The doorbell rings, and my stomach immediately clenches. It’s the beginning of the necessary same song and dance which I’ve come to dread like no other. Meeting a new nurse.

The spiel is the same, the faces are new, how much of my personality I inject into the meeting depends on how much energy I have that day. How long the pauses are after I tell them about certain aspects of my care is the main indicator that I need to determine how adept they are.

Since I’ve actually been on a few first dates this past year, I feel like this analogy holds more weight, because these first meetings are like first dates in a lot of ways. I’m judging them based on their appearance, how they act towards me, etc. to see whether they will be a good fit for me and my care. Which I maintain is a perfectly normal thing considering the fact that I would be putting my life into their hands, quite literally, the next time that I would be seeing them.

I haven’t given an update on my nursing situation in a minute, so I figured it’s time to give you all an update. Because it’s safe to say that the past year has been very draining in that department.

Over the last three years, but specifically, the last year there has been so much nursing turnover. I cannot count on my two hands the number of times I’ve met new nurses this past year, let alone the amount that I’ve actually trained.

Some of you who have been following my column for a bit may recall a column that I did a number of years ago, where I equated a nurse unexpectedly leaving to a breakup without any sort of closure. And, more specifically, without the hope for any real closure.

One of the nurses that I was particularly close to, who had been with me for almost a year, left really unexpectedly — because of a family emergency — at the beginning of last summer. I am fully able to empathize with why she had to leave, but that didn’t make the process of losing her any less hard. Especially, because she was the first nurse that I let emotionally in in a number of years.

It also didn’t exactly help that her leaving also happened in the same month-long timeframe that the guy I was seeing for a few months ended things with me, because he was also moving away for work. Additionally, during that period of time one of my other main nurses at the time took a step back because she was having health issues. She came back a few months later, but at the time, it truly felt like a mass exodus of a lot of people around me on a daily basis who were up-and-leaving me.

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As someone who already has a whole host of abandonment issues, I can’t even begin to explain how much of a proverbial minefield my mind was. Because I have been subtly internalizing for years that when someone left me that meant there was something intrinsically wrong with me, that everyone else could see. And it took everything in me not to believe that this was the almighty proof.

It took me several months to grieve the loss of that nurse — almost the same amount of time it took me to grieve my relationship with my ex. However, nothing in my life can go smoothly for long; therefore, right at around the time I had fully grieved her leaving another nurse that I was particularly close to unexpectedly left the nursing agency because of family issues.

Cue starting the grieving process all over again. But at least this nurse has been wanting to remain friends with me, which has been really helpful for maintaining my sanity. Because I didn’t lose her in my life completely.

Two weeks later, another one gave her notice though. I wasn’t particularly close to this nurse, so losing her is not a huge emotional loss. It is still a loss though, because it means that I now have to train at least one other person to fill her hours.

I am having difficulty conjuring up the energy to face that reality lately though, because it’s, frankly, exhausting to train someone only for them to leave three months later. Especially, because it wasn’t a choice that I made for myself. It was one that I was born into.

I’ve had nurses since I was two-years-old, because my parents both had jobs and couldn’t stay home to care for me. No other family members stepped up to the plate at the time, so having nurses take care of me was the only sustainable option.

I understand why my parents made that decision, but part of me wonders who I’d be without the emotional torment of having hundreds of strangers’ hands on my body. If I didn’t have to bend my personality in every which way to cater to being likeable to each nurse caring for me. If my home was a private sanctuary.

Instead, I’ve had to grow up in an environment where caregivers come and go at the drop of a hat, and as I’m getting older it’s getting harder to cope with that fact.

Gazette columnist Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently pursuing her master’s at Emerson College. She can be reached at columnist@gazettenet.com.