Crazy Busy

The week since I returned from Crete has been wild. I have been struggling to stay afloat.

The trip home was exhausting: Got up at 5:30 to get the 6:15 bus for the 75 minute trip to the airport in Iraklio. After a short plane ride I had a 4 hour layover in Athens, and then another 4 hour layover in Frankfurt before my last flight to Oslo. The airport in Frankfurt is HUGE! I took us several minutes just to fly over it! In Oslo I had to scrape 10 cm of ice and snow from the car before driving home, another 90 minutes, arriving at midnight. 

The next evening I was back at work. The ER has been outrageously busy with 30 - 50+ patients in the ER at all times (we only have 28 beds and that is if you fill the observation rooms as well as the acute rooms. We have 15 regular admission rooms. So with that amount of patients, they are filling the waiting room and triage area waiting to be admitted, and lining the halls waiting for beds on the floors. It is a madhouse! We have been understaffed as well. Flu season has begun and staff are out sick just as more we are getting more patients due to the flu. Friday the problem was not so much lack of rooms to admitt patients as lack of staff. Monday we had > 160 patients through the ER.  I feel guilty because every time they ask me to work an extra shift, or stay a few hours longer,  I always say no. But I feel like I'm just barely with it, like it would be unjustifiable to take on more. When I'm this tired, I have trouble hearing when people are talking to me, or the beeper in my pocket. I am able to do my job, but only by narrowing my focus on the task at hand. 

At home I have also had deadlines to meet. It was my turn to give a presentation for sunday evening's anthroposophic meditation/study group (First Class). Monday was the deadline to hand in our schedules for the spring (mid feb to mid june). The deposit for the house in Crete had to be transferred - it took me two tries before I got it right. Then getting access to my bank account in Crete via internet banking took several e-mails and phone calls to the National Bank of Greece. 

The regular household chores of shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and walking the dog seem to take almost all the time that is left. I want to spend time on christmas shopping and baking as well, send packages and write christmas letters, yet I have been so tired! I have had to take a nap here, sleep and extra hour in the morning there. Drink extra cups of coffee during the day, just to make it through the afternoon/evening. Wednesday I had such a headache that I went to bed at 8 pm and slept until 7 am.

I am starting to get my head above water again though. The most important deads have been done. The only thing looming now is an online exam in ACLS before the recertification course on tuesday. It had to be done and passed in advance and I won't have time until tomorrow, but will have to make time then! But I feel I am getting things under controll. I will bake a batch of cookies today. Husband baked some yesterday. I am enjoying advent this year. Last year it was all in boxes, as we were packing up to move on dec 19. Our first aniversary in the new house is looming ahead!