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“Do no harm.” On televisions and junk food in doctor’s offices.

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Must there be a television in every doctor’s office? Must it be on Jerry Springer or Fox News? Must it be so loud?

Most people who come into a doctor’s office are sick, right? They already don’t feel well. So high energy, high hostility television only makes things worse. The commercials are not only not a respite, they are even louder, even more insistent, even more unsettling than the show itself.

I feel tense when I watch TV. It is like drinking a Doctor Pepper and eating two chocolate bars in ten minutes. I feel all hyped up, unsettled, anxious. It took me a long time to realize that this isn’t a normal way to feel, and that television was a big cause of my unease. It took me a long time to wean myself from the addiction that is TV. I’ve not watched broadcast television for five years. I use the television, sure, to watch movies on DVD. But I don’t watch anything live. And I certainly don’t watch anything where people are yelling at each other.

So going into a place that is supposed to make me feel better and being confronted by something that makes me feel worse feels like an assault.

I understand how people like TV. It is numbing. It is distracting. It takes their minds off their pain. Plus, many people are afraid of silence. They don’t know how to be with themselves. They don’t know how to entertain themselves. So the TV in the doctor’s office makes sense, in a strange sort of way. But while it is soothing to them, it is really disturbing to me, and there really is no middle ground.

I think I’m going to call around for a new doctor and ask if their waiting room has a TV. If not, I’ve found my new doctor.

I wrote this while waiting to get an X-ray for a slipped disc. I wasn’t in the chiropractor’s office, but a separate one. It wasn’t far. Because they do radiology all the time, their prices were cheaper, so he sent me there. I noticed that they had complimentary snacks for while you were waiting. Soda. Chips. Nothing healthy. Even their water was fake. Why not have fruit and nuts? Why not have spring water and fruit juices? Why would you offer people things that are harmful to them?

Perhaps it is because that is what people want.

Doctors need to give you what you need, not what you want. We want quick relief but we don’t want to know how to take care of ourselves. We want to keep on eating badly and smoking and not exercising. And we want to be well. We can’t have it all.

Doctors don’t work around this. Either they don’t know to, they don’t know how to, or they don’t care. Maybe they are frustrated, only treating the symptom and not the cause. Maybe they are stuck thinking the usual way is the only way.

I’m saying that a doctor that gives you bad things isn’t really a doctor. A doctor who treats only the symptom and not the cause isn’t really following the pledge of “Do no harm.”

Surgery – cut out the old ways of doing things

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One time I was in the recovery area after surgery. I didn’t have cancer, I had cancer’s next door neighbor. I was recovering after my surgery to remove the abnormal cells. The area was open so the nurses could keep an eye on everybody.

I had not had any mind altering drugs before my surgery. I didn’t want any Valium or anything like it. I didn’t want Versed either. That is an amnesia drug. My theory was that I have enough problems as is with reality because of my bipolar condition. I don’t need drugs messing with it too.

It is rare to refuse these medicines. If you have a surgery you’ll be asked what you are allergic to, and other than that it is free and clear for them to give you whatever they want. They want you calm and compliant. They don’t want you freaking out. So they commonly give these kinds of drugs.

Because I’d refused them, I was awake and alert while there. I didn’t hurt, and I was a little bored. There were others there in various states of recovering from anesthesia. There were cloth curtains separating the patients but no walls.

I overheard something two beds over. A doctor came up to the patient and told him that it was a lot worse than they thought. His cancer was a lot more invasive. They couldn’t get it all. He was going to have to have chemotherapy, and even that might not work.

This was heavy stuff. This was private. This was serious. This wasn’t something that should be said to someone in an open place, and by himself, and drugged up.

He had nobody with him. In the recovery area you are alone. He was most likely still not alert because of the standard drugs that are given. Thus he wasn’t really in a state to properly process this information. It is doubtful that he would remember it. Sure, they would soften the blow, but they might soften it so much that the words wouldn’t even be solid enough to stick. The words might slip right through and fall on the floor.

I felt for him. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do these days when I don’t know what to do. I prayed. I prayed for peace and healing. I prayed that he had strength to hear these words. I prayed that the peace of God would descend on him and envelope him.

And I was angry. I was angry at the insensitivity of the doctor. I was wondering why he had to tell the patient then, there, in that way. He could have waited. He should have waited. That is some heavy stuff to tell to someone. What a way to punch somebody when he is down.

So I prayed some more. I couldn’t get up – I was attached to IVs. I was also naked under that flimsy hospital gown. I needed to lay still because I was being checked for bleeding. My surgery couldn’t have stitches. So I was stuck there.

But even if I could get up, what would I do? This is a stranger. What would I say? I can’t make it go away. I couldn’t heal him. Maybe I could let him know he wasn’t alone. Maybe I could tell the doctor that he needs to try being human for a change, try to see things from the patient’s perspective.

This was three years ago. I don’t know the resolution. I don’t know if the patient is still alive. I don’t know if the doctor has changed his ways. But I write this anyway, hoping that my words reach out across time and space to speak to some other doctor. Consider your words, and when, and how.

There may be no good way to tell someone that they are far more sick than you thought. You may be uncomfortable with your own mortality, so it may be hard for you to tell someone else about theirs. Breathe into it. Pray into it. Feel it out. Get counseling. Get training. You’ll be doing everybody a favor – including yourself.

Body mind and spirit aren’t separate.

Some doctors get into medicine because they like to know how the human body works. They want to fix things. But bodies aren’t like cars. You can make all the systems work, but the person is part of it too. She has to be a part of the healing. She has to change her ways, otherwise she will end up sick again. She has to want to get well, and work towards it. The doctor is part of this process and can help inspire the patient or can crush her spirit. What is said, and how, and when, is critical. Yes, doctors are human too, and make mistakes. That is normal. We make mistakes and we learn from them.

Consider the idea of making the patient have to come back to your office to find out bad news from test results. Sure, you don’t want to tell him over the phone. But making him take time off from work, drive downtown to your office in bad traffic, have to find a parking space – and then have to drive back in bad traffic, back to work, after hearing that he is very sick – isn’t that great. It is very hard on the patient. It makes a bad situation worse.

Perhaps you could come to him, and meet him? Whatever happened to house calls? Whatever happened to the doctor having time to talk with the patient, and having time to listen?

We need to rethink the whole thing. We need to focus on prevention and not treatment of symptoms. We need to focus on keeping people healthy rather than dealing with them being sick. We need to teach healthy living as a lifestyle instead of a quirk.

Who rescues the rescuers? On addiction, passivity, and power.

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Who rescues the rescuers? When there is a natural disaster there are always people who go rescue those who are trapped by the floodwaters or under the flattened building. Who takes care of them? What kind of lives do they live so that they are able to help others? Maybe we can learn from them so we don’t need to be rescued so often.

If you keep not looking out for yourself, you’ll keep needing to be rescued. Your problems will always be someone else’s problems to fix in your mind. The mark of an adult is the ability to take care of yourself. Adulthood has nothing to do with age. There are plenty of people in their fifties and older who still need to be rescued.

For some people, life is all about reacting to problems instead of planning ahead. For some people the same bad things keep happening over and over and they just don’t seem to notice the pattern. They are always late with their bills, late getting ready in the morning, just late late late. They find they have some incurable disease because they ignored the symptom or they didn’t take care of themselves for years. They barely have enough energy to take care of themselves, much less anyone else.

What do you do if you lock yourself out of your house? Wait till your parents or roommate come home? Call a locksmith? Or do you already have a spare key stored away in a safe spot? Do you have a ritual to make sure you always have your keys with you?

Then there is the idea that “you can always go home.” Plenty of people have their parents as a backup plan in case they get laid off or they get divorced. They will move back in with their parents. But what if you can’t? What if your parents are dead? What would you do differently about your life then to make sure you are OK? Would you move in with your friends, or would you have been saving money all along? Would you have had a backup plan?

Always thinking that someone else will take care of it will mean you always need someone to take care of it.

I knew a guy who was constantly running out of gas, locking his keys in his car, and forgetting his wallet. Every week one of these things would happen, and his parents would rescue him. How much of this was his attitude, and how much of this was their rescuing him? What would he have done if they were out of town? Be more mindful? Plan ahead?

When he got addicted to prescription pain pills that he was taking recreationally, he again blamed it on others. He was passive about it. “Why do bad things keep happening to me?” he wailed. Bad things don’t keep happening. He kept letting them happen.

Nobody forced him to take drugs recreationally. That was his choice. It didn’t happen to him. He did it to himself. And he kept doing it, until his wife left him and he’d pawned everything he had to get the next fix.

When does it become too painful to keep doing the same thoughtless things? When does it become easier to plan ahead? When do we wake up and take responsibility for our lives? When do we become people who don’t need to be rescued?

Maybe it has something to do with nobody is around to rescue us anymore, and we have to fly with our own wings for a change. Just like with baby birds, it is hard at first, but then we get strong.

Stuck – cars and bodies.

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My car won’t start. I’m waiting at home for AAA to take me to the dealership to get this figured out. It has happened off and on for several years. It will get fixed, then stop again. It is a little annoying. I’m trying to use everything I’ve learned to adapt to this. Be calm. Accept it. Don’t fight it. See it as a lesson.

Maybe there is a good reason I’m being kept at home right now. Maybe something bad would have happened if I’d gone on my errands today. I’m trying to trust God. I’m trying to be thankful f

Meanwhile I’m thinking about other things. There is a possibility that I might be stuck for a long time. I’m not talking about my car right now. There is a possibility that I have multiple sclerosis. I have several of the symptoms. When I went to the eye doctor two years ago she noticed that my eyes twirl in an odd way. It is called rotary nystagmus. It isn’t a disease. It is a symptom. The ophthalmologist, in standard Western doctor way, told me not to look up anything about it. She didn’t want me to be scared. She doesn’t understand that not knowing is far more frightening than knowing. At least with knowing, you can name what you are up against. You have a plan of action once you have a name.

It could be a brain tumor. It could be multiple sclerosis. It could be a side effect of my bipolar medicine. It could be nothing. It could be either something really horrible, or it could just be the way things are and this just has never been noticed by any of my previous eye doctors, ever. That part is unlikely. I go to eye doctors at least every two years.

I was sent to a neuro-ophthalmologist. Then I was sent to get an MRI. Nothing bad showed up. I’ve had a thyroid test too – fine. There are now other symptoms. My fingers have a slight tremor. I have a pins and needles feeling in my arms occasionally. I have vertigo every now and then. Nothing stays long enough to be of real interest, until something else pops up for me to wonder about.

There is no cure for it, so early detection won’t do me any good. And, standard Western medicine being what it is, it treats the symptoms rather than the cause. That treatment alone is painful and has unpleasant side effects. So I pulled open “Prescription for Nutritional Healing” – one of my favorite how-to books. It is like an owner’s manual for the machine that is the human body.

Fortunately I’m already doing some of what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m doing water aerobics and yoga. I’m eating seaweed. I’m headed towards being vegetarian.

But the most important thing I think I can do is accept it. Whatever it is. Learn from it. Maybe there is something just over the horizon that I would miss otherwise. I’m mindful of the Chinese story of the old man, the boy, and the horse. I’m mindful of Rumi’s “The Guest House”. (I have copies of these in my Resources folder.) Everything speaks to the idea of not judging, of accepting, of trusting. Everything also speaks about being with and in the moment, the now.

Perhaps I will eventually get to the point where I can’t walk. My body will be like my car – unresponsive. I’m trying to be OK with that. I’m trying to be thankful for that. I’m trying to be open to the lessons that God needs me to receive like that.

I’m breathing into it, just like with a deep yoga stretch. Just like with pigeon pose, I’m breathing into it, breathing into all the tight places.

Bears.

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My husband and I are nurturing our inner children. We both had difficult childhoods. It may seem strange but it is never too late to reinvent yourself.

There is nothing about being a parent that means you are competent at it. Often you just continue doing the same stupid thoughtless things that were done to you. You don’t stop being selfish or needy or controlling. So you raise children who are broken because you were broken.

It wasn’t all bad. There were trips to cultural events. Education was encouraged. But how to be human? How to deal with emotions? That was too hard. They didn’t know how to do that.

They did the best they could with what they had. They didn’t know there was more to being an adult than paying the mortgage and cooking dinner. They weren’t intentionally neglectful or abusive. But the damage was still done. And it still has to be undone.

I’m grateful that we both were aware enough of our weaknesses to decide to never have children. We didn’t want to continue the cycle. Slowly we are learning ways to heal ourselves.

We have teddy bears. They have names and stories. We drink tea every Sunday evening with the bears, and afterwards we read a children’s story. This may not be what adults usually do, but it is healing. I’m starting to think that everybody should keep their teddy bears. More bears, less drug abuse. We all need something to hold on to when times get difficult.

There is a lot that is hard about being an adult who never had a healthy childhood. There aren’t a lot of instructions on how to heal your inner child. There is a lot of shame involved. It is hard to admit that you need help. You have to learn how to grow up backwards. I think there are a lot of people who have to do this. Maybe we should start a club so we don’t feel alone.

Maybe we should also start a 12 step program for people who have escaped from church, for the same reasons.

Roll call.

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I realized that you don’t have access to this information so I’m sharing it. My site statistics are a little amazing to me. I have been journaling for years, but then I started posting my thoughts on Facebook in November of last year. Then I realized that there were ideas I wanted to share with people who weren’t my friends on Facebook so I created this page in December. I’m a little overwhelmed that people all around the world have read my words. I don’t get a lot of visitors every day – maybe 20, but each person reads about four things.

I’m very close to having had 12,000 of my posts read. I’m at just over 300 posts written, so this means some have been read multiple times. One has been read by over 5 thousand people, so that skews the numbers a bit.

Here is the list of all the visitors divided up by their countries and their number of posts read.

United States 9,685, United Kingdom 1,328, Canada 289, Australia 227, Germany 68, New Zealand 62, Philippines 42, Japan 33, Ireland 23, Sweden 15, India 14, France 14, Brazil 14, Republic of Korea 8, South Africa 8, Costa Rica 8, Indonesia 8, Mexico 6, Nigeria 6, Switzerland 6, Netherlands 6, Malaysia 5, Hong Kong 5, Italy 5, Sri Lanka 4, Bangladesh 4, Israel 4, Belgium 4, Spain 4, Saudi Arabia 4, Taiwan 3, Singapore 3, Austria 3, Norway 2, Qatar 2, Bulgaria 2, Ghana 2, Puerto Rico 2, Jamaica 2, Portugal 2, Finland 2, Kenya 2, Denmark 2, and one hit each for Guyana, Romania, Iceland, Russian Federation, Guam, Botswana, Venezuela,Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic, Viet Nam, Latvia, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Greece, Argentina, Egypt, and Jersey

Welcome to you all.

Tiny things

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I have a fascination with tiny things. I love studying the intricacies of beads, especially Botswana agate and ocean jasper. I love coming across flowers smaller than my fingernail, especially wildflowers of any sort. I love finding bugs that have amazing detail and are just as small.

Big and flashy things seem rude to me. They call attention to themselves. They overdo it. Huge baubles and immense flowers virtually yell “Look at me!” Now I can certainly respect a peony or a hydrangea, but I’ll never plant one. Oddly, I do like crepe myrtles, but perhaps part of that is they are part tree and part flower. Perhaps partly I love them because they are uniquely Southern. But when I think about it, their flowers are big bunches of tiny flowers. It isn’t one big flower getting all the attention.

I wonder if part of my love of tiny things comes from the fact that I have very bad eyesight. I see things better if they are right up in front of my nose. Perhaps part of it comes from beading, where I’d see amazing swirls and details on the sides of beads while creating a necklace. Sadly, the details were obscured once the design was created. Only I knew about the hidden beauty.

It is amazing to me to come across a tiny insect. Sometimes I’ll find a flying bug that is smaller than a quarter of my fingernail. It is intricate and perfect. It is hard to believe that it can even exist. When I find such a bug, I think God must be showing off, saying “Look what I can do!” This creature has a brain and eyes and stomach and wings all in such a small space. Tiny flowers are amazing, but tiny bugs are magic.

Perhaps it is human nature to compare everything to ourselves. It if it that tiny, it can’t possibly matter. It can’t possibly be important. But it is, and it does. And maybe there is something in that which needs to be noticed.

The samsara bug. Or not.

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Last night we slept in the living room. It is like camping out, but with indoor plumbing and minus the bugs. Sometimes you have to do something different.

In the middle of the night I heard this “thwop-thwop” sound and realized a bug was in the room, stuck between the windows and the curtains. He was trying to get to the light outside, but was prevented by the glass. He also couldn’t get out into the room because of the curtain. He seemed a little upset/crazed by this, judging from the frequency of the sound.

I thought about this. I could get up and catch him, and release him outside, which would mean going out the back door because there was no porch light on. Or, I could ignore him. He chose to come inside my house when all of the great outdoors was available to him.

I chose the latter. It wasn’t easy. He was kind of annoying, smacking up against the window. He was noisy and persistent.

I started to think that he was like some people I know, where I feel like they need “fixing”. I feel like they are in the wrong place and I need to help them out. But by letting them work out things for themselves I’m honoring their path. By leaving them alone, I’m respecting that their way is their way, and even though it looks totally stupid to me, it is their way and I need to back off.

This is a new way to think for me. I’m not sure if I learned to be a busybody from my family or from my peer group or if it is just part of who I am. It isn’t very nice. It doesn’t honor people where and how I find them. Just because they are doing things differently from me doesn’t mean they are doing them wrong.

So, I was trying this with this bug. It is kind of strange having a philosophical discussion with yourself in the middle of the night, but there I was.

Then the “thwop-thwop” sound stopped. He got free of the curtain. For a brief moment I was happy for him. Was this like a soul escaping samsara, the wheel of reincarnation? He was free, no longer trapped by his wild need to get to the light which he would never reach.

Then he flew into the ceiling fan and I didn’t hear him anymore.

So much for philosophy.

Holding yourself hostage.

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I know a few people who carry guns with them everywhere they go. They are afraid they are going to get robbed or killed by some stranger. The odd thing is that they are getting attacked all the time, but it is by themselves.

They smoke. They eat poorly. They are afraid of some stranger coming up to them and harming them, but they are doing to themselves in slow motion.

The fear that they are going to be attacked permeates their lives. Their blood pressure is high. Their stomach is upset all the time. These are symptoms of fear.

This is the same issue I have with “preppers” Who cares if you have two years worth of canned food and water if you can’t enjoy it because you are feeble?

Instead of walking around with a gun, work on peace. Make the neighborhood safer. The first way to work on peace is to work on yourself. Eat better. Go exercise. These two things alone will reduce your anxiety and fear, and you’ll be in better shape to handle any eventuality.

Peace starts within.

Energy – attention is attention, whether negative or positive.

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Don’t give your energy to something that isn’t good. If there is a performer on TV who has “jumped the shark” and done something so egregious that the dictionary now has a new name for her actions, don’t talk about it. Don’t post pictures of it. This just gives it more energy. Negative energy is still energy. Let it go away. Let it disappear. Don’t even mention her name.

This is the same thing you learn with bad behavior and children. If you want a child to stop doing any bad behavior, don’t comment on it, but comment on the good behavior instead. Any attention is attention. If you yell at a child for doing something wrong, it is still attention. All people crave attention. If you yell or fuss, that behavior will happen again. Yes, this makes no sense, but it is true.

This is the same with celebrities or groups. This is the same with people who are celebrities just because their fathers are famous, or groups that use the forum of media to spread their message of hate.

As long as the person isn’t doing something dangerous, ignore it. Don’t comment on it. Don’t post about it on your Facebook page. Don’t talk about it at work. Energy is energy.

Don’t spend time on things you don’t like. Don’t give them your energy or attention. Focus on the positive. Talk about what works, not about what is broken.

Yes, I’m kind of breaking my own rule here. I’m trying to shift a way of thinking, so I have to point this out. We have to shift the way we think in order for change to happen.