Compassion

October 17, 2020

It takes me a moment to realize my alarm is going off. I feel myself coming out of the weight of a deep sleep and think back to where I left my phone charging overnight. I like to change it up on myself so I don’t get into a pattern of turning off my alarm and going back to sleep. It’s plugged into the outlet in my bathroom, so I’ve got twenty-five feet to turn it off, and now that it’s really starting to annoy me, I throw off the covers, swing my feet over the side of my bed, and step out to turn it off.

And crash.

Well, almost.

I catch myself on the side of my wingback chair, about two feet from my bed right before I’d have landed hard on my right side. I push myself up into a standing position, take a few more steps, and then fall hard into the rocking recliner on my right, but it’s not registering that something’s off. The alarm just keeps ringing, so in my early-morning, pre-6:00am haze, I keep pushing myself upright and stumbling across the room until I’ve almost fallen into my desk on the right, my closet on the right, and finally the right-side of the door-jam into the bathroom.

I hit the “stop” button on my alarm, and it’s finally quiet. Without thinking, I pull the warm water handle of the bathroom faucet so I can wash my face and maybe start to wake up. Eyes closed, swaying slightly, I open the top drawer of the vanity’s cabinets, pull out a headband and hair-tie, and pull my hair back from my face. As I open my eyes to check in the mirror that no hair’s escaped, I notice the room is spinning. Closing my eyes, I feel the ground shifting beneath my feet and nausea hits my stomach. I realize I’m falling to the right again and then it dawns on me that maybe my half-stumbling, half-falling walk across my bedroom wasn’t normal.

I hear my dad moving around in the kitchen, so I shut off the water and gripping the walls, doors, and everything in-between, make my way to the door of my room. Opening it, my dad stops and says, “good morning.” 

“Dad,” I call out, “Watch this.”

And I take a few steps out of my bedroom, into the living room/dining area, and pitch sharply to the right. I barely manage to catch the farmhouse table we sit around for family meals, and through dizzy eyes look at my dad.

I take a few more steps and it happens again. It’s almost comical. It feels like a string is tied to my right wrist and is pulling my body down to the ground with it as I stand and walk. My dad sits his coffee cup on the counter and announces, “I’ll go get your cane out of the attic.”

Oh yay, the cane.  

I remain standing, sort of, at the dining table, more leaning and clutching than standing, and wait for him to return. As I hear the attic door close and my dad comes into the room, I can see the cane I haven’t used in six years in his hand. I actually don’t mind it now, to my surprise. My dad sets it down beside me, but even the cane isn’t enough to help me get to the nearby rocker-recliner in the living room. After several almost failed attempts, my dad grabs me by the shoulders and holds me upright as I make the five steps to the chair.

Finally sitting, my dad says he doesn’t know how to make that breakfast drink I enjoy, a London fog latte, and I say it’s fine, but I could really use some water.

As he hands me a cold bottle of water from the fridge, he says, “well, I don’t even know where to begin with this one.”

I laugh. Neither do I.

I take inventory of my symptoms, pitching to the right, nausea, dizziness, the world moving around me, and I think it sounds like something, but I can’t remember what. My dad asks if I’m going to work, I don’t have to be at work for four more hours, so I tell him I’m not sure, the day is still young, and we’ll take things at the moment they’re at. My dad asks where my phone is, I remember it’s still plugged into the outlet in my bathroom, and let him know. He brings it back to me and says, “better start googling.” I hold my phone and think for a minute, absently staring at the TV, now playing the local news. Finally, I remember what it reminds me of, vertigo. So I google vertigo and yep, all of my symptoms align.

So I start thinking. By this time, I’ve been up for almost an hour. My doctor’s office isn’t open yet, and from my research, it looks like all you can do is wait for it to pass. It could be resulting from something as simple as an ear infection, but it could also be the result of the arachnoid cyst in my brain stem. Episodes like this are always so annoying; I never know if I should go to an urgent care or call the neurosurgeon.

Since I’m feeling a little better, and I realized my headband was still on, my hair was pulled back, and I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet, I decided to do my best to work through my morning routine.

Using the cane, and seeing my dad carefully watch to make sure I was okay, I slowly wobbled my way to my bathroom to move through my skincare routine and brush my teeth. Ten minutes later I slowly make my way back out, move toward the kitchen, and watch the snails speeding by me. It takes a lot of effort and time, but I finally have a latte made and resting on the counter. My dad comes into the kitchen, grabs it off the counter for me, and takes it to the end table next to the chair in my room. During the time it takes me to make the trek back to my room, my dad has gotten my water, some saltine crackers, my phone, laptop, kindle, and tv remotes all set up and ready for me to stay awhile. It’s two hours till work starts, but I can’t even stand on my own, much less drive into work, so I text my boss and call in sick, mentally thanking God that the Board of Directors meeting was pushed from today to next week and that the interns aren’t in on Thursdays.

I pulled out my Bible, do my Bible reading and journaling quiet time, and heard my dad leave for work. My mom and brother were out of town, so I had the house to myself. My phone was making my nausea worse, and holding my neck up made me dizzier, so I turned on the TV, switching over to Amazon Prime, and hit play on the next Eureka episode, letting my head rest against the tall back of the chair. Which is the exact reason why I bought a tall, wingback chair.

As I’m waiting for the show to load, I start to feel that familiar tug try to pull at me. It’s a workday, I should be working. I start to feel a little ashamed of my body but rather than allow the feeling to overtake me, I stop.  

I work hard. When I’m feeling okay and when I’m moderately able, I do my best and I’m a good employee. It might seem like I’m doing nothing right now, but my body needs rest, and the best way I can serve my body at this time and what’s going to allow me to be back at work soon is if I simply sit here and rest. Making that latte exhausted me, and even a little exertion makes me more nauseous. Why inflict that on myself? What good does that do? Why beat myself up emotionally when I already feel so beat up physically? I might have started to feel shame, and yes that was an accurate label for what I was feeling, but that doesn’t mean my feeling is true or accurate, just because I felt it.

It felt like I was flexing a new muscle, as I was reassuring myself. I felt…compassion toward my body, sympathy toward…myself.

And it felt nice.

I watched Eureka all day, drank ginger ale, ate saltine crackers, said yes when people offered to help, ordered food to be delivered so I didn’t make myself worse by cooking something, answered a couple of work calls that came in, and stopped any shame that tried to work its way in.

And it felt good.

I can’t remember a time where I’d been so kind to my body and kind to myself in the midst of an episode like this. In the past, even if I had been trying to start learning to give my body what it needed in times like this I still felt shame that it had times like this. Now I know, I take care of my body, exercise and eat well, get consistent and full nights of sleep, take moments to rest, and sometimes it will still have days like this, and I’ll be kind when it does.  

As I woke up much the same the next day, I knew I’d be spending another day at home. I called and talked with my boss about the plan for the day, rescheduled a couple of meetings I had on the books, sent over the work for the day to the people I manage, and found more ginger ale. I thought about being a leader whose body has days like this. How am I supposed to lead when I can’t know the days I won’t be able to function?

As I thought on it here and there throughout the day, I realized I will need to get really good at communicating, I’ll need to make “how to” guides for every part of my job or ensure it’s otherwise documented in a policy or procedure, I’ll need to be better at planning out work and having those schedules written down, and I’ll need to ensure different people on the team are trained to do different parts of my job. I’ve been thinking of leadership as being the only person who can do the job, and I’m embarrassed to admit that because it means I’ve been operating from an insecure and immature definition of leadership. If I’m the only person that knows how to do things, knows where things are, or knows what’s supposed to happen and when then, of course, I’m going to be anxious and stressed when my body is having a day like this one and of course I’ll feel like I can’t give my body what it needs at that time. The solution is to lead with clarity, transparency, and to prepare for the times someone else will have to take over my responsibilities. It will be what serves the organization best, which is leading well. Besides, I don’t have anything to prove. If someone can step into my job and keep things running while I’m in a hospital or unable to come in, it doesn’t mean I’m replaceable, it means I’ve done my job really well. And if that leads my boss to think I’m replaceable, that’s fine, God’s promised to take care of me, and I’ll lean on that.  

Sitting here, thinking on how I responded to this episode, I feel hopeful. Hopeful that the next illness that strikes, I’ll handle it well. Maybe this healing thing will stick. Sure, there will be some things I’ll need to be reminded of, and I’ll have bad days, but overall, I’m feeling confident, I’m feeling changed.  

At the end of two days I’m finally off the cane, but still pretty nauseous. There’s only one feeling overpowering that. I’m really pleased to say it’s self-compassion.

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