Week 4?

Did I say week 4? Really, it’s been more like six or seven weeks, not four. Nobody's counting except me, and even I lost the thread for a minute there. So, session 4 is really what I mean.

Here's what happened. Session four (week 4) got delayed after the whole ex-lax debacle, and I need to tell you, I am usually a person who takes things in stride. Delays, detours, plans falling apart, fine, whatever, I roll. But this one got under my skin in a way that genuinely surprised me. I felt fine. My numbers were mostly good. And still I got handed a stack of tests, scans, a GI consult, more tests, and it felt like overkill. It felt like caution for caution's sake, and every extra appointment was not just more of my time taken, but one more day added to the three months I had already braced for. The three months I made peace with. The three months I've been counting down and blogging about to match last summer, week for week. Twelve weeks. That was the deal. And then, suddenly, it wasn't the deal anymore, and it might bump into my October travel, and something in me just, snapped isn't the right word, but it got loud.

I started calling the scheduling call center like a woman with a mission. I tried to drive to it at one point, which, in retrospect, is not a normal response to being on hold for over an hour. I wasn't yelling at anyone. I wasn't losing it in some big dramatic way, no "Mommy Dearest" moment, nothing like that. But I was short. Gruff. Plain grumpy with people who didn't do anything to deserve it. And I couldn't fully stop myself, because underneath the grumpy was just how mad and sad the whole thing made me.

I had to reframe AGAIN? This is maybe the fourth or fifth time this summer I've had to reframe something, and it’s getting exhausting. Instead of counting weeks, I'm counting sessions now. Four of twelve down. Five of twelve, soon. Milestones instead of months, because months keep lying to me and milestones don't.

I made my position clear, to the nurses, the doctors, whoever would listen, that I needed this plan moving again, and it worked, or something worked, because I'm back on the schedule and doing another ridiculous procedure this week. I also apologized to the nurse I'd been short with. We made peace. I meant it.

But here's the actual test underneath all of it, and I don't love saying it plainly: other people are running my life right now, and I don't get a vote most of the time. I hate that. I don't have a more elegant way to put it. I just hate it.

Today, in session four, there was an older gentleman the chair across from me. Thin, clearly been through a lot, completely calm. He had someone on the phone with him, speaking Vietnamese, and I found myself wondering, would he have put up the fight I put up? Would he have just taken the delay and let the consequences land as they landed, no calling, no driving to a call center, no grump? Was what I called "self-advocacy" actually just privilege showing up in a fancier outfit? I don't know. He's probably calmer than me. Possibly happier, too. I'm not going to pretend I've resolved that question, because I haven't. I do know I still want to advocate for myself, I'm not interested in becoming a person who just absorbs whatever happens to her but I clearly need a better balance than the one I'm running right now.

Which brings me back to last summer. Week four of the “Summer of Service” blog was "The Agility Course," and it had this line I wrote about bending like a willow instead of snapping like a twig, about testing, adjusting, not gritting your teeth through a system that isn't working. I wrote that about mornings and habits and a much lower-stakes kind of experimentation. I did not, at the time, imagine I'd be re-reading it a year later trying to figure out how to survive a scheduling delay without turning into a person who stalks a call center. But there it is. Same instinct, wildly higher stakes: bend, don't snap. I clearly have more agility training to do.

If I didn't pass this test, that probably means another one's coming. Great. Wonderful. But, if you knew all the ways my husband and I have been tested in the last two years, you'd understand why I'm not that worried. I wrote a timeline for my parenting coach recently and it shocked even me, reading it back. I think I've already passed more tests than I'm giving myself credit for. Maybe I get a pass on this one. Time will tell.

Looking forward to next week already being a calmer version of this one. Sigh