LIFE: The Summer of My Discontent*

In football, there's a penalty for jumping onto someone when they're already tackled...it's called piling on. In sports, we hear about coaches running up the score when they are already crushing their opponents. You often hear the expression, "don't kick a man when he's down." Well, over the past few months I've been kicked, piled on, and crushed.

I've written previously about my kidney stones. That turned into five (yes, FIVE) surgical procedures and months of pain and discomfort. I won't even go into the story about the day I had to take the train into New York City for a job interview and was trying to ignore the constant pain and urge to urinate because I had two stents in my kidneys. I can't tell you how many times over these past few months that women (mostly nurses) said to me that they'd rather go through childbirth again than have a kidney stone. I think that was supposed to be comforting to me. :-)

I had my fifth (and final) surgery about a week or so ago and it looks like everything is finally taken care of with that. I'm feeling a hundred times better and re-energized. When you face a daily physical challenge it knocks you down and takes away a lot of your strength and motivation. I've gained so much respect for people who deal with chronic pain.

On top of all that fun was the fact that I had been laid off and my last day at work was at the end of July. Doing a job search is a daunting task as it is (especially in my field of work and in an economy like the current one) but when you are dealing with something as painful as kidney stones it makes interviewing a huge challenge.

I've had about five interviews so far (six, if you count a phone interview) and I've come away from all of them feeling as if they went very well and that I would probably get a job offer. So far I've had no offers and have had no explanation (and often no response or notification of there decision). Is it difficult for an employer to let you know that they went with someone else? I've emailed a few of the people I met with and asked them for constructive criticism or at least a reason why they went with someone else and I haven't received many responses (and when I have they were not very helpful).

If I had the time and money I'd think about changing my career path. But I love being in a creative field and editing and writing are all I've ever done. And, to toot my own horn, I'm good at it. So, for now, I continue my career search in publishing/Editorial and work on starting my own freelance web site (more on that some other time).

But, as if those weren't enough to deal with, the worst part of the summer was when my wife, Lynne, was in the hospital for a couple weeks. She was pretty sick and it's still a bit of a mystery as to what exactly happened but it started with a reaction to a new prescription medication. It's a scary thing to see something like that happen and it angers and saddens me to think that there are doctors who prescribe medicines without really knowing much about them and drug companies that push drugs on the public without really knowing all the side-effects.

While my wife was in the hospital I was still at work so I would get up in the morning and get Mikey ready for his in-home teachers, go to work, and then rush home to go to the hospital and stay as long as I could at night, then go home and put Mikey to bed each night. He was lucky enough to have his nana watching him when I wasn't around so I don't know how much he realized that mommy wasn't there every day. It was a tough experience on all of us and very, very scary.

Have I mentioned that it wasn't a fun summer? ;-)

But, the shining beacon in this summer of darkness has been Mikey. He's such an incredible boy! He has been making really good progress with his development and his teachers are so dedicated to helping him. He never fails to make us smile or amaze us with something new he's learned. He just started going to a school for developmental disabilities (more about that in the next post).

Through all of the challenges this summer I have been able to keep a positive attitude (I might have had a bad day here or there) and it definitely wasn't my favorite summer ever...but, heading into the fall and winter I'm feeling ready for anything and full of energy again.

Normally people think of these coming seasons as a time of death and dormancy but I'm looking at them as a rebirth and I'm ready for good things to start growing.

Hope you all had a good summer.

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* Borrowed, slightly, from:

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York"
--William Shakespeare, Richard III