The Fellowship of Suffering

My last month on active duty in the US Navy was a very quiet uneventful one…except the night I decided to find something different to do and on one cold January evening the very day before I was due to be discharged, I decided to go ice skating. The rink was practically empty and I enjoyed myself. I’m not an accomplished skater – I’m merely passable, capable of holding my own without looking too much like the one waving his arms about to maintain some sort of balance. Well, that wonderful evening, I was standing near the entrance to the rink when the skates went out from underneath me and I was flat on my back. I would find out that the fall had actually broken my leg, albeit a rather minor break. Because the fracture was on the outside, I was somehow able to walk on the leg, leading me to believe it was just a sprained ankle. You can imagine the chagrined look on the corpsmen’s faces when they realized they had me walking on a broken leg. Suffice it to say, they got me off my feet in no time and wanted to put me in a cast. Driving a manual transmission car with my toes was a challenge, but I was determined!

I got over the novelty of the cast pretty quickly and was none too disappointed when the day came to get it removed. I remember sitting in a waiting room with a collection of other walking wounded people awaiting their own removal of multi-colored casts. The waiting room was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. The silence was broken by a good ol’ boy from Tennessee whom we would all find out had in his young life, sported casts on many places on his rather large frame.

“Boy, but don’ it itch!”

We all let out variations of bemused sighs, all nodding in agreement. Everyone began sharing how long they had worn their cast and how they managed to get injured. The place practically turned into a religious service, everyone bearing testimony on their suffering. Can I get an ‘amen,’ brother? When I lived in Minnesota, there was a common suffering of the intensely cold winters. If it got above 0° any time in the month of January, it was cause for celebration and when it crested 15°, I, no kidding, saw shorts. When you live in Minnesota, you revel in complaining about the weather. It’s just what you do.  Once I put the frigid temperatures behind me in living in Southern California, I did more than store my lovely Norwegian sweaters with cedar blocks in plastic boxes under my bed never to be worn in the eternally warm weather. Arriving in November, I was greeted by shivering Californians wearing fur-lined parkas in the ‘new’ frigid: 50°(yes, really)! In SoCal, the new fellowship of suffering was the hellish traffic. Just as in Minnesota, we all acknowledged the extreme weather, in SoCal, we all acknowledged the traffic and once again, we reveled in how bad it was. It required no explanation, perhaps just how much time we spent in it. Now that I’ve arrived in Utah, it doesn’t get really all that cold and the traffic can’t compare to Southern California, I laugh out loud at anyone who complains at either!

My new fellowship of suffering seems to come rather often now with other people who are suffering from chronic illnesses and most especially with other cancer survivors. I spend quite a lot of time at the VA Hospital getting routine blood draws and because I’m there so much, staffs in many places throughout the hospital know me by name. I still have my PICC line in, so I don’t get stuck with a needle for my lab tests this round – I know I heard an “amen” from the back of the room – so I go to the Ambulatory Medicine Unit (AMU). The AMU has a number of rooms with a few recliners and IV poles. People who get outpatient chemotherapy, blood products, or infusions for other chronic conditions can pull up to the pump, get serviced (oil changed, windshield squeegeed, and a fragrance of their choice all complimentary of course) and be on their way. For those of us with PICC lines or ports, it happens a bit faster.  It’s as easy as unscrewing a cap and connecting the IV. No muss, no fuss, no pain – we all win…and we get an extra punch on our frequent customer card along with a cup of coffee and a packet of graham crackers. What a deal!

This morning, the nurse took all of about 2 minutes to come in and take a blood sample from my PICC line and the rest of our time, we spent just chatting. She flushed out my PICC line and it struck me that it was not fair that I gave blood and she just gave me water…isn’t blood thicker than water? Yes it is, but that’s the arrangement. So, she took my test tube sample off with a smile (and left no graham crackers) for the lab to run their chemistry and count and while I was waiting for the results, I got two roommates. And just like the good ol’ boy from Tennessee, one of us started talking and we all just laughed through our own shared suffering of sorts. We were all veterans and had long-term conditions – one had Parkinson’s and the other had rheumatoid arthritis. My numbers came back really good and I left with new friends and a bit of a spring in my step.

The nurse "flushing" my PICC line with a saline solution.
I do this at home every morning, but she's getting ready to
draw blood and then change the dressing around where
the actual catheter enters my the vein in my arm. You can see
the greenish donut where the purple line disappears. This
line goes into the vein and it feeds through my chest to just
above my heart. Pretty cool, huh? Well, it keeps me from
getting needles in me on a regular basis!

I’ve found that as much as I don’t ever want cancer or illness to be the first thing about me, there are times I need to be able to talk to people who know what I’m going through. It’s far easier to talk with two complete strangers about what I’m working through than my loved ones. I think that’s mostly due to the fact that I just don’t want the relationship to change. I don’t want them to treat me differently. I want and need that stability that regardless of the awful things that I’m walking through, for the important people to be there, to be unchanged is critical.  My life, my world may be shaking underneath, but the ones who are my foundation stand in front of me, holding me steady as my feet wobble from the quake. I can’t make them understand what it is that makes me unsteady the same way they can relate to heavy traffic or nasty weather…and I guess the truth is, I wouldn’t want anyone with whom I’m depending on to have to empathize fully because I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through what I am.

That said, I really do want to be able to be there for others who find themselves in the dark with a new cancer diagnosis and unaware of what to do next. I’m not a medical expert and I don’t want to be a source in that department, but I know those who have meant the most to me have given me the simplest of human needs – a simple touch by holding my hand when I hurt, hugged me when I felt unattractive as my hair thinned and fell out, smiled at and with me or told me jokes when I just wanted to cry, brought me a cup of real coffee when the chemo made breakfast smell putrid…and so on. Every little message of love and support pushed me one day closer to healing and whatever I can do along the way and after the only thing left from my cancer experience is PICC line scars, then that’s what I do.

That’s what the fellowship of suffering grants – authentic empathy and a responsibility to ease other’s pain. It’s not a group I had endeavored to join, but as I’m wearing the accoutrement of its membership and with so much pain around me, it feels right to smile and laugh with those who hurt.  Funny thing happens in that process – I make new friends…and I find myself feeling better.

Be well, stay strong, and much love to you all.

Today’s music – a classic from Bill Withers in 1973: Lean on Me

Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's
Always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
Till I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride
If I have things
You need to borrow
For no one can fill
Those of your needs
That you won't let show

You just call on me brother
When you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem
That you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

 

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
Till I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

You just call on me brother
When you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem
That you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

If there is a load
You have to bear
That you can't carry
I'm right up the road
I'll share your load
If you just call me

Call me
If you need a friend
(Call me)

Golden Scars

At a low point in my life, someone very dear to me shared a little quip that, under the wrong circumstances, might be misconstrued as glib or insensitive. Yet the words were true because they carried the import of experience. She told me something to the effect that “Scars are beautiful because they prove that you heal.” Lately, those scars have a twinge to them much the same way people who have broken bones will tell you that certain weather will induce aching in the same areas as the break. I think the aching I feel is because I missed the mark again. It’s not like I missed the lesson from the first blunder…I got closer to getting it right, but I ended up hurting someone else in the process, something that heaps hurt upon hurt.

I find it ironic and infuriating that these circumstances make me want to be surrounded by people and at the same time left alone. Having been a tad under the weather as of late, the scales tipped in solitude’s direction. So I’ve had a lot of time to myself to ruminate in my own self-imposed ‘time-out.’ In my quiet times, thoughts either tend to spin out of control until they implode on themselves or they resolve into a core idea that has been chugging in the back of my brain for a long time. During these times of clarity, I get physically weary, emotionally fragile, and just plain spent. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t take much for a movie, a song, or nothing in particular to bring that familiar lump to my throat and I’m again finding myself wanting to be simultaneously with people to lean on and alone to ‘get it out of my system.’ Yet, the real thing that that pushed through lately is that it’s not that I want to be around people, but that I want to be around people who have a scar or two.

You know you’ve been around someone with scars because they come off as wise beyond their years; they impress you as authentic, and their encouragement doesn’t have a pitch at the end. Their time with you is truly selfless. Their smiles seem to communicate more than their words, yet they don’t let you simply vent without some sort of accountability attached—you can kvetch all you want, but be prepared to do something about it! These are the people I truly treasure.  Admittedly, as much as I wouldn’t complain about having a chiseled physique, a wrinkle-free face with gleaming white, straight teeth, and all the high-dollar toys, the people who typically have those things aren’t the ones who make me feel whole. The kind of person with scars doesn’t tell you what to do, how to do it, or heap guilt upon you for not doing it, but rather is there for you when you make the same mistake over and again, when you feel like you’ve fallen for the last time and don’t have the strength to stand back up, let alone, sit…but their enigmatic smile is there and they have a hand outstretched when you are able to finally muster enough strength to roll over and get your face out of the cold, fetid mud. The real kicker is that someone with one of these scars will probably not call attention to it; they may not admit to having one. And they’re the ones that lift you to their shoulders to publicly cheer you when you get it right.

No, the people who have the innate ability to put me back together are typically those who have been folded, spindled, and mutilated a time or two and rather than having let circumstances beat them into some pink slime, they have been refined into something beautiful yet malleable; and inexplicably, they find a way to become part of you. The best way to explain that kind of selflessness is in the Japanese art of Kintsugi—using gold to fill in the cracks in a piece of pottery and thus restoring the piece. The piece isn’t without blemish of course, but the original break now becomes beautiful. Its scar has, indeed become a beautiful thing, and has in effect made the original piece worth much more. I find that to be the case in my own life and in those who have survived emotional and physical ordeals.  After all, the old proverb, “Smooth seas do not skillful sailors make,” didn’t come about without a few storms or shipwrecks.

These people are all around us and they don’t typically stand out, but their examples do. Their courage isn’t the kind of thing that makes Hollywood movies, but rather the scorn of the self-righteous. They are the recovering alcoholics; they are the young women, caught in flagrante delicto, overcome shame and raise the child with great grace and dignity; they are the awkward gay kids who push past the bullies and get their degrees and decent jobs, even after being kicked out of their fundamentalist parents’ home; and they’re the people like you and me, who just made a wrong decision that had long-term consequences or even just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and performed the great alchemy of turning sour grapes into vintage wine!

 

Healing is a miracle, and never more so than when you feel like you’re going it alone. But the great gift of healing is a beautiful mark left behind to remind everyone that you have become the miracle and now the agent for healing in someone else. That empathy born from your own pain is a powerful thing, but even more so is the wisdom of knowing what to do with it and when to let it rise up within you. It’s risky, it’s sometimes painful, and it’s often awkward, yet to the one who is broken, you are to them priceless, immeasurably beautiful, and permanently part of their beautiful scar…you are golden and restore someone to wholeness.

 

I encourage you to reflect back to the golden people in your own life and let them know how you are whole because of their gift to you.