To "Anonymous"

Athena,

I stumbled upon your site a few months ago. I was scouring the internet for anything that could...who knows? normalize?...the crazy turn my life has taken in the past year.

My family has always been my rock. And then this wonderful relationship...came out of nowhere. And all of a sudden I became distant. My family would never approve. Their potential reactions, were they to know, plague my worst nightmares. I've struggled with not being able to tell my friends and family about this...and it makes me feel horribly distant in a way I've never experienced before.

I still can't get over the similarities between your story and mine. I really just wanted to drop a line. Let you know I have loved reading your posts and I really enjoy your writing.

I hope you are well and keep posting, but life is hectic so if you cannot blog, I wish you the best of luck.

To the person who posted the above: please feel free to email me if you're looking for a little long-distance support. (Invent a name if you aren't comfortable sharing your real one.) I have soooo been there, and I know almost everyone else reading this site has too. I feel honored to be able to provide even a tiny bit of the support you're looking for, and I wish you the very best of luck with everything.

Conflicted

Wow, it's been a long time. Sorry for falling off the map like that -- it's been a truly crazy summer.

Quick update before the real post:

(1) Aphrodite has started her master's degree and is having a great time,
(2) I'm in two online classes (Pathophysiology and Developmental Psychology), which are both very interesting and are potentially my last prerequisites for PA school,
(3) we're moving to a MUCH better apartment on October 31st,
(4) my grandfather has backslid a lot medically, and I've been given his (mostly new) car so we can sell my beloved Beetle so I can pay off my credit card debt,
(5) my little sister is getting married on October 4th,
(6) I'm contemplating a longish buzz cut (after the wedding),
(7) marathon training isn't going quite as well as I'd hoped, but I still think I'll finish the race, and
(8) I still want that ear spiral.

Anyway, I have a dilemma, and I'm hoping you guys can help -- or at least provide some sympathy. :)

We currently have 12 doctors at the pediatric practice where I work (five men, seven women), and each doctor has a more-or-less-regular nurse who is with them almost every day. Every doc has different preferences when it comes to how much (or how little) documentation they like the nurse to do, at what age they prefer to give the meningitis vaccine, how lenient they are with regard to what time their patients arrive, etc., so having a regular nurse for each doctor lets each nurse get used to the way her doctor likes things done and function accordingly. So the docs get to keep their preferences rather than adhering to a practice-wide policy, and each doctor-nurse team functions pretty efficiently.

When I first started work at the pediatric practice, I got 'bounced around' a lot from one doctor to another; they couldn't seem to decide where to put me. Then, finally, Dr. H (one of the younger male doctors) got fed up with the scatterbrained older nurse who had been assigned to him (but that's another story) and privately asked my boss if he could have somebody different. Next thing I knew, I was Dr. H's regular nurse.

And it has been fantastic. Dr. H hasn't been used to having a nurse that he can ask once and have a task be completed every time henceforth, so he was visibly relieved and thrilled to get me. He treats me with respect (doesn't go on a power trip like a couple of the other doctors) and thanks me profusely every evening for that day's work. When I noticed that I occasionally had to correct the immunizations he was ordering, I started checking each patient's vaccine records before he went into the room and attaching an electronic note to the chart documenting which shots the patient needed -- a practice that he loved and asked me to continue. His patient messages to me are signed with his first name. We discuss patients and parents, talk about our personal lives and what's happening with the election (he's a staunch Obama supporter, too), and swap jokes back and forth all day. And as he's gotten more comfortable with me, he's given me more responsibility, such as asking the preliminary questions on the infants (breast- or bottle-fed, how many hours of sleep, etc.) and calling patients back with test results. Better yet, he knows I'm trying to go to PA school, so every once in a while, he calls me into an exam room, hands me his stethoscope, and says, "Listen to his chest. This is classic pneumonia." And if he's discussing a patient's condition with another doctor ("The parents were like, 'oh, he was in so much pain before', but really, I didn't think pyloric stenosis was a painful condition -- I thought those kids just puked a lot, right?"), I know I'm welcome to ask what pyloric stenosis is and have both doctors turn around, smile, and educate me. I'm submitting my PA school applications in 8 months, and Dr. H's letter of recommendation will weigh heavily towards getting me into the school I want to go to. It's really an ideal situation.

But.

I don't think he approves of homosexuality.

We have a number of gay and lesbian parents who come to our practice (the moms of those twin girls I wrote about a few months ago, for example), and he is always kind and polite as can be, treating them no differently than any other patients. And he's politically liberal, so that gives me hope. But he has made a number of comments that have put me a bit on edge. For instance, I heard him use the word 'dyke' in conversation one day. And a mother brought her son last month with the last name Millert, or Millette, or something with M-L-T. Dr. H sidled up to me afterwards and said, "Nice family. But I think Mom's last name may have been Mullet before, if you know what I mean." What could I do but laugh along with him?

Same thing a few days ago, when an older teenage boy came in for a physical. "He's a bit odd, but not in a bad way. Maybe fabulous. I don't know for sure whether he's fabulous or not, but you'll get the 'fabulous' vibe off him." (As it happened, I did -- he even walked in with a purse.) But does that comment qualify as offensive, or not? I couldn't decide.

Most people at work don't know about Aphrodite -- only one of the receptionists, two of the doctors (at our accessory office, not the main one where I work), and two or three other nurses. I don't know for sure how far word has spread. But I do know that I don't want to become another of Dr. H's jokes. Partly because I genuinely like him and want him to think well of me -- but partly because, if I'm going to be his regular nurse for the next two years, he's the one who has to write me that glowing recommendation letter. If he wrote it tomorrow, he wouldn't be able to say enough good things about me. But if he knew about Aphrodite, I'd always wonder what he was really thinking, and if that would have an effect on his opinion of me. It's a risk I'm not willing to take. But at the same time, I want to be able to discuss my life with him, the way he does with me -- because I feel like he could be a lifelong contact, even a friend. My Developmental Psychology textbook talks about how people in their twenties usually find older mentors who help them shape certain aspects of their lives, and I think that's what Dr. H is becoming for me. I want to 'come clean' to him, so I can talk with the same open frankness that he does. I think about it every day. But at the same time, I don't want to put my future in jeopardy.

Do I maintain the 'distance' I've got going right now and not say a word, ever? Do I wait until he's written my letter (May 1, 2009) and then casually mention 'my girlfriend'? Or do I just take my chances now, before too much time has gone by? I really don't know what the right move is.

Thoughts?