There's really not much exciting to report on the job front. The guy from HR has not called back yet. He promised to by the end of the week, but his secretary had also said that he was taking vacation days Thurs., Fri., and Monday so that could have something to do with it. I'll have to call my boss on Monday to confirm that I'm not supposed to show up to work for them somewhere on Tuesday. That should be interesting. I hate all this drama.

I have all the kiddies home again, and it has been a fun-filled week to say the least. Hubby has been working ALL day, ALL week, leaving at 7 a.m. and coming home around 10 p.m. No help there! It's been quite a challenge with the four of them and Mom in a cast and on crutches... oh yeah boss lady, I'm loving this! Actually I don't have to use the crutches anymore unless I'm outside, so that is a huge plus. Oh, and our only bathroom is upstairs . The older two have actually been very helpful this week with the younger two, feeding the pets, cleaning up some of the smaller messes and various stuff like that. I think it would be a lot rougher if I only had the younger two (although people think I'm nuts when I tell them four kids is easier than two!)

Hubby is off tomorrow and I have to go shopping for my son's birthday. His party is Monday, and I have no presents for him! Bad mommy!

A day or two ago (this week is all a blur) the dog got loose on me while hubby was gone to work for the day and my teenager wasn't home yet. I should mention said dog is fourteen years old, completely blind, and weighs a good 75 lbs. Maybe a few more. He didn't get far, and a neighbor saw him and came to tell us. I found him at the side of the house and got his leash and put it on him to take him back to his little house, but the poor thing was so terrified that he was shaking all over and planted his butt firmly in the ground and refused to move. The boys were trying to help (the two year old by throwing the poor cat on the dog) and really NOT helping the situation, so I had to send my daughter back in the house to keep them occupied. So here's me... 5 months pregnant (I'm obviously showing at this point), big ole cast on my leg, trying desperately to move this terrified, blind dog across the yard.

I got a can of his food and tried to coax him forward, but he was too scared even to move for that. No amount of sweet-talking reassurance on my part was having an effect on the poor creature. So I'm picking him up under his front legs and scooting him across the yard since I really physically can't pick him up, big ole belly, cast and all... poor dog is whimpering and whining and digging his hind legs and butt into the ground, still shaking in fear. How pathetic we must have looked!

It probably took me half an hour, but I did finally manage to drag him the 20 feet or so across the yard to his house . Anyone watching would have either been crying at the sheer stupidity of us or rolling on the ground laughing from the spectacle. I really missed my teenager that day.

Sunday evening I went to work as usual, and dealt with all the usual ER joys. Twenty minutes before the end of my shift, I slipped and FELL on a paper clip (I'm such a klutz!) and broke my foot!

Baby is just fine, no worries there. Mom, on the other hand, not so much! Our ER is not open all night, and my shift was ending because we had closed. Since the other ER was reporting its usual 6+ hour wait time, I elected to wait until morning to see what my foot looked like. I did have to call our company hotline to report the injury (CYA) since there was no supervisor there. By morning it looked bad, felt worse, and I had little doubt that I had broken it (again).

Reluctantly, I called my boss and told her what had happened. I also made an appointment with the orthopedic specialist who treated me for the same injury last year (I know, klutz I told you). I had to call our occupational health department, who told me I couldn't see my dr of choice; rather, I had to go through our ER and our occ health dept. Then our employee health dept. who said yes I had to go through our Er first and then go where they recommended. I was being pretty finicky being pg and not wanting to be exposed to unnecessary x-rays (hoping for just one to confirm the fracture or not).

I wound up going to our ER (the one I work at) Monday morning (oh, with 3 kiddies in tow - that was fun but that's a whole 'nother story!) although I refused to let them do the xrays and asked instead for a referral to my guy. Which they gladly gave me. I was thankfully able to bypass occ health, have one xray (well 2 shots of my foot) and indeed I am broken. By the time I finished my boss was gone for the day, so I left a voice mail and promised to come visit her Tuesday morning.

Tuesday I went in to see her, and well... she'd fire me in a heartbeat right about now if she could. She told me my coworkers (four of them) tried to recreate my accident and couldn't MAKE themselves fall on a paper clip. Well, I'm just special I guess. Takes talent, you know? She thinks maybe I'm faking? I don't know how one would fake a broken foot (or why, in the middle of summer and 5 months pregnant, this cast is not exactly a cake walk!) I guess she thinks I enjoy messing up her schedule that much that I would go to such great lenghts to destroy it. Yup, that's me!

She said they cannot accomodate my restricted duties and that I'd just have to take the next six weeks off. She also told me this counts toward my twelve weeks total that I'm allowed, which added to to the four I've already taken leaves me... two weeks for maternity leave. So my days are numbered for sure.

I had to go to HR and drop off my dr's notice/restriction paper, and had another chat with the guy in charge there. He's pretty sure there's a caveat to protect me somewhere, and said that the fact that my dept won't accomodate me definitely says something about them. According to him, dept's usually go out of their way to work with workers comp injuries since they're going to be paying me anyway. Even if they just had me typing or filing or something, just to have me there to be paid for it rather than sitting at home (and getting paid for it). He's going to try to find me a spot elsewhere in the hospital but said it's doubtful and that I should enjoy my vacation... Also, he adjusted my occurances so that the one I felt set up for and the others that she counted double are no longer on my record, so I have only two absences now.

He's also checking to see if these weeks do in fact count against my total. He seemed to think that since they're workers comp they do not (he said if I fell at home there would be no doubt that they do, but since it was on the job I may be in luck). He'll be calling by the end of the week to let me know what he discovered. I'm sure he's all over my bosses to get their side of the story by now too. And they'll still fire me as soon as they have the chance .

But for now... I'm in limbo and just hanging out. At the very least, I'm off until the 1st and then I can go back with restrictions if they can find a spot for me. I'm going to have a big red X on my file there before it's all said and done (wait, I probably already do!)

On the bright side, I discovered how to avoid that pregnant waddle! A pregnant woman on crutches does NOT waddle at all!

I'm sure every ER has them, the med-seekers that come in twice (or more) per week with some mysterious ailment that is causing them to cringe in pain (usually an 11 on a scale of 1-10 when you ask). Where I work is a small branch of the larger local ER, and we don't see nearly as much of this as our counterparts at the main campus. For one thing, most of the "regulars" know that the docs who work our campus are onto them, and are not as busy as the main campus. They usually have the time to put you through a "complete workup" and you will leave with some sort of pain relief that would be quite effective to hold you over until you got to your regular dr, but really wouldn't provide you with any good kind of a "buzz" or "fix."

I've actually had patients come in doubled over in pain, ask who the dr was that day, and when I told them... they simply replied "Oh, nevermind" and got up and walked out . A miracle, I do declare! It's hard not to lose your compassion for people at this job sometimes.

When the regular (bigger) ER becomes overcrowded, we often see the overflow and we get their regulars as well as our own. Tonight was one of those nights (reported 6 hour wait time at the main ER ) and it seemed like it just got stupider and stupider. Which got me to thinking...

How very sad is it that some poor souls have nothing better to do with their Saturday nights than to feign some injury or illness all for the sake of a buzz. Aren't there more effective ways of achieving this? Some will even go so far as to actually inflict bodily harm upon themselves (cutting, hitting themselves with hammers to break bones, etc.) so as to not be "faking it." Doesn't it get tiresome trying to come up with a new "ailment" two or three times a week? Do they not realize that the hospital staff are onto them and they're not getting the "good stuff" anymore anyway?

I guess not, they never seem to give up. I know there's no real solution, but it saddens me to see it. It takes our time away from those who really *do* need our services (especially on nights like tonight when we have all the overflow from the main campus), and puts a real strain on the doctors to try to differentiate anyone who comes in experiencing real pain. Just another one of the sad realities of life in the ER I suppose.

I gathered up all my documentation and headed to HR today. They're supposed to "investigate." I also stopped by to pick up my schedule today for the next 6 weeks, and well, I guess it's confirmed that they're doing whatever they can to try to get me to quit. I can't remember if I commented or not that last week they decided to send my partner home early, leaving me to man the ER by myself (unheard of). That was step 1 I suppose. The newest approach, I think, is to mess with my schedule enough that I will quit since I'm scheduled to work the next 3 weekends in a row.

I think I'll take this to HR as well, since it is a more blatant discrimination. While it's not written anywhere, I was told when I hired in and it has been standard practice in our dept. that we have every other weekend off. Others have (recently- like in the last 6 week schedule) gone on FMLA leave and come back, and still had every other weekend off. The only exception is when someone goes on vacation and has 2 weekends off in a row, then when they come back they are on the opposite weekend of where they started. They still don't work 2 weekends in a row, let alone 3.

At any rate, the schedule is printed in such a way that the whole department's schedule for the next 6 weeks is right there for plain viewing. If I take the previous schedule (showing the other employee returning from a 12wk FMLA leave) and this schedule, and NO WHERE on either of those 2 schedules is anyone else working more than one weekend in a row... well, that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

This is very frustrating and upsetting for me, to say the least. I might not have believed that such a thing existed as "pregnancy discrimination." Now I'm definitely reconsidering. I could, to some extent, understand not hiring a very pregnant woman for a new job knowing that she'd be leaving in a very short time (although technically I guess that is illegal as well), but I cannot fathom making an existing employee's life miserable because of health problems that she has no control over.

Hopefully I'll come up with a good solution soon, this is really eating at me and, well... it sucks!

Oh this has been one long week...

I'm getting all my documentation together for a trip to HR on Friday (it has to wait until then, my week is too hectic to make it sooner!) Just riding it out for now, and waiting to see what, if anything, happens.

Tomorrow is my 20wk ultrasound, looking forward to that of course! It's really hard to believe that 20 weeks have passed already and I'm halfway through this pregnancy. Just wait until I'm 36+ weeks and beyond ready for this little one to make an appearance and see if the time is still passing so quickly...



On a completely different note, I ran into an old acquaintance at the grocery store today. I wouldn't have recognized him, it's been a good 8 years since I've seen him and he's lost a LOT of weight. But he sure recognized me and said "Come here, I want my wife to meet the person who changed my life!"

He said he'd been trying to look me up for years to thank me, because it was my fault his life turned out the way it has. He's now the managing editor of a pretty large newspaper in NC (was back in town on vacation visiting family), and it was I who talked him into working for me as an assistant editor way back when I was an undergraduate and the editor-in-chief of our very small university newspaper!

He was a math major... not exactly your usual editor-type student. But, it was one of only 3 paid jobs on our staff (including mine and the guy who sold ads lol) and paid a whopping $250/month! It was NOT an easy position to fill, let me assure you, but it was easier than all the other unpaid positions. He had a decent writing style and was so perfectionist that he was PERFECT for editing (I never had to worry about typos since he proofed everything first!) So I convinced him to work for me. It really was a LOT of work for very little money.

When I resigned, I nominated him to replace me and of course he got the job (the editor-in-chief was almost always selected in this manner at that school, at that time anyway). Which led to a change in major (actually a double major, he kept the math too), a few years as editor of that newspaper, a year or so with the local newspaper, and then a starting job at the NC newspaper as a sports editor.

Of course he gets all the credit, as he's the one who did all the hard work to get himself there, but it was nice to think that something I did (and questioned, and was questioned about - a MATH major???) had such a positive impact on someone's life. Kind of made up for the crappy Monday I had...