In my hotel bed last night, I had a very vivid dream that I had been found to have a large brain mass. It had just been found on imaging, lodged between my parietal and occipital lobes. This imaging had been done in my dream world because I had developed some new vision problems — black areas in my visual fields — which is pretty medically reasonable of my subconscious self.
Anyway, it was all very realistic and my dream self was sobbing with grief and disappointment because I knew that with most brain masses, my life would very likely be shortened significantly and would certainly be very different from that point forward. And I realized that I had really been banking on a 90+ year lifespan, and had lost that expectation in a matter of minutes when a doctor reviewed the image with me.
AND THEN I WOKE UP. And slowly realized that the awake/real me (probably) does not have a brain mass.
It’s a nice way to start the day.
Other random notes:
- I went to a time management session for program directors. I texted Laura to show her the introductory slide and she said I could probably lead the session. Well, the guy (why is it always a GUY!?) was pretty charismatic and had some good ideas. He did suggest tracking your time (duh), not checking email so #($U@ often (which did inspire me to rededicate myself to this effort), and provided some strategies on clearing your calendar (fewer/more productive meetings, closing your door at times and becoming inaccessible when you need to get deeper work done). He did not discuss personal life and family except to acknowledge that those realms are important (and he even played this video, which I rather liked). But Laura was also right, I could have led it too — though probably more effectively once I have been a program director for longer than 3 months.
- I skipped the last talk (7p-9p) and gave myself a relaxation night in my room complete with room service and no fewer than 5 episodes of Schitt’s Creek. It was glorious.
- I slept in this morning which means no workout, which means I will not meet my September goal of 24 workouts. I still have a shot at 23 though 🙂 And I’m glad I slept enough to have the above dream.
2 Comments
We had a health Econ person give a very basic talk on health economics to us during fellowship. My PD asked me if I liked it. I said it was great! And that I could have given it. Maybe I should learn to keep my mouth shut. 😂
I’m glad you don’t have a brain tumor in real life. We obviously take care of kids like this all the time though, and I was wondering just the other day about how people adapt to this new future, and what that must be like.
Yes. It is heartbreaking to think about. My heart goes out to those families.