Decision making when you are recovering from cancer really should be banned. Instead of the 100’s of stupid fucking booklets you get when you first go to the hospital, none of which I have ever read, you should get a second card to carry in your wallet. I currently have a yellow ’emergency’ card saying I am having chemo and may need urgent medical attention if I have a fever or something along those lines. The accompanying one should read, ‘Person having chemo and is exempted from making any decisions until further notice’.

On a slight aside, I am thinking of pulling together a one pager for new chemo patients in the Marsden with handy tips – which I wish I had received instead of the stupid booklets. Did you pick up I found the booklets (you get a whole folder full of them) really annoying….? I hope I can get it together to do that one pager – I’d feel good if I could.

Back to today…and right now. You have all very kindly ‘listened’ and commented on my ongoing work saga – and I definitely reached the point of boring myself on it. Not that it stopped me. I’m here now 3 weeks and its been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, specifically related to work with me unable to see the wood for the trees. I realised yesterday that I have been looking at only 2 options – never a good move – either stay and suck it up or quit. My actual job is regional for the Syria response – but since July, weirdly coinciding with my cancer diagnosis, I have been fixing shit from the past in Jordan. And its relentless – every time I think its done, we can move on, more shit comes down from somewhere.

And right now I am not entirely sure that its not going to come down on me and The Man, which is a horrible feeling. Everyone is spinning like hell, an HQ team are here, people are looking to blame others both for the fuck ups from the past and the fact they were not here to help fix them when they should have been. I have spent days full of anxiety about being targeted, excluded from the ‘inner circle’ of decision makers (galling, since I was pretty much left alone to deal with this shit for the past 7 months), seeing history being rewritten and wondering when a hammer will come down. Then feeling totally disempowered which leaves me spinning – I continually want to shout out ‘the truth’, my side of what is going on and frankly, very few people are interested. I honestly have no idea right now what the powers that be are thinking – ‘poor Sonia, dealing with cancer, its all too much, lets stand her down’ is the most likely with a number of variations on that. Maybe not. But I am certainly not getting any positive messaging either.

So I need to reclaim my power in all of this, and not sabotage myself in the process. I decided last night that I will not manage Jordan anymore – enough. It also really doesn’t work for me and The Man – I am his boss’s boss – and it was never meant to be this way. I was only meant to be in the role temporarily so we could cope, but long term its a disaster for us both. I just need now to fully figure out how I will do this – its another leap because I have things set up in Jordan – from my relationship to my chemotherapy -and I am not sure what will happen when I step out because my focus will have to be more regional. I doubt they will fire me – it would be pretty heavy to let me go, given the work I have done and my health, although of course you never know. I want to jump at this right now – but my gut is telling me that while it is absolutely the right decision, the timing is not right at this moment. We have the investigators in town for the rest of this coming week and also I don’t want to make a petulant statement about not managing Jordan – I want it to be clear and empowered. And I am not fully there yet. Wish I was….