I was looking forward to the day. I hadn’t been assigned to this floor in awhile. It’s always nice to see residents again after a long absence. And it’s always hard to see that the names outside of rooms have changed.

However, that wasn’t the only thing to simultaneously dread and anticipate. Apparently the home moved our documentation from the usual hefty binder system into a software program that runs through the internet and our network onto tablet pc’s that we have at the desk. Ordinarily I’d be thrilled about such an advancement, but I missed the training for it - She is too old. Yes. Too old to begin the training. – and so it was on my mind all day that I would need to be able to set aside my last hour at work to learn for myself or pester my workmates to teach me.

I think that thought cursed my day. Because I only got half of the work done before breakfast that I ought to have. Catching up after the meal was essential and happened, but it meant that I missed my lunch break. Plus it took me like two hours to help someone with a bath when ordinarily that task is half an hour, tops. I collapsed into the chair at the nurse’s station with tablet pc in hand, barely scraping half an hour at the end of my shift to climb the mountain of electronic information on the nifty little white device in front of me. When out of nowhere a man walks up to the desk.

He introduces himself as the home’s pastoral associate. And today he has a new program. But not for the residents. For us. And it starts right now.

I look down at the tablet pc and back at him. I tell him that I must politely decline. I don’t tell him that it’s already been a day that would leave me in tears. I do say that it’s an impossibility for me today because of this system and my paperwork must be done and I missed the training. That next time I’d be happy to attend. He nods his head and excuses himself. Disaster, I thought, averted.

{You should see this software, by the way. I know the answers to the questions. I mean, I know my job and by the end of the shift, I’ve caught up with the resident’s and their needs, but seriously I would probably need a law degree to figure out how they want me to answer the questions.}

Not five minutes later, the nurse on the floor calls us into the program. Failure is not an option. I start stumbling over my once very cohesive and logical protest and she cuts right through it all, telling me to just bring the tablet pc with me and do my work while the pastor talks about whatever. This is where I inwardly and outwardly sighed. I’m being forced to be rude, forced to learn my work with the distraction of a program around me, forced into more stress.

Here’s the best part: the program was about learning how to de-stress our lives, about how to care for the caregiver. I wanted to cry.

Once I got out of there, today even, I can laugh about it. But at that moment in time, I really do believe that I could have punched a hole right through the wall.

I sat through a guided meditation and an introduction to him as our pastor, the counseling options available to us through the workplace and a discussion about palliative care and how we deal with resident’s family, each other and ourselves in the time immediately before and after someone dies. All *while* I am totally freaking out and not knowing what the hell I am doing or answering but going click click click with the plastic pencil on my screen, praying that management will understand it was my first day and that if I answer all the stupid questions wrong, they’ll forgive me because otherwise I have an excellent track record.

And the pastor, knowing my situation, never blinked.

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