On Jan 1st, 2022, I was at the ER, terrified. This week has been a lot. I need to write about this to put it behind me and have there be a tangible, mental recount with a conclusion so that my anxiety around this abates. I am perfectly healthy now with no consequences outside of the mental, less than 7 days later. My completely disjointed thoughts, for my own healing:
It’s very strange to be at the ER because everything around you is catastrophized because everyone is in a catastrophe and it is the one time anxious feedback loops are met with concerned faces that say “yeah, actually this is a problem and we can’t validate that this is just you being worried.” Strangely, kind of like how Anderson Cooper said on the Dax podcast, grief does make you live in a sort of catastrophized reality and so this did not necessarily feel out of place. If anything, I felt quite at home, almost as if the world was finally meeting my internal level of mental catastrophe through which I operated for 5 years of my life (which I am deeply happy is not my current lens).
Anyhoo, very sensory experience to take breaths between pain and not be thinking. Living second to second on that day, all I could focus on was the colour of my socks or the veins on my hand or the arm of my loved one. After a very academic, cerebral (ok, definitively hate that pretentious word) quarter, this was a strange reminder of just…life in the present.
It also strangely tied into my recent experiences living around animals, people who have animals and caring for them. Which is also a very sensory experience with a lot of being out of your head and (literally)touching gunky fluid and poop and hair and is just generally a messier, less performative way of living. I find this to be a very welcome respite from the narcissism of my millennial existence. My hands, for example, on a typical day, can be found typing, dancing, making running motions. Around a dog I am suddenly also using them to tenderly caress, to tighten my hold, to direct, to touch new things, to consistently scope around to make sure nothing dangerous is in reach. Very of-the-earth-ish. All new motions, small and repetitive, but completely change the way my body exists on the daily?
Nothing as humbling as caring for a little being. Though also, I can see how one can detach from the emotion of it with the weight of responsibility and mundaneness. This small exercise in caregiving has made me both ruminate (which apparently some strong research has shown, is bad?) in my spare moments, and live outside my body for a bit, but either way creates a new version of me that is not the one I am individually (I guess that is to be expected and obvious, but weird to feel yourself settle into a role in real time).
Is it not politically correct to say that this experience has helped me empathise or temporarily experience less ableism than my usual, if it is not from a lens of “I am glad I am not in ‘that’ position” or any form of pity, but from a factual, oh I can (at the most bare minimum level) see even in my short experience with this, how ableist and inequitable the world is and how I should not forget this experience (just because it is fleeting for me), but see how I can help actionably make spaces more accessible? I don’t know if that is me speaking from a bad sort of privilege and I recognize that I do not live with this reality and know nothing outside of this experience. These are, however, my true thoughts. Other thoughts include a grateful awareness that I was near a hospital, had access to transport, did not have to worry about bankruptcy or medical costs and could focus on getting better. All the multiple avenues of access, quality and cost of healthcare that served me but fail to serve many due to inequity and disparities were painfully blatant, and are simply not okay. Access to health care is a human right and I never felt it as much as when I was in pain and begging to see a nurse. I know it is a privilege to be able to speak retrospectively about this, to have accessed said care, to have this be something I write about and cast aside. This is not afforded to so many. I am really, really glad to have a public health community around me who cares about these things and works tirelessly and to be a small cog in this machine.
Some positives:
The deeply and truly indescribably nourishing care of my dearest loved ones, which I hope continues to be the essence of life. Listening to the voices of people I love and/or am inspired by. Dax’s podcast. Hearing about the James Webber telescope. Hugging a lot. Kitkat that I ate with medicine and now have a pavlovian response to. Puppy licks. Interactions with (oh so many) health care workers who were kind and thoughtful. Feeling the medicine take effect. Being reminded of priorities.
Things will be fine. Now, I mark the next phase of this month which I intend to be characterized by Petra Kuppers statement, “What are your care webs, your creative and nourishing communities?”
