I have finally come back. I did write some for November, and it went pretty well. Didn't finish it, but wasn't really aiming to. Maybe next time!
Today I'd like to talk about having more than one thing going on at once. I mean, most people do, really. But there seems to be a bit of confusion for some on how one person can have two difficult health issues happening at the same time. I found out about this when I was working in senior care.
I had a client who had a serious issue with some of her internal organs. These organs were failing, and she had a lot she had to do in order to live well.
She also had a mental illness, and had for many years.
She had been mostly ok for a long time, but at some point, the meds stopped doing their thing, as they can do, and she had an episode. I was a supervisor at the time and had to advise caregivers on how to handle some situations. In this case, I needed to meet both her and her caregiver at the emergency room at the area hospital.
When I did, I was surprised that I had to be very clear that she had both the organ failure issue and the mental health issue. I had to explain this to a couple of medical professionals who were helping her out. I had talked to her family, and been assured that what she was going through was definitely an episode, yet the medical professionals at that time were convinced the mental illness was not happening, and it was all her health issue.
I told them it was more likely both issues at once. While they did not tell me I was wrong, they did opt to treat the medical, and not the mental issue.
No one flat out said that the two couldn't coincide, but it was definitely the underlying issue with our communication.
I'm not saying this is in any way similar, but I'm having two distinct medical issues now, myself. I argue about it with myself a lot, too, and am often of the opinion that I should not be able to have two problems at once. I'm particularly mad about the problems I have going on. First and foremost, the brain damage--that constant companion that has changed my world so much. Secondly, I threw my back out a week ago. Not doing anything in particular, just walking about 7 feet across my room, in my home, which is safe for me to be in.
Whatever the case, here we are. I missed nearly two weeks of therapy due to the injury and medical appointments combined. I lost track of what day it was at the beginning of last week, and was generally down about most things, due to the back issue. Plus, it's almost Christmas, of course, and I have Stuff To Do. I am terribly behind on my cookie making, and haven't been able to cook for a week now. It makes me quite angry, honestly.
Regardless, both problems exist simultaneously, as problems usually do. After all, it's not like your refrigerator is like, "You know, I better not break down today. The car is in the shop." Of course not! They don't conspire! Inanimate objects etc, etc.
Our bodies are the same way. While, yes, the brain does communicate, via nerves, impulses and the like, with the rest of your body, they neither ally or conspire against you. They're body parts. While ones brain contains all the things needed to have free will, the brain itself does not have the same. One's body does not plot against the brain, either. This means it doesn't plot against us, no matter how personal the issue seems at the time.
I think when it comes to this, we all need to give ourselves a break. Things happen. Body parts sometimes fail to work. This doesn't mean that your body is trying to kill you.
Even my body didn't really try to kill me. Even with a brain explosion, my involuntary nervous system wasn't trying to kill me. It was trying to deal with an unforeseen situation in the only way it was able to do. There was no other way it could go at the time, and if pressed, I would say it did a good job. Who knows what the situation was, but everything worked out in the end, with medical intervention. If I have disabilities because of it, oh well. Really. I could just as easily be dead right now, and not able to write anything at all.
There are a couple of us who joke about our bodies trying to kill us. I do, because I have no known cause for the explosion that happened. I have a friend who does the same because their nearly deadly problem came from something exploding, too. They might have known it was coming, if maybe someone had known what happened in their family history. But that's a huge maybe.
Really, there is no way to definitively predict what might go wrong with someone. You can have all of the family medical history, all of the genetic testing, and you still only come up with a maybe. You can take every precaution against something and still wind up with a disease or with an injury. You could attempt to cross a clear street at the crosswalk and still get hit by a car. Life is a very complex, often surprising puzzle, and we can't know what it looks like before each event is finished. I mean, sometimes we can't even know then.
Life is a very complicated, often surprising thing. Sometimes you really just need to live it.
