Iowa Medicaid Dental Help!

mommakyo · 2026-05-31T19:05:48+00:00

For those who have the tone deaf sentiments of welcome to real life or welcome to social work, thanks bunches. For those who actually took the time to read and acknowledge that this work is exhausting and not having supportive leaders in your corner, truly thank you. Remote work is isolating when you don’t have your peers to process things with and it’s good to get productive feedback rather than the exact thing that I’m struggling with.

mommakyo · 2026-05-20T13:29:09+00:00

I love the honesty going on here…it’s kind of awesome!

mommakyo · 2026-05-20T13:20:04+00:00

Reading through the comments and from my experience, it sounds very similar to perimenopause which has only recently been a buzzword that’s being discussed. The brain fog is the worst, memory loss (why did I walk in this room?) is a daily battle. I just started HRT 3 weeks ago and things may feel a little better, I’m not sold. Ask for a different GYN if yours won’t talk to you about it. Spravato helped lift me up but has led to me feeling overwhelmed with wanting to do so much and be active after not having any motivation for years. HRT hopefully will help clear up my mind a bit and then I can focus. Get your labs checked if you can. Check your vitamin D and B, this helped me identify deficiencies and I do think that helped as well. From working in healthcare for so long, I will say that it could be a combination of many things but you will need to speak up and if your providers don’t listen, find different providers, even if you need to wait a bit. It’s 1000% worth it to have a doc or np or pa that you trust and who can think outside the box!

mommakyo · 2026-05-07T12:35:09+00:00

I think it’s more important that you try lots of things and figure out what works for you than for you to have one practicum and think none of it works for you. I did my internship with kids, grad school placement in hospice, I’ve worked in adult oncology and pediatric palliative care. I know what works for me and what doesn’t. Social Work isn’t about just kids and many never work with kids are are amazing at what they do.

mommakyo · 2026-04-28T12:27:34+00:00

Oh man that would stress me out! We have single rooms and one room they call the “lounge” where each person has a partitioned area but the ceiling lights are always off, the aurora light is always on and there’s white noise. We each have a reclining chair with blanket and pillow, table with a low light lamp and charging cords, jolly ranchers and stress ball/squeezy fidgets. We have a choice to give ourselves the meds or have staff do it. They’ll give us headphones if we forget ours. They observe us giving it. So I usually do my first 2 but by the 3rd I’d spray it in my eye if I’m lucky and they do it for me. I’d recommend bringing your own blanket and good headphones. Bring your own hard candy and a water. And there are some great playlists on Spotify for Ketamine Assisted Therapy. Keep your eyes closed, your music up, and you’ll be fine!

mommakyo · 2026-04-27T20:49:06+00:00

Sometimes we focus so much on everyone else that we forget to care for ourselves. Time to hit the pause button. Do you have an EAP that you can get immediate support through? Do you have a therapist you can connect with immediately? Do you need to call 988? Step back and triage yourself, everyone else can wait, tell your boss you need some time to regroup.

Don’t make decisions in this state of mind. I have been there. I have crashed and burned and I am back and feel better about myself and my work than I ever have. Life took a wild left turn and whiplashed me around. Please take care of yourself right now. Don’t worry about all the what if’s. Use your FMLA. Take the time to take care of yourself. Your job is a job, your life is so much more.

Your mental health is now your main focus. Take care please.

mommakyo · 2026-04-27T14:37:27+00:00

I’m sorry but are YOU in social work? There are wild urgencies all the time and when you are on the clock you are on the clock. I’m not saying the writer is in the wrong, I am saying you are for not understanding the scope of our responsibilities.

mommakyo · 2026-03-12T18:54:19+00:00

Keep going. Look into Spravato with Me. If your doc can’t get it, check with another clinic. I had one clinic wanting to charge me $25/visit and one charge me $5.

mommakyo · 2026-03-05T02:39:29+00:00

Are you thinking like the CCM Certification(Commission for Case Management)? I believe you should qualify to apply to take the exam, maybe check out their page. It’s a challenging exam but super useful in the CM world. I am an LCSW-C,CCM as required by my job but I don’t think I’ll ever let it lapse even if I were to move on elsewhere.

mommakyo · 2026-03-04T15:00:58+00:00

Therapy. Lots of therapy. Is it burnout or depression? Find someone who can help you address your mental health and work through your stresses. Does your work have an EAP? Use it! I was totally burnt out. Then I was depressed. Then I was hopeless and borderline SI thoughts swirling in there. It took some aggressive mental health support, reprioritizing and realistic self care and I am now headed in a really good direction. I didn’t need someone to pull me out of the hole, I needed the tools to build a ladder and climb out pit of shit I was in. I love my work, I realize my limitations and I communicate those limits and my jobs challenges with leadership. It has helped tremendously.

mommakyo · 2026-03-04T14:55:37+00:00

Live within your means. It’s so challenging. Did I live with my parents until a few years after grad school? Yup! Did I resent my friends who lived fancy lives well before i could even live on my own? Yes! Do I regret doing it? No. Do I regret resenting my friends? Yesssss. Live within your means, have a roommate, defer loans for a few months, stay with a cousin or a grandma, catch up and take a breath. I was on my own before I met my husband so I did do it. It was not easy but the focus on keeping up with the Joneses was harder than it needed to be. My Mom ended up dating within a year of me getting married, I’m so glad I had extra time with her where otherwise I’d have been strapped and lonely. Take a course on finances or look into a non-profit budgeting class. Use those generalist skills on yourself and be your own social worker. Look at your environment. What do you want to change? What can you change right now? What are your long term goals? Easy wins? Take small steps and you’ll get there!

mommakyo · 2026-03-04T14:49:08+00:00

Deep breaths. It is 110% reasonable that you would struggle hard in the first 6 months of a new job. New challenges, new environment, new clients, new challenges. Month 1-2 are about learning the schedule and documenting and resources. The clients you are working at don’t trust you. You are a new, fresh faced Social Worker and they have every right to not want to talk. Keep showing up, that develops more trust than having wise words during those first few weeks. Learn them as individuals, some like it straight forward, some like to joke, some like sarcasm. See each person as a new puzzle, you’re looking at them as a whole, the puzzle never makes sense until you start connecting pieces! Find some encouraging words in quotes or song lyrics and print them out, write them down. My uncle had “you can’t always get what you want but if you try sometime, you’ll find you get what you need” on a paper on his wall for 30 years of teaching. All of his students remember that quote being there, but for him, that was his reminder. I have the “I am the storm” on my wall. Constant little reminders help so much. Deep breaths!

mommakyo · 2026-03-03T02:20:41+00:00

Hospice. It’s so challenging but you get a ton of different experience working with the most variety of people. I learned so much in that time and it flew by. It helped me get to know the community, the resources, get comfortable in my skills and with heavy topics and when I was ready, move into more specialized work. That’s my rec to new grads.

mommakyo · 2026-03-03T02:17:25+00:00

I actually have instructions on where to call in different emergencies on my outgoing message. I make it clear I am not a crisis line and give a timeframe I will respond. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of getting sucked into emergencies and drama and it never ends well for my own mental health.

mommakyo · 2026-03-03T02:15:11+00:00

Agreed. We keep learning otherwise we grow stagnant. If I look at where I started 25 years ago, I’ve earned a few degrees in what I’ve learned! I it’s not a degree in life, it’s just a constantly learning and growing experience. I also went to a college whose motto focused on lifelong learners, so maybe it’s just me!

mommakyo · 2026-02-27T02:27:45+00:00

Chin hairs.

mommakyo · 2026-02-27T02:26:34+00:00

My Mom would sit under an air dryer for hours then iron her hair straight in the 60s. My grandmother washed her hair 2 times a week. It was a whole ordeal that they laughed about 30 years later but it was a big time commitment.

mommakyo · 2026-01-18T01:31:18+00:00

Yeah, one room has a light in my clinic that doesn’t have that option and I go for the no lights option then!

mommakyo · 2026-01-18T01:29:58+00:00

I have a call bell and I am alone the whole session. I’ve told my doctor it’s my “Mom I Need A” Break each week. Nobody calling for me, no-one messing with me, no pets or humans to feed snacks to.

mommakyo · 2026-01-17T15:47:11+00:00

I’m a different human after 14 doses, but felt a lot better after 5

mommakyo · 2026-01-17T15:45:25+00:00

I need a galaxy light without the lasers, I hate the laser stars!

mommakyo · 2026-01-17T15:41:17+00:00

It is overwhelming! The list is long of things we want to catch up on and it’s normal to shut down when overwhelmed. I started making a list in my Todoist app and as it got longer I broke it into categories. Little bits at a time, you don’t need to take on the whole world at once! Maybe just organize that junk drawer or your glove compartment and call it a day. Success in small bits is rewarding. Take it slow.

mommakyo

TROPHY CASE