Settling in for a Fight

I want to write a little about persevering in the face of a challenge. For more than a decade, the biggest challenge in my life was living in congestive heart failure and getting myself heart healthy enough to have surgery and reverse it. I accomplished that a little over two years ago now and my life is pretty normal again.

When finding this out about me, many people often tell me they wish I didn’t have to go through that. Well, I’m glad I did. It has impacted my life in a major ways. In fact, that one decade-long battle and the stories of other CHD adults really taught me how to settle in for a fight and persevere.

Case in point: I have been going to school to retrain for a second career. This semester I am faced with having to learn QuickBooks. I’m not sure why I’m learning QuickBooks because current electronic health records have billing built into them. What’s more, we are not learning the introductory version of QuickBooks; we are using the full-fledged corporate accountant version. To say I don’t get it is an understatement. The last time I took an accounting course, everything went into a handwritten general journal. Accounting software didn’t even exist.

In the past, I would have been angry, complained about having to take a course I didn’t need, and tried to put it off by dropping it and picking up another class. Not now, though. Now I know how much energy all of that wastes—it doesn’t get you anywhere. Instead, I took a deep breath and I’m spending extra time and getting extra help from the professor. I’ve decided instead of trying to avoid it, I’ll settle in and fight my way through.