Yesterday during the train ride to LA for my review, I was dreading my 30 minute performance evaluation with my boss. I like meeting with my boss, I just don't think I had as stellar of a year as I did last year or the year before. I'm finally enjoying my job, yet I could not make a dent in the main project that I was charged with. Not so good. And it did not help that I was out for four months.
During my review, which thankfully happened after the holiday gorging fest at a Brazilian steak house, she asked me why I thought I fell short this year. Oh, why did she ask me that question?!? I got a few words out, then just got choked up and started to cry. I wasn't sure if I was crying because I had to actually tell her why my work sucked or if I was embarrassed that I was actually crying because my work sucked. She also wanted to know how those four months that I was out would have made a difference in my accomplishments this year. No one will ever know what could have happened if I wasn't out, but I really just wanted those four months back.
On the train ride home, I tried to figure out why those four months were so significant that I had to cry about it, in front of my boss no less. Well, I want those four months back because they were the hardest ones I have had to live through. Sometimes I wish I could trade four months of hard work being thrown down the drain so long as I never had to hear the words, "It came back positive for cancer." That is why. Because despite the fact that I have accepted that I have thyroid cancer, and have moved on, some part of me still hates the fact that my life is now dictated by a pill that I have to take for the rest of my life. My life stood still for four months this year as I went from girl with inconclusive FNA, to girl with two flavors of ThyCa, to LID, to, RAI, to a CT scan, to TSH and FT4 levels that are not cooperating. There are a ton of other things I would have rather done in those four agonizing yet defining months. That is why I cried.
aw, Flo. four months is a drop in the bucket. seriously. and yes, you went through a lot in those four months, but you are alive and getting better! Stop thinking about the time you lost and start working on the time you won by surviving those four months.
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