A month and a half of commuting from hospital to hospital: The story of how a pharmacist mom's brain glitched while staying with her hospitalized child

6:00 AM,
I wake up on a hard cot in the pediatric ward.
I check my child's temperature, wash my face, and
put on makeup.
I stuff my work documents into my bag and
head off to the hospital where I work.

From hospital to hospital.
I have to admit, I think it's a pretty surreal commute.

Glitch #1: Where am I?

For the first week, I honestly underestimated it.
Even though I thought, "Well, it's just a week,"
the attending physician said one thing on the morning of the scheduled discharge.

That turned into one extension after another, and before I knew it, a month and a half had passed.
While taking turns with my husband,
repeating the cycle of
staying with the child, working, staying with the child, and working,
I gradually started to lose track of
where I was.

One afternoon,
while walking briskly down the hallway at my workplace,
I was looking around.

Who I was looking for
was the nurse in charge at the pediatric ward where my child was hospitalized.
I was looking for her because I wanted to discuss something, but...
this is my workplace.
The pediatric ward is at a different hospital 40 minutes away by car.

In my head, I thought I understood that perfectly.
But my feet and my eyes were searching on their own.
This was the moment I truly "glitched."

Glitch #2: Occupational hazards never stop

The IV drip being administered to my child
was a medication prone to causing vasculitis.

As a pharmacist, I knew that as a matter of knowledge.
That's why, while staying with my child,
my eyes were constantly drawn to the insertion site.

Every time a nurse came to perform a procedure,
I would mutter "IV line, no issues" in my heart.
It was completely in work mode.

The moment the alarm went off in the middle of the night, my hand moved.
I tried to stop it.
—Though I didn't actually stop it.

And then one day,
I started to become overly concerned about the fine hair on my own arms.

My child was using steroids.
But the one being administered the drug is my child, not me.
The thickness of my hair
has nothing to do with steroids.
I know that.
But I became anxious and checked with my husband.

My husband's reply was this.

...That was a bizarre conclusion. Was my husband glitching too? It seems that occupational habits don't stop even when you take off your white coat or when you're chronically sleep-deprived.

Glitch No. 3: Milk, Medicine, and Me

My child, right in the middle of the 'terrible twos,' suddenly became obsessed with milk while in the hospital.

What's more, they had quite specific requirements, insisting,
"I only want this small, cute milk!"

My days of scouring the supermarkets near the hospital every single day in search of that specific milk began.

By the end of the hospital stay, the supermarket staff would greet me by saying, "Milk again today? We have it in stock." I had become a familiar face to them.

What was even more troublesome was when they started saying,
"I want to take my medicine with milk." As a pharmacist, I have things I want to say. There are medicines you shouldn't take with milk. There are medicines where it affects absorption. I know I should explain it properly.

But by the end of the hospital stay, my spirit was broken.

That was the answer I gave. Is it technically safe from a pharmacist's perspective? But the 'me who used to do everything perfectly' had long since disappeared somewhere.

Glitch No. 4: The most painful self-loathing

At work, I can speak calmly to both patients and their families. I can smile and say, "If you have any questions about how to take your medicine, please feel free to ask."

And yet. Back in the pediatric ward, when faced with my fussy child, I would just snap.

I can be kind to patients' families, but I end up yelling at my own child.

I could barely manage a shower every two days, I lived on convenience store rice balls, and yet I kept telling myself, "This is just what you do when you're staying with your child," as I slowly wore myself down.

What I learned for the first time by standing in the family's shoes

The thing that changed the most from this experience was
how I approach discharge guidance.

I used to say this
when providing medication guidance to families.

I was spouting pure logic.
But now I understand.

I might have been telling people who didn't have the energy
to prepare those meals to give it “after meals.”

I might have been telling people who couldn't even manage
to sleep or shower that
“it is important to keep taking it.”

So now,
I try to ask a little before talking about the medicine.

“Is this dosage schedule manageable for you?”I ask.

Reducing medication
is also about reducing the burden on the family giving it
—that realization was born from that month and a half.

Conclusion

It was tough. It was truly, incredibly tough.

But the experience of “a hospital employee becoming a patient's family member”
taught me things
that I could never have learned in any training program.

To all the moms and dads
currently staying on a cot in a hospital room:
You are doing such a great job.
It’s exhausting, isn't it? That whole situation.

And for those who have had their brains break in similar ways
—like “looking for staff from another hospital
at my own workplace”
or “buying so much milk that the store clerk remembered me,”

please share your own strange episodes in the comments.
I want to believe I'm not the only one.

▶ The story of how I earned a qualification during maternity leave while being told “it's okay not to try so hard”

▶ Until a pharmacist who was told “it's okay to stay at the pharmacy” creates a place for herself (Part 1)

▶ My child won't take their medicine... Methods practiced by a pharmacist mom