too many dogs
I talked about mission and purpose at our work retreat last month. This, from someone who is searching for a little purpose herself these days, and so my reading materials included Billy Graham’s The Journey, All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Kadison’s College of the Overwhelmed, Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Nemo. Yes, Nemo. I kept it simple.
First, I had them gather in 2’s and share one thing about each other that the rest of us might not know, something that makes them unique. Then we shared with each other. I was pleased people opened up. Then I did my Sunday school thing with excerpts from Simon Birch (now there’s a child who knew his purpose, in spite of others’ doubts along the way) and Tortilla Soup (tying in the family and needing others theme as well as doing what we were meant to do giving us back our “taste.”) And like Sunday school kids, they hollered when I turned off the film. Focus, people, focus.
Yet, I feel like a failure at this purposeful work thing. I try too hard to make each day count as some momentous moment of my life, each encounter, each word, wait, this is the HSP thing, isn’t it, with a lack of estrogen thrown in. focus, focus. On the big picture. Some people are gifted at that. Letting the little things go, seeing the forest, not all the trees.
But let’s not be so negative about HSP’s. Speaking of forests, I saw Prince Caspian last month at the dollar movie and I loved it so much, I cried. The good tears. The LIFE DOES HAVE MEANING kind of tears. The trees and all their individual significance that only an HSP would notice. C.S. Lewis’ imagination captured the human plight of battles with enemies surrounding us, surely defeating us, the camaraderie of our allies, the fighting between us and our allies, our temptations, our weaknesses, our fronts. The roots of trees capturing evil, then the huge running trees “and they will cry out, even the stones will cry out” and “the trees will clap their hands,” are the verses that roared in my head. Aslan the Lion, makes me cry. I see God behind the fur in the way he tumbles playfully with Lucy. And in the way they missed him, only, I’m the one that’s been gone.
Purpose for me now is in the trying, the wanting, the struggling to not struggle so much with it all. Just being is so hard for me. But life does have a funny twist sometimes and as I was finishing up a visit with a former therapist’s housekeeper whom she had brought out to Penitas’ clinic last month, I turned to this healer and mentioned how I missed her remarkable way of summing up life’s patterns or people’s ways. And right there, on the spot, she said one of those amazing phrases, and I felt affirmed. I then affirmed her gift of paraphrasing and bringing closure to challenging life events in this quest for sanity and sense.
Now, I am reading a book on Osler, the great bedside physician. I am thinking I may type up his 9 points for living a full life and put them in my examining rooms.
Manage time well. Find a calling. Find mentors. Be a part of community. Be positive.
Learn and teach. Care carefully. Communicate. Seek balance.
I guess work has been difficult, but in a way that I don’t see. I move from one patient to the next and if there is any time between, I do risk management assessments or QI studies. It’s all got somewhat of a negative trend to it, looking for things that might go wrong in a clinic. Even though I am looking to make things better. Some things do turn out well, like our charts on positive chlamydias, we did good, treatment and prevention –wise. Hard to quantitate “doing good,” isn’t it? I try hard when it’s possible. But it is absolutely impossible to see the “doing good” in medicine on a day to day basis. For an HSP, this is hard to take, knowing we don’t always help someone. Just trying here.
Well, I have one last point to make here. I never liked the phrase, “nervous breakdown.” First of all, there’s no such medical diagnosis. People use the phrase to try and objectify a melt down, those times when they’ve been trying to do too much, didn’t say no enough, perhaps didn’t take care of themselves, perhaps didn’t see it coming, just too busy. Too busy. But it sounds good, doesn’t it? “I had a nervous breakdown.” As though something happened to me outside of my control. That is such bull shit. Well, I had one last Saturday at Penitas. After seeing 4 patients, each with about 6 medical problems, 3 of them chronic and worse, and after racking my brain for the best treatment, then listening some more and talking some more, I put my head on the counter, and cried. Everything just seems too big for me. Too many medical problems and too many mental problems. Too much poverty and too little control over their lives. Too many patients still waiting in the waiting room. Not enough me. I calmly stepped out and called Shirley in. She grounded me for a few minutes. I could have left if I wanted to. But I stayed and things calmed down immediately. One or two problems each, some improvements, some just refills.
There is a breaking point sometimes. Like tonight at the dog park, there were too many new dogs, and there were 2 German Shepherds and 2 Collies and 3 or 4 yelping puppies. Just too many dogs. And sometimes the breaking point is not in the numbers or our own pain, but in the pain we feel for others. But who am I kidding? The pain I felt for my daughter yesterday was perhaps all mine. She can take care of herself, I think. I seem to be the one falling apart rather easily. Let’s review these one more time. This is my mantra for the week.
Manage time well. Find a calling. Find mentors. Be a part of community. Be positive. Learn and teach. Care carefully. Communicate. Seek balance.
9:36:54 PM 
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