I have literally nothing left emotionally or physically. Healthcare/EMS right now has drained me. I was really looking forward to the Christmas Eve service tonight: Well, we wound up missing church….but my estranged sister texted our sister group chat at 4 pm and said she’s missing our big family Christmases that we had as kids. Six of us were able to jump on zoom and so the cousins finally met each other tonight and I saw my seven and four year old nieces for the first time. I love candlelight Christmas Eve service, but this was better. What’s your Christmas story? Anyone else have a story, even if it’s not this year?

Well, we wound up missing church….but my estranged sister texted our sister group chat and said she’s missing our big family Christmases. Six of us were able to jump on zoom and so the cousins finally met each other tonight and I saw my seven and four year old nieces for the first time. I love candlelight Christmas Eve service, but this was better.

“No” is a complete sentence.

I worked a 24 hour shift and unfortunately was at a large fire most of the night. Blessedly, no one was hurt, but it was a very long and cold night. I finished up Christmas shopping as soon as I got out. Now I need to shower, go get the kids from Grandma’s, wrap presents, paint ornaments, pick up a grocery order, zoom with my sisters, go to church, make dinner(easy foods though), watch our Christmas movie and read a Christmas story, and then Santa stuff. Maybe a nap if I can get one. Maybe.

I think there’s quickly coming a time when quarantine without symptoms is no longer feasible. I wish everyone with any symptoms of anything would just stay home, anyway.

My DS11 and DD9 share a room. Either one could share with DS6, but they refuse to. We are hoping by 13 we can split them up, but they don’t really want to have separate bedrooms yet and we have to build a fourth bedroom either. When they ask or are uncomfortable we will make it happen.

Our volunteer fire departments stopped responding to Covid positive calls last year, so if you have Covid or Covid like symptoms, you wait for an ambulance to show up. My county, where I work, has been able to keep up. The longest wait might be 20 minutes. But the counties bordering us rely on a mixture of paid and volunteer ambulances, and I listen to them page up for an hour for an ambulance. If we all go down for 10 days with Covid, it’s going to be a disaster. I expect it to change and if a HCW is asymptomatic they’re no longer quarantined.

Yes!!! I have extra cards too lol. They’ll be on the way tomorrow!!

I haven’t mailed yours yet—I can include the stuffies names if she’d like! Just let me know what they are.

I’m honestly not holding my breath. I expect Omnicron to wipe us out with quarantines the next few weeks. Everyone is vaccinated and some of us are boostered, but a positive still requires a quarantine even if you’re not sick. What’s killing us at the moment is long distance transfers. 6+ hours one way. I understand why, but it’s a huge strain on the EMS system. We run all 911 and IFT in the county and pinch hit for critical care IFTs in the regional area. And I decided now was a fantastic time to take my flight paramedic certification test. I am going to enjoy every minute I can squeeze out. But I’m not really expecting a full week off with only one 24 in the middle. We’re going to do the best we can.

Oh my goodness. This is one of the kindest things I’ve ever read and it made me cry. I asked my kids what is important to them; what Christmas activities are their favorite. The 11-year-old said his favorite part of Christmas is the years Mom and Dad go to work because Grandma lets him play with whatever electronic he got longer than we do. 😂. My 9-year-old just wants hot chocolate and cuddled on the couch watching movies. My 6-year-old wants to watch Santa on the firetruck—there’s a local fire department that drives Santa around the streets on top of a firetruck so kids who maybe can’t go see Santa at the mall due to transportation or money, or kids who are sick, or now quarantined, can see Santa. Apparently this is a highlight for my son. This week I worked a 24 yesterday, a 24 tomorrow, a day shift Christmas and a 24 hour shift on Sunday, but then I took a week off. We can see Santa on the firetruck tonight and spend lots of time next week cuddling and drinking hot chocolate. I’m giving myself permission not to stress about this.

That‘s a good way to look at it! Lol I know that as soon as I finish writing these new ones that I’ll find all the ones I wrote before.

I wrote all the cards out and now can’t find them. So the new cards will be in the mail tomorrow. And then I’m sure I’ll find all the lovely cards I already did.

It’s click bait. He probably didn’t actually request it, but neither county jails or federal prisons allow conjugal visits. They’re done having kids, which is good.

I honestly thought it was an anti-vax trope, but the mechanism makes sense. This is super annoying though lol.

I did leave a message. I kind of think it’s weird that there is a lot of rumors about the Covid vaccine messing up periods and I get my first one in five years a few days after the booster. it’s not abnormal to not have periods on the birth control I’m on so the doctor has never been concerned about that: BUT corralation doesn’t equal causation.

Please don’t quote— Is there any truth to the Covid vaccine/abnormal bleeding/period rumor? You guys know more about the vaccines than half the doctors I know. I figured it was just anti-vaxx nonsense and correlation doesn’t equal causation but… I boostered on Wednesday. Saturday I started bleeding, heavily. First period in five years(I am on the BCP due to pcos). It hasn’t stopped, just gotten heavier. I contacted my gyn but she’s on vacation for two weeks and it’s a small office so no one covering(they don’t do obstetrics) correlation? Causation? Something I should worry about? (I had my annual exam a month ago and everything was normal so I don’t think there’s something going on like cervical cancer. And I am on the birth control pill and DH had the V, so I can’t imagine I am miscarrying.)

I would contact the agency. You really do need to keep caregivers. Omnicron will peak and dissipate, but there’s likely to be another variant, especially considering how widespread it is and how many potential hosts there are. So I would not just let it go until this wave has gone. An agency can help you navigate a lot of things, including no shows and call outs.

We moved our traditional get together with my sister to Zoom. Partly so all the far away cousins could participate and partly because my sister is a single Mom with no sick time and cannot afford quarantine. I’m pretty sure neither she or her kids are vaccinated due to Crunchiness. But she’s also really liberal politically so maybe—but probably not. my 88-year-old grandmother has let it be known again that Covid or not, her time is short and she wants to see her great grandkids. She was an infectious disease nurse and from the beginning of the pandemic has said Covid would outlive her and she did not want to lose time with her family waiting for something that would never happen—Covid to go away. So we will see her though I will test with Binax just in case. We’re still going to Christmas Eve service and spending our normal Christmas morning breakfast with both sets of grandparents. I fully expect next year there will be another wave of Covid, and hopefully by then it will be just another cold for most of us.

I’m sorry you get it, but commiseration helps a lot. Even on my days off I’ve been too drained to do any of the fun Christmas stuff we normally do. Everybody is sick, we’re running short due to employees being quarantined or calling in sick due to exhaustion or illness, the acuity of patients is ridiculously high. I fell asleep writing a PCR the other night and then had to erase about a million Xs….. My kids need something normal. New house, new town, new school, missing their grandmother, parents who are mentally and physically spent…We’re going to do all of our fun stuff in the week after Christmas and call it good enough. I know my kids struggle with flexibility, and this is really hard, but this year we have to change traditions. I’m going to ask them tonight which tradition is most important to them individually and make those three traditions my top priority. I’m feeling like a truly terrible Mom right now, but I have nothing left to give.

My company is outstanding at getting parents’ shifts covered for holidays, even a couple hours on Halloween. So fortunately my kids have always been able to have Christmas on the day of. But I usually lead up to the season with all kinds of things, and couldn’t this year. My kids have been through a lot of changes this year, and there’s some autism and undiagnosed neurodiversity in the mix. We moved, two of them changed schools(homeschooled to one public school in the old town to a new public school where we live now), their beloved great grandmother is on palliative care and no longer as interactive with them, their grandmother whom they previously spent a lot of fun time with has lived with that great-grandma for six months because there’s no empty beds in any nursing homes, Mom and Dad’s work goes crazy with the pandemic and they’re gone more—the list goes on this year, but there’s been upheaval and change. And then Mom changes all the Christmas traditions unexpectedly—they’re struggling. A lot. And I’m trying to figure out how to bring these traditions together, just the week after Christmas. It’s hard for them, but I’m trying.

I do have presents for Christmas Day, and we’ll spend the morning with grandparents opening our presents and eating cinnamon rolls until DH and I have to leave around 10(I’m home Christmas night though). They’re frustrated because usually in the weeks leading up to Christmas we’re reading lots of books and watching movies and looking at lights and making gingerbread houses and doing the zoo—things I just haven’t had the time or bandwidth for this year. We can do it after Christmas, all next week, but they’re struggling with that change. Probably the deeper issue is that Mom and Dad are working more than they ever have and being absolutely exhausted when we get home(instead of catching at least three or four hours of sleep and being able to be present at home), along with other pandemic caused upheavals. My kids are struggling and this is the tip of the iceberg, but it’s the most pressing issue.

I couldn’t think of a good title: Between the absolute chaos that is being a paramedic in today’s world and Covid booster kicking me hard, I haven’t done half the Christmas stuff I wanted to with the kids. This is my favorite time of year and I want to salvage it somehow, but I just got mandated for more shifts this week(people are out sick with the flu and Covid quarantines plus we are slammed with long, many hour out of town transfers just to get a patient to an open bed somewhere). It’s literally the grace of God and supportive bosses that DH and I got three hours off Christmas morning. I have the 13 days after Christmas off except for one 24 hour shift. I can’t be mandated for another three weeks so I should be good. Anyone do their Christmas celebrations Afterward? I am thinking the books I love to read aloud, the Jungle Bells at the zoo, the drive through light shows. I could make it a really nice 12 days of Christmas—but my older kids are convinced that this will just be dumb to do after the fact. They’re 11 and 9 and both rather inflexible, black and white thinkers. Do you do the 12 days of Christmas or all your traditions afterward? Any stories that will help me normalize it a little for the kids? (there is also a lot of local talk about schools going virtual in the New Year, which my older kids have heard and are very anxious about. That uncertainty is playing into this resistance to do any Christmas anything after the actual day as well. I know they need normalcy, but I also have really sick people that need to get to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and even Virginia, and I’m one of only three vent trained paramedics.)

Just north of me they’re calling in FEMA contracted ambulances. Our call volume is high, sure. But what they’re really there for is to transfer patients out of state. All hospitals are at or close to capacity, and they’re starting to look at 12-14 hour ambulance transfers to find a hospital with a bed. We’re also in a violence spike in my little city. There’s always been violence because drugs and gangs are a problem disproportionate to the population for a variety of reasons, but now we’re running two or three shootings or stabbings a day. Where are those people going to go? The only trauma center within driveable distance has no ICU beds. I’m also not at all convinced Omnicron is going to turn out to be mild in the unvaccinated or distantly vaccinated population. I’m closely watching the UK data.

My kid’s school district just announced they’re starting Christmas break early due to large numbers of staff out. However, it seems to be mostly flu, not Covid, which is good(not good, because the flu we’re starting to see is severe-ish even in flu vaccinated people, but it’s not severe Covid)