Hi all,
Today, I’ll riff on some thoughts I didn’t address in last week’s reading review of Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals.
For some, the second day after an injury, a surgery, or even a loss can be euphoric. It is usually downhill from there.
This was a really interesting insight. I think it speaks to how quickly we bounce back from the lowest point yet take a very long time to return to a previous equilibrium.
I remember the day I sprained my ankle – I could barely stand up. The next day, I left the hospital with crutches and a boot. This was fantastic – I could move around again! But fantastic... relative to when? The day before? The week before?
By the time I reached my sixth week on crutches, I was feeling about as low as I’d felt on the day I was injured.
A hospital’s blankness is an advantage in how it allows us to remain emotionally vacant in an environment that rarely demands we do much more.
Considering all the problems hospitals solve – broken bones, major abrasions, and a host of conditions that most patients would otherwise die from – it is quite a feat that they still manage to get a generally bad rap. The fact that many people hate hospitals is a little strange on the surface (and I can’t imagine how bizarre this feeling would seem to someone coming from a place where medical care was really poor).
However, I have lived here long enough to understand the sentiment. I think this point about ‘hospital blankness’ gets at one angle. People like routines and generally prefer the status quo – however, they don’t want too much of it! The hospital mentality is so singularly focused on reversing the body's most common breakdowns that it must stamp out all signs of variation and unpredictability. This means the controlled spontaneity that contributes so much to emotional wellness often goes by the wayside and, with it, the possibility of those little moments of good feeling that come around anytime familiar people interact together with the slightly unpredictable. Even a cat that moves once or twice an hour introduces a world of spontaneity to an otherwise mundane space. But in a world rightfully ruled by the balance between successful recovery and short lengths of stay, each moment a hospital employee loses to distraction is a moment possibly lost elsewhere in terms of a missed diagnosis, poor treatment, or substandard care.
The problem of the prosthetic is a lot like the eye patch. The difference is how it is perceived. Those with the eye patch are never encouraged to get a prosthetic. It is often function, not appearance that drives the need toward prosthetics. A prosthetic with no functional component will hinder recovery.
This was an insight I liked and agreed with. However, I could easily play the other side of this debate as well – for many, maintaining an unchanged appearance is a functional component and often an important part of the recovery process. The question is currently framed as prosthetic OR no prosthetic – perhaps the better approach looks at it as prosthetic AND no prosthetic.
Spirituality must lend or create energy. If the energy is sapped, it is a false belief system.
This sounds suspiciously like my admin argument – if the spirituality creates extra admin, it is probably a false belief.
To demand people seek ‘joy’ rather than healthy food or clean air is perhaps a cousin of victim blaming. Unhappiness is not a condition to reverse through sheer force of will but rather one to sort out by identifying and addressing the root causes.
I recall coming across this idea in a couple of places before I started reading and I suspect this is among the most frequently quoted ideas from The Cancer Journals.
The thought makes me think about the way people will dismiss rather than admit the things they know little about. This doesn’t mean suggesting that someone ‘look on the bright side’ is a problematic approach. It just means that it must be clear how forced optimism isn’t a solution but rather a band-aid. If we become too accustomed to smiling our way through pain, eventually we’ll get good at it. One day we’ll become experts, and it won’t occur to us anymore that we are actually in pain.
