I got to sleep late and got going too late to attend the Eucharist at St John's this morning, but I did get out to visit the wound clinic and collect some dressings to be sure I have what I need to cover the usual supply and demand chaos surrounding the holiday season.
While I was out, I realised that my wallet was missing from my jacket, and that gave me a panic, until I remembered that I'd last worn the fleece my sister gave me, and hadn't removed the wallet and put it back in its usual place. Silly small things like this can be quite upsetting. Coping over the past year has made me more of a creature of routine than ever before. I have to discipline myself to carry out everything, to make sure I don't get caught out by an unexpected change in the condition of my wound. Fatigue or concentrating on the wrong things at the wrong moment can sow minor chaos in my routinised life.
Losing keys, as I did on Monday, misplacing wallet, specs etc, are quite upsetting. Call it ageing, or forgetfulness, whatever, it's more to do with the long drawn out recovery from 'flu in my opinion. I get bursts of mental and even physical energy sometimes, and then phases of sluggishness. Not so much fatigue though, as I'm not desperate for an afternoon siesta as I was I few months back. There are some gains. I just wish I didn't have to wake another month for the pre-op surgical assessment, with no date fixed for op number four. It's a plague on my morale.
Another interesting episode of 'New Amsterdam' tonight, in which the head of A&E is taken to task for near-miss errors. The doctor in question is energetic and workaholic, and normally successful, but she's heading for burnout, and abusing prescribed medications which, it's revealed, she's taken since her teens for coping with ADHD diagnosis. She's in denial, but in a well portrayed encounter with the hospital's psychaiatrist, she acknowledges what's been driving her, and commits herself to change her behaviour. What I found interesting was how she attributed her usual work success to the fact of her ADHD condition. Not blaming it, but drawing on that source of energy to give more of herself that should reasonably be asked. She'd learned to channel that which other might regard as problematic about her. With so many youngsters these days being diagnosed with ADHD, how often I wonder do their teachers and medical specialists see the possibility to acknowledge and harness this energy for good, rather than try to contain and control it.
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