Gah. Sorry, I’ve been overcome with one of my regular bouts of slight depression over the last little bit. It’s not so bad right now and over the years, I’ve discovered various coping mechanisms. Mostly, it’s that I’ve grown older and know that I can pretty much live through anything and even though it feels bad, it’s not really that bad. Not that I want to tempt life because now that I’ve said it, a tsunami will come down and drown me right at my desk. The most effective is to get up and do something or to ignore the feelings. The feelings almost always go away after time. I’m not opposed to taking meds which I have done in the past, but I haven’t been on them for over half a decade and I’m hoping all my CBT efforts will be good enough. I think I can be pretty resilient or whatever, but Jeremy says my habit is to borrow trouble which I like to do.
For example, Edda’s redetermination letter for Medicaid was due in Baltimore today. This provides Medicaid for Edda and pays for all the aftercare program and the caregivers in the house. I’m behind on the mail and didn’t open the envelope until last Thursday when I panicked and found all the paperwork and then FedExed it on Friday expecting a Monday noon delivery. When by Monday at 12:15pm, the tracking system hadn’t registered it delivered, I freaked out, called the number on the form (which went straight to voicemail and promised a call back and (surprise! not!) they haven’t called back even 24 hours later) and called Jeremy in tears and told him I’d have to spend all day today driving to Baltimore to the Health Department office because I just knew no one would call me back and then at 12:30 pm, it was marked as delivered. And then I freaked out that I had filled the form in wrong. This is such a small thing, I think I could have handled it better (like less crying), but I’m not in a relaxed form.
I’m still having anxiety about work at the hospital. It’s not great. It’s better than before but still not fine. I’m still getting used to everything, it’ll take a long time (I’m about 100 shifts in, I think I’ll need another 100 to feel good), but I’m not sure how much longer I sustain this. The scheduling is better, I have kind of a fixed schedule – out of the 12 shifts for the next 4 weeks, 11 were on days that I had planned. Still, on the one unexpectedly shifted day, our caregiver is out of town so Jeremy has to pick Edda up and I had to make late arrangements for her aftercare. But the summer is a scheduling sh*tshow with both Jeremy and Vince traveling and Edda having weeks off at the beginning and end of summer and all my caregivers having weirder schedules. It’s not only the scheduling, but I’m trying to figure out how to think about the patients. Lots of people get better, but lots of people are just kind of stabilized and then sent out into the world into their problems. I had to discharge a person to a homeless shelter. I feel sad for the patient with intellectual disabilities living in a group home with no one visiting. Families find me when they are upset at their doctor for not being doctorly when I can see the bad scan or test results and they haven’t seen it yet. I became friendly to a mess of a person who everytime I walked into the room reported that he had something more distressing happen to the people he loved and later I found out he was shooting up through his IV line while we were out of the room. These are not things I can brush off easily.
I am doing my best to take care of myself. Lots of sleep. Lots of good, healthy food. Not too many cookies. Exercising. Lots of hugs. Time off from work. I’m terrible at taking vacations – I think because I don’t know how to relax and I hate spending money on fun and sometimes one needs a vacation from vacation because they can be a lot of trouble, but I’m going on vacations! Soon!