Life on Life's terms

It's an old AA mantra. I'm trying to hang on to it today. Not that I've ever been in AA, but, I think it's useful.

Here's my day.

I woke up at 4:45 this morning, after a restless night of coughing and choking and fussing. I putz for a bit, decide I'm going to go to the Starbucks for breakfast, because I have a little time and a distinct absence of clean dishes, and it's not that far. And so I'm headed down the road, at like 6 am, and I pull off of one highway to another, and there's this woman, standing in the road, in a dress and a coat and heels. She looks a little wobbly. I can't tell if she's trying to summon help or hitchhike. In an uncharacteristic display of good judgment, I resist my urge to save the whole world and do not stop. Instead, like a responsible citizen, I call 911 from my cell phone. And talk to the world's stupidest dispatcher.

I say, there's a woman standing in the road where Road X N pulls on to Road Y E. He asks me six questions about if she's "in" the road, or off to the side of the road, or near the road. I tell him she's in the outside part of the lane. He says, is this the on ramp or the off ramp? I tell him - for the fifth time (no kidding) - that it's coming OFF of Road X and ON to Road Y, so, well, whatever that means to you. He asks for a description. I tell her she's a tall, slender Hispanic woman in a green dress and a brown coat, and heels. He - I could not make this up if I wanted to - asks me what color her heels are. I said red. I honestly have no idea, but it seemed like the quickest solution, and, well, I doubt the officers were going to get out there and be like, oh, sorry, we were looking for someone in red heels, couldn't be you! He asks me if she looks intoxicated. I said she looks unsteady, but it's 40 degrees out and she's standing in the roadway in heels, that could make a girl wobble. He finally dispatched a car. I hung up and rolled my eyes extra hard.

(Angie, you think maybe we could trade him into your department, you could come here? Clearly we need some competence...)

So I get to work, and I have an early therapy patient on Tuesdays. Who asked me if he was losing his mind because he pulled kind of a bonehead move the other day. I told him no (45 minutes later. 'Cause at that point in the day I was still a good therapist), and neglected to mention the three times in the past two weeks I have walked up to other silver Jeeps and wondered why my key won't work in the door.

We had one patient in the child clinic, who didn't show. I tried to dictate all my notes from yesterday, made it through two before the coughing fits rendered that a bad idea. My afternoon clinic was fine, everyone was doing well.

For the first time in my recorded history, I batted 1.000 this week - every patient I had scheduled showed up except one who cancelled well in advance. I guess we're not truly there yet, until the two therapy patients I have tomorrow afternoon come, but I think they will. And wow, let me tell you, I was hoping for some no-shows yesterday...although, good for them.

So, I'm getting my afternoon clinic squared away, and....within ten minutes of each other, both of my therapy kids crashed. Boom. One of them did so in the office (fortunately, he was seeing his med doc today, not me). I know with these kids an hour a week is like giving them a bucket on the Titanic, but, still. In my self-indulgent, PMS-y (yes, still), immune compromised, underslept moments of self-pity, I feel like just the worst therapist ever. Cognitively, I know this to not be true, but, as one of Sparrow's patient's pointed out recently, thinking and feeling are not the same thing.

And I feel pretty bad about it.

And then, of course, I made another trip to the Starbucks (it was coffee or dinner, as it often is. And as always happens, coffee won. At least it wasn't the same Starbucks as this morning) and ran off to class. Which was long. And, um...I couldn't actually remember anything I'd read in my febrile delirium over the weekend. Lovely.

I just need to go hide in my bed....