Getting close...

Surgery #2 is getting closer. Scheduled for next Monday.
One of the (many) curses of being in academia is the constant need to apply for grants to get money to do research. Sent out one proposal this morning, another goes out tomorrow, Thursday is a meeting  (4 hours away) to present one of the proposals to the funding agency, and Friday is a conference call to discuss yet another grant proposal with collaborators. At this point, it is really difficult to pinpoint exactly what is the source of my growing stress level. Is it the general pressure of being junior faculty on the exhausting quest for tenure? Is it the more specific stress of having a jam packed week of grant related madness? Is it the stress of having to go in person to beg for funding? Is it just that I'm starting to stress about the surgery? I feel fairly confident in saying that it's all of those together and depending on what I'm working on at any given moment, the rankings of which one is causing more stress is up for grabs.
I was really stoked about the new doctor, Dr. Y, she is very nice, she was very conscientious of making sure she wrote things down for me and even drew diagrams and flowcharts at my visit with her. Lately, I'm not as pleased. Her office has been friendly enough when I call, but I have heard little to nothing from them since my visit. It's a week from surgery, over a week since my biopsy, yet I haven't heard from them. I found out the biopsy result (benign fibroid) from my doctor here, Dr. H, because the office that did the biopsy listed her in addition to Dr. Y to send the results to. Dr. H's office called to let me know what the results were, but not a peep out of Dr. Y's office. I don't know if Dr. H's office let them know that they had already spoken to me, but still, a phone call would have been nice. I'm a bit touchy over all of this mostly because of the mounting stress, but I would expect a cancer treatment facility to be incredibly conscious of the need to share information with patients quickly and often.
This is going to be a long and crappy week. I can't wait for it to be over.
Oh, and yet another fun thing to add, this weekend the washing machine decided to die on us.
Can I quit being an adult now?

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