The lyf so short

Sometimes I'm just tired

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 17:19:25 GMT

Probably from breathing in too much CO₂ after wearing a community mask for five hours (the latest scare in ever-concerned Germany!)...

Nah, actually I'm just tired because what should have been a straight-forward trip to the neurologist for the mother-in-law turned into a five-hour odyssey.

Now, let us begin the story by stating that I, personally, have my doubts whether neurologist appointments in general, and neurologist appointments for 79-year-old patients in particular, at huge bustling university hospitals have to be scheduled in the middle of an international pandemic, if the issue at hand is neither acute nor life-threatening. Be that as it may, the mother-in-law had an appointment at the university hospital. Today. At 11 am. Because she is 79 and easily flustered, she didn't dare to drive there herself, satnav or no satnav. So I drove her to Düsseldorf. The satnav managed to find the university hospital. I managed to find, on the rambling inner grounds of the hospital, the visitors' parking lot.

THEN we found out that the information the MIL had been given didn't suffice to find the neurologist's office, or even just his department. Because not ONE of the signposts deigned to point towards the neurology department.

With the help of a map, I eventually managed to narrow it down to two buildings that thankfully were right opposite each other. Naturally, we first went into the wrong one. The MIL asked a rehab technician who happened to be seated near the door for directions. He took a look at the sign and said that he didn't know, but maybe we wanted to ask in the department of neurosurgery on the third floor? Having extracted that information (and while the poor gentleman was still talking), the MIL turned her back on him. I smiled (uselessly, underneath the mask) and thanked him for his efforts. Then I suggested to the MIL that perhaps we should ask at the official helpdesk at the other end of the hallway. As the person behind the helpdesk told us to maybe ask for more information in the department of neurosurgery on the third store, we could as well not have done that.

Up to the department of neurosurgery we went. Unsurprisingly, the department of neurosurgery was not the department of neurology. Surprisingly, they didn't know where to find the department of neurology, either. (I mean, I'm probably underestimating just how huge a university hospital is, but.) They sent us down to the first floor, which wasn't the department of neurology, either, BUT at least the secretary knew that it was located in the building on the other side of the plaza, also on the first floor.

So over to the other building we went. Inside, renovations were going on, making it impossible to see the signposts, but fortunately there was a nurse who correctly interpreted our desperate looks as "searching for something" and asked if she could help, and then pointed us towards the very end of the building (which was, rather like Hogwarts, divided into Four Houses. Probably all more or less alike in dignity). We actually managed to find a hallway marked "walk-in neurology" at the very end of the building (in Blue House). A sign at the door very sternly told patients to come in alone and leave their accompanying person at the door. I went to the waiting area by the door.

Fifteen minutes later, the MIL emerged. It had not been the correct hallway after all. Because she had an appointment, she needed to go one floor further up. (I don't know if she failed to mention that she had an appointment when she went inside, or whether they didn't do anything with that information. Either is plausible.) Needless to say that the time for the appointment was, by that time, well past! But fortunately, the professor in question had nothing better to do and didn't see fit to punish the MIL for being late. On the contrary, after the initial anamnesis and assessment he even suggested scheduling additional tests Right Now.

In the meantime, Jörg - who was in home office and also looking after our kids - had gotten a mail from his company requiring his presence (in person, not online) by 1 pm. I explained that, after the hijinks of the past hour, I didn't want to go away from where the MIL knew to find me, so no, I couldn't come to the next highway rest area to take over the kids while he drove on to Essen. He wondered loudly whether we could leave the kids alone until I got home. I expressed my displeasure. He declared that he didn't want to leave the kids with my father, because contamination. Honestly, after the MIL and I had journeyed through a GODDAMN HOSPITAL for an hour, the likelihood of the kids catching the plague via my father (who himself only goes out for groceries, but my mum is still working at the nursing home) seems rather negligible! So he brought the kids to my father. Just as he was leaving my parents' driveway, his company called that he didn't have to come in today, but tomorrow.
Oh joy.

I had just ended that call when the neurology department (the correct one) called. Or rather, the MIL called from the neurology department to inform me that they would be able to do further check-ups right now, or otherwise they could make a new appointment in two weeks' time or so, which would I prefer? As we were already there and the day was already ruined, I figured that they might as well do the check-ups then and there and spare us a second journey. (I mean, this time we would've known where to go, but it's still a one-hour drive, one way, in the first place.) So off to testing they went, and I sat back down in the waiting area (the cafeteria, naturally, was closed due to the Plague). Let's just say that I was very glad that I had brought a relatively new book along.

The additional check ups took a bit over an hour (so driving in for another appointment would indeed have been worse) and although we drove home during what would usually be rush-hour time, there were no traffic jams (another perk to wide-spread home officing!). But, ugh.

I arrived home to various confused mails from parents, asking why the OneDrive folder for my class was empty. Apparently, one of my colleagues deleted all the kids' folders while I was away. (By accident, not on purpose.) Still not sure whether the system will allow me to restore the folders myself (and, worse, the files within them) or whether I'll have to ask our admin for help. I have decided that it's a problem for Tomorrow Me. I planted a few flowers in the garden instead. It finally rained yesterday and this morning. We haven't had any precipitation since late March (when there was a bit of sleet), but now the sweet showers of April have finally pierced the drought of March to the root and so on and so forth (though folk who long to go on pilgrimages will still have to wait, alas). That's something, at least.

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sigh

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 08:49:56 GMT

Much as I hate when my 6th or 7th graders behave like preschoolers, I hate it even more when fully-fledged grown-ups do it. Even when they're reaching an age when, supposedly, they begin to enter a second childhood.

The mother-in-law is in hospital again. Yesterday morning, she had a strange tingling sensation in one leg, paired with the feeling that the leg was lame and wouldn't carry her, which lasted for about an hour. She found that alarming, as well you might, so she called her neurologist and described what had happened. The neurologist also thought it sounded alarming, so he told her to come to his practice so he could take a closer look; he'd squeeze her in somehow.

So she came over (I'm on sick leave) and asked if I could drive her there, since she shouldn't be driving after her leg had behaved so strangely. Up to this point, this is all very reasonable and good.

Then we sat in the neurologist's waiting room. There was another friendly old lady sitting there, waiting for her appointment. So it was clear that the MIL might have to wait a bit. I had my own doctor's appointment two hours later, but I figured that if it took too long, I'd just have to leave the MIL here and come back to pick her up later. I mean, it's a waiting room. There's reasonably cushioned chairs, something to read, a water dispenser and a restroom. It's warm, too. Nobody likes waiting rooms, but there's definitely more boring and less comfortable places to hang around in. But somehow that idea seemed to stress her out terribly.
"I hate waiting," she complained. "I thought he'd take a look straight away."
"He's going to squeeze you in," I reminded her, "you can't expect him to cancel his previous appointments."

Long story short, the doc managed to take a look just in time so we could make it back to [home town] for my doctor's appointment. Neurologist still found the situation alarming after taking a closer look. He said that it might be a minor stroke or possibly the onset of a major stroke, so he sent the MIL to hospital for more tests and medical observation. So after my appointment, she packed some things and I dropped her off at the hospital. So far, so good. The MIL was understandably agitated about the fact that she might have suffered a minor stroke or that a "real" stroke might be approaching, so I tried to console her that it was 100% better to notice it at this point and go to hospital pre-emptively, as opposed to it happening unobserved, possibly at night, with us finding her ten hours later or something.

Then she was in hospital, and she later called us, full of complaints. The hospital was overcrowded, as badly funded hospitals occasionally tend to be, particularly in winter, so she'd been put in a room with two(!) other women and one of them was coughing all the time. Possibly because she was sick and had been hospitalised for that reason? But the MIL treated it as if she'd been put in a room with a coughing woman as a personal offense. How was she supposed to get rest? It was so annoying! She would come home from hospital sicker than before!

(As a side note, I absolutely get how constant coughing is annoying. It sets my teeth on edge, too. Somewhat ironically, the mother-in-law is prone to nervous coughs and will cough all the way through an evening's movie unless you tell her three times to take her meds or just plain drink something because she doesn't want to get up and/or doesn't want to need to pee at night. So she's a major offender, without the excuse of whatever illness that other woman had.)

And she's been paying for the private insurance upgrade that pays for a single room*! She complained to the nurses (within the hearing of the coughing woman, I have no doubt) until they put her into a different room. But there were no single rooms. They'd already been forced to turn all the single rooms into double rooms because people get sick in winter - I mean, they get sick all the time, but they get especially sick when they spend all their time in over-heated, badly ventilated rooms with other people, not counting all the people who happen to injure themselves during season-related activites such as Slipping On Ice, Cutting Your Leg Rather Than The Christmas Tree, or Burning Your Hand On A Candle. It's a busy time. Anyway, the only room with only one person in it was apparently in the observation unit, but alas! that one person happened to be a man. Gasp!
"Conditions like in ancient Rome!" the MIL complained.
When Jörg visited her in the evening, she was still worked up about the coughing woman. By that time, she had been in a different room for several hours, but she still hadn't gotten over how she! had been expected to share! a room! with two other people! one of whom coughs! all the time! She didn't even remember what tests they've done and what results she'd been told because she was so offended about the coughing woman.

And then she complained, "And now they're all judging me just because I spoke up."
Yeah, MIL, you know what? I'm judging you, too.

It's not about the annoyance. I absolutely understand getting annoyed. I get annoyed easily. I get annoyed by silly things, too. I may even vent about them. Privately. To my husband or my mum. Or maybe on my blog.

You know what I don't understand? Whining to already overworked nurses about things they can't change. These people work 24 hour shifts around people who cough (and worse) and complain all the damned time. What are they expected to do? Throttle the coughing woman? Kick out other patients so you can have that single room you crave? They're already doing what they can. They've already accomodated you by giving you a different room. And you're still whining? Of course they're judging you. You're making their already stressful day more stressful - and you're doing it unnecessarly. An emergency patient can't help having to be rushed in on top of a full schedule. They know that that kind of thing can happen. But the MIL is not (currently) an emergency patient.

Like. I don't think "She should be grateful that she's being treated at all" is a good attitude, but I can definitely see where it comes from.

Incidentally, my doc said I shouldn't be talking at all. Instead, I got to reply to questions and complaints from the MIL all day. (Also from my kids, but in their case, I see why they don't quite understand that mum doesn't answer their usual barrage of questions.) Yeah, that worked well.

And now I'm feeling like a bad entitled age-ist bitch for ranting about this on my journal.

- - -
* if available. "If" being the key word.

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Jinxed it

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 08:05:26 GMT

Of course, after talking about the schedule being more reliable, I was bit completely in the ass by having to sub the last two classes yesterday, which took away the time I would've needed to get home before conferences to do at least some basic shopping or sth. Conferences dragged on until 18:15, with the result that I was away from home from 6:30 to 19:00. Joy.

Also, the substitute lesson was awful. They're the same 9th graders who, when they were 8th graders last year, proved too much to handle. Unexpectedly, they gave me hell. To some extent, I can understand it - they had written a math exam earlier in the day, and had been looking forward to cooking (and eating!) something nice in their home economy class, and instead they had to sit through theory assignments with me. Of course they were unhappy. But I'm angry and frustrated with myself that I couldn't get them to cooperate. They were allowed to chat amongst themselves as long as they also did their assignments, but instead, a couple of them decided to enter into a paper-ball battle that, in all honesty, went on until they themselves had tired of it because I couldn't stop them. Since it's not a class I usually teach, they know I can't really do anything about it - just note down their names and give them to their class teacher and leave it up to her discretion. "Oh, they never do that with me!" Thanks, good for you. I hate being so inefficient.

(Also frustrated with their home economy teacher, who left them such a boring and basic assignment. They're 9th graders. They must have gone through the food preparation hygiene shit three times by now. It's not fair to leave a poor sub dealing with the fallout of "but we knoooow all that! we've done it a hundred times!")

Today would be my free day - the last free day before my qualification classes at ZfSL start. Last week's free day was already consumed by professional development. Next week I'll have to attend parent-teacher conferences AFTER ZfSL classes. Officially, I should be at ZfSL today, but classes only start next week. The principal at ZfSL explicitly told me and the other trainee teacher that we shouldn't tell our school, because it was already officially a ZfSL day and we shouldn't have to do substitute lessons or anything else on that day, regardless of schedule. THEN our principal and the ZfSL principal talked on the phone for some reason and the latter told the former that we didn't have any classes today. Naturally, we now have to do substitute lessons today. (And just to make me happier, the teachers I'm substituting for haven't sent in any assignments yet. One class is 6th grade English, so I can treat them to the same Guy Fawkes Day nonsense I did with my own 6th graders yesterday. The other class? I have no clue.)

Fuck that noise.
It definitely isn't less work than journalism. It just gets paid better. (Not for the conferences, though. We don't see a single weary cent for the conferences, professional development or parent-teacher talks. Those are taken as given.)

To make me happier, I came home yesterday evening to the husband yapping that we didn't have ANYthing for breakfast. I will grant that he drove the kids to school (but not back; my father did that) and had a dentist appointment (INSTEAD of going to work!), but somehow I've got the feeling that he would've had more than enough time to go shopping. "Well I didn't know if you were planning to do it!" You could have sent me a text. "Then you would tell me that you don't have internet except in the teachers' lounge!" I spent most of the afternoon in the teachers' lounge. Also, breakfast stuff rarely has time to spoil in this household. The truth is, he thought of it as Somebody Else's Problem. That happens a lot these days.

Additionally, it's DARK all the time and GREY and WET and that's not exactly making me more stress-resistant. (Should be grateful. If it were dry, I'd have to help working on the garden wall.)

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A family outing

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 10:07:05 GMT

In accordance with the prophecy and year-long planning, we attended the big Lower Rhenian trade fair last weekend. There, although I may be one of the biggest Luddites of my generation, I was finally convinced of the usefulness of tablets. I know I know, everyone uses them but I just didn't see the point so far. But now I finally acquired one.

( Cut for pics, rambling and silliness )

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The lyf so short

Sometimes I'm just tired

*sigh*

Jinxed it

A family outing

sigh