by SRDI
The NonProfit Mafia Blog, Issue 2, Volume 1: It Doesn't Matter If You're Close to Dying
This week I spent several days at Duke fighting a terrible bout with the flu. I've been sick for several months, but have been pushing myself in order to earn my stripes as E.D. of this organization. The last straw for my son when he came home from school and found me lying across my laptop, trying to make a grant deadline, sweating and throwing up (but still typing!). He and my boyfriend carried me into the car and rushed me to the E.R. I had almost 105 temp and my heart rate was 144. I was strapped to a double IV of antibiotics and fluids.
On the third morning, the head of the unit quietly sat by my bed and explained to me that my house was probably making me sick. That mold or some other allergen had developed a bacterial infection deep in the back of my sinus cavity and was dripping into my chest. Hence why I was coughing and fatigued and unable to do my very best in love, work or parenting this entire winter. Catching the flu was a result of a compromised immune system.
So now I have to move. And all I can think about is, what about kids and WORK? I have no time to look for a house, fight a landlord to get out of a lease, pack up, move, unpack again. I have grants to write, a budget to raise, kids to recruit, staff to coach, parents to appease, board members to convince of my vision! Aargh!!!!!!! So I have made the decision to stick it out until June. I just don't have the strength to deal with both my crisis and the crisis of the organization. So at night I sleep with a mask, I keep the fans on and windows open most of the time, and I take my medicine like clockwork. I figure it this way, in June, when the old fiscal year ends that someone else started and I have been trying to string together is over, I can relax a bit. We close for that month to the public, so then I can pack up a house, move into another one and unpack again. My friends are livid, but I am at peace with this decision.
See, no organization, at its own breathing place, can afford to stop if we are sick. We get sympathy, maybe a few temporary passes here and there, but in reality, the work must continue. As leaders we must keep our organizations alive, thriving, and with little painful suffering. If we cannot hold the reins and keep it running, then someone else is asked to step in to drive; otherwise the horse will stumble or stop, and the precious cargo we call mission will never reach the place where it needs to be. In a larger organization a rest is okay, but in small, grassroots orgs where there are only 1-3 staff members, our presence is more than sorely missed; it is mourned, and if too much times passes, panic starts to creep into the organization. That is the reality of what we do.
So in the meantime, I take my flonase, my antibiotics, and I sleep with a mask on over my mouth and cotton in my ears. Very very sexy. :)
On the third morning, the head of the unit quietly sat by my bed and explained to me that my house was probably making me sick. That mold or some other allergen had developed a bacterial infection deep in the back of my sinus cavity and was dripping into my chest. Hence why I was coughing and fatigued and unable to do my very best in love, work or parenting this entire winter. Catching the flu was a result of a compromised immune system.
So now I have to move. And all I can think about is, what about kids and WORK? I have no time to look for a house, fight a landlord to get out of a lease, pack up, move, unpack again. I have grants to write, a budget to raise, kids to recruit, staff to coach, parents to appease, board members to convince of my vision! Aargh!!!!!!! So I have made the decision to stick it out until June. I just don't have the strength to deal with both my crisis and the crisis of the organization. So at night I sleep with a mask, I keep the fans on and windows open most of the time, and I take my medicine like clockwork. I figure it this way, in June, when the old fiscal year ends that someone else started and I have been trying to string together is over, I can relax a bit. We close for that month to the public, so then I can pack up a house, move into another one and unpack again. My friends are livid, but I am at peace with this decision.
See, no organization, at its own breathing place, can afford to stop if we are sick. We get sympathy, maybe a few temporary passes here and there, but in reality, the work must continue. As leaders we must keep our organizations alive, thriving, and with little painful suffering. If we cannot hold the reins and keep it running, then someone else is asked to step in to drive; otherwise the horse will stumble or stop, and the precious cargo we call mission will never reach the place where it needs to be. In a larger organization a rest is okay, but in small, grassroots orgs where there are only 1-3 staff members, our presence is more than sorely missed; it is mourned, and if too much times passes, panic starts to creep into the organization. That is the reality of what we do.
So in the meantime, I take my flonase, my antibiotics, and I sleep with a mask on over my mouth and cotton in my ears. Very very sexy. :)
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