This day has been a complete roller coaster of highs and lows. It's rainy and cold again, after such a nice day in the 60s yesterday. We also had great news today, followed by really bad news.
Sweet stuff: The CT scan was clean. Yippee! Phlebotomy wasn't bad. I didn't feel the needle stick too much, everyone was sweet and full of hugs, and I found out that dear, sweet Mattie retired last month. Good for her. I also had a much better experience than last time getting the IV for the CT - not too bad either. She was quick and relatively pain free. I had the slowest machine in the place, but who can complain about a 5 minute test versus a 3 minute test. No big deal. The doctor's visit was short and sweet (except for the hour-long wait), but they came in with GREAT news so no complaints there.
Bitter pill: Mike lost his job this afternoon. He got a call last night on our way home asking him to come to work today for a very important meeting. He explained that he would be at NIH with me so they said it was okay if he didn't come in. He called around to other co-workers seeing if they knew what was up, but they didn't. I speculated that his company was acquired. Today at NIH he couldn't get a phone signal, but he was able to get out a text asking what happened. The response was simply "28". Later, we understood that meant 28 people had been let go. When Mike was finally able to get a signal, he talked to people to ask what happend, but they assured him his name didn't come up. However, his boss hadn't returned his call. I assured Mike that they wouldn't expect him to show up at work tomorrow and then tell him. Then the phone rang. His boss called to tell him he'd been let go. They asked him to go in tomorrow to talk to HR and pick up his stuff.
It's hard to be happy for me while being sad for Mike. As my accupuncturist said, "Your health is your wealth." So true. I am thankful and grateful for my health. Now Mike needs a job.
1 comment:
Well. Yeah! And crap!
You know in that movie City Slickers where they're talking about their best day and their worst day? Bruno Kirby says his worst day was when he stopped his father from hitting his mother, and his father walked out on the family. Then he says that his best day was the same day. That's the way I feel now about having been laid off about 10 years ago. My worst day in the fact that being laid off is one of the nastiest, scariest, sucker-punchiest feeling in the world (I would guess second only to hearing you have cancer). And, eventually it became the best day of my life, because it realigned my priorities, set me on a different path, and really made me look at how the kind of human being I was was affected by the kind of job I had. It was a sucker punch. But turned out I needed a good slap to the head.
And actually, City Slickers is a great movie to watch when you're having this kind of moment. Maybe you could slip it into Mike's Xmas stocking.
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