Warning: contents under pressure.

[rivka]

This got long, so I'm going to lj-cut everything but the takehome message.

A month ago, our nanny called when she was supposed to be on the way over and said she was sick. She called back the next day and said that she had mononucleosis and was going to be out for a while. We checked in every few days to ask if she needed anything. Around the first of February she told us that she was feeling somewhat better, but that her doctor wanted her to stay in bed for another week.

That was the last we heard from her.

We've called and left multiple messages, including - this past week - messages on her live-in boyfriend's phone. We don't have an address for her (she recently moved), or we'd stop by and look for her in person. We don't know if she's desperately ill, or if she wanted to quit and took the easy way out. We are in childcare limbo.

A couple of weeks after our nanny got sick, one of my two full-time research assistants became ill. She missed day after day of work, first because of illness, and then because her doctors were subjecting her to an increasingly intense series of tests. Finally her illness reached a crisis point, and she was admitted to Johns Hopkins hospital. Where her probable diagnosis is pancreatic cancer.

Anyone who knows anything about pancreatic cancer is swearing right now. It's... well, the five-year survival rate is 4%. Higher if they're able to remove the tumor surgically - we still don't know whether it will be possible in her case - but not much higher.

At this point, the miracle that would have all of us weeping in gratitude would be if all they have to do is remove half her pancreas, the first six inches of her intestine, and her gall bladder, in a major surgery with a not-insignificant death rate, recovery from which keeps her an invalid for weeks. That's the happy ending: a benign tumor. Her doctor told her today that he doesn't think it's benign - although they aren't sure. We'll know more in the next couple of days.

If I seem like I'm really tightly wound these days, or quick to take offense, or too dramatic over too little, or not paying very close attention to what's going on with you, or if you think I'm flaking out on something I was supposed to do for you or comment on or generally just take care of... all of those things are probably true. And I can't promise to do anything about it, either. It's about the best I can do right now.

I am worried about Meaghan and tormented by the uncertainty of that situation. I am worried about what we'll do for replacement childcare if, as seems imminent, Michael gets one of the jobs he's recently been contacted about. I'm doing more childcare than usual myself, trying to give Michael breaks when I can. I'm trying to figure out how we'll get our work done with one less full-time staff member. I'm spending more shifts in the clinic and leaving more of my other work undone. I'm trying to figure out what needs to be done to ensure that her pay and benefits continue while she isn't working, while at the same time an ashamed part of me is wondering how in hell we're supposed to stretch our grant to pay her salary and also pay someone else (who, anyway?) to do her work. I'm visiting the hospital every day. I'm on board if necessary for her parents, who are up here from Puerto Rico to be with her. I am so freaking behind on my church committee work, and my data analysis, and preparing our upcoming presentations, and our house is an unbelievably disgusting pit of loathesome dirtiness. I am desperately afraid that a woman I like and admire is going to die a particularly ugly death, and soon.

I am not falling apart, because this is pretty much the living definition of a situation that is Not About Me And My Feelings. But I am brittle and impatient and, necessarily, a little bit slipshod right now. And exhausted.

I've been posting to LJ more than usual lately - mostly about stuff that isn't this. I expect that to continue, because (a) it distracts me enough from my mouse-in-the-bottom-of-a-jar thoughts to be genuinely relaxing, and (b) it's about the only social interaction I'm up for. It's not that I don't want to see people, it's that I am just not capable of orchestrating a single additional thing however tiny.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I hope that Maeghan is being flaky or avoiding a difficult conversation like "I found another job" instead of ill or suffering or in need.

She has a live-in boyfriend and local parents who are very involved in her life, so I don't worry that she is alone and uncared for and too ill to answer the phone.

I guess it's just hard to make myself believe that someone who has cared for Alex since she was three months old would, in the end, care so little. She wore Alex in a sling for months and months. She handed down clothes her little boy wore. She made a little car by cutting and coloring an empty diaper box.

I mean, I didn't have the illusion that people make fun of parents for, that our nanny loved our kid so much that she would want to come over and play for free. That it wasn't, first and foremost, a job. But I did think she cared about Alex enough to... not just disappear.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I totally understand. I would feel 100% the same way. Part of the thing that makes you feel comfortable with a care provider is the sense that they see your child as a person for whom they are, at least, fond. I'm sorry -- there's no good thing to hope for with her, is there?