If You Want To Make God Laugh, Make Plans!

If you want to make God laugh, make plans! I was all set to retire from my full-time job, move to Florida, and concentrate on my Caregiver Warrior blog, book, and website. My schedule was set, my affairs in order and I was prepared for a whole new life and experience.

During this transitional time, my physical balance had been off for some time but was being diagnosed as possible stress on my neck or stress in general. It wasn’t bothering me that much until the end of the year when all the big life changes started coming together. I began to feel unsteady all the time and started to worry that something serious was going on.

All the years of advocating for those I cared for prepared me to follow my intuition and speak up for myself with my doctors. I insisted on getting an MRI.

I had the MRI on a Saturday and on Monday the results showed up in my online patient chart account. I opened up the test results and saw that the MRI test was “flagged” and the words benign, meningioma and massive impact jumped out at me. As I hung onto the word benign and my breath I dialed my doctor’s office.

Sure enough, my specialist confirmed that they had found a benign tumor in my right hemisphere near the base of my skull and referred me to the neurosurgeon’s office.

So I now have an amazing surgeon who will remove the tumor at the end of the month in a state-of-the-art facility in the #1 hospital for neurosurgery in the country.  I have had this slow-growing tumor for over 30 years and my body is done with it! My recovery time is 4-6 weeks with the caveat that I will, understandably, be tired for months.  Exhaustion aside, I should be good as new once fully recovered.

It looks like this Caregiver Warrior has crossed over to the Patient Warrior (hopefully) side of things which if nothing else will be extremely interesting! I wonder what tools I’ve learned as a caregiver that will motivate and inspire me to be a great patient. I also wonder if the very things and personality issues that challenged me as a caregiver, such as perfectionism, the need to control and fix everything, and being impatient with things not going my way will make me the worst patient ever!

I have a great patient model to follow. My dad never ceased to amaze me with his grace, resilience, and acceptance during his journey as a patient. No matter what test they threw at him or what procedure he had to endure he was always grateful and positive and willing. I remember when he had to have open heart surgery, the team was so impressed with him because when they asked him if he would be willing to get right up and work on his recovery immediately after surgery he said “Hell, yes! Let’s do it! “

His power of example stays with me always, and I think of him often when confronted with yet another MRI or another IV or when I worry about the upcoming surgery. I think to myself, WWPPD (what would pop pop do) and always come away with the answer that he would be calm, smiley, accepting, and ever grateful for the wonderful care he was receiving.

This gives me hope and settles me down. He’s watching over me and will be right by my side. I also realize and understand that caregiving is my wheelhouse and the self-awareness I relied on so heavily during my journey as a caregiver warrior will support me on this end of it as well.

So here we go. Hell yes, let’s do it! I’ll keep you posted…to be continued!

As one Caregiver Warrior to another, I offer advice, helpful tips, and strategies based on the experience, strength, and hope I found while surviving my own caregiving journey. It has become my mission to share my stories and the things I learned about being an empowered caregiver. To help spread the word and offer guidance to other caregivers, I have written a new book entitled “Self Care for Caregivers”  that is available at all major retail outlets including an audio version so you can listen on the go! It’s now available for pre-order and you can find order buttons throughout the site. If you find the book everything you hoped for, let me know and leave a review! Your feedback means thr world to me!