I decided to withdraw from my current semester for my M.Sc. program. It was a hard choice but as I sat there in the dark at 7pm tonight (last night now), I was completely and throughly exhausted, so much so I physically had a hard time getting up and moving around. The training trip had completely drained my reserves, it would seem. Even the mere thought of having to do more work, more studying provoked an involuntary physical shudder through me.
I've been exhausted at least twice in as many weeks. I can continue to pretend that I can but that way lies madness, especially this close to surgery when I absolutely have to be healthy.
Something's got to go. I can't drop my family and in fact, I've been quite derelict in spending time with them as well as helping out at home. I'm sorry, sis - I'll do better. :( I can't drop my work - we need the money, at least until I find a better workplace. So I started looking at other things, and the course was the most expensive (I've already paid for tuition) but would take the biggest stress load off me. The kicker was that I had to have my research project in by the night before I was due to be admitted into the clinic for surgery - I usually bleed off stress from projects for days afterwards and that is not a good way to start off major surgery.
There are other areas I need to cut off as well. I feel like such a failure as I'm doing this - I hate quitting. :( Having said that, I've received nothing but caring support on all this from everyone, even as I'm pulling back, cancelling or delaying my commitments.
I'm getting the distinct feeling that out of everyone in my life, I'm probably the person who underestimates the impact of surgery the most. I keep getting responses like, "You're crazy, that's not enough time to recover" and other similar remarks. That's not good, and I need to go reexamine my position. Joys. :(
It is now T-30 days to surgery. I'm scared but impatient - promises of being finally whole are tempered by the sobering reports of excruciating pain during the months of healing.
2 comments:
You will get through it sis, and those of us who love and care for you will be there all the way. *hugs*
A few posts back you were commenting on how you tend to be too much of a perfectionist and here you are now giving yourself the gears because you can't simultaneously spend enough time with your family, do your work, do justice to an out-of-town training course, prepare yourself for major surgery AND complete your MSc. Did I miss something here?
Cut yourself some slack, Kate! One of the things I've had to learn recently is how to prioritize the really important things in life. The MSc can wait: you got that right :-)
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