Go With Your Gut

Last week  I had one of those situations where I had to make a decision on which way to act. Do I do nothing and wait? Or do I act? I'm not going to talk about what the situation was but there was a point that I was .....uncomfortable. I kept coming back to it, do I go with what I'm being told , or what I feel? I went with what I felt, there's a reason they call it a "gut feeling" - because you really DO feel it there - don't you? It's like a lump just sitting there and if you ignore it, it moves to your chest.The longer you ignore it the harder it gets, your chest gets tight, heart rate is up , anxious anxious anxious. Some theory states that your gut feelings are actually based on layers of past experience, that somewhere you retained that distant memory and when a similar situation comes up that is what gives you that odd sort of anxiety. I have to say, I don't like it

Did you ever notice when your in that situation you tend to second guess yourself? I get so afraid of that I'm wrong I initially don't  want to say anything - who wants to look like an idiot? I think as a nurse I probably deal with this more than the average person, when I first started there was more than one restless 8 hours in which I ran it over and  over in my head - should I have said something? Did I do the right thing? By morning (or actually evening since I worked the night shift) I would have myself in jail, all of my property divided up by the lawyers that unsucessfully represented me, my children hanging thier heads in deep shame for even knowing me. The patient of course would always be dead, no halfway measures for me! I'd go to work with my stomach in a knot and then........well, nothing 99.5% of the time.  The other Once In A While tended to be no big deal. So you would think I keep my mouth shut - nope.

Because over time I've realized it's better to feel like an idiot for waving that red flag. I can recover from idiocy and usually do on a weekly basis. :)

I can apologize for over-reacting, for being wrong, for hopping on that runaway train and taking other people with me. My gut does not sing that often, but I listen to it - and I've found there is a difference between winding myself up and when something is truly wrong. When I'm just messing with me it tends to be quiet hysteria, when it's the real deal there are bells going off in my head, I cannot leave it alone. I will keep going back, different angles until I feel like I've fixed it. And I'm glad I can do that - but thank goodness it does not happen that often!