u/Jinxicatt

I’ve worked at the local hospital for the better part of a decade, holding a variety of positions over the years. In some ways it’s a decent hospital - the vast majority of day-to-day staff deeply care about the patients and people in our community.

Unfortunately upper and C-suite management continue to worry only about their bottom line. People like Brigid Burke (CFO), Amy Vanterpool (CNO), and other managers continue to make cuts in the places that hurt staff and patients the most.

If you are hospitalized here, know that you will very likely have a nurse who truly wants to help you. Unfortunately that nurse will be taxed almost to the breaking point in caring for too many people with little to no support. The ICU frequently is so understaffed that charge nurses are having to take patients of their own. Often ICU nurses have too many patients to be considered remotely safe.

On the PCU, management routinely promises more help while cutting staff. They recently openly lied to low level managers that they plan to add CNA’s to the floor. That same day, communication was sent to staffing that this unit is not allowed any CNA support.

I could go on about the poor planning, lack of safe staffing, and comfy managers drawing fat paychecks. If this hospital continues down the path they are on, it will only lead to disaster for patients and those staff who do care enough to still put in effort. If you or a loved one is needing more than a quick check up I strongly recommend you make the drive to Providence in Missoula, or Spokane. It is truly crushing my soul to daily invest in people only to see them abused by this B-tier hospital in a broken system. I think it’s time for transparency.

I’m looking at you - Austin Neese, Joy Fortin, Kenneth Lard, Brenda Houston…

Do better.

We’ve been together for 12 years. Have a whole life, four cats that adore him, a cozy apartment we’ve decorated together. But I have struggled for years feeling emotionally and often physically neglected. He tries his best - but it’s never quite right and his attempts at support tend to leave me feeling even more lonely.

We’ve just discovered that he has autism. I’m glad he has a diagnosis because it’s been extremely revealing and helpful for him. But on my end it’s become simply another thing to support him through as he processes and discovers more about himself. And it’s honestly stolen the little hope I had that he might be able to learn how to connect emotionally. Nothing against autism - please don’t read this as me judging. I’m just not sure I can continue to carry the burden of emotional connection in our relationship.

He went through a 4-year stretch of not wanting sex - I mean 0 intimacy at all. I should have left then honestly. He’s given about 10 different reasons for that “dry spell” - back pain, working too much, didn’t think I wanted it (despite me explicitly and repeatedly saying I did)…but honestly I think it was because I was overweight. Now I’ve lost 100lbs and he’s all over me and I want to vomit every time we are intimate…it just feels so fake now.

I just feel lonely and hopeless. Something needs to change for me but I don’t know if separation is the answer. It will crush him. And I do still love him. But I feel so alone in this relationship. I work an extremely high-pressure job overnights and come home every morning to him complaining about how he has to leave his stay-at-home job for a 30min site visit. Meanwhile I just spent 13 hours being physically and verbally abused and I don’t even want to mention it anymore. I’m just so tired.

We tried couple’s counseling once. He immediately hated the therapist and only made it two sessions before having an outburst during the session and we haven’t been back. He’d “be fine trying again” - if I organize it. Again.

He’s agreed to doing his own personal counseling. If I find him someone to see. It’s always on me to plan and schedule and carry on…

I’ve spent the last month in bed, just barely dragging myself to work and then back to bed for days. I don’t want to eat or drink. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I feel like a shell of who I used to be.

I don’t know what to do. My personal therapist of 4+ years gently pointed out today that my dissatisfaction in our relationship this has been an ongoing cycle for me. Would separation help? Would it just damage the one stable relationship I have? I need to do something different but I don’t know what that is.

As a kid, I read a book about a boy (?) who lived in a cabin with his family I think, like in the woods/mountains. But he was great at climbing and every day climbed to the top of a pole to balance and look out at the woods or something.

I feel like maybe there was an element of romance with a girl who lived nearby? And I remember it had sort of Appalachian vibes…

Terrible description but it’s bugging me if anyone has suggestions as to what this book might have been!

This is a long shot, but was wondering if any Billings Clinic people know how much a SUS/charge nurse makes there?

From a Kalispell nurse buddy 😬

I’m full-time night charge on a busy PCU. Had a crazy start to the shift with several new admits, everyone deciding to poop at once, and a couple very unstable patients who were making me worry.

We have no aides (3:1 ratio) and all of the nurses were in rooms so I run to grab a call light. I walk in, smiling pleasantly, but didn’t even get to say anything before the barrage.

“This is unacceptable, my medicine was due at 9pm! It is now 9:15pm. If I’d known I would be treated this way, I would never have agreed to come here!”

For context, this patient is here for Tikosyn loading which requires an EKG to be taken 2hrs after every dose. Idk why the providers insist on scheduling the medication this late but they do. I start by trying to acknowledge her frustration, I WOULD have even just gone to grab the med myself, but she kept speaking over me until I stopped and just stood there until the rant ran out.

Then I said “I am sorry you feel this way. We can discuss the timing of your medication with the provider in the morning if you would like. Unfortunately your nurse has other patients she is helping and I do have people dying who will get priority over you at times. I will be sure to send someone your way as soon as they are available.” And I left. As I closed the door I heard her say “dying?” Followed by some loud sniffles.

I’m just so over the boomer tantrums but what do you all think, did I go too far?

I (35F) and my husband (37M) have been living together for 12 years, married for 4. When I first met him, I was living in my car and dealing with a lot of relationship problems - separating from my very religious parents, leaving what was basically a cult, and really just learning who I was for the first time. Husband was very steady - a low level manager at my job, had his own apartment, a very calm human who seemed kind and easy to get along with.

Long story short, we hooked up within a few days of meeting and I moved in. And honestly things were good - I got established at my job and started community college, and he was super supportive.

Then about two years into the relationship our intimacy simply vanished. He began turning me down for sex repeatedly until I stopped asking, citing back pain, but wouldn’t go to the doctor. Everything outside of sex was great, his time was all accounted for so I didn’t believe he could be cheating, and our free time together felt like just the best of friends hanging out.

This went on for about 4 years, during which time we had literally 0 sex. He knew I wanted it because I told him so every few months. And he would still want hugs and kisses and would still engage in kind of teasing sexual touch until I started physically shoving him away any time he came around. I adopted a strict hands-off policy and threw myself into work, school, and fitness.

Eventually he expressed wanting to start having sex again. I was starved for this type of attention and readily agreed without much thought. But now letting him touch me feels like nails on a chalkboard,

Presently, we’ve had pretty open conversations about this time. He knows how much he hurt me and has apologized. He’s never given a clear specific answer for why he stopped being sexual with me (he’s offered several reasons ranging from my political beliefs at the time being a turn-off to having hang ups from previous relationships).

We now have sex once a week which is never really pleasurable for me because I am so in my head about this rejection. It doesn’t help that he isn’t the best at offering emotional support or reassurance (he was just this year diagnosed with high-functioning autism which does explain some of that).

Obviously there’s a lot more but I’m wondering if anyone has experience with being able to forgive a repeated rejection like this? Any tips for steps forward? We are working on finding a marriage counselor and I’m in personal therapy but this just eats away at me.

Please no “just divorce him,” I have and am still considering it but I am looking for creative solutions as well. He is my best friend and we have an extremely established life together, divorcing him would basically put me back living in my car with no social group to speak of.

TLDR; husband rejected me and refused sex for 4 years, any suggestions for learning forgiveness?