Self-Care is not Selfish

A couple of days ago, I got a phone call that a close family member was in the hospital (in the wake of a freak accident) awaiting surgery the next day. It took a little while to figure out the arrangements, but I came up to keep her company in the hospital, be a conduit for information for some friends and family, etc. (NOTE: All is well. Surgery went well, and recovery looks like it will go swimmingly.)

Going out of town, for me, generally means eating somewhat poorly. Yesterday I was supposed to run 7 miles, but in order to get to my destination in a reasonable amount of time, I had to leave at the leading edge of rush hour. While it sounded like surgery would be mid-afternoon, I didn't bother doing my run when I arrived, instead, relatively soon thereafter, going to the hospital. Surgery kept being bumped further back in the day -- ultimately not starting until 10pm. So much for the run. OK, no worries, swap my rest day and do the 7 miles Friday.

After I finished the run Friday morning and showered and changed, I was getting rather bombarded by texts and phone calls looking to get updates (that I didn't yet have). It was important for my own sanity and stress level to take all of those slowly.

And since I had taken her cell phone back with me overnight (so she wouldn't have her post-op sleep disturbed prematurely), I was getting all of the traffic she would have otherwise been seeing, in addition to what was coming directly to me on my phone. And without that phone, she wound up using the hospital phone to talk with friends; once that number got out, it was virtually impossible to break through the noise. In fact, I had to send a text to her friends asking that they hang up so I could call and get through before I headed over to the hospital.

Making sure to take care of myself and not rush through things on others' timetable not only helps me maintain some semblance of routine -- to help in the lead-up to Erie Marathon next weekend -- but also helps me do everything needed to help out for the current situation.

In short: self-care is not selfish. Be good to yourself, so that you can be good to others.