Sunday, May 1, 2016

Breaking the Rules

I'm having a crappy day.  It started when I couldn't sleep last night.  I was wide awake at 2:30 AM.  Usually that means I drank way too much coffee the day before, but I haven't been drinking coffee.  At all.  Well, almost at all.  For three weeks.  Anyone who knows me knows this is an apocalyptic event.  Coffee ranks second only to books in terms of my loves.  Or rather, addictions.  My stomach's been upset for three weeks .  Nothing helps much and coffee aggravates it, so no coffee.  Tomorrow I get to have an endoscopy to see if I have an ulcer. Joy.  I thought I was only a little stressed about that, nothing out of proportion, but last night suggests otherwise maybe.  It didn't help that I kept thinking, I have to get to sleep.  I have to get to sleep.  This is the best way I know to ensure that I don't sleep.  I wanted to go to church today.  I haven't been for a while because going means I have to ride around in the stupid paratransit van which has no discernible shock absorbers for about 2 hours (The trip should take 25 minutes, but it's a "shared ride" system and lots of people go to church on Sunday), and that upsets my stomach.  But I wanted to go today because I needed worship, needed to be fed, needed to be with people who've known and loved me for 25 years.  And it beat staying home and thinking about the endoscopy.  Going to church also means I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning.   When you're wide awake at 2:30, that seems like a very bad idea, so I didn't go.

The CNA who eventually came to help me get up and dressed was new.  Every time I started to transfer from my bed to my chair, she asked me questions.  I tried to explain that I couldn't answer her right now; I really needed to focus on what I was doing, but she wouldn't let me finish a sentence. When I started to ask her to call another CNA to assist her, to walk her through the process of assisting me, she took it as an affront to her credentials.  "I've been a CNA for nineteen years, " she said.  "I know what I'm doing."  She did call, but she also left shortly after the other CNA arrived.  I broke down in tears.  Couldn't stop crying.  The last time I cried this much was when my mother died, three years ago, I thought.  This was out of proportion. Maybe it was the combination-- the endoscopy, not going to church, the new CNA.  Maybe it was also that I have a rule:  If you have a similar problem with three different people, the problem is probably you, not them.  I don't complain a lot about CNA's, but recently I've complained about two.  I don't want to complain about a third, but this seems like more than a personality clash or the likelihood that she and I will never be best friends, and for the life of me I can't figure out how the problem in this case is me.

When I was finally dressed and in my chair, I had a little talk with Jesus.  In which I think he said, "Maybe you need to break the rules."  So I will go and complain about the CNA on Monday--or Tuesday, after the endoscopy.  And maybe I will break another rule--the one that says I don't go to church on three hours or less of sleep.   So for all you church people who read this, if  I show up next week looking like a zombie, you'll know why.  Please be kind.