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2-23-10

My knee is better though I still have pitting edema in the shin. Sue and I climbed at exit 38 Sunday and the knee felt normal. I led ellies and the roof below and felt great, though I was rusty, had to hang on ellies. I climbed with Fletch and Lisa G. today after work and my knee is no problem at all. I've finished the prescription for cepahexelin for the staf infection.What has woken me up at 3am on a Tuesday morning is my sick daughter and stress from my job.

Lisa is in a 4 day priceptorship, or internship, or whatever you want to call it at Western State Mental hospital. She has to spend a 4 day rotation there working as a nursing student. She caught the stomach flu Sunday night and was up all night barfing. She tried to go in because they don't let you miss any time, but barfed at the hospital and they sent her home, saying she could miss one day, but not two. Now she is still sick and doesn't know if she can make it in Tuesday. She also just had her period and now she has cramps so bad she can't stand up straight. If she misses one more day she has to retake the entire quarter, even though she has perfect grades and attendance up until now. If they boot her out, I will be making a visit to her dean.

I spent all 3 days of President's day weekend working on the schedule for our media program. Then last saturday I did it again. I should have done it Sunday too but chose sanity and went climbing. Now the our dean is asking us to come in and explain why the schedule is so screwed up. We are also in trouble from the students because they need guidance in choosing the right classes to graduate on time, but we aren't sure anymore because they have all been taking whatever looks fun, instead of what they need to take to graduate on time.

This is all related to the fact that they came onboard when the media program was in crisis. The state slashed our program by two thirds, tossing out video and 3D, both of which were under enrolled. I can see why they cut them, it was logical in a time of financial crisis. But that slashing caused Janet (my immediate supervisor and mentor) to quit. In her absence Austin and I have been trying to put together the schedule but it is incredibly complex.

I used to poke fun at Janet (in a kind way) for her lack of understanding of the really complex side of some of the software programs we use, though I always knew her heart was in the right place as a teacher. What I did not know was that she ran the department with a sure and brilliant mind. She was definitely the chairperson at all our planning meetings but we had no idea at the time how much behind the scenes work she was doing (read that as unpaid logistical paperwork at home). She was able to sail throught the endless managerial paperwork without it impacting her teaching hardly at all.

I suspect that the times when she had to call me in and help her with some little function in photoshop were prompted by the endless OT she logged managing our department. She would regularly sit down with students in her office to plan out their education in our media program. Austin and I have let the students have their own free will choosing classes, and they have guessed wrong, which causes chaos as we try to shedule.

The endless hours I've put into figuring it all out is burning me out worse than I've ever been burned out before. I like to be given a job to do and left alone to do it well. I do not like having to spread myself so thinly that I can't do anything well, and that is where I am right now. I'm still teaching my classes well, I won't let the students down, but I am not doing Janet's job well at all. There is no way that Austin and I can do her job. She had 22 years of experience doing that job, and the administration seems to think we can continue to do her job without her. She was the department manager, and in her absence we are a ship without an engine, drifting towards the breaking surf.

I don't like the feeling, but I've done all I can and I fear it is not enough. I refuse to spend any more weekends jumping through hoops doing 2 peoples jobs. They will simply have to stop asking me to do the program review, there is no time whatsoever to do it. I'm not working any more weekends on administration stuff. They can fire me for incompetence if they want. I can teach, but I'm not Janet. I don't have twenty years to become Janet.

I miss the focus of pure web design. I can wrestle code perfectly fine. I can learn flash and php, but this teaching business...I'm beginning to wonder if I'm nearing the end of this road. It's just too much stress.

2-8-10

My right knee has been swollen for 3 plus weeks. It goes up and down, but this all started the weekend after I skied overnight up to Mazama Ridge. I got blisters from my boot on my shin. The popped, got smelly and possibly mildly infected while I went overnight climbing the next weekend at Vantage. I also banged the knee loading the aerodyne into clints truck.

5 days after the ski trip, the knee was slightly swollen, but I climbed on it anyway though it was swollen bigger on Monday. It went down and by Sunday of the third weekend I thought it was a minor swelling and teleskied at Crystal. That following Tuesday it got real big and hot and I saw the doctor that Thursday. They told me to stay off it all weekend, which I did last weekend, this being Monday.

I put it up on a pillow so it was at least above my waist all weekend. I must have watched 12 videos from amazon at $3 a pop. Total veg session. Spent about 3 hours studying photoshop, but even then had it up much of the time. Now, it is still swollen very puffy and hot around the knee. The lower leg is also swollen and hard. When you press on the flesh, it goes in like clay, or bread dough. The thumb press stays there, like there is some kind of firm jello under there that does not spring back for several minutes. Lisa says that is one of the symptoms they test for with patients who have poor circulation. The poke them with a pencil and time how long it takes to spring back to flat skin.

Sitting on my butt did not help, at least not very much. The doctor today (my third visit) said that it started with pre-patellar bursitis as a slight swelling around the knee from a strain, or overuse on my ski trip. Now it is a staph infection in the bursitis. The changed my medication to a different antibiotic, gave me a couple shots in the butt and told me to keep it above my heart, which means no work today and maybe tomorrow.

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