Stress Strikes

I have been feeling a bit stressed this week.  I imagine this is how it must feel to surf: you're shooting along on top of the wave, feeling fabulous, and then suddenly you're upside down in freezing water and your board has just hit you in the face. 

These days I don't tend to get stressed by the blockbuster events - the incidents that mean a trip to A&E, or to "will they, won't they" debates about taking Julie back into hospital.  When things are very bad, there is only one course of action open to you.  There's no room for self-doubt because you know you are doing the right thing, and you're doing it well because you've done it so many times before.  The adrenalin's kicking in, and nothing else is as important as that moment.

What leads to stress is the drip-drip of everyday worries and disappointment.  This week it has been my turn to care for Julie, but what makes it stressful is that I have to try and carry on working at the same time.  It can feel as if you've been pitched into a particularly cruel game show.  It's a recipe for failure: you can't care for your child adequately because of your work demands, and you can't do your job properly because of the demands of caring for her.  I've been given leave to work from home for the moment, but it's a compromise, and not always one that works in my favour.  Just as I get settled into a tough piece of work, I remember with a guilty start that I'd promised Julie I would help her wash her hair this afternoon.  I'm just settling down on the sofa at the end of the day to watch Countdown with her, when I suddenly recall the work email that I haven't sent.  There are hundreds of details of caring for Julie that have to be remembered and followed up - clinics to phone, people to email, letters to write - and each and every one of them means interrupting whatever I was doing to change focus.  Meanwhile Julie gets fretful, bored and lonely, and worries about her failure to study.

It can all become a bit of a treadmill, and the other component of stress is not knowing when you can get off the treadmill.  I had high hopes of Julie's CPA meeting this week, but the meeting was very disappointing.  What else could it have been, when it involved no fewer than seven people, from three different professions, plus the family, trying to make sense of a complicated situation in less than one hour?  The education people proudly presented a reduced timetable for Julie, and were congratulated on their good work.  It was left to me to point out, timidly, that Julie wasn't actually attending school at the moment, so their timetable was at best aspirational.  No one else seemed worried that we had no working plan in place to get Julie back into school.  Not one person in that room could address the central problem in our family at the moment: how to care for Julie during this time when she can't go to school.  It is assumed that the family will mysteriously 'manage'.  My own plea for home tuition was brushed off ("too much pressure", someone in the room said).  The meeting finished, and that's it for the next two months.

The day after the meeting, having mulled over its failures, my stress levels hit red for danger.  I put the emergency plan into operation.  Friday night, Joe looked after the children, while I had a long bath, read a book, and caught up with friends on Facebook.  Sunday, he is on standby so I can take a long walk alone, and come back to another long bath and finish reading the book.  If I'm not relaxed and perky by the end of this weekend I shall punch someone!