Christmas

I had a lovely Christmas working at the hospital. I like that it’s a bit slower than usual, I like that I get to say Merry Christmas to loads of people. I helped people to the bathroom, I fed people, I lotioned up dry skin. People who needed narcotic pain medication the shift before found that their pain was better and they needed only Tylenol for their pain during the day. I laughed with my coworkers. I like that there is a lot of pie in the break room & free lunch at the hospital. I don’t really feel separated from my family, rather, I feel connected to my greater community which is a very Christmas-y feeling. It’s no secret that I dislike Christmas. Crappy things happen all the time, but somehow when the same crappy things happen that happen during the year just happen to happen over Christmas, it makes it so much harder because it feels like you are supposed to be happy or that everyone else is happy and here you are, something terrible happening. There are many people (OK, three people I’m especially thinking about) I love that are having an especially hard Christmas and I want to support them and help them and it never, ever feels like it is enough. So I go and put some lotion on some dry skin and get people some OJ because their blood sugar dropped, I recharged some hearing aids and tried to figure out how to insert them into ears, I got packages from families in the lobby and delivered them to the rooms upstairs and then I had some coconut cream pie (three slices, mmm, I love that coconut flavor and Jeremy doesn’t like it very much, so we don’t often have it in the house). And that was Christmas.

Vaccine-wise, my lottery number is 4246 out of 5878 employees. I honestly was disappointed in this number because it meant that I (and all the nurses on my unit) was categorized as a person who does not need a n95 mask for my job. I was hurt because, well we all did 2 months on COVID units and also they are mandatorily floating us to COVID units now. Of course, I want all the people who work on COVID units to get the vaccine first, but the inevitable happened on Friday which was a person who I work with tangentially (not a nurse) excitedly asked if I had gotten my vaccine yet because she had gotten hers the day before. I said my lottery number placed me back in line and that I wasn’t anticipating getting it until the end of January. And I then I said kind of lamely that I hadn’t worked with a COVID patient since May and she said – oh! I never work with COVID patients and continued on happily with encouraging me to check my email. Gah. I had to stop seeing pictures of people getting vaccinated on my social media accounts because it makes me feel bad. At least I’m not a Stanford resident. I know, I know…I’m happy I have a number. Lots of people don’t even have a place in line yet.

It’s lovely having Vincie home. He gave himself a mullet.

And then he cut it off.

We celebrated the family Christmas on Christmas eve. We gave him a chemistry set (that he asked for). We had a delicious lamb and latkes dinner on Christmas eve, Vince can make delicious latkes.

Jeremy rearranged the books.

One thought on “Christmas”

  1. Oh I wish there was a better way to get the vaccine to you and all those nurses. I COMPLETELY understand your feelings.

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