Psalm 13

I have had a very blah day. I was not at all productive at work -- don't tell the boss, but other than attending a couple of meetings I'm not sure I can recall anything I did today that was of real consequence.

I hate days like that. Time is far too precious to waste.

Unfortunately during the drive home "blah" turned to full-on grouchy. I spent time thinking about all the things I'm waiting on that just aren't happening. Like what? Like moving on from my current job and all of the day-to-day BS that comes along with it. Like Rob moving to day shift and us living in a normal rhythm, just like the rest of the world. Like getting our yard landscaped (enough with the rain already). Like getting the laundry done and put away, and not having my closet annihilated by a five-year old.

I am not a patient person. My impatience has bit me and my little family in the butt before though, and so I've spent the last three years really trying to get better about it -- and I have, honest and true. But right about now, with at least some of the things mentioned above, I feel like enough is enough. I'm singing David's song:

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes,or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, "I have overcome him," and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

Overwrought much? So OK, maybe that's exaggerating things a bit, but in all honesty I do find myself waking every morning and sitting on the side of the bed rubbing my eyes, asking "how long, Lord?" This is nothing new, just a remix on an old classic. When my parents were ill and life was, admittedly, much harder than it is now I cried myself to sleep every night asking "Please, God: how long, how long, how long?"

It was a very long time.

Maybe that's why I'm feeling discouraged now. Because we've been chasing things for months into years, but day after day it's just more waiting. And as I believe I've mentioned already... I'm not a patient person.

At least there is good news, and trust me I'm looking for that a lot right now. As it turns out, David's song doesn't stop there. It goes on, and he closes it like this:

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

I believe this. I know it is true. I KNOW it. I know that good will come from waiting.

I'm just really, really bad at it.

Insomnia

I couldn't sleep Monday night. I was tired and had to get up & moving early the next morning for my staff meeting, but I just lay there: tired and awake, a hostage to my racing mind.

That really blows.

It was the meeting that was keeping me up, actually. You see I had this fabulous idea to add something to our agenda, a short "sharing," if you will, to help do some team building (we could use it -- 2010 was rough on us) and staff development. Anyway, the point of this new agenda item is for each staff member to talk briefly about one thing that has shaped the way she approaches patient care. These stories are often funny, just as frequently heart-wrenching, and always meaningful. We all have a story, and story-telling is one of the best tools for teaching and strengthening relationships, so I am all for it. But since I'm the boss, and since it was my idea, and since we had never done it before... I had to go first.

If you know me at all -- and I suspect you do if you're actually reading this -- it will take you no more than 2 seconds to determine what, and who, I was going to talk about.

And.... your 2 seconds is up.

The truth is that Mom's illness was, among other incredibly crappy, shitty, sucky things, a huge learning curve for me. Let's just say that all those things I "knew" about talking to sick, scared and overwhelmed patients & family members -- like how they are overloaded with information, and are in shock, and have different priorities than we do, and don't care how smart we think we are -- suddenly and vividly made a whole lot of sense. Because it really is all those things - plus denial, and anger, and desperation, and heartbreaking sadness.

I can have a conversation with a young clinician about how all of that is true, but through the filter of my mom... well, it's nearly impossible. And I knew it would be, which is why I spent three weeks not thinking about what I was going to say only to lay awake the entire night before trying in vain to come up with some sort of clinical script to get myself though.

Would you like to know how it went?

Well of course you would. It was agonizing. I apologized for the inevitable and did the ugly cry before I even started, and wondered the whole time if I was making any sense, sending any kind of take-home message that my staff could try to internalize for that next hard conversation with the parents of a fragile, failing baby. I desperately didn't want to sound preachy or patronizing, and suspect I succeeded because it's difficult to sound anything other than pitiful when you're sobbing. I noticed some of them tearing up, some of them a little uncomfortable, some of them sympathetic. One of them, a friend who went through a very similar experience with her brother shortly after I lost Mom, actually clapped for me. But all of them heard me -- at that, at the end of the day, was the point.

It was just the train wreck I had anticipated. Later that night I told Rob about it, explaining my tossing & turning from the night before and wondering out loud when I'll be able to talk about that time without it feeling so fresh. I sometimes wonder if that time will ever come. I hope it does.

I hate those nights I way awake chasing my thoughts. I never catch them and the race always leaves me exhausted the next day. My only consolation, at least this time, is that my story might help shape the way our therapists think about care. To remember that behind the diagnosis isn't just a patient but a rush of emotions, and that our roles as caregivers start where these families really are -- not where we need them to be. To understand that when it's all said and done, the very best clinical skills are absolutely worthless unless they are coupled with the insight and compassion to honor their fears and and hold each of their hearts in our own.

It's hard work we do, but we are blessed to do it.

Hang on a second

My blog seems to have gotten away from me. Small wonder -- most everything has gotten away from me these days.

I have friends who are planning on fun summers. It never occurred to me to plan a fun summer; I am too preoccupied by what isn't so "fun." They are traveling. They are taking their kids to the pool. They are going on vacations, going to the lake, sleeping in.

I am not. I am worried about... pretty much everything.

This isn't a woe-is-me post. Honest and true. It's just that in the last few days I've realized that time has sped past me and I'm not sure I have a lot to show for it. What would I say about the last year? Not much that's good.

What do I want to say about the coming year? Lots of things. I'd like to be able to say that the coming year was exciting, fun, happy. That I made good changes in my life. That I handled the bad (because there is always bad) with grace and faith and strength. And that most of all I really lived my life, rather than merely passing numbly through each day.

I need to work harder to finish those things I can't seem to wrap up. I need to make a point of letting go of some things. I need to plan to spend time with my friends and family. I need to remember that time to relax really, really is just as important as time to wash dishes, and pick up toys, and go to the grocery. I need to stop thinking about the future and get to it already.

I wonder if there's an app for that.

Green (but not the good kind)

We're having a pitch-in today at work.

Two of the girls who are here don't normally work on Friday. They've brought in their children for the festivities.

I'm so jealous that they are with their kids and I am not with mine that I have to stay in my office with the door closed.

It's not pretty.

The long ride to preschool

I'm not sure how my mind got there.

I was just driving from work to Fairview last week, undoubtedly thinking great thoughts -- so great, in fact, that I can't recall a single one of them. Most likely it had to do with work and some things that I expect to come to pass over the next 18 - 24 months. I'm not looking forward to these changes. In fact, they might be deal-breakers for me.

And this is where the memory of my great thoughts becomes quite clear. I remember coming to that conclusion -- that if what I expect to happen actually comes to pass it could be a deal-breaker for me -- and thinking "Boy, do you have a lot of nerve." How many people lost their jobs last year, and along with them their savings, their possessions, even their homes? How many people would fight tooth & nail for a good, secure job today? How many people are scratching to make ends meet, thankful for the paychecks they bring home to their families? And here I am, suggesting that a change in my work environment just might cause me to kick my career to the curb? Boy, I do have a lot of nerve.

I know all of that. And while I often grouse about my job I am thankful that I have a certain set of skills and talent that someone is willing to pay for. The income that my job provides is vital. I'm not going to chuck it all because I don't like the new logo or am irritated by the new company line.

But here's the rest of the story: Economic crisis aside, it has never been in my makeup to imagine that there could be something else beyond what is laid out before me. I work in a setting where, with my particular background, there are not a lot of different career paths to choose from. Early on most of us decide on educational versus medical tracks; once you've established yourself & developed certain areas of expertise, that's pretty much your professional lot. At least this is how I have experienced it and how I have observed it in the lives of my colleagues.

It never occurred to me that maybe I had options.

It never occurred to me that other people had already figured this out.

By now, I was out of the car and walking the path up to the church. The significance of my epiphany wasn't lost on me. It's pretty liberating to realize that it really isn't crazy to think about chucking it all. Lots of people have done it and been incredibly successful in the process. There must be a way, a method of getting from A to B to C that people follow. It's different for eveyone, I'm sure. But there have to be common threads.

But it wasn't until I got to the door that the bigger lesson (yes, bigger than the freedom to change your life's work) hit me: I have to make sure that my daughter doesn't get caught in my trap. I have to make sure that she isn't snagged by the fear of change and failure that has left me blind to the fact that I can reshape things. I have to figure out what it takes to be able to do this, and I have to be sure that Sara knows that her path is not a long road without turning, but a winding, hilly journey -- and the joy of life is in the bends and turns of that journey, not the comfort of a smooth, straight, uneventful path.

I'd say it's about time for me to buckle up and enjoy this ride. Wouldn't you?

10 things -- but really, only one

Among the various tasks I have to do at work is triaging new orders that come in for outpatient evaluations and then deciding which of our speech pathologists should see each patient.  Every chart I get has a patient history form that has been completed by mom, dad, caregiver, foster parent -- whoever cares for the child.

Most are run-of-the-mill.  Some are hilarious.  Some, worthless.  One was even insulting. 

And, of course, some are sad.  One mom, who obviously had very basic reading and writing skills, had clearly spent a long time working on her son's history: she had been exceptionally thorough, proof-read it (changing correct grammar & spellings into errors on several occasions), and written a lengthly note sharing her guilt that her child's delays were her own fault.  

But the ones that always get to me come from the parents whose children are unable to speak at all.  Usually these parents are some of the strongest we meet:  their children are so medically involved, fragile in so many ways -- unable to walk, talk, eat, dress themselves, clean themselves -- that by the time we are working with them on communication they have developed a pretty tough exterior.  While I'm sure they have private moments where they grieve for their kids, wonder why, feel guilty, and indulge in the anger they rightly hold, these parents can't dwell on those emotions every day.  They wouldn't survive.  They have therapies, and medications, and tube feedings, and real patient care duties to attend to every single day.  

The history we gather on these kids is a little different.  We try to figure out who's in there, what gestures, expressions, even grunts they might already be using to reach out to the people around them.  It's amazing to me how resilient these kids are and how intimately their families know them that they can understand what, to an outsider, is just a meaningless noise or an almost imperceptible glance.  We try to figure out what kinds of motor, social, and cognitive skills they have.  We ask what kinds of communication approaches have been tried before, what has worked, and what didn't.  

The last thing we ask is for parents to list ten things they would like their child to be able to say.  And I'm sure you already know their first response -- it would be yours and mine as well.  All of them, every last one, answers the same.

"I love you."

Can you imagine?  (I can't.)

And this is one reason, among oh so many, that I tell my daughter a hundred times a day that I love her - and why I truly do know how blessed I am to hear her tell me the same.