I get so blinded by my cycle that I don’t realize what I might miss if it were suddenly gone. I’m guilty of this all the time without even noticing it. I’m a creature of habit. I like mixing things up and having variety but even with huge changes I always rely on that invisible checklist inside my head. It’s the routine of making a routine.
Whether it’s been one day or 50 days make a routine… and it blinds me inadvertently.
Monday came and I expected the usual; wake up, drop my daughter and my dog off, go to work, care for my patients, go home, make dinner, watch some tv, go to bed, repeat. Only, it didn’t happen that way. I got a call from the office cancelling me. One patient has been in the hospital about two weeks already but she was in physical therapy. Now, the other is gone too? I started to review all his behaviors, all of his subtle actions ans expressions, trying to think of what may have happened. Ultimately, I still had no idea but I had concocted several possibilities in my imagination.
Tuesday comes and I’m cancelled again. What’d going on? Is he okay? He was fine friday!
I’m given a fill in patient to recoup some of my lost hours. The office tells me the patient prefers only black caregivers but that I can “pass” for really, really, really lightskin. Gee… thanks for trying to ‘Rachel Dozol’ me. Anyway, when I show up the daughter answers the door. I politely introduce myself, the company that sent me, and adress the patients name that I was there to care for. I’m answered with an abrupt “Who?” I restate my name and company only to hear the reply “for what?”. Do I detect the undertone of an ever so slight snarl? I think to myself. “To be her caregiver… to care for her”, I answer. I’m turned away at the door while the daughter calls the office and tells me there is no work to be done because I arrived ‘too early’ (the time the office gave me). Later I find out she turned away the little -presumably- white girl and would not budge on the issue. I giggle a little inwardly, she has no idea, all she sees is peach skin.
Back home I go with zero hours on my paycheck still. Another call is made to cancel me for Wednesday. I’m in a state of limbo here. I can’t begin to construct even a temporary routine, the thing I depend on mentally, while everyting is up in the air. It’s driving me insane.
Finally I get some information. It’s the information I didn’t want but at least it’s something. Patient A is coming home and I go back to work Thursday. Patient B isn’t coming home. He’s had a stroke and several complications. He’s being admitted to a full time facility. The last time I will ever see the patient that had begun to be a sort of extended family was Friday and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t say goodbye. I wonder if he’ll even remember I was ever here. Afterall, he thinks it’s thirty-or-so years in the past.
Fast forward to now, here I am back at work. While, yes, I’m still sad, it’s more of an undertone now that I can focus on constructing a new routine. This is what I depend on. This is how I cope. It’s how I’ve survived the worst and how I make it through any situation. But now, I also rely on prayer. I rely on God, though checklists are my distraction and my coping, God is how I know it there’s a tomorrow to have a a routine for. It’s my trust in God that grounds me in chaos because he has a plan even when I don’t.
Trust in him.
MohawkMissionary
MohawkMissionary 