26 September

At office I opened my notepad. I made list of activities which I was required to do today. The list was as follows:

1. Send reminder to the stakeholders

2. Request the line listing

3. Place a request for region specific data

4. Send the meeting schedule to the program manager

5. Review the data from the previous report

6. Conduct a meeting with internal reviewers to establish the expectations and timelines

Then I wrote on a white board in front of me in bold letters "DO NOT FALL ILL FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS". I read the message that I had written for myself on the board. I need it to manifest that. I needed to stay healthy for the next 2 months. At least till the time the report get submitted to the health authorities.

If you ask me why all this jazz? It was because the day was 26th September. The cut off date for one of the major reports of the year. Because of the confidentiality I can only say that it was for one of the medicinal products for which as per the requirement of the health authorities we were required to submit a medicinal safety report. This product had a very complicated safety profile and hence this report would get assigned to me every year. I had vast experience of handling the complicated products and I had a very keen eye for details hence complicated reports would always get assigned to me. Every year at soon as September would start I was required to start with the preparation for this report.

Apart from everything that I had handled throughout my professional career this product definitely was complex and exhausting. It would require hours and hours of hard work and thinking capacity. While working on this product at the end of every day I would feel as if I have lost the capacity to think or to understand. Towards the end of this report, it would take a toll on my health. I would lose weight and appetite. I would get headache every night. Though I would try to avoid medicines but this work definitely required me to take analgesics at least four or five times in the month. Each meeting for the preparation and review of this report would bring massive rework and anxiety. Every year there would be a lot of episodes of crying in the restroom because of the feedback received towards this report (I would not be the one crying but my colleagues who were exposed to it for the very first tine would cry). Every year it would be the same story with no improvement. Every year I would feel as if I had no life other than this report.

This morning when I woke up I had rapid heart rate. My breathing had become heavier. I was feeling a strange sensation of uneasiness. At first I thought I had another episode of hypertension. But I realised, I am not unwell but my body is reacting to the annual horror it had been experiencing for all this years. My body already knew that it was 26th September. My body had been trying to go on a survival mode.

I sat on my bed for a few minutes. I told myself, "you no longer work in that project. You no longer work with that organization. That dreaded report can no longer affect you. You are a freelancer now. Calm down". I took a deep breath. I waited for my body to come back to normal. After a few minutes my heart rate had returned to normal.

It is really surprising how our body carries all the memories and prepare itself for the upcoming danger without knowing that the danger no longer exists.