This weekend has long been scheduled as a weekend of preparation. I am packing a suitcase and make travel plans.

Back in December I found out that my request had been accepted and I would be completing my first 2 week clinical experience at a facility in New Orleans that I was familiar with. I was ecstatic. I chose it because I knew that I could learn there and not feel the awkwardness that I would at other facilities, I knew it would be a great first clinical experience. I marked it on my calendar. I made plans.

I let myself get excited.

And then January happened.

The instant that the nurse handed me the post-op instructions from the neurosurgeon, I knew there would be a problem. I knew that March 1st through 12th fell well within the 2 months of not lifting more than 5 pounds. I also knew that in the profession I’m going into, few things that I’ll do will require lifting less than 5 pounds.

I tried to stay positive. I focused on the good. I was getting better, the spinal headache was gone, I was going to be able to return to school. All good things. On my second day back I sat down with my faculty advisor and got the first inkling that my optimism was useless. He scheduled a meeting for me with the program director that afternoon.

As I sat down in her office, I was prepared to fight. I wanted this. I had worked hard for this spot at this clinic, hell, I’d worked hard just to finish the 1st semester. These 2 weeks in New Orleans were among the few things that kept me going last semester when I wanted to quit. I didn’t want to let down the people at that clinic, the people who were working to find a way to let me come learn from them. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

But as the conversation began, it became clear that I was going down, fight or not. The program director told me what I already knew. There was no way to complete the clinical without lifting more than 5 pounds. And observing instead of doing hands on work wouldn’t allow me to meet the objectives of the rotation.

As I used every ounce of strength I had to keep the tears from pouring down my cheeks, I asked her what I was supposed to do. Deep down I was terrified that she was going to tell me that it was finally time to drop to half-time status and add an extra year to my 3 year degree. It is something she’d suggested in November and something I had absolutely refused to do.

Thankfully they already had a plan for me, they’d just add one more week to my 6 week clinical this summer and one more to my spring clinical next year. She assured me that this was the best time this could happen.

I nodded and said okay. I didn’t argue. I didn’t fight.

I left her office and walked to the library for class, feeling my warm salty tears pour down my face as the cool wind whipped around me. I was overcome with emotion, with pain. Frustration of more plans being ruined burned in my head. Jealousy of my classmates, for the normalcy they take for granted seared through my heart. Anger over the lack of control over my body coursed through my veins. But mostly sadness and regret washed over me, rendering all the other emotions quiet and small.

I was all at once a small, quiet person, drowning in tears, in pain.

I kept walking and crying. I kept thinking how I wished I could go back in time and somehow undo this. Somehow change something to stop this chain of events from getting me to where I was that day, where I am today.

Because I am packing. But I’m not going to New Orleans. I couldn’t stop this from happening.

I’m going home to spend a week with my family, and then I have two more weeks of vacation. I realize that 3 weeks of vacation sounds glorious, and on some level that I have yet to reach and appreciate, it is. But I would gladly give up 10 of those days to be in New Orleans, doing what I’m supposed to be doing. The realization that I just spent hours and weeks catching up with my classmates so that I could be 2 weeks behind again is painful to accept. I feel like I’m fighting a perpetual uphill battle and most days I can’t decide if I want to rest or just quit and fall all the way down the hill.

But so for 3 weeks, I’ll be doing the former. I’ll be resting. I’ll be visiting family, I’ll be baking and relaxing. I’ll be having a few small pity parties here and there and writing a few papers that are due in late March. I’ll be wishing that things were different but knowing that there’s nothing that can be done about it.

I’ll be trying to find a way to acknowledge that though these 3 weeks of vacation are not at all what I want, perhaps they’re what I need.

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