Aah, the first day of spring! And the day I tell Mary Ellen, my boss, about my now likely to be in May surgery. What fun we had contemplating the best timing and ways to share this information with my already traumatized and some rather dependent clients. Also, as I typically inherit my student’s caseload after her early May departure, this puts a serious crimp in the concept of continuity of care and sensitivity to people’s feelings of abandonment.
We’re still not sure all the best ways to manage everything, but did agree on further consideration and larger discussion in next week’s staff meeting to include all my co-workers who may each need to oversee several of my clients. Sorry everyone! Really.
I am very grateful to work in such a cohesive, caring, supportive environment with wonderful colleagues who I know will step up to any plates asked of them. I couldn’t have done this at any other job or any other time with nearly the support I now feel.
Tonight, I also talked at length with my friend who not only had the surgery with Dr. C several years ago and has shrunk to skinny, but who has still told no one but her immediate family. This I can’t fathom — I feel I would crumble from the lack of both support and help so vital to my ability to process and cope; plus, I make a lousy liar. For me, congruency and authenticity are vital and secrets are too difficult and complicated to keep straight or to keep at all.
But this apparently worked for Esmerelda (not her real name!) and I am very grateful that she sacrificed her privacy for my sake and is now a key confidante on this journey. She has shared information and details I couldn’t get elsewhere, including how it feels before and just after surgery; an average days diet soon after and now years later; the management of cravings and tips for decreased problems associated with eating or drinking too fast, etc. She has also offered to visit while I am hospitalized - but this one I have to think long and hard about. I’ve always hated those woman, say, who give birth to triplets and then look better than I look just after a beauty makeover. My normal morning look is frightful at best - a cross between Alfalfa and Frankenstein, and I’m not sure I wouldn’t die from humiliation if anyone but my husband saw me.
I guess I’ll have to decide between vanity and sociability … plus pain and drug tolerance and any other factors that may blur the lines of extroversion even more.
Who can possibly know how to answer such a question NOW?!
March 21st, 2009 | 
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