Enter the
present moment. Being the work-a-holic that I am, I had hoped to be able to
schedule the second surgery during the summer as it required a minimum of two
week’s recuperation. That’s when I learned the true meaning of “Managed Care.”
As a Kaiser patient (and happily so for the last 25 years), I learned that
non-emergency surgery is scheduled based on significance (major vs. minor
surgery) and frequency of the procedure. It turns out that podiatric surgeries
are not all that frequent and, consequently, I would have to wait until there
were enough patients like myself to warrant the allocation of a surgical suite.
That’s when I discovered “Managed Care” means “you manage your care.”
After weeks of interacting with the automated scheduling system, I finally
received a surgical appointment for the middle of September…great…now I would
have to miss two weeks of school.
Happily,
the surgery was a success and, as I write this column, I am home learning how
to be patient being a patient. As I near the end of my first week of
recuperation, I have discovered five lessons concerning the beneficial – albeit
unintended – consequences of having to take an unplanned amount of time off
from work. Top Five Lessons:
#5 Take the time to
think
We all gripe about how little time is available during the workday
to just think. We’ve all heard (or been guilty of saying): “If only I had more
time to think.” Well, now I have plenty of time to think and here’s what I have
discovered: there really isn’t enough
time in the workday to think. It is just too easy to fall into the temptation
that, if I’m not doing something at
work, then I am not being productive. And yet, in my role as President of La
Salle, I am expected to see the “big picture” and to chart the trailing effects
of any single decision (mine and others) made at any time during the work week.
How can I measure up to that expectation if I don’t carve out some time to think? I’ve spent a lot of time this
week thinking about the things I didn’t have time to think about last week and
I am astonished at how much better I am at crafting solutions to the daily
challenges I was previously managing on the fly. Because of my impending
enforced solitude, I brought home a handful of big projects that would need my
quality attention, and which would not receive it during an ordinary workweek,
with a view that I would have plenty of time to think about how to execute
them. The latter assumption has proven to be correct; ironically, I’ve made
significant progress on only one of them. Which leads me to:
#4 Do not treat recuperation
time as if it were “prison” time
A mere 24 hours after the surgery, I was wondering what I
was going to do with two weeks’ worth of time at home in which I would have a
limited ability to move around (as I write this, but for my patio, I haven’t
been outside the house in a week). Surely, I thought, the next two weeks would
move at a glacial pace and I would start to behave like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (a dated
reference, if you aren’t a Baby Boomer). As I look back at the week now ending, I
wonder – where did the time go? In point of fact, it was fairly evenly divided
between sleeping more than I have in a very long time, reading books that have
been piled up next to my desk for years, working on school projects and
interacting with friends, colleagues and family; which leads to:
#3 Cheerfully accept
the kindness of friends (and family)
My brother-in-law, a retired health care professional, flew
in from Wisconsin to act as my personal Florence Nightingale (which was
particularly appreciated when he arrived at midnight to administer the pain
meds). At first, I felt guilty that I was imposing on his good nature and was
reluctant to ask him to do things for me. As time went on, I realized I had to
let go of my need to be independent and to give myself permission to accept his
kindness – a very humbling moment for this “Type A” personality! In a similar
way, I was surprised by the steady stream of visits, phone calls, texts and
emails (not to mention the array of flower arrangements that arrived on my
doorstep!) from friends and colleagues. Despite the toxic political environment
we all face, empathy is alive and
well in Pasadena … which leads me to:
#2 Recognize your
colleagues need the break, too
Anyone who has worked with me over the last 18 years
(employed/volunteer) will roll their eyes when they learn that my time away
from the office has helped me to realize that my intense focus on moving the
School forward can be exhausting for everyone who gets sucked into my orbit.
While I continue to struggle with the notion that I didn’t need a break from
work, it has become clear to me that they needed recovery time at least as much
as I did. They get to catch up on their “to do” list while I am gone; free from
the dreaded “Richard question:” Have you thought about this idea? Which leads
me to the #1 lesson I’ve learned while recovering from surgery:
#1 God writes
straight with crooked lines
My Sottish-Irish father constantly reminded us of this
admonition from the time we could walk. Whatever went right/wrong, he would
remind us of this principle: we can’t know the long-term consequences of what
is happening to us right now because “God writes straight with crooked lines.” Each
zig/zag in our journey is there for a purpose and the straight path those
curves feed into is only visible when we look in the “rear view mirror” decades
after they happened. Certainly my own journey as a Catholic educator provided
enough zigs and zags that, when I started teaching in a Catholic high school on
the edge of the South Bronx in the 1970s, I never imagined I’d end up in
Southern California 40 years later. In a
similar fashion, I never imagined that, when I arrived at La Salle 18 years
ago, I would find myself obsessing about how I would handle two weeks away from
work and the necessity of reevaluating how I structure my time to accomplish
the tasks necessary to ensure the School’s continued success now and in the
future. And yet, that is exactly my “take-away” from this experience. God
needed to remind me that I’m not essential to the School’s success without the
support and collaboration of my family, friends and colleagues. I needed to
take the time to see the “big picture” that I am constantly reminding everyone
else to look for; to recognize that this particular zig/zag in my journey at La
Salle was necessary to ensure that I become more aware of everyone else’s
journey and the crooked lines they – inevitably – must negotiate.
Not a bad lesson to be learned from a five-year old broken
toe.
