I'm sorry for falling behind in my emails and all of your blogs this past week. Please know I am still reading and plan on catching up with you all but it has been a bit of a tough week so it has gotten on top of me for the moment.
You might all recall my friend Cate was hospitalised in severe pain a little while ago. She lives in Sydney with her boyfriend and they were in Melbourne to attend a wedding when she had a sudden onset of abdominal pain and was admitted to hospital over here. For those that don't remember she was eventually diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome which, because it had gone untreated and unnoticed for so long, had gotten very out of hand and was causing such bad pain. When she was discharged and flew back to Sydney she was referred to a specialist for follow up care in Sydney. The specialist agreed that she had IBS but didn't agree that it was the sole cause of that amount of pain. Because the bowel is close to the reproductive area he sent Cate to a specialist in that field to rule out ovarian cysts and things like that.
After seeing the new specialist he was quite confident she had severe endometriosis and Cate went in to hospital again for some surgery to confirm that diagnosis and fix the problem (remove the endo) on Friday November 13. The doctor said he would be unable to stay long after the procedure and that when she woke up in recovery the nurses would tell her the main gyst of the surgery and then he would see her a few days later at a post operative appointment. She woke up and the nurses said that yes she had endometriosis and that it had been removed, but that it had been quite an extensive surgery and she should expect some painful days ahead while she recovered.
The following Tuesday the 17th she saw the specialist for the post op check and he showed her some photos of some funny looking tissue that he had discovered in her uterus while removing the endo. Cate asked him what it was and he said he had never come across it before in 30 years of being in his profession and that he had sent the tissue to pathology. We had a nervous wait until Friday the 20th to get the pathology results.
On Friday afternoon I got a text from Cate that she has got pathology results and the doctor says it is a slow growing cancer. The fact that it is cancerous was bad obviously but the fact it was slow growing seemed positive. Because the doctor was inexperienced with it he said he would prefer to consult with some experts in the area on a plan of action and then speak to her on Monday the 23rd when he would know more.
After receiving the text I have tried calling a few times and have been unsuccessful in getting an answer. I tried again tonight, knowing that she would have spoken to the doctor regarding the prognosis and plan of action for the cancer. No answer again. Then two seconds after I hung up my phone I get another text from Cate again saying she will call in the next few days as she heard from the doctor on Monday and is unable to talk to people at this point in time. She said she just doesn't feel up to it.
I am very worried as I am guessing the fact that she is unable to talk to me, her best friend of 15 years, means that the news has been quite a shock for her. This indicates to me that it was not good news. I really hope she is dealing with things ok emotionally as well as physically. She only moved away to Sydney in August and I wish she was here close by. I'm sure she has lots of support from her boyfriend though as he is a lovely person. Please keep her in your prayers.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
My Christmas Wish
We are approaching that special time of year again and it always seems to make me feel reflective, both about the time gone by and about life in general. Then I read Dianne's beautiful post tonight and it made me want to say something. I'll try and get it out in understandable form!
There's a John Mayer song called "The Heart of Life" which I think I have quoted before at some stage, but I'm mentioning it again because it is a song that really speaks to me. I listened to it so much while TTC Nickie. The song goes "pain throws your heart to the ground, love turns the whole thing around, No it won't all go the way it should, but I know the heart of life is good."
I really believe that. Life is damn hard sometimes and it can bring you to your knees. But deep down, under the surface, life really is good. It's not always easy to see what's good. Sometimes you will have to squint to see what's good. But there is always something, I promise.
When Nickie smiles I see how great life is. There is nothing better than seeing your child happy. The happiness of babies is so pure and innocent and unclouded by the superficial wants that us grown ups have. We all want something more than what we have and we are never fully satisfied. I am the first one to admit that I can get so caught up in what I don't have, that I lose sight of what I do have and how lucky I am. We all want a faster car, a bigger house, a better job, or in my case a second baby. Babies don't have these wants. They are so thrilled with everything about the world and so happy. I know in my heart that inevitably as he grows up he will lose this to an extent. It makes me sad to know that one day his heart will ache for something that feels out of reach. I want him to keep his innocent happiness for as long as he can.
Every Christmas for the last few years Brad and I have decorated our tree, then placed the star right at the top while we both held on to it and made a wish that one day we would have a baby. Last Christmas, I was pregnant. We decorated our tree and then when we picked up the star we both burst into tears and realised we didn't need to wish anymore as it was already coming true. Now another Christmas is rolling around again and our baby is here and I am so happy I can't believe it. Thinking back to how it was on the other side of the tunnel makes me feel happy for how far we have come and all we have gained this year, rather than what we lost.
This year my Christmas wish when Brad and I pick up the star is for all of you lovely ladies out there in blog land who I have had the pleasure of meeting since coming here, who are yet to have their miracle. I just want you all to have your babies. Please know that on Decmber first when we decorate our tree, we will be making that wish for you. Christmas is a special time and it is only fair to use it to honour special people.
There's a John Mayer song called "The Heart of Life" which I think I have quoted before at some stage, but I'm mentioning it again because it is a song that really speaks to me. I listened to it so much while TTC Nickie. The song goes "pain throws your heart to the ground, love turns the whole thing around, No it won't all go the way it should, but I know the heart of life is good."
I really believe that. Life is damn hard sometimes and it can bring you to your knees. But deep down, under the surface, life really is good. It's not always easy to see what's good. Sometimes you will have to squint to see what's good. But there is always something, I promise.
When Nickie smiles I see how great life is. There is nothing better than seeing your child happy. The happiness of babies is so pure and innocent and unclouded by the superficial wants that us grown ups have. We all want something more than what we have and we are never fully satisfied. I am the first one to admit that I can get so caught up in what I don't have, that I lose sight of what I do have and how lucky I am. We all want a faster car, a bigger house, a better job, or in my case a second baby. Babies don't have these wants. They are so thrilled with everything about the world and so happy. I know in my heart that inevitably as he grows up he will lose this to an extent. It makes me sad to know that one day his heart will ache for something that feels out of reach. I want him to keep his innocent happiness for as long as he can.
Every Christmas for the last few years Brad and I have decorated our tree, then placed the star right at the top while we both held on to it and made a wish that one day we would have a baby. Last Christmas, I was pregnant. We decorated our tree and then when we picked up the star we both burst into tears and realised we didn't need to wish anymore as it was already coming true. Now another Christmas is rolling around again and our baby is here and I am so happy I can't believe it. Thinking back to how it was on the other side of the tunnel makes me feel happy for how far we have come and all we have gained this year, rather than what we lost.
This year my Christmas wish when Brad and I pick up the star is for all of you lovely ladies out there in blog land who I have had the pleasure of meeting since coming here, who are yet to have their miracle. I just want you all to have your babies. Please know that on Decmber first when we decorate our tree, we will be making that wish for you. Christmas is a special time and it is only fair to use it to honour special people.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Office politics
Most of the time I enjoy my job, but every now and then (and I don't think you can escape this in ANY job) office politics get in the way. Yesterday I came home from work quite satisfied with myself for standing up for what I believe in. Here is what happened:
Quite a while ago my manager, knowing that she would be in the middle of her maternity leave over the Christmas period and not at work to give this matter her full attention, gave the job of organising our annual team Christmas party to somebody else. The lady that got given this task I am going to call "D". A bit of background into D is that she is quite a wealthy lady and kind of only works for something to do, rather than for the money. She and her husband have a million dollar house and she wears designer clothes. Her husband is a surgeon. This is all totally fine, but what is not fine is the fact that there have been incidences in the past when she has really rubbed this fact in everybody's faces. She also often suggests ideas for team events and so forth that the average person really can't afford as I don't think she understands what it's like for money to be scarce.
Anyway she never took a vote within the team or anything about what we all wanted to do for our Christmas party. Usually it is a dinner at a restaurant. Last year it was at a little Mexican place near work. It was about $20 a head, we could bring partners and it was a lot of fun as well as being affordable, even though it wasn't a 5 star gourmet place. At the time though, D made sure everybody knew it was very beneath her to eat food like nachos. This year D has taken it upon herself to book in for an exclusive restaurant in the city. The cost is $100 a head which makes it $200 if you want to bring your partner. That is out of reach of most of us in the team. Because at the time, our manager was heavily pregnant and just finishing up at work before starting her leave, she didn't do anything to make D organise a more suitable outing and so all the plans went ahead and we are having this party that hardly anyone can afford to go to and as a result lots of people are boycotting. This has caused a lot of tension in the team for the last couple of weeks.
Usually within our team at Christmas we do a Secret Santa. For those of you who don't know what that is it is the same as a Kris Kringle where you put everyone's name in a hat then everyone draws a name and you have to buy a present for that person. We usually exchange gifts at the Christmas party but because so many people aren't going now we have decided to have a "bring a plate of food" day at work the Monday before Christmas and exchange gifts then. Usually the person who organises the Christmas party also organises Secret Santa because they are kind of related, but because of all the trouble, our new manager decided to allocate this task to someone other than D. I volunteered as I thought at least if I run it I know I will do the right thing. Our manager announced I would be running it so right away I get all these people coming up to me giving ideas on what they think the money limit should be on the gifts and new ways to run it etc. So last week I called a 5 minute team meeting to talk to everyone about it. I said that the running of Secret Santa this year was going to be a democratic process to make sure we did what was fair and what the majority of people would be happy with. I explained I would be sending out a team email with some questions about how people wanted it run and that everybody had to email back so that it would be like a confidential vote. I added for people to remember that this is supposed to be a fun activity not something designed to stress people or burden them financially and that was why I was going with what the majority would be comfortable doing.
I sent out an email asking people 1. whether or not they wanted to participate in Secret Santa 2. to nominate what $ limit they would be comfortable spending, and 3. Did they want a traditional Secret Santa or did they have any ideas on any new fun ways it could be done? There are 20 of us in the team at work and the results went like this:
Everyone said yes they wanted to participate
Out of 20 people, 17 people said they wanted a $15 limit and the other 3 said higher than that.
Out of 20 people, 16 people said they just wanted a traditional Secret Santa, 2 gave ideas for a new way to run it, and the other 2 never answered the question and said they didn't mind how it was done.
So with a pretty overwhelming majority, yesterday I sent an email out saying that after considering everyone's preferences we would be doing a traditional Secret Santa with a $15 limit on the gift buying. Everyone seemed really happy that they had had a say and people were excited about doing it. But guess who started to voice her opinion and the fact that she had issues with it? You guessed it! D! First she says to me "traditional Secret Santa is boring. It's been done. We need to do something new." and then proceeds to tell me about how her family always does it. Apparently everyone buys a unisex present then someone selects one and opens it, then the next person can either choose to select another present or take the first person's gift off them if they like it better. I politely listened to her and then said that out of 20 team members 16 had voted for a traditional Secret Santa so that's what I have to go with. I also said that I thought the "taking people's presents" idea had the potential to cause arguements but told her thanks for her idea. After that, twice more throughout the day she tried to convince me why we should do Secret Santa her way and I met her comments with a very simalar comment to what I said earlier.
Then she started saying how a $15 limit was measly, that the team must be a bunch of cheapskates if they can't afford more than that. She asked me to tell her who said $15 so she could convince them to spend more. I said no that the vote was confidential and that it was a vast majority that voted for the $15 limit. Several more times she comes up to me and loud enough for everyone to hear made rude comments about people being pathetic not wanting to spend more than $15. I got really angry as she was upsetting everyone and so I went to my manager and told her what was happening. I said that she was welcome to address the issue with D personally if she felt it more appropriate, but that I wanted her to stop D from behaving this way, and that as Secret Santa is my project that D is ruining I feel I am entitled to address the issue with her provided I didn't get aggressive. My manager agreed and called a meeting with the 3 of us.
D walks in and thinks it is about the Christmas party so she didn't realise she was "in trouble" so to speak. My manager explains she has called the meeting as D's behaviour towards the Christmas celebrations has been unfavourable and that I have been upset and made a complaint. She had a talk to D about how and why her behaviour had been unacceptable and then let me talk. I was very calm and tactful but I told the truth and it all came out beautifully. I explained how the Secret Santa is being ruined by her selfish attitude, that she was hurting people's feelings by calling them cheapskates, that I had taken a vote to try to do what was fair and that the idea behind votes is to go with the majority not with what one person wants. I also gave her the oppurtunity to withdraw from the Secret Santa if she was that unhappy with it. My manager and I then gave D the option to talk but she suddenly went quiet. All that big talk she does all day escaped her and she had nothing left to say except to apologise to me which I accepted. I said to her I like coming in to work and I like the friendly team atmosphere and so I hope we can be friends as it was not my intention to be aggressive or yell at her, that I was just trying to sort out an issue with her by talking with her about it.
For the rest of the day she never said a peep about Secret Santa and was nice to everyone including me. I was very proud of myself as I really think she was being a real bully and I think standing up to a bully is always a positive thing.
Quite a while ago my manager, knowing that she would be in the middle of her maternity leave over the Christmas period and not at work to give this matter her full attention, gave the job of organising our annual team Christmas party to somebody else. The lady that got given this task I am going to call "D". A bit of background into D is that she is quite a wealthy lady and kind of only works for something to do, rather than for the money. She and her husband have a million dollar house and she wears designer clothes. Her husband is a surgeon. This is all totally fine, but what is not fine is the fact that there have been incidences in the past when she has really rubbed this fact in everybody's faces. She also often suggests ideas for team events and so forth that the average person really can't afford as I don't think she understands what it's like for money to be scarce.
Anyway she never took a vote within the team or anything about what we all wanted to do for our Christmas party. Usually it is a dinner at a restaurant. Last year it was at a little Mexican place near work. It was about $20 a head, we could bring partners and it was a lot of fun as well as being affordable, even though it wasn't a 5 star gourmet place. At the time though, D made sure everybody knew it was very beneath her to eat food like nachos. This year D has taken it upon herself to book in for an exclusive restaurant in the city. The cost is $100 a head which makes it $200 if you want to bring your partner. That is out of reach of most of us in the team. Because at the time, our manager was heavily pregnant and just finishing up at work before starting her leave, she didn't do anything to make D organise a more suitable outing and so all the plans went ahead and we are having this party that hardly anyone can afford to go to and as a result lots of people are boycotting. This has caused a lot of tension in the team for the last couple of weeks.
Usually within our team at Christmas we do a Secret Santa. For those of you who don't know what that is it is the same as a Kris Kringle where you put everyone's name in a hat then everyone draws a name and you have to buy a present for that person. We usually exchange gifts at the Christmas party but because so many people aren't going now we have decided to have a "bring a plate of food" day at work the Monday before Christmas and exchange gifts then. Usually the person who organises the Christmas party also organises Secret Santa because they are kind of related, but because of all the trouble, our new manager decided to allocate this task to someone other than D. I volunteered as I thought at least if I run it I know I will do the right thing. Our manager announced I would be running it so right away I get all these people coming up to me giving ideas on what they think the money limit should be on the gifts and new ways to run it etc. So last week I called a 5 minute team meeting to talk to everyone about it. I said that the running of Secret Santa this year was going to be a democratic process to make sure we did what was fair and what the majority of people would be happy with. I explained I would be sending out a team email with some questions about how people wanted it run and that everybody had to email back so that it would be like a confidential vote. I added for people to remember that this is supposed to be a fun activity not something designed to stress people or burden them financially and that was why I was going with what the majority would be comfortable doing.
I sent out an email asking people 1. whether or not they wanted to participate in Secret Santa 2. to nominate what $ limit they would be comfortable spending, and 3. Did they want a traditional Secret Santa or did they have any ideas on any new fun ways it could be done? There are 20 of us in the team at work and the results went like this:
Everyone said yes they wanted to participate
Out of 20 people, 17 people said they wanted a $15 limit and the other 3 said higher than that.
Out of 20 people, 16 people said they just wanted a traditional Secret Santa, 2 gave ideas for a new way to run it, and the other 2 never answered the question and said they didn't mind how it was done.
So with a pretty overwhelming majority, yesterday I sent an email out saying that after considering everyone's preferences we would be doing a traditional Secret Santa with a $15 limit on the gift buying. Everyone seemed really happy that they had had a say and people were excited about doing it. But guess who started to voice her opinion and the fact that she had issues with it? You guessed it! D! First she says to me "traditional Secret Santa is boring. It's been done. We need to do something new." and then proceeds to tell me about how her family always does it. Apparently everyone buys a unisex present then someone selects one and opens it, then the next person can either choose to select another present or take the first person's gift off them if they like it better. I politely listened to her and then said that out of 20 team members 16 had voted for a traditional Secret Santa so that's what I have to go with. I also said that I thought the "taking people's presents" idea had the potential to cause arguements but told her thanks for her idea. After that, twice more throughout the day she tried to convince me why we should do Secret Santa her way and I met her comments with a very simalar comment to what I said earlier.
Then she started saying how a $15 limit was measly, that the team must be a bunch of cheapskates if they can't afford more than that. She asked me to tell her who said $15 so she could convince them to spend more. I said no that the vote was confidential and that it was a vast majority that voted for the $15 limit. Several more times she comes up to me and loud enough for everyone to hear made rude comments about people being pathetic not wanting to spend more than $15. I got really angry as she was upsetting everyone and so I went to my manager and told her what was happening. I said that she was welcome to address the issue with D personally if she felt it more appropriate, but that I wanted her to stop D from behaving this way, and that as Secret Santa is my project that D is ruining I feel I am entitled to address the issue with her provided I didn't get aggressive. My manager agreed and called a meeting with the 3 of us.
D walks in and thinks it is about the Christmas party so she didn't realise she was "in trouble" so to speak. My manager explains she has called the meeting as D's behaviour towards the Christmas celebrations has been unfavourable and that I have been upset and made a complaint. She had a talk to D about how and why her behaviour had been unacceptable and then let me talk. I was very calm and tactful but I told the truth and it all came out beautifully. I explained how the Secret Santa is being ruined by her selfish attitude, that she was hurting people's feelings by calling them cheapskates, that I had taken a vote to try to do what was fair and that the idea behind votes is to go with the majority not with what one person wants. I also gave her the oppurtunity to withdraw from the Secret Santa if she was that unhappy with it. My manager and I then gave D the option to talk but she suddenly went quiet. All that big talk she does all day escaped her and she had nothing left to say except to apologise to me which I accepted. I said to her I like coming in to work and I like the friendly team atmosphere and so I hope we can be friends as it was not my intention to be aggressive or yell at her, that I was just trying to sort out an issue with her by talking with her about it.
For the rest of the day she never said a peep about Secret Santa and was nice to everyone including me. I was very proud of myself as I really think she was being a real bully and I think standing up to a bully is always a positive thing.
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