It is a bitter pill. You go to the doctor for a routine checkup, and you hear the dreaded words: “To be on the safe side, I would like to run a couple tests to rule out (fill in the blank).”
It is difficult to keep your wits upon hearing the doctor’s utterances. Perhaps you were feeling proud of yourself for regular checkups and intentionally living a healthy lifestyle. And this is the reward: more tests?
In today’s world, serious medical illness is an uninvited visitor in far too many lives.
The emotional side
As the diagnostic process gets under way, the knowledge that Seattle is home of several highly rated medical facilities may provide some feelings of safety and even relief. Accessing professional services does not require the addition of travel — something to be grateful for while still absorbing what is happening.
And, for sure, a lot is happening: doctors’ appointments, tests, labs, more tests, results, learning new medical vocabulary, conversing with multiple doctors and medical professionals, advocating and more.
Waiting for results means maintaining a daily routine while trying to manage emerging anxiety about the pending results.
When the doctor finally calls, every word has potentially life-altering meaning. If you are the patient, you may be flooded with “what-ifs.” If you are a partner, friend, neighbor or family member, you might be wondering what you will be able to do to help.
So far, focus is on the medical side, but what about the emotional side of things? A groundswell of feelings and emotions are inextricably part of the diagnosis and treatment process, yet fall outside of the science-based medical model.
For example, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and other interventions treat the disease, but what about all of those complicated feelings that are impossible to excise from what is happening?
Uninvited but persistent feelings — such as fear, anger, guilt, resentment, pain, helplessness, grief, anxiety and overall distress — present emotional challenges. If you are not the patient but are impacted by knowing and loving the patient, angst about being unable to relieve pain and suffering may surface.
Maybe you are unable to have difficult conversations about treatment options and even death. Maybe you start to neglect yourself while you become immersed in the well-being of the patient. Or maybe you begin to feel emotional exhaustion.
Now, there is an uninvited visitor in your life that won’t leave, and you may begin to wonder how you will accommodate the uninvited visitor while you are seemingly consumed with doctor appointments and treatments — all of which can be overpowering.
Connectedness, compassion
Whether the patient or a loved one, chronic illness is a colossal challenge. At a time of intense vulnerability, it is easy to slide into harsh judgment, fear, guilt and self-criticism, leaving little room for unavoidable mistakes and imperfections. When it feels like survival requires super-human qualities, we are bluntly reminded of our humanness. Acknowledgement that we cannot really control what happens frees us to do what we can do, with all of its limitations and imperfections.
Doing what we can while accepting our limitations is what connects us to everyone around us. It makes it possible to see that we are all connected through our limitations and imperfections. Allowing our humaneness crowds out unhelpful feelings of guilt, criticism and judgment, and in place, we have room to feel an unfettered connection. We have room. We have time. We have presence. We have compassion.
Compassion makes it possible to name the unhelpful feelings without censoring. Believing that everyone struggles with unproductive feelings reduces feelings of isolation and aloneness.
Emerging research shows that being kind and forgiving to you is positively linked to adaptive strategies for challenges and difficulties, which inevitably happen when trying to accommodate an uninvited visitor in your life: serious medical illness.
MARY MURPHY has a psychotherapy and counseling practice in lower Queen Anne (www.mary-murphy.com). To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
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