I started my new job at Children's last week. The job itself is going fine. But I'm wiped out mentally, physically, and emotionally from the strain of balancing all the new tasks with my current responsbilities.
And I've failed that balancing act, with the immediate consequence of Elli losing her slot in speech therapy (not to mention the sudden increase in untidiness in our home).
Children's initiated a new policy a year or so ago, stating that if a patient misses more than 2 appointments without calling ahead of time, they get discharged and have to go back on the waiting list if they want to resume therapy. We've had real trouble finding the right time for Elli AND for me with the new therapist we started seeing, so we've been really hit-or-miss with appointments. I never could get the time burned into my long-term memory, so I totally forgot the appointment twice.
Yesterday I didn't get home from work until 4:15 or 4:30, and when I did think about the appointment, I couldn't remember if I had cancelled it already or if we were supposed to go. Before I could dig out my calendar or the telephone, I got sidetracked and didn't think about it again until this morning. By then it was too late.
Joy wins another "Loser Mom" award. Congratulations.
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Orientation was quite a bit different from any I've attended before. This is my first job in the healthcare industry, so most of this was new to me. Unfortunately, the newness didn't allay much boredom for me. We had to view quite a few videos, which were real snoozers.
The first speaker, on the other hand, was very interesting, and had plenty of practical tips and warnings. She works in infection control and described three outbreaks of measles in the area in the last year (and apparently one is going on in Iowa right now).
Measles, mumps, and rubella still pose risks to us here in the states despite wide-spread MMR immunizations. People who visit or immigrate here from abroad, and certain populations here in the states (like the Amish) who don't immunize and never have, carry these diseases with them.
Add to that the fact that tuberculosis, chicken pox, and one other... either measles or smallpox, are all airborne germs that spread like crazy because you don't know you're sick the first few days and they survive for hours or even days in the air.
The main hospital building where I'll be working has sophisicated air filtrations systems that clean all the air 12 times a day. But outpatient centers and the general community just recycle the air, allowing those airborne germs to swirl around until the things die. Scary! Especially since more and more parents are opting NOT to immunize their children.
I had to get another MMR and a tetanus shot, along with my TB skin test series (we have to get 2, one week apart, if we haven't had one in over a year). After that talk, I had no reservations about getting a needle jabbed into my arm. Actually, the shots were surprisingly easy to endure. I used to hide from shots -- I was a nurse's nightmare as a child -- but spending 6 years watching my daughter take much worse without crying has toughened me up.
I don't actually HAVE to get the hepatitis B series, but when I asked my kids' pediatrician about it, he said it would be a very good idea. Hep B is highly contagious and if it's going to be anywhere, it will be at the hospital. He actually has an accountant friend who caught it. The only thing they could figure was that he opened an envelope that had been licked by someone with Hep B and got a papercut. That was enough for me. I'm going to get the series. And I'm glad the kids already had theirs -- we're around the hospital enough that I don't want to risk them getting exposed to a preventable disease.
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I've come full circle now -- the parking garage I used for my first day was the same one we parked in when we first brought Elli to the Emergency Department. It was strange walking in with my employee badge on and the memories of that first day swirling around my head. The day went well, though I was gone 12 hours total and definitely missed the kids by the end.
Yesterday was a bit shorter -- I was only gone 6 hours. However, it was more tiring because I facilitated my first council meeting. I had forgotten how much mental stamina it takes to speak, manage discussion, and keep a group on a schedule, and I have never managed a 40-person group discussion before. We had to scramble a couple times when half the council was an hour late and when the media people didn't arrive on time to start our DVD. On-the-fly hopefully-seamless rearranging also demands excessive brain power. In times like that, I get into this zone where I only remember teeny snippets of what happened. I remember thinking, "Oh THAT came out wrong - your tone of voice was totally off!" and "Look at the other half of the room - you keep forgetting them!" and "How do I regain control and get everyone back on track?! Oh! Wha... Drat. She took a breath but you missed your chance! Jump in faster next time!"
All this gets easier with experience, I guess.
I was a little disappointed later that I had bigger plans for the meeting but ran out of time to prepare. I got up super-early -- 5:30am -- to get some things ready, but at 7am I had to stop working to get the kids and myself ready. I arrived an hour later than I intended because of babysitter and parking mixups (I hadn't been to the lot I was assigned to park in before and missed the entrance). I'll just have to carve out time in the next meeting to do what I had in mind. It's probably better that I wait anyway -- we're still looking for my partner in this job, and it's something we should prepare and present as a team.
Despite my sketchy plans, the meeting went really well. Everyone was very complimentary later, which was encouraging. Once I get another good night's sleep and have a quiet day at home, I'll be fine. I hope.
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I have begun to meet some important people at the hospital, like the chairman of the board of trustees for the hospital. He was really nice and is our strongest advocate for family-centered care. I'll be having a one-on-one meeting with him sometime in the next few months, as well as with the CEO. I need to prepare really well for those meetings!
I met another trustee who I found out later has been on the council for a year! I'm not sure how I missed her joining, but perhaps I missed last year's orientation because Anna was new. Anyway, yesterday I learned that she is the wife of Bob Portman, the man just recently appointed head of our nation's budget office.
That made for a comical moment. My boss asked us, after the meeting, if we thought she should have made a big announcement about this.
I replied that I didn't think we should get into politics on this council -- we open enough cans of worms as it is.
She replied, "I certainly don't want to get into it. I'm a flaming liberal!"
"Do you bleed blue, P___?" I asked.
"I do."
I've never met a flaming liberal before. (Well, maybe I have and just didn't know it.) She's the first person I've ever met who describes her marriage as "a commuter marriage." She lives and works here, and her husband lives and works in Texas. How on earth does that work?
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All in all, I think I need to give myself more time to adjust. I certainly have less time to waste. Once I get used to being more disciplined, I think it's going to work out fine. And probably, in the long run, I'll be a better mom and wife since I'll manage my time better.
But for now, I'm exhausted. I have a huge pile of work to do around the house. And I have to take especially good care not to allow my self-induced fatigue to display itself in impatience and crankiness towards the kids. I'm having a tough time with that today.
