Feels good to be running from the devil

Day one of my much-wanted, long-awaited new job is in the books.

All the good things I expected from it came true. My coworkers were even better and more fun than I expected based on the extensive interviews I had with them. My employer offers a lot of perks and seems to be really fair. And let’s not overlook the simple fact that I sat in meetings literally all day and still made more money than I would in a typical day of freelancing. Once I start getting those paychecks, it will be a win-win all around.

But (and there’s always a “but”, isn’t there?) today also kicked my ass far more than expected. There are many reasons for that. One is that I didn’t sleep well last night and only got about five hours of sleep. With MS, I absolutely can’t function that way.

There’s also the fact of having meetings all day. One was more than six hours and we had to work through lunch. I’m told that will be extremely unusual, the kind of occurrence that only happens a couple times a year. Then I ended up staying almost a half hour late to talk to someone because the all-day meetings prevented having discussions during the day like we were supposed to.

Long story short, I was completely wiped out by the time I came home. I had to nap after dinner and honestly should have gone to bed for the night right then.

I’m honestly kind of scared. I love the job. I absolutely love my coworkers. I love the short commute and the company and the pay. But I also don’t know if my health will hold out.

If every day is like today and I can’t adapt, it makes me feel like having to take disability is almost inevitable.

I want to believe I can do this. I need to believe I can do this. I’m hoping that today was just a particularly grueling day between getting so little sleep last night, having back-to-back meetings all day, and working through lunch.

I need to be well enough to take my kid and his girlfriend to a concert next week on a Thursday, get home around 1:00 am and get to work safely the next morning.

Two weeks after that, I have a friend getting married on a Monday after I get out of work, in a pretty remote location about an hour’s drive from my house. That will be an incredibly exhausting day at the beginning of my week and I don’t know if I can catch up in terms of rest. And I just don’t know if I’ll be able to adapt quickly enough that I can safely take on those extra evening engagements without winding up in the hospital.

I’m really pushing myself to my limits and I have to hope my body will rise to the challenge. And tomorrow night, if I’m just as tired again, maybe I will go to bed for the night at 8:30 pm, no matter how pathetic that makes me feel.

But still, it completely wiped me out. If I ever had any pretense of ignoring my illness, today really made that seem impossible.

I’m a fighter. I’m stubborn. I managed to work a much more grueling schedule when I worked in downtown Dallas and that was only 3.5 years ago. I don’t want to think I’ve gotten that much worse in that short of a time. I hope the exhausting part of today was just a fluke and that by next week I’ll be able to take on occasional evening commitments, too.