cancer – day 169

Cue tears from Chainalytics, AGAIN! Chain called my Dad because they want to pay all of Mom & Dad’s expenses for their entire Team Cynthia Miller Atlanta Breast Cancer walk trip!!! So unbelievably generous, I couldn’t help but cry again at how wonderful these people are and how good they are to me even when I’m not even there. I can always count on Chainalytics for a good healthy cry, it seems. 🙂

Then there’s Mark’s company, which is completely different, and makes me realize even more so how very lucky I am that all this happened now while I’m with Chain rather than at some other point in my life when I worked for companies with no heart. Mark’s company has been “supportive” of Mark taking care of me in that they allow him flexible time so he can go with me to chemo and appointments when he needs to. One of my chemo’s was on a holiday, so we’re talking about just three afternoons off in three months for him, and an hour or so each week for other appointments and medical stuff. But really, aside from the constant of keeping an eye on me, making sure I ate and took my meds and all that, we’re not talking about a huge impact on the work of someone who works from home and makes up lost time whenever necessary. Mark’s work is just like mine that way, it’s the way things are when you work from home, I think, that you get used to having extra time over lunch or in the early evening or whatever to finish up when something really needs to get done. Working from home means flexible time almost by definition, I think, because you don’t lose time to a daily commute. That’s how I look at it anyway, and so from a work perspective I don’t feel like this has had much impact on Mark’s work.

But his company made a big deal with him about the fact that they’ve been so “supportive” of his taking care of me, and they used that to try to pressure him into making another trip to Phoenix while I was still in chemo, after Mark had already talked with them about not traveling again until after chemo was done. It was one thing for him to go out there and run that move they had . . . he was vital to that happening and he absolutely had to be there, which is why he went and I had all those other people checking on me and helping take care of me that weekend back early on. But this second trip they were pressuring him to take recently didn’t have that kind of importance as far as Mark could tell, they just wanted him out there for a meeting and Mark pushed back a little because he didn’t agree that he needed to fly out there for this meeting that he could just call in for, and he didn’t want to leave me alone again during chemo. So things got tense and Mark was venting a lot about it, and it just continues to highlight how very special Chainalytics is and how wonderful the people are. The supportiveness I’ve gotten has been amazing. The fact that the entire company is walking against breast cancer this month is still just utterly amazing, and they keep doing things that I would never expect of a company. I’ve always thought of Chain as a “best of the best” in terms of people, because we have so many of the best people I’ve ever worked with (at previous companies and earlier in my career). Most intelligent, most dedicated, and just downright “good” people. And I keep getting reminded of it now. Best company I’ve ever worked for, no comparison.