Admission Order Set: The Name

When I was a small child, I remember my mother coming home from work with medical supplies for me to play with. In particular, I recall that she would bring home her facemask with plastic visor and I would take great enjoyment in parading around the house with it strapped to my tiny face. Now, let’s just skate right over the implications of letting a child play with potentially contaminated PPE… and think about how cute Maggie must have been running around the house telling everyone that she was going to be a doctor like her mommy. (Nevermind that my mother was actually a nurse on a trauma step-down unit – there are no such distinctions in the head of a three-year-old.)

When it came time for me to graduate from preschool to school, it wasn’t good enough that I wanted to be a doctor. Now these pushy adults wanted to know what kind of doctor I was going to be. What the hell, man? I’m five. How am I supposed to know that there are different KINDS of doctors? So, I told them I was going to be like the only doctor I knew - Dr. Pam, my pediatrician. Shortly thereafter, around the age of seven or so, I knew more about the world around me, and I KNEW I was going to be a psychiatrist. I wanted to help people who were sad.

It all went downhill from there, folks. My mental image of myself changed radically. Between ages eight and ten I was subjected to some fairly intense abuse of physical, emotional, sexual, and mental natures. After the court-ordered therapy that resulted from that time in my life, I decided that I HATED anything to do with mental health. I was still going to be a doctor, but psychiatry was out.

I kept up with the whole doctor thing until I was a freshman at state university. After my first semester, I took some truly bad advice, moved back home and gave up my lifelong goal. I took a tangentially related track and became a nurse through the local community college. (Just like my mother after all?)

However, I never felt done. The goalposts kept moving. As soon as my associates degree was done, I got restless. I finished a bachelor’s degree. I got restless again. I changed specialties. I got restless again. I decided that maybe I would feel fulfilled in leadership, so I got an MBA. I got restless again. I changed specialties again. I am now restless once more. (I can hear my therapist over in the corner mumbling something about comfort in chaos after trauma, but that’s a post for another time.)

So, here I am. This most recent chapter of my life has been about finding what makes me thrive, with the assistance of some very intense and rewarding psychotherapy. I’m grasping with both hands at the two things that make me feel fulfilled: writing and using my skills as a clinician to help others. I have completed the first of two applications to a doctorate program for nursing. I have outlined a humorous, but heartfelt book I would like to write about my experiences with trauma, complex PTSD, and borderline personality disorder entitled “My Trauma Loves My Cat”.

I have been a lifelong student. I am a nurse in my soul. I will be a doctor, eventually.

Welcome to the world: Dr. Student, RN – The blog that was created to explore mental health, trauma, and therapy.

I hope to crack open the fragile eggshell around those three topics with (sometimes biting) humor so that wherever you are in the world, for whatever reason you are reading this – you will know that you are not alone. There are many medical and professional journals that explore psychiatry, psychology, trauma, etc. Kudos to those incredible experts for constantly cultivating knowledge in a dynamic field.

I’m a little bit different. This blog is a little bit different. I am here in the trenches, still learning, still recovering. I am not an authority on the topic. However, I am a voice with raw, firsthand experience. Thanks for listening to that voice.

All my love,

Maggie

P.S. Wouldn’t you just KNOW that I came back to baseline and am pursuing the doctorate in psychiatry and mental health?