It’s late and I know I should be asleep... but I seem to be having the problem of being a night owl lately and no matter how early I try to get myself to go to bed, it just doesn’t happen. I keep staying up later and later knowing that I get to sleep in at least a bit later than I would if it were the academic year. But this is a bad habit to be in because in about a week I am going to have to adjust my schedule to a work schedule which means getting up earlier and definitely getting to bed earlier so I’m not so tired.
Anyway, I felt compelled to reflect a bit on pain and suffering. I guess partially because I’ve had my own pain recently but additionally because I am addicted to hospital shows (House being my favorite right now) and two episodes of Grey’s Anatomy tonight had me thinking. In the episodes (which had the same story line continued through both), one of the doctors is giving birth and her husband gets into a car accident on the way to the hospital. When he arrives at the hospital, it is in an ambulance and he winds up in an OR instead of in the delivery room with his wife. Because she is in labor, the other doctors decide not to tell her anything about her husband until they have something concrete to report. For the record, I didn’t agree with their decision. I thought it was a poor choice and that she should know. Finally, there came a point when her husband had been in surgery for long enough for her to suspect something was wrong and the doctors felt at that point they needed to tell her. I understand that they were trying to keep her from suffering. They were trying to protect her. They like her, perhaps even love her, and want to keep her safe, keep her happy. But her naivete about the situation did not mean it magically went away or that her husband was not in danger of dying. Instead it made her anxious and wonder what had happened to her husband. “Protecting” her only made the situation worse.
We don’t like seeing our friends and family hurting. Plain and simple. We also don’t like to suffer, but more importantly how we react to people who are suffering, people we care for, is often determined by what we like or don’t like. Because we don’t like to suffer and we suffer when we see our friends/family suffering, we often choose to try and prevent them from suffering. Or trying to cheer them up. I’m not saying that cheering somebody up is a bad thing, but sometimes a person really does need to wallow in what is going on. They need to suffer in order for things to get better... if that makes any sense. Grief needs to happen. Otherwise things become very unhealthy and things are much worse later. So perhaps it isn’t best to “protect” our friends and family. I actually believe it isn’t... simply put. Tell them bad news if they have a right to know. What they do with the information is what they do with the information. But also be the friend who is there through it all, through the bad stuff. That’s the important thing. Like Job’s friends when they came and sat with him in the trash heap... but not later when they tried to convince him to blaspheme God... bad move.
I also have thought a bit about this for myself too. I’m sure some of you have read my posts about headaches and the like. Some of you have even tried to “protect” me a bit in various ways. Trust me, I’m doing what I need to do. Bad news, good news... I’m dealing with it. Wishing it away doesn’t work... trust me, I’ve tried. I am at where I am at with all of this. But rest assured that things are actually better than they probably sound here. Yes, I’m still having headaches every day. However, they are like pre-headache headaches that are the slight throbbing one generally feels just before a major headache. They don’t even usually require Advil. There are some times however that I do in fact have to take something for them, but usually not. Also, I haven’t been nauseous since Monday... so I’m hoping that was just a medication/food/something else reaction. By and large, I’m doing better. I’m able to do most things. But the frustrating thing is that it has not completely cleared up. So, to all of you out there, thank you for caring. I really do appreciate it. Ask me how it is going, listen to me lament about it, or rejoice if things are better. Maybe make suggestions for things to do. But don’t try to protect me. I am suffering a bit, but it is suffering I must do. There is suffering we all must do. Not because we want to, but because that is the situation we are in and it is a situation we can’t change. We so often want to make it better, want to change it, but often we can’t. I can’t change (at least at the moment I’m not aware of how) the fact that I’m having headaches, I just am. I’m taking steps to try and figure it out... like seeing the doctor and taking the medication she prescribes. But otherwise it is out of my control.
There are my long, and probably barely coherent if at all, thoughts on pain and suffering. Sorry for the rambling...
Kate
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