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Thanks for the outpouring of support after my last post, I really appreciated all of the emails and texts. It turns out my cortisol level is actually a little bit high, so that is most definitely not the cause of my fatigue. I am now spending an even unhealthier amount of time on webMD diagnosing myself with all sorts of mysterious diseases. I’m trying not to make myself completely crazy, but I will have plenty of ideas to discuss with my hematologist when I see him again early next month. If nothing comes out of that, I will likely see if I can get a full evaluation at the Mayo Clinic. I hear it’s a great time of year to visit Minnesota.
REALLY?!
• I was totally wiped out after 15 minutes of playing fetch this morning. And I wasn’t even the one doing the fetching.
• Marguerite walked into my office the other day and said, “You look exhausted.” Uh, what’s your point?
• Amanda saw that I elected to put the maximum amount of money in my pre-tax health fund and said, “You put THAT much in your health account?” Um, have we met? I tend to have a few medical bills from time to time…
• Someone is clearly trying to sabotage my new diet plan by bringing leftover Halloween candy into the office every day. I successfully abstained from [amazingly mouth-watering delicious-looking] cupcakes TWICE last week, but those itty bitty teeny tiny candies can’t hurt me, right?
• I never thought taking pills four times a day would feel anything but cumbersome, but after a couple of months of taking meds six times a day, four feels like nothing. It’s all about perspective, I guess.
• I was going to write a post called “Beating the Odds – Part Deux” a few weeks ago but lost steam. Here’s the punchline: I got bed bugs in a hotel on a recent business trip. This was my SECOND encounter with these tiny creatures. Are you &%#@ing kidding me??!
Switching gears, a friend wrote me a note this morning and said, “I hope you find something in each day to be grateful for, whether big or small.” What a great charge for all of us, especially as Thanksgiving draws near.
I learned last week that it’s difficult to simultaneously be professional and take a bunch of drugs. Perhaps that’s been common knowledge for decades when it comes to illegal drugs, but I’m talking about the plethora of prescription meds I take every day.
When I’m physically at my workplace, it’s easier for me to maintain my regimen. Almost all of my coworkers know my story and expect to see me popping pills at any given time. Many even know to stay away from my cubicle when my back is directly to its opening, since that usually means I’m injecting insulin into my exposed gut. This makes it pretty easy to conduct my business throughout a day of conducting business.
However, travel and off-site meetings are a bit of a different story. I went down to my business school alma mater – wahoowah! – last week. It was a great trip and I was able to visit with some old (in more ways than one!) professors and interact with the students. The best part of the trip by far was meeting a very senior executive at my company (“Elizabeth”) and seeing her speak to the students. After the speech, a few colleagues and I were invited to lunch with Elizabeth and a handful of Darden professors and senior staff, including the Dean. It was a pretty impressive group in a pretty fancy private room during a pretty formal meeting – as in, one did not get up and go to the bathroom in the middle.
This could present a problem for a few different types of people. Those with incontinence (or bladder weakness, as I recently learned it’s called) might have trouble in this situation. People with Crohn’s Disease could find themselves in some deep…well, you know. And it's a challenging situation for an insulin-dependent diabetic that also takes oral medications SIX (yep, it has gone up) times a day.
Going into the lunch, I knew the plan was to discuss topics one and two, then eat, then discuss topic three. If the plan had been to eat first, I could have injected beforehand, but I didn’t want to risk dropping on the floor during the first two discussions (though that would have been one way to ensure that Elizabeth remembered me!). So in I went for the pasta salad and other glucose-elevators typically found in these catered situations and willed my pancreas to step up to the plate just this once. When it came time to take my next set of pills, I quietly reached into my bag, pulled out my pouch and was just emptying that timeslot’s meds into my hand (fortunately, it’s more socially acceptable to use Purell in public) when the conversation moved to the Dean, who was seated right next to me at the head of the table. So there I was, with a handful of pills in one hand, my pill organizer in the other and my pouch of goodies spilling into my lap, when the whole table of highly credentialed people turned to face the Dean – and me.
I’m sure no one noticed the pharmacy in my lap; that’s not the point. The point is that it’s difficult to do what I need to do sometimes. I guess it really boils down to something I never fully appreciated until recently: it’s hard to be different. And it’s a pain in the butt to take a handful of pills at six regularly scheduled times, to inject myself with each meal and to prick my finger four times a day.
But, as I frequently remind myself, it’s not as big of a pain as the alternative. So I’ll take it. And one day when I’m not the most junior person in every meeting, maybe I’ll get more comfortable in my drug-dependent body.
