Best Time to get a new kitten

I have not been able to sleep due to high amount of steroids. But as it turns out, it is the best time to get a kitten when one must take a medication that keeps you up all night. I only sleep  3 or four hours a night, but by the a.m. dose, I'm ready to take on the day.

Strange stuff this Medrol. This is my 3rd round on it, to keep this bizzare disease at bay. I always lose a lot of weight, too much in fact. For some wierd reson it curbs my appetite for 6 weeks. I have to be on brand, not generic, so the cost is very very expensive. $300 for my course, as opposed to only $24 for generic. What a rip-off!!!!! But, unfortunately, my disease does not respond to generic :-(  Oh well, better than suffering.

I just heard something crash to the floor......better go and rescue the cat

All Unhappiness is caused by comparison

There isn't one single work day that goes by where I am not met with an experience, thought, emotion or chance to be awed by an unbelievable  case that I am working with. It's been like this for the past 13 years since I started my career. But yesterday was a keeper for my journal.

Everyday I can't wait to get to work,And I have a hard time shutting down my day. I always desire to work just one more hour, just one more hour, but I promised my family no-more-work-aholic. Kind of hard to leave your hobby alone!

I was working with a young man, a cheerful guy, considering the trauma he had experienced.  Poor unfortunate fellow had been in a motorcylce  accident where he went off a 30 foot embankment.  

I introduced myself, he was sitting up in a chair, and he agreed to try to stand with me. He was in the hospital to complete some more surgery. The accident was 4 years ago but he needed to undergo several more operations. I helped him with his balance, steadying him to prepare to take some steps through the room. He was pretty unstable, clearly he need the front-wheeled walker and my help for his safety.

He joked around, made light of some of the situations he has had to endure in the hospital the past few years. As I helped him with his balance, struggling to keep him on his feet, he said he was feeling better and better each year, but one thing kept bothering him.  

We stopped for a few moments and he said, "well, I had no memory for years after my accident, I could barely remember anything before my accident and even after my accident, but now I'm seeing friends I used to know , now that I'm getting out more and they have girlfriends and they are dating."

I let him keep talking, nodding my head in understanding. He continued to say, "I thought what I was doing everyday was all there was to life. Just trying to learn to feed myself and walk and not fall down",  " but now that I see what my old friends are doing, what I wish I could do, compared to what I am doing, I'm sad"

I stayed quiet a few more seconds, looking at him with compassion, nodding my head. Calmly,  I urged him to take a step, while I kept him from swaying too far and falling. 

Within a few moments he was laughing again about another incident in the hospital. Traumatic brain injuries can be like this depending on the severity.

He continued to be jovial as we worked for the next 35 mnutes. He never again brought up the subject that had stopped him for a few moments to ponder such a profound concept.

But  he is absolutely right,  how interesting, if we never have the chance to compare, then this is all we know. Why in the world would we be upset? Undeniably, it is true, all unhappiness is caused by comparison.

Empathy-Land of The Lost

It happened again yesterday. I wish I would stop seeing this attribute in people. Maybe, I recognize it because of my experience of almost dying in the hospital last year? Maybe I see it because people have less energy to expend towards human need, struggling so hard to care for their own?  Maybe the universe is just bringing me the chance to make a difference, provide some insight to others at the hospital?  Whatever the case, it's a dilemma.

The scenario starts the same way each time. I arrive to see the patient. I ask if it's ok that I can see the patient, I get the standard reply lately, 

    "Sure, go ahead, he/she won't participate with you. They refuse to do anything. They are lazy. They want to be babied and I don't have the patience."

Who knows why things happen in our lives. I wish I knew. Why do the stars line up a certain way and cause things to happen out of our control? Whatever the reason, I caught a very rare disease last year, probably in the hospital. Strange......the place I would rather be any minute of the day, the place I love the most, the place I feel most happy....almost killed me. Nevertheless, it has provided insight to being an actual patient and provided me a thread of caring in me that I had never known before. I had been caring before. But now I have a sense of empathy that I never had before.

When I am told of a difficult personality to deal with, I immediately feel compassion. Where I used to suit-up with armor, emotionally, to get ready to deal with with "difficult" person, I now, take off any layer of hardness or shell to allow them to open up to me, or at least accept me them near them. I sit down near them. I remind myself that I am there for them, 100%, completely and honestly.

Kind of like when you truly want a stray kitten or puppy to walk towards you, you emotionally try to  "will"  the scared kitten to trust. 

It takes me a few minutes longer, sometimes a good 30 minutes to develop a rapport, but eventually, very slowly, I gain their trust and I feel they are relieved. They participate. They are gracious.  And I get the same response each time, "Well,  they must be Bi-polar, or have personality disorder because they were so nice to you. I bet they are a total pain  when I have to deal with them".

Why do people who refuse to develop empathy skills go into healthcare? Why don't they go work with plants?

It would be impossible to tell anybody to go and "learn some empathy skills", like telling somebody to go learn to cook. But there must be a way. I guess it just comes down to recognizing and truly acknowledging the traumas of your past.

Sometimes I feel that my patients somehow realize that I am trying to empower them not make them dependant. I am merely trying to be a gentle catalyst to them helping themselves. I think with gentle motivation and encouragement most people welcome the idea that somebody believes in them.

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A chance to practice what I preach

We all make plans, set goals and enjoy progress. We go about our day, wondering if our plans will materialize or end in complete failure? The only thing certain about life is uncertainty. So, our frail attempts may end in glorious victory of a task completed or in frustrating defeat. Such is the nature of life. We are destined to engage in a series of celebrations interspersed with a series of disappointments. Because of this, it is important to learn how to deal with disappointment.

But when things don’t go our way, we learn of disappoint.  Today is one of those days that I had a lesson in this. 

As you can see, I accidentally erased my small cache of blogs when I was trying to add new sections to my page.  [Sigh]

So, I had to remind myself of a few things:

1.    No matter how careful or positive we are, we are bound to experience grief, suffering, pain, fear, and anxiety, for they are part of life, the price we pay for the privilege of sharing in the joys of life.

      My lesson is: If I never started blogging on PNN, then I would have never known how much it hurt to lose my little set of blogs with wonderful comments from such nice people.

2.       If you experience a disappointment that you find difficult to overcome without help, talk to people who would understand. This will help you realize that you're not alone and that others have overcome similar problems.

3.       When you learn to welcome challenges and love solving problems, disappointments will disappear or appear less of an obstacle. Enjoy the thrill of  learning from and understanding what went wrong. Analyze the situation and see what you can learn and then move on.

4.       Cultivate patience, for as J. Addison (1672 ~ 1719) wrote, "Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper light."

Of course, after I threw my computer mouse across the room (kidding), I realized that I had better pull it together and practice what I preach.  So a few deep breaths later, I NOW realize what went wrong and now I have a brand new blog site .