Structure

I think that I have spent my entire life resisting the particular structure known as a schedule. Ask my homeroom teachers about how often I was late to school. Ask all of my bosses about whether I struggled to get to work on time. Ask my poor, hungry husband about my ability to put supper on the table at a consistent and reasonable hour. Ask my daughter about my ability to get her to college on time the year that we commuted together.

(My daughter has chosen to rebel against her upbringing by becoming a time-conscious, prompt, and on-schedule person. Good choice!)

Knowing this, you can predict what an amorphous shape my days have taken since retirement. I have a list of daily goals and I do a pretty good job of meeting them, but when things will happen is not defined, and each day becomes increasingly busy with activity as I run out of waking hours to accomplish my goals.

The one constant defining point of my day’s structure is taking my Tarceva, which I do first thing in the morning. After that, I have to wait one hour to eat or drink, so engagement really starts after breakfast. The question every morning is, however, how much time slips away in the company of my good buddy the Internet before breakfast actually happens. Often that one hour wait for complete absorption of the medicine stretches to two hours.

I now have to fit another drug into my schedule; due to side effects from the Tarceva, I’m taking doxycycline twice per day for 6 weeks. This is a drug that demands careful, consistent scheduling. You have to take it one hour before or two hours after a meal for full absorption. I haven’t asked my doctor yet if I can take it at the same time as the Tarceva, but my gut feeling about that is to let the Tarceva have my body all to itself at dosing time. After getting the bottle of doxy and reading the dosing guidelines, my head was spinning around how I can organize my life to take this medication properly.

My conclusion is that I am going to have to structure my life around a more consistent timetable. This means less dawdling after taking the Tarceva, and supper on the table at an earlier hour. I’ll have to focus my dairy on breakfast and supper, and have little or no dairy at lunch. Thank goodness I am a big fan of the peanut butter sandwich.

I’m amused that medicine has taken over the role that having a job used to have in giving my day a structure. I have my doubts as to whether I will be any more successful in cheerfully and consistently adopting this new structure than any other schedule I’ve had in my life. If I can - well, good for me, on more than one level.