Still Changing

Since my life revolves around my work (which has been much easier since I adopted the 12-hour day limit, so whoever gave me that idea, thank you!) my joys and frustrations are similarly framed. When we got the Big Gift (a story that I have told repeatedly, so I'll spare you) my world changed enormously, and is still changing. One of the many new activities I've incoporated into my daily routine is explaining to people how the whole thing works, thusly:

No, we have no model. Nobody has ever done this before.

Yes, there is enough money. How long will it last? For the foreseeable future, if we manage it to the funder's satisfaction. But that's a big "if".

Yes, we fund early abortions and medical abortions. We can afford it now.

For now, we fund only in states where Medicaid will not cover abortion. There are 35 of them.

No, we cannot reimburse you for an abortion you had yesterday, last week, or last year.

I do not know who the donor is, but if you send your letter to us, there is someone here who can arrange to get it to him/her/them.

No, you do not need to pay us back. This is what we do. Really.

We got a call a couple days ago from a doctor who had seen one of the women we helped. He was very upset that we had spent so much money on her. She paid out-of-pocket for the DNA test she needed to establish paternity, and discovered that her pregnancy's other genetic material came from the man who had beaten and raped her for years. She chose to end the pregnancy rather than raise his child. We paid for most of her abortion. This doctor felt that we should be saving our money for the hardest-luck cases, the proverbial (and yes, there is a proverb) 12-year-old-rape-incest cases.

I explained to him that nobody else would go without care if this woman had an abortion. "Eventually, though, the well will run dry, right?" he asked. And I told him about how if we spend all the money we will likely be eligible for more, but if we do not spend it, we won't be eligible for anything. There was a silence. And then he said, "My god. I had no idea. Don't let me waste any more of your time! Go on! Get out there!"

Some days I really love my job.

Something Brought

My apologies to the assembled company. If I have any excuse for being so cryptic, it is that I really didn't realize I was being so. You must understand that I have been out of the company of normal people - as I write that, I realize I am rarely in the company of people anyone would call "normal", thank god, but you get the point - because I have been working. I have been working a lot.

So much, in fact, that I seem to have allowed some of the finer points of communication to lapse. I blame my Lead Case Manager. She is the first and (at this point) only management person I have ever hired who had not previously worked in my department. I'm going to call her Troi because she has, by virtue of reading my mind like her telepathic Betazoid counterpart, made me forget that most people need me to tell them what I am thinking. Often, and especially at crucial moments when we are interviewing someone, I say something like, "yes, um, like, what?" and she translates it to "we were just exploring our employees' comfort level with various different procedures, including but not limited to selective reduction." Which is exactly what I was actually thinking about! So why speak, really?

Here is the information that I should have disseminated last week. The tumor is not shrinking. Neither is it growing. This is completely normal for where I am with the radiation. The scans show edema, but other than that there is nothing remarkable about them. Some months ago I wrote about discovering just how unusual my first experience with cancer had been, and how confused and disappointed I was when it normalized. I wasn't used to normal. This is very similar.

I am trying to celebrate normalcy this holiday. I have been thinking about Good King Wenceslaus, and how he brought dinner and wine and fire to the poor peasant, so that he would have something to eat when the rest of the world was probably gorging. I remember, as a girl, thrilling to the lines "page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together" as I imagined walking out in a winter wasteland on a rescue mission. They were bringing the normal life they knew - nothing fancy, just food and drink and warmth - to someone else. The important part was the bringing.

I hope this holiday brings you all you wish for.

No News Is Good News

We'll try again at the end of February. Until then, steady as she goes.

Hotties

None of us expected such a swell of response - practically overnight! And we especially did not anticipate that it would cripple the company's phone lines, and that nearly everyone would end up with messages meant for our department. Some people are a bit peeved, but all of them are thrilled at the same time. This went to my company today:

[I've called the hotline staff "Hotties" for as long as I've had a leadership role in the department.]

Dear colleagues,

The Hotline is slammed. We are dealing with an incredible increase of calls in a very short time, for which neither our operators nor our equipment were prepared. If you have a number that is accessible from the outside world or, worse, your number is listed in the switchboard's outgoing message, your calls either already have or are about to increase.

Unfortunately, all I can suggest is that you encourage callers, should you speak to them, to keep trying. Evenings are better than days. If they are already working with a case manager, they should try their case manager’s number and leave a message. Leaving multiple messages, however, will not help. All calls will be returned in the order in which they were received.

Thank you for becoming Hotties, even if it is only for a little while and against your will.

A number of our Board members happened to be in town today, and stopped by to watch us give out money. Some wept.

What a life I have!

Fairy

I wish I could say publicly how much money we have spent in the last week, and how many abortions we have funded. I feel like a fairy godmother...