A year. That’s how long I went without a real vacation. Twelve months of “after survey.” “After the holidays.” “After we’re fully staffed.” (I’ll wait for you to stop laughing.)
And then I finally did it. Booked the time. Set the out-of-office. Meant it, even.
Day one of vacation: summer plague.
Not a sniffle. A full-body, fever-dream, “is this what dying feels like” plague. The kind where you take your own temperature and start mentally drafting your own SBAR. Situation: I am on vacation. Background: I have not rested since last summer. Assessment: this is self-inflicted. Recommendation: unclear. Send soup.
Let me back up and tell you about the week before
Three days of electrical issues in the building. Three. Days. Emergency protocols activated — and if you’ve never had the pleasure, “activate emergency protocols” is a phrase that sounds crisp and official and is actually 72 hours of adrenaline, flashlight math, contingency plans for your contingency plans, and reassuring every single person in the building while your own heart rate does something you would absolutely document if you saw it on a resident.
Layered on top of that, I worked approximately ten million hours last week. That’s a conservative estimate. I rounded down.
So by the time I badged out for vacation, I wasn’t a person leaving for a beach. I was a cortisol delivery system in a cardigan.
Here’s the part where I tell on myself
I did this to me.
Not the electrical issues — buildings are going to building. But the year without a break? The “I’ll rest when things calm down” delusion? The pushing through every warning light on my own dashboard because other people needed me more? That was all me. I wrote those orders and I signed them.
There’s an actual name for what happened on day one, by the way. It’s called the let-down effect. Your stress hormones hold the whole immune system hostage during a crisis — and the moment your body decides you’re finally safe, it drops the act and collects everything you owe. With interest. Your body is a meticulous charge nurse. It keeps a log even when you don’t. Nothing goes undocumented; it just waits for the right moment to hand you the binder.
We know this. We literally teach this. We look a stressed-out family member dead in the eye and say “you can’t pour from an empty cup” and then we go work fourteen days straight and call it commitment.
What I’d tell you if you were me
Take the vacation before the year mark. Way before. Vacation is not a reward for reaching a finish line that does not exist in long-term care — there is no “after things calm down.” There is only rotating chaos with occasional cake in the break room.
And if you’re reading this thinking “I can’t, there’s too much going on” — I need you to hear this in your own voice, because it’s the same thing you’d say to your favorite nurse who hasn’t taken PTO in a year: the building will stand. The team you built will hold it. That’s what you built them for. If it can survive three days of electrical failure, it can survive you sitting on a porch for a week.
In conclusion
My staff are planning my funeral.
The invitation will just be a to-do list. The eulogy will have action items. In lieu of flowers, please complete your assigned education modules.
Don’t be me. Or be me, but sooner, with less plague. Take the time off while it’s still a vacation and not a medical event.
I’m going back to my soup.
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