Tag: chandler

On call

10:52pm I’m in chandler. Sleeping in the couch. Girls are in my daughters bedroom. Wife and dog are in the master bedroom. I am administrator on call for work. We got a call around 8pm from a nurse practitioner for a STAT hospice admission. I spent the last two hours talking with my triage nurse and clinical director trying to get everything in place to take care of the patient. now the family wants to wait until morning. Frustrating from a care team perspective. Worrisome for the need of the patient. Luckily The patient appears to be comfortable and managed. We will do the admission in the morning. I appreciate the experience. I have to learn how to enter new referrals in the system and run eligibility. Skills I haven’t developed yet. This is a good life lesson. It is only when I am put in a moment of urgency do I realize what I don’t know but need to know. I will grow personally and professionally from this.

Clarification

It is 6:10am in chandler. Still overcast and raining. I wanted to clarify one thing in regards to the WIL. I have let go. I let her live her life. the part of us that had the “affair” is gone. It no longer exists. But I still love her. I will always love her and am here for her when she needs me. What I am trying to say is we kept our love hidden. At first it was because we were young, sneaking around, having fun. As our relationship grew into something deeper it remained hidden so as not to hurt her husband and my wife. Now it is out in the open. Everyone knows. That is the way it should be. I don’t want to sneak around to be with the woman I love ever again. If we are together I want to be her boyfriend, her husband. I want to be the man she is proud to be with for eternity. I am not sure how she feels about me. I realize I will probably never see or hear from her again. But in my mind it is important to clarify where I stand. What my point of view is and how I approach our relationship going forward.

Friday Morning

5:33am, sitting at my computer in the Chandler apartment. Just finished going for a walk and working out at the complex gym. When I went for my walk it was cold and rainy. I had to grab my rain jacket. I haven’t worn a coat on my morning walk in months. Around 2am last night I started hearing thunder and seeing streaks of lightning through the bedroom window. The rain started shortly after and hasn’t stopped. The drainage area in the neighborhood was already full. The commute this morning is going to be slowed by flash floods. On the walk I thought about relationships. I reminisced about the ones I had in the past, the ones I am in now and the possibility of one in the future. I started to think about being with someone new. Feeling the excitement of falling in love. What would be the cost of trying? What would I have to do to make it happen? The fact is I am still married. No matter the strained state of our relationship we are still together. In our own unique way we remain committed to the promises we made two decades ago. I can’t go on a dating site and meet someone if I am still married. That being said, we could get a divorce. We talked about it this week. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility. That would free me and my wife to move on. We could admit it is over and make a fresh start with someone else. I am not sure about my wife but that is not a price I am not willing to pay. If we get a divorce we would no longer be a “family.” We would be split and most likely create two new families. If that happened I fear my relationship with my daughter would be destroyed. I would not get to spend as much time with her or see her. Especially if I meet someone who has children of her own. I can’t speak for my wife. Maybe she wants a divorce. If so I will go through with it but if I have the choice I choose to stay. No matter how dysfunctional we are right now we are still a family and we are still making it work. As much as I would like to meet someone I won’t sacrifice what I have with my wife and daughter.

Not taking blame

It is 6:01am on Thursday morning. I am writing from my apartment in Chandler, Arizona. I am usually writing from my apartment in Chandler first thing in the morning. There is not much variation in my life. For the last couple of months I am either writing in Chandler, Phoenix, Palm Desert or Dana Point. It can be monotonous always doing the same thing. But then again it can be comforting to not deal with constant variation. Things are a little different today. I am sitting at my computer instead of using my phone on the couch. I had a scare this morning. I brought up the blog site and I wasn’t logged in. I worried I was shut out because I didn’t renew my other site. But I was able to reset the password and get in. Tragedy averted. Now I need to make sure my phone is working. I thought about place and life on my walk this morning. I want to stay in Arizona a little longer. I don’t want to move until the beginning of March, 2022. I don’t want to break my lease and I don’t want to deal with movers. Today is the five month “anniversary” of starting work in Phoenix. It has been an experience. The site I took over has been in turmoil. A lot of changes in leadership. Inappropriate admissions leading to paying back past payments. I thought I could come in and turn things around. I felt good about my abilities. But our census never went up. In fact it continues to go down. Revenue continues to go down as well. So much so that the business is in bad shape. If things weren’t bad enough the company announced on my third day of work they were selling the hospice and home health division. The sale just went through at the beginning of the month. The hospice was owned by a senior living company. We have the same name as the senior living company. We got over 90% of our business from the senior living company. The senior living company sold us. We are now owned by a hospital system that does not have a presence in the market. Many of the senior living communities in the area didn’t like using us when we were the same company. Now that we have been sold they have completely iced us out. We have only had three referrals in a month and a half. We are budgeted for 20. I have disassociated from the situation though. I am not going to take the blame. Normally I take all the blame. When something goes bad I say that the failure is mine. But I won’t this time. I refuse to own the sins of other people because I am not some magical savior. The deck has been stacked against success from the moment I walked in the door. I am not giving up. I am working hard. We have marketing plans. We can get business other ways. I am not giving up but I am not taking blame.

Outside my emotions

5:48am Wednesday morning, in the apartment in chandler. My routine has been consistent lately. Get up at 4am. Go for a walk. Go workout. Come home. Have a protein bar and some water. Make a cup of coffee. Watch the weather. This morning I watched the highlights of the basketball championship from last night. Today is a rare day where I have perspective. I am in the moment with all of its joy and stress. I am not working toward something better. I don’t believe there is a measurable “better” life. Rather there are things that make me happy, things that make me sad and things that cause me stress. They all swirl through my mind. Occupying my thoughts. To deal with the sad and stressful parts I escape into memories of the past. Or i scheme for a different future. On some emotional levels I allow myself to believe the future is better. Or the past was better. But logically I know that isn’t the case. I probably can say that because I am not overwhelmed by stress at the moment. I am not sad. And I am not overjoyed. I am outside my emotions looking at my life. Such an interesting place to be.

Last voicemail

5:43am Tuesday morning. Sitting on my couch. Chandler. For a while the voicemail feature on my phone was not working properly. I could call and check messages but I could not see the history. I didn’t know how many messages I had or how far back they went. Not too long ago the feature started working again. I could see the messages. So I scrolled down and realized I had the last voicemail from the WIL. She left it for me almost a year and a half ago, the day after her husband found out about us. I have known it is there for a couple of weeks but I chose not to listen to it. The thought of hearing her voice and reliving the moment felt traumatic. However this morning a thought nagged at me. Was she waiting for me to contact her? Was she sad and confused I haven’t reached out? I had mulled this over many times in the last year and a half and always came to the conclusion it is not my place to take the imitative. When my wife found out about us it was up to me to make sure the coast was clear and we could at least talk. Still I wanted to be absolutely sure there was no question I should wait to hear from her first. I decided to risk the emotional pain and listen to the voicemail. I put the voicemail on play and heard her voice. She explained how the situation was fraught. That there was a “mirroring” app on her phone, a gps on her car. That she had to get tested for std’s and was going to be excommunicated from her church. . The message went on for almost two minutes. Finally she said good bye. it was the last time I ever heard from her. The next day she tried to call me when I was in a meeting. She didn’t leave a voicemail but texted me and asked if I could talk. I said “yes.” She never replied to that text or tried calling again. It has been over 500 days now. I realize She is gone. That I will probably never talk to her again. But the fire is never totally extinguished. So many years so many memories. Hopes, dreams, feelings came to end with a frantic last goodbye. “I promise I will contact you as soon as I can but please don’t text or call my phone because he will know and it just makes things really bad so…okay…I love you…Bye.”

Songs from the ride home

5:47pm, reclining on my couch in chandler. On the ride home from Orange County three songs reminded me of the WIL and Utah. “…a little voice inside my head said, ‘don’t look back, you can never look back.’” Boys of summer, Don Henley. “All I do is miss you and the way we used to be…” Romeo and Juliet, Dire Straights. “Good bye to all my friends at home, goodbye to people I’ve trusted. I got to go out and make my way I might get rich, you know, I might get busted.” Jet Airliner, Steve Miller Band.