Cracking Under the Pressure

Nurses Stress 101

Published

Specializes in Primary Care, LTC, Private Duty.

Please be forewarned, this is mostly just a vent so that I can get some of the (emotional) pain off my chest enough to sleep.

Since 2019 began...

1. My job has cut my hours back to <8 hrs/wk ever since I returned from my back injury which has been INCREDIBLY hard financially.

2. Because I can't get hours at work and there are no jobs around here, I'm having to list my house and will be moving to a better cost-of-living area with more jobs. However, as excited as I am to be moving to this new state with more work-life balance and more jobs, it's still stressful trying to coordinate preparing my house for sale, selling my house here, finding a new place to live, getting licensure in the new state, and finding a new job.

3. My uncle died. We weren't particularly close, but it stoked the coals in an ongoing family drama into a raging inferno again.

4. My mom became debilitatingly ill (the sickest she's been in 30 years, according to her) and ended up moving in with me. So now, on top of coordinating a move for myself, I'm coordinating helping her move interstate.

5. I'm still recovering from my own bout of a weeklong flu that caused me to get pneumonia. However, because I didn't want to lose the only case I have right now, I went back earlier than my PCP wanted me to.

6. My job finally offered the "potential" of more hours if I orient to a rather difficult case in the middle of this week.

7. My grandfather, who is on hospice, is actively dying a state away, but I have work tomorrow and HAVE to be there because if I lose this case then I have NO income. Administration, itself, would probably understand if I called out because they've been forewarned that he was on hospice, but my current case---however few hours it is---is VERY particular with nurses' attendance.

I just can't stop crying. I used to be really close to my grandfather (before he forgot who his own daughters were, let alone his granddaughter, secondary to dementia), I came *this* close to almost losing my mom recently at the same time as I was super ill, before that I lost my uncle, and underneath all of this I have my impending move. I don't really have anyone I can vent to due to trying to be strong for my mother and -interesting, to say the least-family dynamics which prohibits talking about what's going on on Facebook. And it *is* nursing-related, since it's because of nursing that I can't be with my grandfather as he's dying.

1 Votes

**hug**

i hope you are able to be with your grandfather before he passes.

Specializes in Primary Care, LTC, Private Duty.
8 hours ago, beekee said:

**hug**

i hope you are able to be with your grandfather before he passes.

Thank you. Unfortunately, he passed around 9 AM this morning. I'm scheduled to work at 11 AM, so it's off to work I go since it's too late to call out for my shift. Sometimes I really hate nursing in this regard...everyone else can be human and have human needs and emotions, but we're expected to be superhuman/robots without our own feelings.

2 Votes

I’m so sorry. I’m sure he knew you were there in spirit.

2 Votes

Sorry for all your heartache - I hope your move goes well and life gets better.

1 Votes
Specializes in Primary Care, LTC, Private Duty.

Thank you both so much!

Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.

Sending you hugs and good thoughts. Hope your move goes super-smoothly and that everything after that falls into place. Hang in there.

Specializes in Primary Care, LTC, Private Duty.

Thank you! I do appreciate it!!!

+ Add a Comment