I tried to turn off my cell phone today. I recall being able to do so relatively easily in times past, but a recent update must have reassigned the function of the on/off button to a summons for the Bixby app. For you non-Android users out there, Bixby is an intrusive Samsung incantation that is impossible to delete and that will repeatedly force its services upon you no matter how many times you decline it. After a few minutes of aiming death jabs at Bixby, I opted for airplane mode. But this didn’t give me the satisfaction I was looking for. I wanted to experience the incandescent joy of watching my screen begin to power down, offering me a wistful “good bye” before fading to black. I am embarrassed to tell you that I still haven’t figured out the new to shut off my phone, so I settled for putting it on “do not disturb” for two hours and sticking it in a drawer.
If it isn’t already apparent, I am deeply unsettled. I have been for quite some time now. I’m not sure what the trigger was this time. Perhaps it’s not having experienced a single waking moment of being pain free for over three weeks. When I taught my chronic pain class, one of my favorite things to tell my students was that pain stimuli will occupy about 50% of a person’s attention span. That’s 50% of my brain that is unavailable to process new information, recall details, regulate my emotions, reasonably manage conflict, make complex decisions, and participate in the hundreds of higher cortical processes required of most functioning adults on a daily basis. Perhaps this is why my spouse more or less called me irrational and a self-victimizer the other day and I literally couldn’t continue the conversation. Perhaps this is why my colleague who is a Christian man in his sixties snapped at me when I made a comment about not liking the way Eagle’s fans behave.
Or perhaps it’s because I spent a month working with a CNA who I was so determined to believe was helpful that I ignored all of the ways in which she displayed unprofessional behavior and actually began to slow me down. It would start the moment she met me at my car to help me unload my supplies—a verbal onslaught of personal details about her life that I never asked for. I didn’t know if she just happened to be a magnet for drama or the unknowing cause of it, but I have my suspicions. Her ability to talk without taking a breath, requiring a response, or recognizing that the object of her chatter was becoming increasingly uncomfortable was spectacular.
In fact, I am now beginning to recall the precise moment that I recognized the tension creeping back into my cervical strap muscles. Within a few days, it migrated to the back of my skull and heralded that familiar occipital headache. Next came the TMJ pain—a deep ache in my temples that slowly migrates down my cheeks and into my forehead. Before long, my teeth, my throat, and my eyes are throbbing. My ears begin to ring on and off. My personal favorite are the electrical zingers that occur when I turn my head to one side or the other—not every time but often enough to make me extremely cautious about it.
I cycle through my various essential oils, topical rubs, NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, and migraine abortive pills. I see my chiropractor, my acupuncturist, and three different massage therapists who specialize in headaches and TMJ. I pray, while deeply regretting turning down the Botox injections my neurologist offered me a few months ago. All of it takes the edge off for a time. But it never goes away and inevitably begins to escalate over the ensuing days and hours.
I work a 15-hour day midweek in addition to more standard hours on Mondays and Fridays. I don’t eat enough or get to bed early enough. I pass out on the couch 2-3 times per week out of sheer exhaustion and don’t take my evening medications. Reminding myself to take sips of water during rounds takes genuine effort. My skin is incredibly dry and I am always parched. I am tempted to set alerts on my phone to make myself drink something hourly but I am so overwhelmed and stressed by all of the alerts on my phone and computer as it is—and this is the case with most of them already disabled.
I am experiencing a profound season of famine. I lack the time and resources to live my own life effectively and I have no clue what to do about it. All of my best efforts have seemingly failed—reducing my work to part-time hours, prioritizing my family, prioritizing my health, prioritizing serving at my local church, actively seeking deeper friendships and community. All of this has equaled more to do with less time to do it in. I am always starving but never hungry. I am often disappointing people and disappointed in people. I am constantly questioning my decisions and feeling as if I am stuck in a time-loop of ineptitude.
A blank day on my calendar never occurs but I desperately want it to. Moments of inner quiet, even when I am alone, are almost non-existent. When I am honest with people I trust and tell them I’m drowning, they either don’t believe me or minimize it, thus, reinforcing the reason I once rarely ever asked anyone for help for most of my life.
At the moment, I am listening to jungle sounds while I type. I am burning lavender and sandalwood incense while sitting on a medicine ball. My overall pain level, averaged between my head, neck, and face is a solid 5 out of 10. I love my family. I love my job. I love my church community. But all I can think about is how much I want to spend the rest of my life in this jungle serving the sick and destitute. I am rarely happier than when my fingers are buried in a smelly wound, the soothing sounds of my curette scraping through devitalized tissue to make way for healthy tissue to proliferate. It connects me to the miracle of the human body repairing itself as it was designed to do until its Creator calls the body back to dust. This is how I show my LORD that I am aware that the tiny part I play in this particular time and space isn’t insignificant. It's how I communicate to the patient in front of me that their suffering matters just as much as mine does—perhaps more.
And then Fox news or a True Crime Story or reruns of the Jerry Springer show break into this sacred space, breaking the spell. I have seemingly endless compassion for my patients and their families but can’t seem to manage the mounting conflicts with my spouse. My kids seem to be the only people on the planet who love me in a way that might drain me physically but never depletes my soul. It’s as if modern life has been carefully designed to slowly drive people like me insane. I can’t help feeling as if I have grossly miscalculated the majority of life. And then I wake up and have to do it all over again.
Stay Thoughtful.
Minus the literal pain… that checks out. If I could skip the rest of this life and be in Heaven with multiple people that have recently passed away I would.
To live is Christ, to die is gain.
That verse rarely has felt more true.