I’d like to say things have turned around this week and that I am feeling physically better and emotionally more hopeful. Well, I pretty much don’t get what I like lately, so you basically know where this is going.
What was bad continues to be so. My equanimity has failed to return. I am still taking too much too hard and each new blow seems so much worse than it should be.
Physically I still feel completely pummeled almost constantly. I’m definitely leaning on chemical comfort more than I ought but, even though it doesn’t make me feel good, it does make me feel better, and I’ve reached a point where just getting through today is the goal. Just dragging my exhausted aching carcass through the day, putting another workday behind me, even another weekend, without having a breakdown or a fit of some sort, any sort, to relive the stress, that’s the pathetic bar I put myself to.
Physical therapy is going as physical therapy does, slow and painful. Because I broke all three bones at the joints, I have pain and diminished movement at the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist. I go to the therapy place twice a week and the therapists put me through the exercises, one after the next, and I do give it all I have. I push myself to my limits. Movements that used to be simple, like twisting my wrist, palm up, palm down, like raising my arm above my shoulder, like opening and closing my elbow, these are all body tricks to be relearned, practiced over and over, fluidity and unconscious ease replaced with tremulousness, discomfort, and the possibility that full recovery may not be possible. But I work hard at it. I work very hard. If I am permanently diminished in my right arm, it will not be because I gave up.
And now, to add to all my other problems with sleeping, my crooked arm requires a night brace. It’s an ingenious (and expensive) device of torture that stretches my crooked arm toward straightness with constant even evil pressure outward. It isn’t pleasant to say the least and it makes falling to sleep insanely difficult. But, hey, it’s just one more thing. I’m strong. I’m used to layer upon layer of unpleasant.
As for the bleeding problem, it continues as before, unchecked and undiagnosed. It’s been too long between the start of symptoms and seeing the doctor of the world’s most unpleasant speciality, but I had to wait the weeks to get an appointment with my Primary Doc so that she could refer me to the specialist and that appointment took more weeks to get. But that’s how the system works and I worked hard at being a patient patient.
On Thursday afternoon I had gotten permission to leave work early and had myself steeled for the embarrassment and humiliation of having to go see the doctor who was going to send me to get a colonoscopy for cause now instead of the routine one I wasn’t looking forward to for six more years. As I was turning off my computer and picking up my purse, the phone rang. The Doctor of Specialty Most Unpleasant’s office was calling to cancel the appointment I was both dreading and absolutely needing to get done and over with.
To the suggestion that I understand the complexity of medical scheduling, continue to be a patient patient (a.k.a idiot) and that I take the offered rescheduled appointment the second freaking week of July(!!!), I answered rather uncourteously and emphatically NO.
“Listen,” I said quietly and clearly into my office phone, fighting not to let the appointment clerk hear the tears I was starting to lose, “I know you have nothing to do with this cancellation, but I really needed to see this doctor a month ago and my problem is serious enough that if I can’t get in to see him in the next week I’m going to have to just give up and go to the emergency room - which I know is wrong, but I’m that desperate right now, you know. Is there nothing in the next week at all where you could fit me in? I’ll take any time at all.” And so I see the doctor I really don’t want to see on Tuesday, which is a thing good and terrifying in the same breath.
And I wish I could end the litany of this week’s unpleasantries with the tale of the delayed angst-laden medical appointment, but the work week ended with a thundering whimper.
St. Rapp’s is going through another administration upheaval. In early spring it was announced that the school’s principal, Mr. Michaels, was retiring. That was the press release version. The truth was that Michaels was fired because the Archdiocese had a new plan for St. Rapp’s and firing Michaels (a good principal, employee, and boss) was just the start.
It was announced that Mr. Milton would be the new principal. Within two weeks of Milton’s appointment, another bomb was dropped. Mr. Madrigal, the Dean of Students and my direct supervisor, was fired. No one saw that coming - except for Mr. Madrigal. He told me that he knew his days were numbered the minute he found out Milton was the new head man. Seems that Milton had been rather unhappy back in September when his daughter failed to make the St. Rapp’s cheerleading squad. Mr. Madrigal happens to be one of the cheer squad directors. It’s not really hard to make a connection.
Then the rumours started about the support staff. There was talk about a major shake-up coming, reassignments and firings on the way. Weeks passed and the rumours simmered and boiled, unsettling everyone, but the semester ended with no word on who was safe and who was not. (Teachers are contract employees and all knew by the beginning of the fourth quarter whether they’d been offered a contract for next year. Support staff are non-contract. We can be let go at any time, for any reason.)
All week long Mr. Milton has been calling in the secretarial staff, one by one. Positions are being restructured, personnel reassigned. Every one of the women called in Monday through Thursday was told she would have a different position come August. They were all a tad unsettled, having your job suddenly change is unnerving, but the general feeling was relief that they all had a job even if it wasn’t a familiar one.
Today was Friday. The last three of us who hadn’t been called in were understandably nervous. Lillian was called in during the last hour of the day. She left the meeting and went back to her office without speaking to anyone, so no one knows whether she put all her personal items into a box because she’s moving to another office or she’s been fired.
Pat was called in next. Pat is my friend. We’ve worked together for fifteen years and I’ve grown closer to her than to my own sisters.
When Pat left her meeting she came directly to my office. She could hardly get the words out to tell me that, completely out of the blue and for absolutely no fault of hers, she’s been fired. Last month, they took a picture for the local papers of smiling administrators presenting her a plaque for fifteen years of “loyal service,” and today they told her not to let the door hit her ass on the way out.
And I am devastated over this. She is stunned and shocked and terrified of being unemployed at sixty-five when she’s not financially ready to retire. I feel terrible for her, but, selfishly also for myself. We’ve been so close for so long at work especially. There she goes, my one real friend there, the only person I really trust.
My boss was fired.
My best friend was fired.
I felt as if there were bombs are exploding all around me and
I was left without a single ally just waiting to be called in.
So how did my meeting go?
Have I been fired too?
I waited at my desk to be called in for over an hour, well past the normal end of day. Then I said, screw it, and walked down the hallway to just freaking ask.
The lights were off in the administration offices.
A look out the windows proved mine was the only car left in the lot.
This has been a hell of a week.
This will not be a comfortable week-end.
Loading comments...