When all of this came down last month, I vowed that I would do whatever I could do for as long as I could. I mean, I've done surgery twice and I've worked right up until the day before I went in both times. I can press through. I can work hard. I want to work hard, because knowing that I've done all that I can do beforehand is what brings me peace when I'm stuck in a bed or need help just to get a bowl of cereal.
I told my boss that I'd work as hard as I could for as long as I could, and I meant it. I told my RS President (can you believe that I'm in a presidency?) the same. And I meant it.
Until today. Today, at about 2:00, the dam of caring about anything and everything broke and I just wanted to come home from work and take a nap. (Well, first I wanted to go to Jack in the Box and get some curly fries, and then I wanted to take a nap.) Today, I just wanted to give up, crawl in a hole (with some curly fries and a Coke) and never come out.
Of course, I didn't give up. Because I can't. Because I was at work, and I carpool and I'm not the one who drives. After a good ten minutes of wondering what I was going to do with myself, my phone rang. It was MD Anderson. I'd been playing phone tag with two doctors' offices and the reception desk at MD all week long. After all the messages I'd left on Tuesday, instructing offices to send what where, I didn't hear back and assumed it was all taken care of. Oh, no. This afternoon, the sweet reception girl called to tell me that she'd just listened to my message from Tuesday (she's new and didn't know she had a voicemail, or how to retrieve it ... I am not making this up to be mean, she really was very sweet and I enjoyed her, but she was new and didn't know how to pull my message that I'd left on Tuesday morning at 9:00 out of her phone). She told me that none of the faxes had come through, that she was unable to contact my doctors and request my records, that there was a form I could find online and fax them myself if I wanted to. (If I wanted to? I had to! The new doctor wouldn't see me until he had all of my old records, which I'd assumed he'd had since Tuesday, when I made all of my requests and left the contact and fax numbers for all of my doctors in a voicemail for the reception desk.)
Argh.
So much for curly fries and a cave to hibernate in.
Within ten minutes of getting the call from MD Anderson, I had an email come in that one of the loan files I had been working on was blowing up.
Again, so much for my desire to do nothing. ... Doing nothing wasn't a choice. I spent the next 3 hours of my work life balancing sending my own medial release form via fax to two different locations. I made phone calls and wrote processor's certs and rearranged a file that was (metaphorically) falling apart at the seams. (Files on my desk don't literally fall apart. I'm way too OCD to not tie everything down under the proper tab as soon as I have something come in.)
Holy moly, today was a rubberband day. Emotionally, I was all over the map. I mean, far over to one side of the map - and then I was yanked by a force beyond my control (and totally against my will) to the other side. The good news is that my period of wanting to give up only lasted about 10 minutes. Giving up and walking away from my life with curly fries in one hand and a Coke in the other wasn't a viable option when I wanted it, and I knew that. I just really, really wanted to give up.
Sometimes I hate the ups and downs and demands of life. Other times I sort of love them, because they help keep me on track when what I would do on my own would most definitely take me off track.
