Friend to Friend
When we first met her she was young and fresh-faced, enthusiastic and friendly, capable and all fired up about her job. We were a little taken aback that such a young woman would be entrusted with the operation of such a complex enterprise. We were old enough to be her parents; fifty to her twenty. She had attended University of Georgia on a basketball scholarship and had graduated with a business administration certification. She was confident in her abilities and her studies had obviously prepared her for any position of management and administration. We had our doubts, initially.
She informed us soon after we met that she had survived cancer. Hardly; at her age? Yes, she'd had Hodgkins lymphoma, had just completed undergoing post-operative therapy, and this was her first job post-graduation. Her older brother, she confided in us, had died the year before at age 32; heart attack. What a family medical history, right? We learned over the course of the next few years just how capable she was, how her confidence in her abilities was not misplaced.
A born people-person, she went out of her way to befriend people, to offer her empathy to those who needed it. But she was also a firm and knowledgeable administrator, and friendship had nothing at all to do with the manner in which she performed her work. Principled and honest to the core, she had no patience with the acceptance of the little tricks people resort to in their ambitious search to enrich themselves or better themselves using ethically questionable methods.
You had to admire her, and many did. But she came to logger-heads with those who did not, who resented her competence her dedication to her job through which she was capable of making end runs around their seedy little machinations of paperwork to claim benefits unearned. Since she was a locally engaged worker and they were their country's ostensible delegation in a diplomatic core, they resented her ability to discern their little tricks and forestall manipulation of the system to personal avail.
The nearly two decades she has performed in her position as manager/administrator of the post has gained her great respect in some quarters, enmity in others. She has had to work alongside domineering and implacable diplomatic representatives of the country whom the post represents who resent her presence and the powers residing in her position. Those times when the assigned head of post was a reasonable, knowledgeable and credible ambassador of his country gave her temporary relief from the inexorable and more-frequent presence of those whose major concern was their hollow reputations and preoccupation with personal enrichment.
Her personal life was impacted by the lapsed management skills of those to whom she answered to in the administration of her job, by their demands and sulks, by their wives' social ambitions and feelings of self-entitlement. She trod a fine line between acquiescence and job satisfaction, between work accomplished and the need to intervene when tempers flared as a dictatorial superior verbally whipped a subordinate.
We last saw her fourteen years ago when she stayed with us briefly during a trip to our home city. This was after a return of the cancer, and following a last-gap effort to save her life through a successful bone marrow transplant. She was still the young, energetic, optimistic and bubbling woman we had known the decade previous. Still a pleasure be with, to share conversations and memories with. No one had a more generous heart, was more giving to the needs of people around her.
This was our most recent re-union, this week-end, when we picked her up at her downtown hotel and drove her back to our home. The fine facial features were almost hidden behind a pasty bloat. Her muscular frame had descended into a wide but firm configuration. But she smiled happily, was glad to see us as we were to see her. And we talked and we talked; like the rain, non-stop. It was easy to see how tired she was. She didn't sit, she reclined heavily into the welcoming sofa.
The stresses and strains of her job have taken their toll. A toll her many friends' concern and love for her could not possibly ameliorate. She had experienced what was first thought to be a series of small strokes. Later, neurosurgeons had felt perhaps not strokes, more likely, they thought, a form of migraine headaches, but manifesting themselves through exhaustion and memory loss.
A two-week coma could be construed as a type of memory loss, perhaps. She's on pain killers; suffering constant neck/back pain. She takes drugs to offset the threat of seizures. She has neuropathy in her digits. She feels perhaps some of her symptoms can be attributed to the extensive chemotherapy she had undergone in her two bouts of surviving cancer. She faithfully attends a weekly session for cancer survivors.
She's a motivational speaker at these sessions, speaking to and with newly-diagnozed cancer patients, as well as recuperating cancer survivors. There are people in the group who consider her intervention at a critical time in their lives as signal events in their survival, their acceptance, their recouperation. I've seen the testimonials to her dedication to the well being of others.
Our friend is a shadow of her former self, although, thanks to the side-effects of some of her medications, there is more of her. Forty pounds, no less. Her mental and physical resources have been tapped out. She is entirely, utterly exhausted. She is reaching the zenith in reverse of her ability to cope. She is operating on overdrive.
How can we tell her, in language that she will understand, that she is in dire straits, that her body and her mind are conspiring together to persuade her that they can no longer serve her? She has countless friends, people who have known her for much of her life, people who love her, people whose own well being owes much to her good spirits and optimism in life. They see what has become of her, and they try to reach her.
She was born an optimist, always has been an optimist, always will be an optimist. I suppose that in and of itself is a fitting enough epitaph.
She informed us soon after we met that she had survived cancer. Hardly; at her age? Yes, she'd had Hodgkins lymphoma, had just completed undergoing post-operative therapy, and this was her first job post-graduation. Her older brother, she confided in us, had died the year before at age 32; heart attack. What a family medical history, right? We learned over the course of the next few years just how capable she was, how her confidence in her abilities was not misplaced.
A born people-person, she went out of her way to befriend people, to offer her empathy to those who needed it. But she was also a firm and knowledgeable administrator, and friendship had nothing at all to do with the manner in which she performed her work. Principled and honest to the core, she had no patience with the acceptance of the little tricks people resort to in their ambitious search to enrich themselves or better themselves using ethically questionable methods.
You had to admire her, and many did. But she came to logger-heads with those who did not, who resented her competence her dedication to her job through which she was capable of making end runs around their seedy little machinations of paperwork to claim benefits unearned. Since she was a locally engaged worker and they were their country's ostensible delegation in a diplomatic core, they resented her ability to discern their little tricks and forestall manipulation of the system to personal avail.
The nearly two decades she has performed in her position as manager/administrator of the post has gained her great respect in some quarters, enmity in others. She has had to work alongside domineering and implacable diplomatic representatives of the country whom the post represents who resent her presence and the powers residing in her position. Those times when the assigned head of post was a reasonable, knowledgeable and credible ambassador of his country gave her temporary relief from the inexorable and more-frequent presence of those whose major concern was their hollow reputations and preoccupation with personal enrichment.
Her personal life was impacted by the lapsed management skills of those to whom she answered to in the administration of her job, by their demands and sulks, by their wives' social ambitions and feelings of self-entitlement. She trod a fine line between acquiescence and job satisfaction, between work accomplished and the need to intervene when tempers flared as a dictatorial superior verbally whipped a subordinate.
We last saw her fourteen years ago when she stayed with us briefly during a trip to our home city. This was after a return of the cancer, and following a last-gap effort to save her life through a successful bone marrow transplant. She was still the young, energetic, optimistic and bubbling woman we had known the decade previous. Still a pleasure be with, to share conversations and memories with. No one had a more generous heart, was more giving to the needs of people around her.
This was our most recent re-union, this week-end, when we picked her up at her downtown hotel and drove her back to our home. The fine facial features were almost hidden behind a pasty bloat. Her muscular frame had descended into a wide but firm configuration. But she smiled happily, was glad to see us as we were to see her. And we talked and we talked; like the rain, non-stop. It was easy to see how tired she was. She didn't sit, she reclined heavily into the welcoming sofa.
The stresses and strains of her job have taken their toll. A toll her many friends' concern and love for her could not possibly ameliorate. She had experienced what was first thought to be a series of small strokes. Later, neurosurgeons had felt perhaps not strokes, more likely, they thought, a form of migraine headaches, but manifesting themselves through exhaustion and memory loss.
A two-week coma could be construed as a type of memory loss, perhaps. She's on pain killers; suffering constant neck/back pain. She takes drugs to offset the threat of seizures. She has neuropathy in her digits. She feels perhaps some of her symptoms can be attributed to the extensive chemotherapy she had undergone in her two bouts of surviving cancer. She faithfully attends a weekly session for cancer survivors.
She's a motivational speaker at these sessions, speaking to and with newly-diagnozed cancer patients, as well as recuperating cancer survivors. There are people in the group who consider her intervention at a critical time in their lives as signal events in their survival, their acceptance, their recouperation. I've seen the testimonials to her dedication to the well being of others.
Our friend is a shadow of her former self, although, thanks to the side-effects of some of her medications, there is more of her. Forty pounds, no less. Her mental and physical resources have been tapped out. She is entirely, utterly exhausted. She is reaching the zenith in reverse of her ability to cope. She is operating on overdrive.
How can we tell her, in language that she will understand, that she is in dire straits, that her body and her mind are conspiring together to persuade her that they can no longer serve her? She has countless friends, people who have known her for much of her life, people who love her, people whose own well being owes much to her good spirits and optimism in life. They see what has become of her, and they try to reach her.
She was born an optimist, always has been an optimist, always will be an optimist. I suppose that in and of itself is a fitting enough epitaph.
posted by Pieface @ 1:33 PM
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