It’s been 3 months since I stopped seeing patients at Sage Naturopathic Clinic.   The decision to leave Sage was agonizing.  I thought about it for several years before I finally walked away.  I loved practicing at Sage.  The patients, the community and my colleagues energized me, challenged me and helped me form lifelong relationships.

But sometimes we have to walk away, even from the things we love, and sometimes that includes people we love (but that’s another blog post!).  It was hard to recognize the toll that the commute was taking on my health, on my husband and our children.  We managed of course.  We had help.  We out-sourced – a lot!  In my mind, my work in Kitchener wasn’t a big deal.  After all, it was only a couple of days a week.

Those days however, were very long.  Trying to fit in patients and admin work while trying to give my colleagues the face to face time they deserved was exhausting.  I would get home totally fatigued.  The day after I got home, I spent recovering, usually struggling to get out of bed.

That wasn’t fair to anyone.

Even worse, I often felt like a hypocrite.  While advising my patients to make their health a priority, I was neglecting mine.  I wasn’t getting the rest I needed, and my MS symptoms were getting worse.

When I was diagnosed all those years ago, in my mind, it was like someone set a timer.  I had limited time to do all the things I wanted to get done.  I kept waiting for my symptoms to get worse and for my mobility to decrease.  I started living my life with a sense of urgency, trying to cram it all in, just in case I wouldn’t be able to do all the things I wanted to do in the years ahead.

Three months since I stopped the commute, I am a little embarrassed to report that I am still exhausted, but now it’s because I go to the gym more, cook more, spend more time with my children.  I still run my practice in Toronto and do much of the admin work for Sage too.

I guess I am still trying to cram it all in….