.  Here's hoping.

Love,
Psyche

PS. I fixed commenting! :)

Lousy Smarch Weather

Snow.  Rain.  Freeze. Melt. Repeat.  That's been this entire month.  For a city that claims to get the most sun of any city in Ontario, Thunder Bay is not living up to its Wikipedia page.  On one hand, I'm thankful to have been spared the usual -40C daytime temps in January and February.  On the other hand, March sucks.  And all the locals agree, I would be foolish to take off my snow tires until the last week of April or sometime in early May.  [sobs]

In other news, my work is going really well.  I feel a level of confidence in line with my developmentally appropriate level of competence.  It's new and good.

So things are holding just fine.  No other shoe has dropped, although there is still 5 months for footwear to fall to earth.  Oh, and I got a new fancy uppy-downy desk.  So my shoulder is also starting to stabilize.  Life is... good.  I even saw my partner for 44 hours this weekend.

I guess it's time to step up my looking-for-a-job game? 

Love,
Psyche

All About the Climb

I've been incommunicado despite having passed residency-hump-day.  That's right.  I'm more than halfway done the internship and I'm relieved and terrified in equal measure.  I've begun applying to jobs with no firm leads yet and still less certain about what I want to do with my life than a kindergardener who can't decide between astrophysicist and pretty-kitty.  Something in psychology, I guess?

I've also made a couple of changes lately, taken a couple of healthy risks.  And regardless of the healthiness inherent in those risks, have been fighting cold viruses and the bitter cold of northeastern Ontario.  Damn you, winter dryness and constant nosebleeds!  Oh, dear reader, I feel like something moderately profound is happening... maybe something semi-profound or at least a slight rank above amateurfound.  It's hard to put in to words and I sometimes feel a bit of Shining-syndrome up here that make me wonder if anything is meaning to anyone but me and if in August Mr. Husband will come to find me frozen in a snowbank watching the Toni awards on my iPhone.  But I think I'm making progress.  I don't cry for no reason as much as I used to.  That seems like progress.

I faced my fears in the hearing last month and can honestly report it felt... a bit disappointing.  I did really well and feel proud of myself.  But it was not nearly the fight it was the first time around so I had a lot of left over adrenaline that had no where to go afterwards.  So I channeled it into some conference presentations and now some front-line social workers likely think I am more vehemently passionate about chat counselling than is reasonable for a woman with only two hands.  But it's fine.

It's fine.

Everything's fine.

I'm just not used to that.

So I breathe and breathe again, and continue to realize there is still air even after the nightmares.  And the weight that used to sit on my chest as I slept has fallen to the side for now.  What's left is residual nervousness, just tiny little terrors that if I let my guard down that's when... when the big awful something will happen again.  But for now it's not, and for a while it's not, and even though I am alone up here, it's not, and I'm not.

And maybe I'm befriending fear and maybe I'm kidding myself.  But maybe I am really breathing in and out without assistance.  We'll see.  For now it's fine.

Love Psyche

In one month...

On February 15th, 2017, I will return to the College of Massage Therapists of Ontario to re-do the hearing in which I gave evidence in regarding an issue from December, 2011.  I'm not looking forward to it.  The original incident was traumatic.  The hearing was traumatic.  Finding out the successful outcome was overturned was traumatic.  The state of how women and girls are treated in systems that are supposed to protect them is less than ideal.

If you're in Toronto that day and want to show your solidarity or support, it would mean a great deal to me for you to attend part of that hearing.  I understand it is open to the public.

PM me for any further information.

Back to Blurk

Sorry folks; I can't get the video to be right-side-up.  :( 
So on to other things...

Nancy invited me over to her house to hang out with her and her daughter while we "decorated" xmas cookies.

I ate a considerable number of them

These ones made it back to my appartment.

Others weren't so lucky.

My super-cool supervisor from Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital took me out to lunch on my last day there.  This was incredibly appreciated as I was feeling like a total Grinch about xmas.  Her husband is some kind of hilarious awesome dude who buys strange things from thrift shops and duct-tapes them to her dashboard.  He is a psychiatrist.  I am now convinced that there are kindred spirits in Thunder Bay in the mental health community.

Sean came to visit for the xmas break and it made us both VERY happy indeed.  We did stuff.  There were presents and a turkey.  We had the other interns over for Festivus Lite.  I did not hospitalize my fellow intern with extremely serious food allergies.  We went to Kanga's Sauna and Pancake House (yes, you read that correctly).  I lost my bathing suit (I honestly do not know how this happened).

Even little Dr. King (Luther) came with Sean.  The cats were not that excited about their reunion.

However...

Thatcher seemed very happy to have a visit with her boy-hooman.

They've gone back home and it's been just us red-headed gals for a week now.  Back to the routine.  I'm .80 at Children's Centre now with only educationals and one client at the mental health outpatient (MHOP) clinic.  The goal for the next 8 months is to basically become a psychologist and be able to practice near-independently by the end.  So diving right into assessments and interesting therapy cases (that I wish I could talk about but hey, confidentiality).  I learned the WPPSI-IV and WISC-V (intelligence tests for toddlers/preschoolers and children-up-to-16-years).  Oh, and I'll be supervising a junior PhD Lakehead student for a while too.

I'm busy.  I miss you.  I hope to hear from you soon.

Oh, and it's only going down to -18C overnight.  Whoo-hoo!