Tomorrow

Tonight, I will wrap up my work week early. I will do my best to help my coworkers who are so graciously covering my position for me while I am away. I will make sure that everything is left in the best possible ways, a little difficult in a world where we deal with changing information by the minute. I will worry that I have forgotten something when I get into my little, yellow truck to drive home.

Tonight, I will trust that my family has everything under control, but I will also wish I could provide a better plan to help them. They don't realize how little I do, but it seems like they are all very worried about the upcoming days. I wish they had more help, and I regret scheduling a surgery that will affect their extra-curricular activities. But what's done is done, and they will manage.

Tomorrow, I will wake much too soon from my short night of sleep. I will follow my directions and I will be ready.

Excitement has been building as I consider what we might find. Perhaps its an easy fix and in a short amount of time I'll be back to who I was more than a year ago. Or maybe its not an easy fix but we'll have answers and a plan.

I'm not nervous so much as excited. I'm not afraid or worried about the actual surgery. I trust my doctor and I know he'll do everything he can to help me be more mobile.

Tomorrow, I hope I will sleep. For so long I've lived with this constant, exhausting pain, I can't help but hope that we can find a way to end it. The thought of sleeping without the pain is what I look forward to. Even if its just for a few weeks of drug induced sleep, I am excited that I will sleep.

In less 24 hours I hope to be back home and in my bed. I hope that my knee is on its way to healing and I come home with new goals. Goals that will make this adventure a little less of a struggle.

Restarting

We've been broke before, but not broken.  

We had a disastrous winter of 2001 well into summer of 2002, in which we had family die, job loss, a major move, a huge income decrease, and a complete change of lifestyle.  It was hard.  We struggled through a pregnancy with our families and friends far away after we had accepted that children were not in the plan for us. And while our lives had been turned upside down, we weren't broken.  Maybe it was the hubris of youth, maybe it was the ignorance of life, but we never doubted that we would recover.  It took a number of years, but we managed to eventually overcome most of the challenges. Scarred, but not broken.

This particular adventure though, this one has broken us. Our entire lives have burned down around us and only a few precious things are left in the rubble. From every angle, it looks like almost everything is broken and destroyed.  We've choked on the acrid smoke of losing nearly everything we've wanted and worked for. Our lives have been reduced to garbage. I'd love to say its time to rebuild, but its not quite over, like a fire, the hotspots threaten to reignite and consume what is left.

We worry, of course. How can we not? We've been broken with worry, fear, pain and anger. It seems as though every step forward is followed by a step backward. Every success is countered with another failure. And yet we resolve to not just to manage the challenges, but to figure out how to gain purchase in the rubble. When every single step is challenged, its hard to climb out of the ashes and trash.

Its been over a year since we stood in awe at the disaster our lives had become--when we no longer could figure out how to make things better, or which way to go. It was like watching the inferno start with no way to stop it. 

Now we breathe and wait and protect tiny glints of hope. We are learning to accept that our lives are restarting. We are learning that we aren't who we once were.  These are painful lessons to learn. We feel like our age, experiences and former status should mean something, somehow.  They don't. 

So we are restarting. Again. 

Day 407

I've started to hope for freedom from the never-ending pain that I've endured for 407 days. Even as I turned down another invitation to socialize, I realized that the time may soon come where I won't have to. I might not have to consider the steps it will take in order to go into a place.  I may not have to consider the amount of space I need to walk with crutches, or consider how I will carry an open-top drink or a fast food tray. Very soon, I might be able to carry my things without needing to have extra pockets and bags.

I do not take for granted the amount of work I will need to put into recovery, but I am not afraid of it. I am afraid of forever being bound to home and work alone. The idea of going to the store when I need something--without having to consider parking, or if there will be an electric cart, or if I will be able to carry items if there isn't--is appealing. I hope I am liberated from the crutches.

It will be 60 weeks when I go into surgery. I wonder how many more weeks it will be before I can fully sleep again, and wake without pain. I set lofty goals of ice-skating this winter, riding my bike this fall, fishing next spring and camping next summer, but really, the ideas of sleeping without pain, walking without crutches and not relying on my husband and kids for so many little things are more valuable goals.

In nine days, we find out what has caused over a year's worth of suffering and humiliation. Its a powerful thought to consider the freedom I might actually find.

Value

As deal after deal falls through, the partners are learning what they need to do differently.  It seems like every time they find a promising project there isn't funding or when they find funding there is no promising project. Its frustrating, but sometimes there's enough interest in one thing or another that the desperation is actually hopeful. This job, these lifetimes of training, these careers that has fallen flat in the face of global turmoil and markets feel wasted and the partners question daily, sometimes hourly what they should be doing differently.

We talk about this--my husband and I.  We talk about what kind of changes he needs to make, what kind of career he'd want to change to. He's angry, disappointed, sad and frightened. The role changes in our family has hit him harder than it has me. My contribution is measurable. I have a monetary value. For a long time my value wasn't measurable as I stayed home to educate and raise the children. For a long time, I had to rely on my gut instinct that I wasn't completely failing. My successes were never measured in cash. And for a long time he had measurable value. From the time he was 13, he could know the value of his actions and time in dollar amounts.

Its still poverty.  We're still too poor for even ACA insurance for him. We still need the government to help us keep our kids healthy. We can't afford to fix our family vehicle, and we can't afford to replace it. We grimace that it has a full tank of gas. We talk about upcoming expenses and wonder how we'll manage to deal with them.

I've forgotten again to ask if I have vacation time accrued to cover the time I need off for surgery. I've forgotten to see how many sick days or personal days I have available. So when I come down ill with a summer stomach virus, I go to work. Feverish, taking breaks between tasks to vomit, I can only hope that I haven't missed something huge. What if I did let something major through? On the other side of the computer screen is a designer who is more than happy to work sloppy. I don't look at the paper the next morning. I know. I know I didn't catch every mistake. I can only hope I caught the big ones. And I worry that I've lowered my measurable value for the company and thus jeopardized my measurable value for my family.