Last year on this day, I had dragged my massively pregnant self to work for one last shift before having a few days off over Christmas. I had planned to try to work almost up to my due date of January 11th at the beginning of the pregnancy, but at this point I had convinced Sean to let me quit a little earlier. I was just so sore and my job involved a lot of walking around. My feet were so swollen that all I wore to work (in addition to business casual dress) were a pair of black slippers that looked relatively like shoes and an over-sized pair of black ugg-type boots. After Christmas break, I was only going to have to work three more shifts and then I was going to sleep as much as you can when you are nine months pregnant. I was very excited.
I had planned that the day was going to be busy and awful, because that was usually how it went as a home care liaison on the day before a holiday break. Lots of last minute referrals for patients who didn't want to stay in the hospital over Christmas but couldn't really go home safely completely on their own. I dragged my roller bag around the hospital and wrapped up all of my work. I parked myself down in the Au Bon Pain at RUMC in Chicago and strained to lean over and get my laptop out of my bag to transmit referrals. I kept waiting for my pager to go off with a bunch of new referrals, but it really didn't as much as I was thinking it would. Perhaps the case managers were feeling sorry for me being huge and pregnant and decided to dump difficult and last minute patients on some other home care agency liaison. Whatever the reason, I was thankful. I was sore and didn't really care about getting any more patients.
I finished around 4 or so and booked it out of there fast. Little did I know that would be the last time I would finish a day at that job.
Sean and I were going to go out to eat with a gift certificate to Ruth's Chris steakhouse that my brother-in-law had given us for Christmas. We got dressed up and headed downtown. I ordered a delicious steak and baked potato, and we sat in a booth in a corner of the restaurant (I can still see it clearly in my head: Sean facing the booth and me facing the dining area), taking our time and enjoying what was probably to be our last night out at a nice restaurant for a while.
After our long dinner and a couple glasses of wine for Sean, we thought it might be nice to walk around downtown for a little while. Christmas in Chicago is beautiful. But as we waited for the bill to come, I felt less and less like walking around. I was just tired. I didn't want to be such a downer but told Sean that I thought I just wanted to go home. So we drove back home and went to bed around 10:30pm or so that evening.
I awoke at 1:09am to a strange sensation....
I had planned that the day was going to be busy and awful, because that was usually how it went as a home care liaison on the day before a holiday break. Lots of last minute referrals for patients who didn't want to stay in the hospital over Christmas but couldn't really go home safely completely on their own. I dragged my roller bag around the hospital and wrapped up all of my work. I parked myself down in the Au Bon Pain at RUMC in Chicago and strained to lean over and get my laptop out of my bag to transmit referrals. I kept waiting for my pager to go off with a bunch of new referrals, but it really didn't as much as I was thinking it would. Perhaps the case managers were feeling sorry for me being huge and pregnant and decided to dump difficult and last minute patients on some other home care agency liaison. Whatever the reason, I was thankful. I was sore and didn't really care about getting any more patients.
I finished around 4 or so and booked it out of there fast. Little did I know that would be the last time I would finish a day at that job.
Sean and I were going to go out to eat with a gift certificate to Ruth's Chris steakhouse that my brother-in-law had given us for Christmas. We got dressed up and headed downtown. I ordered a delicious steak and baked potato, and we sat in a booth in a corner of the restaurant (I can still see it clearly in my head: Sean facing the booth and me facing the dining area), taking our time and enjoying what was probably to be our last night out at a nice restaurant for a while.
After our long dinner and a couple glasses of wine for Sean, we thought it might be nice to walk around downtown for a little while. Christmas in Chicago is beautiful. But as we waited for the bill to come, I felt less and less like walking around. I was just tired. I didn't want to be such a downer but told Sean that I thought I just wanted to go home. So we drove back home and went to bed around 10:30pm or so that evening.
I awoke at 1:09am to a strange sensation....
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