a new book and a lot of anxiety

[Peggy Archuleta]

Dear Friends,

I want to share something with you, because of all the people I know, you
will understand what I'm about to tell you better than anyone.
In the way of background, I published THE book that is extremely important
to me: Smart Patients, Safe Patients. I wrote this book to teach everyone
how to be safe when they or a loved one is admitted to the hospital. I
served for many years on a Nursing Peer Review Panel, and every month we
reviewed most of the nursing errors that occurred during that month. We met
for two hours, and we were never able to address all the errors. Many were
fairly minor, and some were more serious. The deadly errors went to another
group to review.

There are things the patient or the patient's close friend or family member
can do to help prevent errors, and I want to help everyone know exactly what
they can do. While I would love for you to read the book, the main reason
I'm writing to you is to share what I've been going through related to this
experience. (I published the book the end of last week. It's an eBook on
Amazon. If nothing else, I would love you to see the pretty book cover, and
you can see it at this link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WTZD5MY)

This is what I want to share: After I published the book, I began to feel
extreme anxiety. It was that old feeling of being in the middle of a storm
that is raging all around me, and I can't figure out why the storm came up
or how to get out of it. It's not a panic attack, just a jumble of feelings
that are not conducive to a bright, happy day! After waking up morning
after morning with the anxiety, I decided to do some self-empathy and try to
get to the bottom of it all.

After looking at all my feelings, it became apparent that every single
feeling was based on fear. So I began to ask myself what I was afraid of,
and I came up with this list:
1. I'm afraid some nurses or physicians will be offended by something
in the book.
2. I'm afraid I will frighten patients.
3. I'm afraid some nursing leaders will be unhappy with me.
4. I'm afraid something in the book might be inaccurate.
5. I'm afraid I left out something important.
6. I'm afraid I might create confusion.

Many, many fears. My needs are obvious: I need to have a sense of safety
and to know everything will be fine. I decided I can't continue to be
fearful of what others will think. I know in my heart that I wrote the book
for the right reasons, and I tried my best not to insult anyone, not to
scare patients, and to be accurate etc. While I don't understand why I must
experience this kind of anxiety, I'm sure there are lessons to be learned.
(If the jackals would be quiet long enough to let me think straight.)

Anyway, thanks for reading this long email. The book is a kindle book on
Amazon. If you read it, I would love to know what you think. I would also
love to hear any insight you might have into my anxiety issue.

Love,
Peggy