I'm so angry, I.....cry?

I am a research assistant for a CAMHS. I work hard, I work fast and I always try to support the clinicians. I found out that there was a Mental Health Nurses Conference coming up, so I rallied the nurses, prodded and cajoled them into thinking about research ideas for presenting until I had four abstracts sent off for approval. All were accepted, and I began working hard. For the SACS one, I wrote the ethics application, I wrote the research proposal, I wrote the institutional approval application, I pulled the data, I will do the data analysis. No offence to the nurse, but I have done at least 90% of the fucking work - and the nurse is appreciative of it because she doesn't understand the process or how to do it. In fact, the nurse manager said that she is amazed and astounded by my work.

So why the fuck was I declined to attend this conference? Without me, the service wouldn't even be presenting. The Clinical Directors justification for this was because I am not a nurse, and it is a nursing conference and there are three other nurses going. No shit. Two of those nurses are going to present a fucking poster. I'm talking about a 20 minutes presentation where I am a named author.

Of course, my ridiculous reaction was to get angry and that lead to crying. I'm not crying for pity, I'm crying because I can't seem to manage not express my anger verbally. Which of course makes me look weak and not professional, the opposite of what I am aiming for.

I want to go to this conference because I have done so much work for it, and because it is my only show of professional development. I have three areas for performance reviews - conferences, grants and publications.

What this basically comes down to is that I feel I am being undervalued because I am not a member of a clinician team, and thus I am feeling like there is really no point to my work there. And because I can't adequately explain my position, I don't know what to do.

I never thought it would be like this. I was just thinking on the weekend that I really love my job, and this notwithstanding, I do. It's just that this is such a big deal.

With all the shit that has gone down so far this year, I wonder what the hell I did that set off this bad portion of karma?

Thank god for vodka and sleeping pills.