Less Whining, More Truthing

This sounds like a bad made-for-TV movie plot, but honest, it’s one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” stories…

This past fall, my aging, ill, live-in mother, for whom I’m primary caregiver, was hospitalized. It was pretty serious stuff, but her healthcare providers were brilliant, socialism (Medicare) made such medical care possible, and my mother is one determined human being. She spent a week in the hospital and came home, weak and exhausted but on the mend. For the next month, I coordinated meds, weekly visits from three home healthcare workers, follow-up medical appointments, and weekly labs.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, Ray had another heart attack, his 4th, thanks to rotten cholesterol/heart genes and probably a couple decades of road-musician food. We went to our Little Town ER in the wee hours, where there was no cardiologist either on duty or on call, and where he was treated and released because a telehealth cardiologist said his echocardiogram looked okay (and because the Big City hospitals are at capacity). But about 24 hours later, with the heart attack still ongoing, I drove him to the ER of a heart hospital in the Big City, where he was admitted. (A Little Town ER doc had hinted that if you show up in an ER, they have to see you – that doc thought Ray should have been airlifted to the Big City hospital.) You can read a bit about our Big City adventure here: https://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-heart-of-gratitude.html.

Thankfully for all, Mom was spending Thanksgiving with my brothers in a lovely southern location when this happened, so I was free to divide my time between zookeeping here at the Uncannery Row Refuge for All Creatures Haired, Furred, and Feathered, and daily commutes to visit Ray in the Big City. A few more days of hospital living and much more gratitude for brilliant healthcare providers and our socialist Medicare system later, I brought Ray home. He didn’t need a LOT of help when he came home, but he couldn’t exert himself or lift anything over 10 lbs., and he was exhausted, so I found myself caregiving again.

Then, two days after Mom came home, while Ray was still home and beginning rehab at our Little Town hospital, Mom went back into the hospital – our Little Town hospital this time – with new, scary stuff. Another week of hospital life, an almost overwhelming amount of gratitude, and Mom came home again, with new meds and more intensive caregiving requirements.

I remember someone commenting, somewhere during these adventures, that they didn’t know how I could do it all. My answer was that I’m really good at calmly rising to the occasion, but that I sometimes fall apart later, once the crisis is averted. I won’t say I’m prophetic, but a day after Mom got home from her second hospital stay, I woke up with a respiratory plague that turned out to be two weeks of bronchitis (probably – I wasn’t ABOUT to go to the doc and end up Hospital Patient #3). Mom and I both had negative Covid tests during this time, so I knew what I had was likely a run-of-the-mill plague.

For the next little while, the three of us took care of each other. Dear friends gave us porch drop-off’s of dinner rolls, soup, and elderberry syrup, and we isolated. I’ll admit that during my illness (finally letting up now), I may have felt just a wee bit sorry for myself. I may have been a little whiny once or twice. And I may have sent Heart Attack Guy out for groceries and more NyQuil.

But I read something today that shifted things back in perspective for me. It was an article by Toni Bernhard, former law professor, person living with chronic illness, and author of How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers, where she talks about understanding illness from a Buddhist perspective. The article (read the whole article here: https://www.lionsroar.com/illness-and-the-buddhas-prescription/) helped me re-frame my thinking about our household’s recent illnesses, but it also helped me to re-center my thinking about suffering, and life in general, by reminding me of the Four Noble Truths, the foundation of Buddhism:

1. All life is suffering. It is a fact, Buddha reminds us, that ALL humans go through non-pleasant experiences: birth, pain, illness, aging, grief, wanting what we don’t have, not wanting what we have, losing what we cherish.

2. Dukkha is the cause of suffering. In the original language of Buddhist texts, the word usually translated as suffering is dukkha, but its meaning is closer to an amalgamation of dissatisfaction, discomfort, stress, unease. And here was Bernard’s commentary about this Noble Truth, and the re-centering revelation for me: It isn’t the “ten thousand sorrows” of human existence – the experiences themselves – that cause our suffering; it’s our own inability to accept their reality as a normal, expected part of life that causes it. It's our misguided expectation that we should/could always be “happy” that causes our suffering.

3. Suffering can be overcome. By fully comprehending the reality of suffering as part of life, we can end our dis-ease.

4. The eightfold path is the way to overcome suffering. The eightfold path is Buddha’s teaching about HOW to KNOW (not just understand intellectually, but KNOW) the nature of reality by living “correctly” (probably also a mistranslation, but you can read more about the eightfold path here: https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-eightfold-path/).

So today, on Mom’s 86th birthday, I’m caretaking, coughing and blowing my nose ad infinitum, throwing down the Emergen-C, sanitizing like a madwoman, and feeling a lot less sorry for myself. I’m accepting my own illness as a normal part of my life – I don’t have to LIKE it, just ACCEPT it – and learning what I can from it, maybe about my own limitations, my stubbornness when it comes to taking care of the caretaker, and the healing properties of Doritos and French onion dip, in moderation of course.

The Four Noble Truths