Exit Strategy

Grad school is always a busy time, but anyone who's ever been there can tell you some times get absolutely crazy. I just finished a big several-weeks-long push that culminated in a couple days where I was so exhausted I thought my body might give out. Mind you, I was sleeping. I always sleep. I don't do all-nighters unless absolutely necessary, and this push didn't ever come to that shove. But all of my waking hours were taken up by this sustained focus, as late into the evening as my brain would still work.

It's just this thing that happens sometimes in grad school. I've done it before, and I'm sure it'll happen again before I graduate in May. It's just this thing.

This week I dressed up. I thought, if I'm gonna feel bad, at least I'm gonna look good. And so I'd get that little smirk of guilty pleasure as men would stand aside to let me pass, hold doors, and smile at me like they had a chance. It's cheap, I know, but I was exhausted and I'm not above cheap pleasures from time to time.

Yesterday I kept dozing off during lunch at work.

At home, Michael and Gina have been taking care of me-- cooking and things. I was talking to Kiriko the other day (she's in a big push also with a grant she's working on) and we were lamenting how when you get so busy, you'll just grab any crap food that's available to shove into your face. You just don't have time to take care of the regular things, and it doesn't help at all because then you feel worse. She said, 'you can't monitor everything.' So when you get so crazy busy, things fall by the wayside. Like eating well.

After yet another meal prepared for me by the people I live with, Gina said that this was like Comps, and if she had realized it would be like that she would have made sure there was always food just laying out for me so I could wander out of my hole, bleary-computer-eyed, eat a food, and wander back in. She suggested we have a code phrase for these crazy weeks. We can say, "Guys, this is Comps," so that we all know to pick up the slack and take extra care of each other.

This morning I'm finished. Sometimes at the end of a big push, my stress melts away and leaves me with a migraine. It's not so bad this time, as migraines go. But also, sometimes at the end of a big push, I feel at loose ends, like I have to keep doing even though I'm done doing and I deserve a break anyway. But I wander around thinking, "I should do this. No, I should take a break. I should do this! No, I should take a break. Or I could do this!! No! Take a damn break!"

That's what this morning is like.

Gina's code phrase came back to me. 'This is Comps.' At the end of Comps, I knew I'd need an exit strategy, because I no longer remembered what it was like to not be doing Comps. And here, at the end of this big push, it feels strange to not be embroiled in a 14 hour work day. I don't remember how to not be doing that. I need an exit strategy, to transition me back down to my regular productivity levels.

I made a list of 12 things I need to accomplish in the next week. These are my normal weekly deadline things-- updating class slides, grading, researching for papers, etc., etc., etc.

Then I determined not to do any of those things today. Or at least not while I have a migraine. Or at least not this morning. (baby steps)

I covered the list up with a new list. Stuff that I kinda always wanna get done. Stuff I've been putting off for days or weeks or years because it doesn't really matter that much if or when it does get done. Things I wouldn't mind doing. Things I also wouldn't mind not doing.

This is my exit strategy: my anti-productivity productivity list. Today I am only allowed to do these things. Or I can do other things, but not things on my for-realz productivity list. I can only start on my for-realz productivity list when I can be sure I won't work on it for 14 hours straight. With the anti-productivity productivity list, I can ease myself out of the big push by checking things off a list while simultaneously not doing anything too consequential. It's like taking a break without taking a break. It's like not taking a break without not taking a break.

Yeah. Sometimes I feel like a ridiculous person.

Surgery and recovery

So, it turns out that surgery hurts. I mean, it really, actually hurts. They cut open your body and stick in knives and cameras and things and they cut stuff out, and doing stuff like that is painful. I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise to me, but for some reason, it really kind of did. I'm sure in part it was my blase perception that I was only having the "small" surgery and not all the big ones and so that was no big deal. Looking back, I'm okay with that. I don't think it would have mattered if I were "more prepared" for the amount of pain; I don't think I would have been able to go into surgery so unafraid.

I don't remember the anesthesia. I remember being wheeled into the OR, and trying to suppress these hysterical giggles that were welling up in me. It seemed ridiculous that I'd be in this TV show sort of room. Bizarre. Surreal. Silly. I positioned onto the bed/table, and then... that's all. I don't even remember the anesthesiologist coming across the room to me, though I have to assume at some point he did.

The post-op room is what stands out the most to me. I don't remember the doctor or nurse or whoever she was telling me that I may not be able to form memories yet. But I do remember thinking (perhaps responding to her?) that as a psychologist who has read a bit on brain damage and short term memory loss and things like that, it was absolutely fascinating to consider that what I'm thinking and doing right now I might not remember later. I do remember I said to her that she "was very nice, in case I forgot later." I remember she was pleased by that. I don't remember her telling me I still have both my ovaries, but that information penetrated enough that the next time I asked her about the surgery, I didn't ask after my ovaries, I asked after what they had removed--tumor? cysts? She reminded me I had asked about my ovaries and was I curious about that? I couldn't remember asking after my ovaries or her response, but I did remember that I had both of them.

In the end, they removed the mass and I think a cyst, and they found some endometriosis that they scraped off, and apparently after my ruptured cyst some months back, scar tissue had formed and fused some things together that were meant to be separated, so they removed that scar tissue too. The doctor said I'd be up and about in a week. This made me think that I'd be more or less back to normal after a week, but that is not the case at all. As per earlier, surgery hurts a lot.

Michael has been incredible. I've told people already that he deserves a medal, and he really, really does. He stayed with me for almost a week, he lifted me in and out of bed, he brought me everything I needed. He sat with me the first night when the pain was making me too nauseated to take more pain medication and I lay on the bathroom floor for what could have been hours in the middle of the night trying to settle my stomach enough to take and keep another percoset. He hovered over me and fed me gatorade through a straw and petted my head and eventually helped me back into bed. And after I went back to classes in the summer, he carried my bag to and from school every day, dropping me off at 8:00am and picking me up at 5:00pm, on foot, because I couldn't carry things so well. Deserves a medal.

I wanted so badly to get back to work, so the next Thursday after my Friday surgery, I did. And I'm kinda glad I did, but it was too much. I stayed home again the next day. But the following Monday, I went back to class. I figured it would be just fine by this point, sitting in class all day and learning things. Some days it was, some days it wiped me the hell out. Every day when I get home I go back to bed, where I have my laptop set up for homework and Buffy the Vampire Slayer videos. The best part of going back to class (other than that I'll be finishing up 9 credits in three weeks) is that in my first class, a woman I know was there too. She just had a hysterectomy. So we were surgery buddies in class. I felt much better about my recovery, being able to compare with her our experiences, getting to see how much worse "the big surgery" would have been if my BRCA1 results had been different. Also, she's not American, which means she is much stronger than me. She accepted the huge amounts of pain with power and stoicism whereas I'd been whining at every turn. It's always good to get an example of a better way to deal with the situation.

I measured my recovering by the things I could do. "I can open a jar now." Did you realize you use your stomach muscles to do that? I didn't, until I didn't have control over them. "I can take a full length step now." Did you realize you need your stomach muscles to support your leg stepping so far away from your center? I would plateau for days and feel grumpy that I wasn't better, then suddenly one day I'd be so much better than the day before. In my second summer class we had field trips and one of them required so much walking up and down hills and stairs that it set my recovery back almost a week. That morning I could take full steps. I had planned on walking *all the way home from school.* Instead, for the next five days I was shuffling again. Ugh, that was the worst.

After classes I went back to work, and after going back to work I started walking up stairs, and after walking up stairs I started riding my bike, and after riding my bike I started lifting weights, and after lifting weights, I tried to SCUBA dive, but that didn't go so well because it turns out I'm afraid of strapping on a bunch of heavy equipment and going under water. But I was physically capable, at least! A few days later I rode a horse, so there. See? I can do things.

One thing I still struggle with is wearing pants that fit. My scar tissue is all healed, but it's still sensitive when it has something pressing on it all day long. I've been wearing my loose, comfy pants for months now. I'm only now starting to ease back into wearing pants that fit. Getting there.

The biggest step to me, honestly, was when I started spending the *whole day* out of bed. Even a month (two months?) after surgery, I would go to work, come home and climb into bed. I had my laptop set up there. See, I have this stand-up desk at home, and I didn't have the energy to use it. I have a chair, I mean, I *can* sit down at my desk. But I was just so exhausted for so long. After go out and doing things, I'd just want to climb into a soft comfy space and rest.

It was probably for the best that I wasn't able to get to Tuvalu this summer. Especially since my second class turned out to be so physically demanding, I don't think I was at a good recovery point to be trying to travel internationally, walking all over an island near the equator in August conducting research. Oh, but it would have been awesome. I miss Tuvalu so much sometimes. But for the sake of my body healing, I'm sure it's way better to go in December.

But I'm all better now. Stand up desk, bike riding, weight lifting, working all day, getting stuff done, carrying my things to school, teaching two classes, taking one class, getting ready for job applications for next year, crazy excited about doing my dissertation and getting my PhD... all the things normal people do.