Counting down and holding on

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I know I am burning out but am trying to hang on to my compassion and my sanity until my holiday at the end of the month. It’s probably the result of significantly increased caseload for the last year or more and some really sad / tough patient situations recently. Normally I feel privileged to be able to help these people as much as can be done, and see them all as unique people who happen to have cancers that I treat, but right now all I want is to limit the interaction to 1. find out what problems they have that I can use my treatment for and then 2. get the treatment done and get these people out of my hair. (I know that sounds awful, but it’s the truth. I’m pretty sure I succeed in not revealing this to my patients, though.) I am tired of being the authority and being responsible for others.

I come home exhausted and then am irritated that there is stuff and people at home that needs taking care of or at the very least interacting with - all I want to do is read mindless stuff and sleep. My spouse is very supportive and venting to him takes the edge off. Exercise helps for a little, too.

I know the vacation will only be a temporary break and that all the stresses of daily life will be there just the same when I get back from the vacation. I think the break will help me get my compassion and stamina back. I have no intention of leaving my job, so my questions are:

  1. Any suggestions on how to cope until the end of the month?
  2. Any suggestions on how to deal with work when I get back?
2

Let me toss a different set of questions back at cha:

  1. Is there anything that you can point to as “the point where my attitude changed”?
  2. You indicate bad situations for some patients. Being cancer yeah, shit’s bound to happen. Has it been worse than usual? If it hasn’t, then the problem is really elsewhere.
  3. Are there other stressors in your life that are out of whack at the moment?

I know that one of the stressors in my life right now is that every time I call Mom, either she’s just come back from a funeral or she tells me about one she missed. In the last two months, partial listing: my great-aunt, a neighbor, the mother of one of my school friends, the grandmother of another (I’ve baked uncountable cakes and butchered two pigs with the old woman), one of our old parish priests, the father of another classmate, the little brother of a fourth…

So while my own situation at work has several points with which none of us here is happy, I know that the “ok, who died this time and how?” part of calls home isn’t helping my peace of mind.

ETA: sometimes you can fix it. Sometimes the only fix is “to hell with it”. What would be best for you and your family, to have you completely burned out or to have you in another job?

3

I’ve been close to where you are and I feel your pain.

When you take on responsibility for the care of others, when you are the go to decision maker, when it drags on longer than your emotional resources can bear.

I know the feeling of your compassion and caring wearing thin. It’s damaging and brutal to your psyche, in many ways worse than the work load.

I’ll tell you that the holiday will be a huge, huge help, but that doesn’t get you through does it? I’ll share with you what helped me when I was where you are.

Plaster lovely photos of where your holiday will take you, around your life, one on your computer or desk at work, your bulletin board, your fridge door, your car dashboard. Remind yourself to smile every time you see one of those photos! Small thing, big payback.

Next, burn yourself (or get a friend) a cd of music that makes you feel good. Your favorite ‘get up and dance’ music. Beach music if you’re going to the beach, salsa if you’re going to Mexico, etc. You get the idea I’m sure. Play this cd in your car, very loudly on the way to and from work, also as soon as you get home, put on your music and play it loud while you’re making your dinner. Again, small thing, big payback.

Also, get out your suitcase/backpack, put it in your hallway or diningroom, and very slowly start to toss the odd thing into the bag in anticipation of your upcoming holiday.

But most importantly, I would say, when you get on that holiday give yourself permission to lay your burden down. Not one second spent worrying about those back home! It’s a week or two, they’ll manage, you’re not the only one who can help them.

And I wish you the very best of luck!

4

What you have is a well-known syndrome in the field of health care (and also among people like chaplains and family caregivers for Alzheimers patients). It’s called “compassion fatigue”, and there are strategies for coping with it. Google it, there’s a bunch of info out there.

5

Wow, Duck Duck Goose, I wish I’d heard of this phrase when I was deeply in the throws of it.

It describes to a tee what I was experiencing. I was not a professional, I was caregiving to someone with a lot of needs in my own home, for an extended period of time. Having no medical training at all made it more challenging, to be sure, but there was never any time, for anything else.

Great info, thanks for passing it on!

6

I’m sorry you’re going through a hard time. I think you’re very strong and courageous to do this kind of work at all. I hope you find rest and rejuvenation but if you need to take time or counseling to work it out, do what you need to for yourself first.

7

Duck Duck Goose, thanks for the awesome link. I will definitely Google “compassion fatigue” later; I had no idea that this was different from the usual “too much work, too little time” but I was disturbed that this was the first time I had started to not care.

Nava, actually some home life stressors that had been out of whack for 2 years are improving at this point. Certainly some of patient situations I’ve been hearing or dealing with at work over the past few months have been amongst the worst IMHO in my career - it seems like a lot of really bad situations are coming my way all at once. My attitude change has been over the last few months, but I think that’s mostly related to the workload getting really heavy and hard since Christmas (fewer doctors, more patients, more really sad stories, loss of secretarial support staff).

Elbows, thanks for your support. I’ll get on the photos and music quickly. I’m going to have to hold off on the suitcase, though - my 4 year old will immediately want to do toddler things to the suitcase and be disappointed that we are not getting on that plane tomorrow! I think he may be needing a break too - he has been complaining every morning for the past week or so that he doesn’t want to go to school.