The Traveling Sales Week, the Camp Fire & the Diagnosis - Part 1

I knew the week would be challenging, my most challenging yet. I'd crammed a variety of appointments, including group presentations and trainings throughout the Bay Area into a limited timeframe, accounting for inevitable traffic and unexpected customer requests. I now represented a handful of product lines and each hospital presentation covered different combinations of them. So my van was packed with it all... demo wheelchair, Smart Drive device, pressure mapper, custom molded simulator chair and bean bags, tools, pump, every variety of seat cushion, back support and accessory for every complexity of needs for a wheelchair user. I was overwhelmed, fighting physical fatigue and unexplained mental cloudiness. Determined to succeed and make the travel efforts count, I swallowed my usual handful of vitamins and immune boosting supplements, meditated away the fear, stretched the aching joints and hit the road, repeating positive mantras in my head. High vibrations, faith over fear.. "I'm healthy. I feel great. I'm strong. My mind is clear. I'm wise. I can do hard things."
I repeated my morning wellness routine on day two, looking out my hotel window at the ocean, breathing in the salty air and feeling an unprecedented buzz of gratitude and peace. Wow. I can do this. Yesterday went well. Today will be even better. The otherworldly feeling of love and peace that washed over me in that moment, like the warmest heavenly blanket, was so profound, I couldn't help the accompaniment of an ominously skeptical thought of "Is the other shoe about to drop?" For time had shown me that the pendulum always swings in balance, for all the joy I've experienced has been met at some point by equal and reciprocal amounts of pain."
It was about this time that the Camp Fire began. The fire that left our entire neighboring community of Paradise frantically fleeing a firenado and its spewed fireballs for their lives. For hours that day, the winds carried this fire the length of 80 football fields a minute. In the end, over 150,000 acres burned, the town and over 10,000 structures destroyed, all 27,000 Paradise citizens evacuated, 81+ people dead, still over 1,000 missing (as of today). A few weeks later, the most devastating and deadly fire in California history, is still not contained. The 27,000 evacuees are still unable to return home, whether their house survived or not.
That day, Chico, where I live, was also threatened. I headed to the VA hospital for my cushion presentation, not knowing whether my kids would be evacuated or whether my home would still be standing by the time my in-service was over. Paradise had no warning. The stories that filled my Facebook newsfeed were devastating. And I was a few hundred miles away from helping anyone. The stress poured over me, and the mantras failed.