Disclaimer: This post will be mostly me venting. I’m not necessarily looking for solutions, assistance or even a response. This isn’t an indictment or condemnation of any person or anyone’s behavior, it is merely me shaking my fist futilely at the universe.
Something else I have struggled with since the beginning of this saga, before even I knew for sure what was going on or told anyone anything, is finding a way to express my general dissatisfaction with the world and my position in it without either sounding like I was blaming someone for something they did or didn’t or hadn’t done, or just sounding whiny.
This may also be connected to my nurse brain in a way. In my professional life people don’t generally tell me anything unless they want me to do something about it. In this way, physical medicine is quite different from mental health medicine. No one tells me that they’re having crushing chest pain because they want a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on, they tell me so I’ll do something about it. There is certainly a component of compassionate and therapeutic listening to what I do (I hope anyway) but mostly I’m expected to actively try and intervene in some way that will improve the situation. This is, I think, a large part of why I didn’t really tell anyone that anything was going on; there wasn’t anything for anyone to do. I’ve had versions of the following conversation a couple of times now:
Me: Hey, turns out I have cancer
Friend or family member: Why the f(*# didn’t you say something before this?
Me: Why would I? There’s nothing you can do about it.
Friend or family member: [ExpressionlessFaceEmoji]
It took someone pointing out that I would very likely be kind of pissed off if the situation were reversed and it was one of my friends or family members that had cancer and hadn’t told me to get me to finally realize that people might actually want to know what is going on with me, even if there was nothing they could do about it.
[ArloGuthrie] But that’s not what I came to tell you about [/ArloGuthrie]
I feel like hammered shit today. I worked last night and, due to a combination of things that includes the unhelpful capriciousness of my brain, I haven’t really been able to sleep. Minus three or four hours of fitful dozing here and there I’ve been awake since around noon on Tuesday. I work again tonight (and tomorrow night) but I can’t really call out sick because I don’t have any sick time and I don’t want to miss a whole bunch of shifts this early in the process when it is very likely I will need the time off more in the coming weeks.
So I’m exhausted, dissatisfied with my job (this is a completely separate subject that is more complicated than will fit right now), I still have to go to work for the next two and there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about it.
This shit sucks.