My alarm goes off at 6:20 am. I think I should feel exhausted. I have not slept a full night since last Thursday when that word was said that feeds the anxiety still curled in my gut, waiting for me to let it loose. It’s getting harder to control. I was awake for several hours in the middle of the night, falling back to sleep sometime after 4 am. I was awake before my alarm went off at 6:20 am. I lay there ignoring the alarm and check The Lump. FUCK! It’s still there. Damn it. I get up and get ready for work, packing my lunch. I have an industry Expo in town that I need to get to try to do some networking. We need more business. But I want to get to the office first and catch up on all I missed on Thursday and Friday.
I am trying not to think about The Call. The call that will schedule us to come back for the results. The call that will change the rest of my life. The anxiety pushes from its little corner; I push back. My boob already hurts. I can now take more than Tylenol. Advil is my next choice. I can take 3 extra strength Advil, which will get me through the day. I work, get through emails, answer questions, help with billing issues, and check all pending to make sure everything looks right and there are no anomalies.
Boss arrives, we talk, review some things, asked when I’m going to the EXPO. I told him I would finish up some rate requests, review some things, eat my lunch, and head over there. Asked about The Call. Not yet, as I shake my head, my cell phone rings. Not a number I recognize, but it originated in the city of the Breast Diagnostic Center. I hold up my finger to pause my boss for a second and answer. It’s Evelyn from the BDC. They will not receive the biopsy results in time to schedule a follow-up that day, but they will be in for a first-thing appointment on Tuesday. “9 am, yes, that works, we will be there.” Show the pink slip or tell the front desk you are there to see Evelyn. They will take it from there. The anxiety perks up, and it starts to unfurl, ready to go, but I am not ready for that yet. I close my eyes, take a deep cleansing breath, and imagine good, purifying energies coming in, goldish, with a tinge of pink, entering my lungs, spreading through my bloodstream, fortifying my body, adding invisible armor, my protection from bad, and slowly exhaling. My boss watches all this, and as I turn back to him, he says, “Tomorrow”, and I nod. “OK. Let me know how it goes.”
“I will.”
“Will you go back to the EXPO tomorrow?”
“Depends on what I find there today.”
“OK. Then Wednesday, you have the all-day Symposium on the Software we use, correct?”
“Yes, I still plan on going to that. I think there are tools we’re not using effectively. This is a free way to find out what I am missing.”
“Good, we will see you back here for sure on Thursday.”
“Yup.” And with that, I went back to work.
I like my boss. I really like my boss. I love what I do. There are times when I don’t like my boss. We have different management styles, and he can be overbearing at times. He is quick to anger and VENTS. But he is also quick to calm down. When he is frustrated or angry, he will not listen. There is no talking to him. You cannot explain anything. You just take the wrath, do what you can to fix the situation that started his frustration, and then present the solution you wanted to present earlier after everything is fixed.
He frustrates me to no end at times. He makes me stretch and grow and learn new things, even when I don’t want to. He is fair. He believes that in a good days pay for hard work. He expects hard work. He is so much like my husband. Cut and dry. A wry sense of humor. He’s a boob man. I know this; he knows this. He says things he shouldn’t say, but they are the same things I think or would say. HR rolls her eyes at us all the time. It feels like we are compatriots fighting the same fight.
He makes me laugh almost as much as my husband. I respect him. When he mentions my boobs about whatever we may be dealing with, it is usually funny, makes me laugh, and then I tell him I own his ass. He laughs and agrees. As angry as he can make me, and I am sure as hell, I can press all his buttons and piss him off, too, I don’t think I would find a better place to work than where I am now.
I was very happy for almost 20 years to work for a major corporation. Then they moved all the jobs I liked to Arizona. And not to a nice place like Prescott or Flagstaff. I couldn’t do it. I could not move with the jobs. So, after almost 20 years with this company, I took the layoff. Sometimes I think of my boss as almost a second father. He is a good man.
Anyway, it took me a little longer than I anticipated to go over everything, get emails caught up, and answer all the questions. I went and retrieved my salad from the frig and ate at my desk as I put finishing touches on things, then packed all my gear up and headed to the EXPO. I walk in, and of course, I see people I know everywhere. I’ve been in this industry for so long, and I happen to be the current president of one of the non-profit organizations in our industry, so I have had the great opportunity to meet many wonderful people.
I greet those I know, we chat, promise to call and get together, the normal stuff. Then I will move on to see if there are any opportunities to grow our business here. I stop at various booths, introduce myself, chat, swap stories, trade business cards, get goodies, the little marketing gimmicks everyone buys to hand out at EXPOs. As I turn a corner and come to one booth, I recognize an old colleague. The previous corporation I worked for has gone through many changes, including a purchase by another company. Many of my previous co-workers throughout the country have left and gone on to other adventures. The previous COO and the President of the Americas have started a new company based in Arizona with the primary footprint of the services and goods they offer in my neck of the woods. As they have been expanding their footprint and providing offerings in other markets, they keep hiring more and more people to help them. One of my previous bosses, who I loved working for, also works for this new company. Here was yet another face from my past, becoming my present once again. It was good to see him.
Once I was done grooming the EXPO, with very little to show for my efforts, but it was nice to have been able to get out there and talk to people I don’t get the chance to speak with very often, I called it a day and headed home. Home, where we were still in denial about the word that had been spoken that directly relates to the C word. I was barely in the car before I unhooked my bra. I am still uncomfortable wearing it. Thank God for Advil. Any maybe tonight I will drink the rest of the bubbly I opened last Tuesday. Maybe this will help me sleep through the night.
We watch TV, I go through email again, and I drink the last of the champagne. The anxiety is getting hard. It has been this soft ethereal thing curled into a corner of my gut this whole week. Now, it’s becoming hard, edgy, cutting, and heavy. How am I ever going to sleep tonight? I didn’t tell my husband that my primary care physician left me a voicemail earlier when my phone was snugged away in my purse. She’s received information from the BDC about the biopsy, if there is anything she can do, I am to call her. I am afraid to call her; I don’t want to know what she knows.
Life is denial for now