As the sun rises over the prairie, I am grateful. Grateful to be back home and to have found some music that lifted me up this morning.
Thursday evening, I got a call from John. He said he’d been having some symptoms – dizziness, strange taste and smell, chills, and vomiting. He had worked a show on Monday and Tuesday and forgot to take his meds with him and had gotten home late so he hadn’t taken them Tuesday night. So, I left around 9:30 pm for the four-plus hour drive.
We’d had six and a half inches of snow the day before and I knew the roads were clear here. It had mostly blown over them and hadn’t stuck. I checked the road conditions for the rest of the state. It looked like they might be a little wet for the last 30 or 40 miles. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone in the dark.
Before I went to bed, at 3:00 am, I sent a message to his neurologist’s nurse. I was glad the next morning when the nurse I had been talking with since he started seeing this neurologist called me on Friday morning. She had been out for a while, and I didn’t like her replacement as well.
After several phone calls, she talked with the doctor and got us called back before 5:00. The doctor thought it was a side effect of his medication and reduced the dose by half of what he had raised it to the first part of December. John hadn’t had any more symptoms, so we had brunch on Sunday, and I headed home.
I know doctors and nurses are human and need time off from work. I also know that it can create stress for the patient and/or caregiver when that happens. Someone else steps in, they don’t know as much about your case. They do something different than your regular doctor. You already have a rapport with your regular doctor, and it can be hard to find that relationship with another. And you may not want to.
Doctors can feel like the bobber when they need some personal time.
This happened to me when I was going into my last month of chemo. My regular oncologist was on vacation and doing administrative duties. I had to see an interim doctor during that time. I didn’t get along with her as well as I did him. She didn’t explain things the way he did. It wasn’t as comfortable as it had been previously, and I didn’t like it.
Since I was the daughter of the only doctor in a small rural community, I understand that this happens. My dad would have to hire someone anytime he wanted to take a vacation. I remember one time when my cousin was getting married, he had a pregnant woman who had a stillborn child while he was gone. It devastated him that he wasn’t there for her.
As doctors, if you let your patients see your human side your patients will be much more understanding. As patients or caregivers give your doctors some grace. They are not machines and can’t work all the time.
How do you handle this type of change? Do you spin out of control? Do you show some grace around the situation? The horses can help you come to a place of empathy and ease in going with the flow. Connect with me here to find out how.
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Onward!
