People care. I was open and honest with my struggle, I didn't suffer in silence. People like
@pwhickey
and
@DrTraceyK
reached out about Walter Reed. I was able to find someone willing to take my case. Friends offered to make food, do grocery runs, or order me delivery food
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I completed my briefing to the CSAF and a constellation of other GO, still in pain but managed by timely doses of Motrin & Britney Spears for morale
What I didn’t know was that as I stood there briefing the head of my service, I was very slowly bleeding out inside
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Hubris, pure and simple
I ignored warnings. After all, I had struggled for 15 years to earn my command pin! Illness was for lesser mortals
I, as you can see, was an idiot
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As I packed to go home the next morning, the flight doctor called me to say the bloodwork they had pulled “showed anomalies” and I needed to get in ASAP
It wasn’t fast enough though because I collapsed at work a few days later before I could make it to my appointment
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Even after diagnostic surgery confirmed I had a chronic illness that had already progressed to stage III, I was determined to white knuckle another year in command and ignore the blatant warning signs my body was giving me
Lesson 1: Don’t ignore your own health
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After my first surgery diagnosed me w/stage III endometriosis, I was put on a medication meant to suppress the lesions the surgeon was unable or unwilling to remove due to proximity to vital organs. After 2 mo we deemed it a failure & moved to a stronger, more risky medication
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This was ultimately a failure as it caused “fun” side effects like hair loss, insomnia, chemical menopause, weight gain, and eventually a near catastrophic shutdown of my pancreas and kidneys
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We decided that the next step would be to remove the most pesky organs & see what happened next
Doc acknowledged that I needed a robotically assisted procedure due to the complexity/severity of my case, something we couldn’t do on my base
I got a referral to a clinic 90mi away
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Upon seeing my records, they declined to take my case due to the risks involved. I was a liability and the system doesn’t care about you. What’s worse, when I asked for Referral Management to give me another doctor, they push it back to me to figure out
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Trying to find a surgeon, in this specialty, who can do a robotically assisted procedure when my body is a ticking timebomb and I’m recovering from the emotional turmoil of relinquishing command was not ideal.
Lesson 2: The system doesn’t care, but people do.
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The military, for all its faults, is still the biggest family in the world, and when the chips are down, they will move the Earth to help you
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Lessons 3 and 4 can both be summed up as: Leave your ego at the door
Coming up in the AF, I had never seen a commander willingly relinquish command before their time.
Fired? Sure
But leaving to care for themselves or their family? Never
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I ended my command tour w/only 16 of my planned 24 mo
If I were honest, it should have been shorter
But hubris is a real
With a very strong team behind me, willing/able to step up, I believed that I could bear down; get through this little hiccup while they handled the mission
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In retrospect, I should have asked to relinquish command sooner. I robbed them of precious months they could have had with a commander who was fully present, capable of handling the long days and stressful situations.
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Instead, I let my pride bind me to a course. After all, I had worked 15 years to get to that command position? Surely this is temporary.
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After struggling for months and being told the condition was chronic, I should have bowed out then to allow the mission to operate at its best, not weighted down by a leader who is struggling with health issues. My team deserved better.
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In my change of command speech, I apologized to my team, “To my Roadrunners, I fought as long as I could, but you deserve a commander focused on the mission and I deserve to heal.” Those were hard words to say.
No one wants to quit early
But I deserved better too
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"I fought as long as I could, but you deserve a commander focused on the mission and I deserve to heal.”
I deserved the time/space to heal my damaged body
Working 15 yrs to achieve my dream would mean nothing if I died foolishly b/c I wasn’t willing to take the time to recover
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This might be the hardest lesson for leaders to learn and certainly takes the most self-reflection to know when you’re at that point, but its ok to admit you aren’t ok. It’s ok to step back so you can heal, because that’s when I learned the final lesson.
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The Mission Will Go On Without You
The last week of my command, I have 3 Art 15s going through the process, one of my best troops popped hot during urinalysis, and we had a hurricane bearing down on the line of travel and locations my team was set to visit later that week
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All while trying to coordinate a very last minute change of command. It was stressful. It was chaotic.
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I'm drinking a glass of wine writing this and will not admit that I was about 2 minutes from calling my First Sergeant and asking him to take me to the ER the Sunday before change of command
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It felt like my world was ending
Not when I show up to Walter Reed with my Mom, who was armed with Powers of Attorney and my Living Will b/c we knew how risky my surgery was
Change of Command... I felt like I lost so much
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But trying to balance recovering, command, and being a newly single Mom... it wasn't living. It was just surviving
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But the moment I passed the guidon, command and the mission was out of my hands and on to a brand new commander who had to pick up the ball and run.
(He's doing awesome, BTW)
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And the mission went on. The NJPs still processed. The missions still executed. Briefings were still briefed
And I got my surgery as well as time to heal
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As leaders, I think we sometimes lose sight of our position
Yes, we lead, but with very few exceptions, any one of us could be replaced overnight and the mission will still move forward
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The unit, the team that executes the mission was still there
I should have put my ego on the back burner and stepped aside sooner to let them do their mission
The service will always be there and we should be more careful so that *we* are still there
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It is no stretch to say that making the decision to relinquish command early was the most difficult professional decision I’ve ever made
It was a complete unknown to me and I accepted the risk that I wouldn’t get command credit or that it would negatively affect my future career
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But by the time I made the decision, I also knew that I was dying and then what did any of that matter?
What did I miss with my family and friends over the last 18 years? Was that worth it?
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Learn from me
Learn that self awareness & the ability to put your ego aside to look at the whole picture is invaluable
Learn that empathy for yourself & others does more for the mission than letting the system work
And know that its ok to not be ok, as long as you take action
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I'm gonna go have another glass of wine and work on a costume for DragonCon
Because a year later I'm still alive to do silly nerdy things like this
And that really means a lot to me
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And yes, when I posted this before surgery, we worried it was a coin flip (50/50) shot I was waking up again
Glad this wasn’t my last tweet
It’s go time! Catch y’all on the flip side and if I don’t make it back, be good to each other
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