Bits of Whitdom

The Weight of the Wait

I called my coworker this morning to tell him that I was running late for work, only for him to tell me that he wasn't coming in at all this morning. I laughed and confessed that was my 'plan B" phone call! I told him I had been trying to decide all morning whether I should "work at home" or "sleep at my desk."

I actually considered for about an hour taking a half day of vacation just so that I could sleep, because I think I managed to piece together about 1.5 of total shut-eye last night.

(Isn't that funny that when it is time to sleep, our brain won't shut down, and then when the alarm goes off the next morning, our brain decides to listen to our urgings to quiet down from the previous 6 hours?)

But alas, I figured nothing would be gained from sleeping away half the day when there is much to be done here. And conversely, there is also much that can't be done.

I am waiting for a call from my doctor. And there is nothing in the world I can do to hasten it. I could call and leave a message...but that won't make the information forthcoming. I could show up on their doorstep, and aside from the puzzled look I would probably receive, I'd probably get a bill for a co-pay, to boot.

Chances are that he won't call until the end of the day. Chances are that when he calls, he won't have any earthshattering, life-changing information.

But it's not really the content of the call that is nagging at me. It's the fact that I have to wait for it. I know it's coming...but I don't know when. He'll have one of three things to say, so the mystery there is confined to a few outcomes. It's the timing...it could literally be at any minute in the next 24 hours that he calls. (For you who are numerically inclined, that's 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds.) Of course, he was supposed to call with the results yesterday, but as luck would have it...my luck...they didn't come back. My results didn't come back.

So back to last night. Over the past two weeks, I have been focused on one outcome. Probably due to the fog of the medications I was on, but in retrospect, it was a good thing. I say that because last night I was pretty clear headed, and then holy cow...a possibility I had not considered until then popped into my head, and I was crushed by the import of it all. Obviously just because it occurred to me doesn't make it so, but my mind became fixated on it.

All of a sudden the wait for the doctor to call started sprawling in front of me like a special effect in a sci-fi film, and the thought of waiting an entire business day seemed like something torturous in a Machiavellian novel.

It felt like a wet sack of concrete hoisted on my back and iron fixed around my feet. I instantly felt weighted down with thoughts and possibilities...

11:45pm -- Let me jump on the internet and see if there's any correlation between these two things.
12:02am -- Lay down. So tired.
12:27am -- Aha, but if that were it, then that treatment wouldn't have had an impact.
1:13am -- Drats. Studies in the UK showed a slight improvement with that course of medication even though it had no lasting impact on the condition. Back to bed.
1:21am -- SLEEP -- WHERE ARE YOU?
1:45am -- I'll just check the blogs and see if there's anything interesting.
2:09am -- Yawn. Crawl under the covers. The cat is upset with my lack of stillness and chastises me.
2:15am -- Wow. The moon is really bright through the blinds. Never noticed that.
2:33am -- The cat takes mercy on me and begins to lick my forehead. (Her show of affection.)
3:17am -- Oh yeah! Let me just check to see if anyone has done a study on THAT!
3:35am -- Wow...there really IS a research team for everything.
4:18am -- Have to at least close my eyes. Alarm will go off soon.
6:00am -- BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
6:09am -- BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
And so on, and so on, and so on every 9 minutes as I slap the snooze button.

Here we are back at my phone call to my colleague this morning.
And here we are back at the wait.
And the weight...

posted by Whitney @ 7:00 AM