Looks like I've already missed an entire month of 2013! Life is too busy right now and not all for the good.
This job is high stress. I have attended three deaths in five days...some sadder than others. Helping the families/loved ones through this time can be very rewarding and I usually like this part of the job...though I would prefer not so many in one week. Sometimes, when I have gotten attached to a patient and/or family, the death can feel like a personal loss. Even when it is not, it sometimes reminds me of a loss of my own or reminds me how very fragile life is.
Then there are the increased needs or crises; responding to those throws a monkeywrench into whatever patient visits I had lined up for the day. It can make for a very harrowing week, such as the one that is slowly coming to an end. Every day started or ended with an unexpected problem, leaving me struggling to catch up until only a few minutes ago.
But, for me, the worst is being on-call, which occurs every Wednesday night and every third weekend. Sitting on tenterhooks, dreading the phone ringing and jumping every time it does...especially at 2AM. I am on-call this weekend and my stress is palable. There are weekends with very few calls and weekends with dozens, requiring one to put in twenty or more hours working over the course of two days...following and preceding a forty-hour work week, of course.
This past week included a terrifying (for me) evening. I was trying to help out and offered to cover only two hours of call for a sick on-call nurse. After three calls in less than an hour, the third call required a visit. I headed out to see a patient I didn't know who lived about twenty miles out "in the country" and used my faithful GPS to find my way. I was doing pretty well until it instructed me to turn right...onto a dirt road. I made the turn and my GPS indicated I was on the correct road. The road was narrow and rutted, lined with woods and thickets on each side and twisted and turned in every direction. The night and the area was black as can be. I could see nothing behind me and only as far as my headlights in front of me. I questioned this road, but kept going as the GPS showed I was correct and only one half mile from my destination. About this time I came to a large puddle; as there was no way to turn around or back up, I stupidly ventured across it...and found myself stuck in about two feet of water! My first reaction was to be terrified and when I felt the water coming up over my feet the terror turned to panic! I scrambled over the console to the higher, passenger side of the car and took stock. I was stranded in my car, in the middle of nowhere, in pitch black darkness with water seeping in...and no one, including me, knew quite where I was!
I called the nurse I was supposed to be helping out, who lives in the area, and told her my situation. She was huddled under blankets and throwing up regularly, but rose to the occasion. After I calmed down and answered a number of her questions, she figured out where I probably was...and told me to keep my doors closed as this was swampy area! She sent her husband and father-in-law out to look for me. The time I spent waiting in that dark, cold, wet car seemed interminable. The headlights I finally saw in my rearview mirror were the most beautiful sight I had seen in a very long time! The two men were able to pull my car out of the water and eventually get it back to the paved road. Miraculously, it was still running and I was able to drive it home under my own (wet, muddy) power. It is a smelly mess!
It was only after I got home that I began to realize how much worse it could have been. I was lucky that my friend was able to figure out where I was stranded, and luckier still that I even had a cell phone signal to make the call, as there are so many rural areas around here where it is impossible to get a signal.
As I said earlier...a terrifying evening from which I am still (emotionally) recovering. I'm getting too old for this kind of excitement!
