Better than a PhD

I’d been both dreading and looking forward to yesterday afternoon’s care conference.

It was a social worker who offered to get the biggest players on my health-care team together in a virtual room to discuss a major life change that my husband and I have in the works. I’m someone who deals with anticipatory anxiety and has developed a real aversion to most medical situations, especially those in which I’m by necessity the centre of attention, so this struck me—understandably, I think—as an exceedingly unappealing prospect. If it weren’t for this new goal, which is relatively secret for now but is a great source of excitement, I can almost guarantee that I would’ve done my darndest to wriggle my way out of it.

Luckily (the sarcasm!), herding a group of highly trained, incredibly busy professionals was a feat that took said social worker more than a month to pull off. That, of course, left me with more than four weeks to obsess and ruminate and engage in catastrophic thinking of the most catastrophic variety.

Well, I didn’t explode into a fit of uncontrolled nervous giggling or randomly start singing a Christmas carol at a serious moment halfway through the conference. (And yeah, those were two of the scenarios my brain came up with.)

In fact, the meeting was an overall success. No unplanned arias! No bursts of context-inappropriate laughter! Just a good opportunity to get everyone on the same page and generate some ideas as to what we need to do to lay the groundwork for what’s going to come next. Optimism, realism. An hour in which the faces of people who’ve shepherded me through some of the roughest periods of my life were united in helping me move toward a goal that I’m only in a position to achieve because they’ve helped me survive.

Each health-care provider had an opportunity to give an update on yours truly. No one had anything very negative to say. Another victory for my stubborn self.

The best news, though, came from my palliative-care doctor, who reported that I’ve improved to the point that I’ll be able to graduate from palliative status. This from a (wonderful) doctor who’s told me several times that she hadn’t anticipated that I’d pull through.

The reality of it only sunk in after the call, when my husband and I were debriefing.

That’s right: I’m graduating (in the most positive way possible) from palliative care. With the patient assistance of an enormous support network, I’ve clawed my way out.

This, my friends, feels better than walking across the stage and accepting my PhD did.