first of all, you make a stupid mistake at work. a mistake that is considered inconsequential because nothing happened to your patient because of your mistake. you keyed in another patient’s medical record number to check another patient’s blood sugar. the result was normal, no harm was done. only, the computer is all knowing, and would not allow you to unchart that result form the wrong patient’s chart.

you are overcome by guilt, even after talking to the doctor, the outgoing and incoming charge nurses, and the computer people, who all assured you it is no big deal. so you call your nurse manager to confess and wish for a punishment. while waiting for her to return your call, you spent the whole morning thinking if the hospital was sending the SWAT team to arrest you. when the nurse manager finally returned your call, you said yes a million times when she said you need to fix it and actually write an incident report as soon as possible. to you, it actually sounded more like “drag your heavy ass here, NOW!”, so you didn’t care that you have not slept in almost 48 hours. you’re off to the hospital, minutes after you said “bye” to your nurse manager.

you got questioned by everybody who saw you for being so ridiculous by making this stupid thing a big deal, but you smile and tell them to bring you something to read when you get to wear that orange uniform. there is no sense in being so obssessed with a very small mistake like this, but you can’t help it.  you realize you might need drugs for this kind of behavior, but you’re not really sure, so you shrug the thought off.

you thought the worst part of the day was over, but then your  three year old said he was tired and wanted to go to his room. you know you either all of a sudden lost your sense of hearing, or something was seriously wrong. you automatically grabbed the thermometer and prayed to the Gods of temperature that you were only imagining his burning skin.

of course the thermometer betrayed you by announcing 102.4 degrees. being the stupid mom that you were, you called his pediatrician for a tylenol dosage even if it clearly said in the bottle that you need to give 7.5 ml to a child between 2-4 years old with a weight of 35-47 pounds. knowing that your child is 3 1/2 years old who weighs 37 pounds, this written instruction doesn’t make sense to your panicked brain, because you definitely cannot trust those labels. so you wait for the pediatrician as she calculated the dosage, while your son throwed out his guts.

then, you went through all possible things that could happen, because hey, it was fever, and it could be serious. you went numb as you imagined the worst. you know you are hopeless, because a fever is seriously not that serious all the time.

the only thing that saved the day was the sight of your younger son, hugging and kissing his older brother with this look of concern in his face that made your stomach flip in really mushy emotions.

the sick one went through all the imaginable and unimaginable motions just to avoid taking the tylenol. you realized calling the pediatrician was futile, and so was the tylenol, which your husband dutifully tried to clean off from the carpet. the second episode of throwing up was less intense, but it was enough to take his strength away, and knock him off. his little brother, lied next to him, trying to comfort him. this sight, no matter how ordinary, took your breath away, and you fought the tears, because what kind of an emotional wreck cries at the idea of her sons caring for each other?

anyway, you have high hopes the fever is nothing serious, so you went through what actually happened in your house this past couple of weeks. you get a letter from whoever it is that sends letters like that, telling you, you owe an extra $2,700.00 for property tax because they got the wrong appraisal price of your house. to make things even more exciting, things broke, leaked, or just completely stopped working. you thought maybe it’s time to take advantage of sign in bonus offers, (in a closer hospital of course) when you tried to take in this pieces of information:

broken garage door replaced:  $700.00
leaking pipe/dry wall replaced:  $575.00
circuit breaker/electrical stuff replaced with 5 year warranty:  $2,060.00

knowing that your home insurance DOES NOT cover any of the above: PRICELESS!

you took a deep breath, and realized that a lot of things are indeed priceless. you concluded that although you were concerned about the things you need to pay, there is nothing more important than the truth that you are not going through this alone. you were also reminded of the fact that you actually have the energy and capacity to work, so you can pay the unexpected bills, and move on. knowing this, you can now quit escaping the inescapable, and stop talking in the third person.

okay.

well, the little guy is still feverish, but is back to his really unstoppable active 3 year old self. the smaller guy is still following his older brother around like a devoted fan. and i, need to go to dreamland even for a couple of hours, so i can get ready for work.