A big part of the rationale for writing Gather With Jim is to impart lessons I have learned along the way.
And it really occurred to me today while I was at a Ceremony of Life for a friend that I made a grievous error in judgement back in January. Not sure why the message came to me then, perhaps it came from my departed friend. As I was trying to figure this out the January visual of the doctor asking me if I should call Tracey came in to my mind.
Maybe I should back up a bit. Back in January I had one of ‘those’ nights. http://www.gatherwithjim.com/blog/2019-1-23-low-pressure
It was a night where I was close to the edge, so close that the doctor asked me around 4:30am, after working on me for many hours, if I wanted to call my wife. His words were something along the line of ‘we’ve been trying for hours and are not getting you stable, I’m not sure how this is going to end but maybe you want to have your wife here?’
And in like an instance I said ‘No. We are going to get through this.’
So we continued.
First I’ll run through the rationale, then I’ll let you know what the mistake was - if you haven’t already guessed it.
1. It was 4:30 am and I knew Tracey hadn’t been getting great sleeps and 4:30 was around the time she usually starts getting some REM’s.
2. As odd as this sounds, I didn’t want to give the Doctor an ‘out.’ I wanted the pressure of our teamwork to remain as is.
3. I didn’t want a distraction, this was serious and I needed to focus on simple things like just breathing.
Now all that made sense while I had a bunch of nurses, doctors, pain medications, new bags of steroids, saline, ecg’s, ultra sounds etc working on me.
But when Tracey showed up in the morning, in my drug induced haze, I told her what had transpired. Quickly the conversation changed and she rightly admonished me. And not in a you’ve been through a tough time so I’ll go easy on you kinda way, no, this was an important point I needed to learn in case it happened again.
And for those of you following in my steps, here is the lesson.
IF AT ANY POINT SHIT IS GOING SIDEWAYS DO NOT HESITATE TO MAKE THE CALL. NO MATTER THE TIME, THE DISTANCE OR THE CIRCUMSTANCE. YOU ARE A TEAM AND YOU OWE IT TO YOUR PARTNER TO LET THEM PARTICIPATE NO MATTER WHAT!!!
I’ve put this in yelly all-caps so you fully appreciate the lesson I was given.
And now it’s yours.
Good luck, don’t flinch.
