Catch up: Chapter 2: July - Dec 2022
It was July 5th. I had just come back to the house I supervised. One of my residents (B) had just come back from a home visit. I was talking to my staff and she was saying I looked like a strong breeze would knock me over. She assured me she could handle the house and urged me to go home and get some rest. Typically, I would check in with all my residents, especially if they had just come back from a home visit, but this time I listened to my staff and went home. I had been home for about an hour (I lived about an hour away from the house I supervised) when I got the call. B had been found unresponsive in his room, paramedics were there working on him. I called our on call and informed them, made the call to B’s mother and went back to the house. Before I could arrive, my executive director called me to inform me that B did not make it. I arrived to the house to the wails of B’s mother in the kitchen and a house full of people. I stayed the night as my staff was traumatized from finding B and was up till 3 am consoling my other residents, talking to leadership and coming up with a plan for the coming days.
I ended up staying the rest of the week as my staff stated she could not return to the house. I couldn’t even allow myself to grieve as I wanted to be a touchstone of normality to my residents and my one remaining staff. I know all too well the dangers of suppressing my stuff, but wanted to make sure everyone else could move on and felt if I could just get through a few months it would be worth it for everyone involved.
What followed was the longest and one of the most intense depressive episodes in my experience. I was just going through the motions. I was struggling with derealization, which is already unsettling, but this lasted for MONTHS. My voice kept talking me, if I had just checked in with him I may have been able to do something, that he would have lived if I’d been less selfish and just checked on him before I left. That had I found him, my CPR skills would have been better and I could have saved him. I had urges to bash my head into the wall repeatedly just so I could feel something, to swerve of the road into a tree to prove everything was actually real, because NOTHING felt real to me. I wasn’t closed off about it either. I told my boss, other supervisors, the director, “I’m not ok! But I’m trying” I was still covering my house at least half the week, running the day program, and helping at the other house.
I was getting sick of it, especially since the other supervisors in my department were not helping at my house or the program, or the other house. They were even asking for help at their houses from me. It all came to a head when my boss got a complaint from a parent that their son’s room was dirty. Now, we had just done a deep cleaning of the whole house as we were looking for a new resident to move into B’s room and had potential residents visiting with family. My boss met me outside and started laying into me about that room, when I said, I don’t think it was as bad as it was portrayed. She got pissed and marched into the house to inspect the room herself, only to find a clean room. “I guess you were actually able to get your staff to clean it since yesterday” she huffed. “Yeah, you saw the goals I wrote for him and know that yesterday was his cleaning day” I replied. She didn’t like that and started going off on everything she didn’t think I was doing and then said “I’m only upset because I give a shit and I don’t think anyone in this house gives a shit!”
Over a room that wasn’t perfect for a day.
After everything I’ve done and everything I put myself through.
After MONTHS of me saying that I wasn’t ok, that I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep going the way I was.
She didn’t think I gave a shit.
I told her I needed to leave and someone would have to cover my house for a change. I wrote a strongly worded response in an email, let it all out and then contacted HR. I took some time and wrote out a proposal for a new position. Someone to help with retention of staff, something we needed because we just couldn’t keep anyone company wide.
I was turned down. But they did offer me a new position. To run the day program attached to our retirement center. They were in desperate need for supervisors out there as 3 turned in their notice at the same time. Red flag for sure, but they assured me that they were restructuring things out there to make it run better. They told me I only had to focus on the day program and I would have an 8-4 schedule unless it was my week for on call. Plus they would give me a $5,000 bonus for going out there and helping with the restructuring. I accepted.
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