My funk has still not lifted and it feels like it is transforming into depression.  You have no idea how much I hate depression.  It drains all of the color and beauty and love out of life and makes me feel dead inside.  Everything becomes difficult and overwhelming.  Nothing good can ever come again.  Of course that's not true but it is what it feels like when depression descends.

We took our grandson, who I shall name Jack from now because I'm tired of referring to him as the grandson or the little guy, to visit his father yesterday.  My son never showed up.  Nothing.  Not a word from him.  We don't tell Jack we're going to visit anyone so not a big deal right now.  My son has gone silent again so no idea what's going on with him.  I try not to let it  bother me but obviously it does.  

So we had Jack yesterday and decided to walk to the park before the storm started.  The skies turned quite dark and eventually it started snowing and turned into a white out.  There was thunder and snow, a new combination that we're not used to here.  We dropped him off with his mama and had a quiet/dull evening.  I'm tired of the pandemic too.

Swings at the park.

 Soccer pitch behind our house.

Things I'm thankful for today.

Visit with Katie.

The snow is melting.

The laundry is done.

I went for a good long walk on Saturday and Sunday with the dogs at the dog park.  The weather was mild and we were due for a storm that hit late Sunday night.  The photos probably look dull and unispiring but to me they look like spring in Alberta.  

This photo is of the approaching storm front on Sunday afternoon.  Lots of wind, some rain, some snow and some thunder.  Fortunately none of our roof shingles blew off this time.  The weather is getting weirder, or at least weirder than I've seen in my lifetime.

We took the little guy to visit his father on Saturday at a mall.  My son was acting very strangely.  Conversations that went round in circles, paranoia, agitation and a lot of anger.  We finally left after an hour because my son wouldn't keep his mask on and kept arguing about it.  I didn't get angry in respone, I stayed calm and we just packed up and left.  I did cry in the car though.  He's my son and he needs help but I can't give it to him.  

The little guy is with us this week as his mom works evening shifts this week.  He's not feeling great, a runny nose, cough and fatigue.  Lots of cuddles and his bottle.  He's stressed but I'm thinking it's just because he's not feeling great.  He follows his poppa around like a puppy and doesn't want to let him out of his sight.  The big guy smokes in the garage and my grandson locked the mudroom door on him yesterday morning.  There was a lot of banging and crying before I made it downstairs and unlocked the door.  There is a key hanging in the mudroom now, just in case.

I'm off for five days which is heavenly.  The weather is even warming up so we'll get outside more.  Yesterday morning with the windchill it was -18C.  Tomorrow it's supposed to be 16C.  

I'm tired but not depressed which is nice.  I keep going, one foot in front of the other and sometimes I cry but mostly I'm ok.  

Last fall I collected acorns and stored them in my fridge over the winter.  Much to my surprise and delight, they survived and I am now growing oak trees as well as tomato plants on my kitchen counter.  I'm going to plant these future oak trees out of the way at the dog park and in one hundred years there will be some lovely oak trees shading the pathways.  The trees aren't for me, they're for my great grandchildren.

I can't remember where I saw this but it fit and makes me smile.  I always joke with patients that I'm losing my marbles, that there is a small hole in the bottom of my marble bag and that if I shake my head, I can hear the last two marbles rattling around inside my head.

It's cold and cloudy this morning and we had a dusting of snow last night.  Springtime in Alberta.  On the weekend it was warm and sunny and now, not so much.

The cat is following the sun around the house again.

I've been collecting data at work to present to our manager as an argument for management to add another full time nurse to our complement.  When I started working in DI ten years ago we had four nurses on the floor and did approximately forty CT IVs a day, plus another ten in MRI.  We had no recoveries and did fewer central lines.  Today we still have four nurses but CT puts through sixty patients on average each day, we do more central lines, usually two recoveries and still do the difficult IV starts for MRI as well as accessing their central lines.  Our workload has exploded, so, data.  It's more difficult to argue with data.

The other day at work I typed into google, why am I so angry all the time?  I'm not nearly as angry as I used to be when I was younger but I still struggle with my anger.  Women aren't supposed to get angry or at the very least, aren't supposed to express their anger.  Angry women are called bitches, harpies, witches and other less pleasant names.  Anger isn't always a bad thing though.  There are reasons to get angry such as discrimination, racism, sexism.  But there are other reasons too, feeling unappreciated, feeling attacked or unsafe, feeling disrespected, feeling powerless which I'm sure most women and some men have felt at some point in their lives.  

At work I often feel disrespected by my employer who not only doesn't understand my job but also doesn't seem to care.  I am completely replaceable, except my patients don't think that and for that I am thankful.  I am asked to do more than is humanly possible sometimes.  I am asked to put patient safety second so that we can increase our numbers and make our director look good.  It's not about good patient care, it's about numbers.  Except people aren't numbers, they're people.

Last week I had a twenty-nine year old young man with metastatic colon cancer which has spread to his liver and lungs.  He has an eighteen month old son at home and he wants to watch him grow up.  He's not a number.

Yesterday I had an indigenous woman, ten years younger than me, with obvious metastatic colon cancer.  Her abdomen was huge, she looked pregnant, because her liver was filled with tumors.  I'm guessing her signs and symptoms were brushed off as women's complaints and/or she didn't have good access to health care because she's indigenous.  She won't live long, her cancer is advanced.  She has six grandchildren.  She isn't a number.

Yesterday I listened to a man whose wife has breast cancer.  He's frustrated with how slowly things go and wants to know why.  Why does his wife have to wait so long in the waiting room for her scan?  Why do they ask patient's names and birthdates so often?  Why can't things be more efficient?  What he was really saying is, "I'm terrified my wife will die?  What will I do without her?"  So I listened to him.

It's goes on and on.  My patients are people and they all have stories and often they need to tell their stories.  A couple of weeks ago I listened to a man for ten minutes while he told me his cancer diagnosis story.  That's not in my job description but it is.  It's a part of him and he needs to tell it so that he can figure out how to wrap his head around it.  

I remember when I had my kids, telling my birth stories to my girlfriends.  We all did it.  I didn't know then that's how we process things.  For years I had to tell Katie's story because I did not know how to process that pain.  I don't have to tell her story so often now, the grief has worn down and although I still carry it with me, it doesn't break me anymore.  But stories matter, patients matter and time spent with patients matters because we are humans giving care to other humans.  My patients are all carrying grief around with them, so are their families and their friends.  We are not just starting IVs, we are dealing with grief in it's many forms.

So, am I angry.  Fuck yes I'm angry.  I'm angry that the goverment of Alberta disrespects me and my work.  I'm angry that my employer disrespects my work and I'm angry that my patients are treated like numbers on a spreadsheet. 

We were both off yesterday so after we picked up the little guy from daycare, we walked straight to the park.  He had a good time.

I took the dogs for a walk this morning but it's still icy and snowy in the trees.  The dogs don't care but I'm terrified of slipping and falling now.  My chin's still numb from my fall in December.  

Out of the trees, the park is ok.  Muddy but not really slippery which I can cope with.  

I'm collecting data about our numbers at work compared to staffing levels.  Our workload has gone up significantly without a corresponding increase in staffing levels so, data.  

I made progress in dealing with my anger and irritation with my coworker that drives me insane.  Last weekend I was listening to a radio program about how covid and the lockdown is messing with our brains.  People, a lot of people, are having a hard time, not just me.  Apparently some people just check out or don't pay attention to what's going on around them.  I've never really been able to do that but my coworker is a rock star at checking out.  Twice in the last week she either lost paperwork for a patient or didn't finish up with the patient, didn't access their port before taking the papers to CT.  

I told her what happened, without anger, and asked her to be careful.  She denied responsibility for either inicident, even though it was her.  She even said it was other coworkers.  She didn't own it.  We all make mistakes but she doesn't own her mistakes so never learns from her mistakes.  I get she's stressed and apparently from the way she normally behaves, she's been under a lot of stress for the past ten years that I've known her:)  I left it and told my manager what was going on and asked my manager to talk to her and then let it go.

One of my other coworkers is Chinese and said to me the other morning, "I'm so glad you're not racist."  I said, "Well, I'm glad too.  And thank you."  Apparently the coworker I talked about above harrasses her about taking breaks.  At first I thought, no it's not racist, our coworker is just an idiot but who knows?  Maybe it is racism.  I've never lived in any other body than this one so I can't say.  

So I'm trying to mind my own business which reduces my mental stress but the physical stress of running my ass off at work is tough.  I almost cried the other day because I had so many people waiting for IVs and then three tough IVs back to back which can take up to an hour to deal with.  

And now it's the weekend.  Laundry and cleaning.  I hate cleaning.  I hate a dirty house more than I hate cleaning though but I hate cleaning.  I hate cleaning toilets the most.  

A friend of mine at work sent me this morning.  He knows my sense of humor very well.

Best of all, I haven't fallen down the rabbit hole of depression.  I survived the winter of covid!

I was talking to my manager on Monday and she said something about me being an extrovert and I corrected her and said that I am indeed an introvert, but she only sees me at work.  At work, with my patients, I am outgoing and funny.  I joke a lot with my patients but I also have compassion for my patients and I try to meet them where they are on their journey.  I talk to all my patients, try hard to remember their names, I want them to have a good experience in our department.  In real life I am quiet, have a hard time making small talk and tend to keep to myself.  I refill my cup when I'm alone.  I like to walk alone.  I bake alone.  I sew alone.  I  need that time alone to recharge my batteries.

When I was a kid I was painfully shy.  I don't think I'm shy anymore but I still like my alone time and when I thought about that this week I realized part of the reason I feel so drained at the end of the day is me being extroverted at work.  I'm not about to change that because my patients matter but for me understanding how much extroversion takes out of me is a good start.  

Gracie came over the night to pick up the little guy and told us that she has been sober for ten days which is wonderful and I told her that.  I hope it sticks.  Our grandson needs a least one parent who is present.  My son also tells me that he has been sober for ten weeks.  I hope his sobriety sticks as well but I'm not holding my breath for either one of them.  

The little guy has us and the ladies at daycare and between all of us, we provide a lot of predictability for him which little people need.  I don't know what the future holds for any of us but right now it's good enough.

Poems by Mary Oliver, a much wiser woman than myself.  

Last week I told a youngish man that he had cancer, that his colonoscopy had shown cancer and that they had sent him upstairs to us for a CT to see if and how much it had spread.  But the doctor didn't tell him that.  I told him what was on the requisition, because he asked and if it was me, I would want to know and it broke my heart.  But we were busy and I had so many more patients to deal with so I left him with a warm blanket and a broken heart and the memory of being told he had cancer in a busy waiting room without his wife to hold his hand.  To live in this world is to have your heart broken over and over again.

On Tuesday I joked with a patient before we put a central line in him for his treatment.  The radiologist literally glared at me and I felt afraid like when I was a small child.  This doc is a bully who has been left unchecked for years.  After the procedure I asked the patient if I had offended him by my joke and he told me no, that he had appreciated the humor.  

I continue to find humans confusing and difficult to deal with.  I asked a young friend of mine at work the other day why do I only have toxic people in my life.  And then I said, "But you're in my life and you're not toxic."  There are really only three toxic people in my life, my son, Gracie and one doctor but they take up a lot of room in my brain.  So again, a reminder of all the good people in my life.

I asked my young friend if she would take care of me when I was an old woman and she said, "You already are an old woman!"  and laughed.  But she did agree to care for me when I'm eighty.  She is one of my adopted daughters and it is her daughter that I'm making a quilt for right now.

We're picking our grandson up from daycare today and keeping him until Sunday.  Gracie seems to have gotten over her paranoia.  We haven't seem him since last Saturday which was actually a nice break, even though we miss him.

I picked up an old chest of drawers for his room and I'm in the process of painting it with chalk paint.  I'm painting it a lovely gray.  His crib will be put away for good this weekend as he doesn't stay in it at all.  He is a ninja now.  He's figured out how to push chairs around so that he can climb up on them and reach a whole new level of previously off limits things such as light switches and remote controls.

The weather is warming here finally after two weeks and I'll be able to take the dogs for a walk today which I'm looking forward too.  The sun is shining and there are birds at the feeders outside the window.

I'm thankful for

hugs

friends

sunshine

walks

dog love

grandson love

my patients who remind daily what's really important in life

my hubby who loves me as I am

a day off today

and quilting, the fabric at the bottom of the photo will be the backing of this quilting, moons and stars

What are you thankful for today?

Very little has changed around here.  I finished my grandson's quilt just in time.  He won't stay in his crib anymore.  He's a freaking ninja.  It's been a tough week here for us and him, trying to get him to sleep.  I know it will pass but I don't do well without a good sleep.  

I've started a new quilt for the daughter of a friend of mine.  Celina will be six in June and she loves blue.  I wanted to do a wave quilt but it was too complicated so I'm making this one instead.  Lots of cutting and sewing and pressing but I enjoy it and get to listen to CBC while I work.  

I'm still eating a soft diet, waiting for my TMJ to heal.  I've started baking this, amish baked oatmeal.  I keep adding spices and it's quite tasty with no chewing required.  

Life continues on.  Work is work.  I'm minding my own business and staying calmer.  When the one coworker who always pushes my buttons starts doing irritating shit, I walk away and stay out of it.  Much less stressful for me but all of us right now are feeling stressed with the pandemic nearing it's year mark.  

We've been in and out of lockdown a couple of times now and it doesn't seem to make any difference to our lives.  We still go to work, still need groceries and still don't really go out.  We're not overly sociable, two introverts, so staying home isn't all that difficult.  

Gracie had to leave her job at the shelter because she was being targeted by gang members who were trying to take over the shelter, running drugs and recruiting prostitutes.  She reported them, called the police and they started following her when she left work.  She's back to work at the transition house which is safer but less work.

I'm trying to take care of myself, breathing through my nose, paying attention to my breathe, it actually helps.  Trying to sleep better.  Trying to eat better.  I still wobble a little but only a little which feels pretty good.  We're in the middle of a pandemic and I feel okay.  That's a huge win for me.  I'm coping.