Yesterday was rough. Concentrating is like exercise. You have to work up your stamina at concentrating and maintain it or else you lose some of it. My last two months at work have been very easy, working at most an 8-9 hour shift in which I still had breaks throughout the day to go grab coffee or lunch and let my mind rest for a little bit. Yesterday was my first day back in the ED in two months. It was 12 hour shift… twelve hours straight of non-stop focus. There are no breaks. People’s emergencies aren’t timed around when I want to go grab lunch or go to the bathroom. By the end of the shift, my brain was shot. The last three things that I had looked at were a CT scan of the brain, spine, and face of a guy who had gotten beaten up. When I finished my shift a little after 8pm, I kept thinking, did I miss anything on that case? Did I rush through it in order to get out of there? Was I not focused enough when I was going through it?
I normally am able to leave work at work, but for some reason I left work feeling uneasy about that case. When I was still thinking about it at dinner, I had to remind myself that even if I had missed a subtle face fracture, it wouldn’t kill him. He was getting admitted to the hospital regardless. It’s so easy to get so detailed focus–which believe me, we HAVE to be–but sometimes you have to step back and look at the big picture: was anything I potentially missed going to kill him or affect his care? I finally stopped worrying about that case when I realized the answer to that was most likely NO.
Luckily, if I had missed something, I would’ve heard about it by now from my attending, so it looks like I thankfully didn’t miss anything big!
When Dean picked me up after my shift, we headed straight over the place we will be doing our rehearsal dinner, Sapori Trattoria. It’s a cute little Italian restaurant in Lincoln Park. We were sold on this place not only because the food was great, but because they had the most amazing customer service there. I will ALWAYS support good customer service, even if it costs more (which, this place happened to also be totally reasonable). The people who work at Sapori Trattoria are absolutely wonderful. We had a great time, and I left completely stuffed and in a food coma.
Dean and his father. Can’t you see the resemblance?
They kept bringing us out food to try, including these amazing desserts.
The upstairs rooms where we’ll be having our rehearsal dinner.
Today I have the day off, but it’s still going to be fairly busy: we have a baby shower this afternoon (yay Jeannine and Vidal!!), and then we have our first premarital counseling class tonight. Our class is with 42 other couples from our church (technically, the church we used to go to). Can you believe that??? Dang there’s a lot weddings coming up around the city, apparently!
I have no idea what to expect with the class. I’m honestly a little scared. I’m afraid they’ll look down upon the fact that we are already living together. We got asked that question on one of the questionnaires we filled out in the beginning (I wrote about my choice to move together pre-marriage here). Oh well. It is what it is, and we are totally comfortable with our choice to do so!
QUESTIONS:
Anyone else have trouble leaving work at work? How do you switch it off?
Who else has done premarital counseling? How was it?
Have a great time at the shower!
That’s a long work day..and it really is VERY tough to mentally stay focused for so long.
I have a huge, huge problem with leaving work at work..I struggle so much with sleeping at night, and that’s basically one of the reasons – I can’t shut off. I don’t know if it’s a skill that’s possible to be learned?? I hope so!!
We had pre-marital counseling and honestly ours was one on one with a couple who are also members of our church. It’s not that bad and it actually helps you learn things about the other person that you may not have known before. It’s a great thing to do and I think everyone, regardless of religion, should take time to do that before walking down the aisle. We still go back to see them too ifw are going through rough patches in our marriage it helps you stay connected through all the chaos of life