P is for Perspective

Not having been able to write my blog for a couple of days, I now appreciate how much I miss it and how rewarding and/or therapeutic it is. I went into hospital for a lung biopsy on Tuesday, which was supposed to be a day treatment, just a few hours. However, the biopsy caused a 'partial collapsed lung' (I've put that in inverted commas because I still find calling something partially collapsed wrong!) anyway... it just meant that they wanted to keep me in overnight for observation and put me on oxygen, so I was released at about 14.00 Wednesday instead of Tuesday.

Having to stay in hospital was annoying for more than one reason: firstly because my mum arrived Tuesday and the plan was that I would be there to meet her from Schiphol and would have one full day (Wednesday) of non-medical stuff before chemo starts today. Secondly...well, just being in hospital is reason enough isn't it? I was in a room with 3 others, all quite a lot older, a couple of whom looked seriously unwell. I realise that they wouldn't be there if they were healthy specimens, but the guy in the bed opposite me couldn't really move without help and his speech was really impaired so it was hard to understand him. His wife was by his bedside most of the time, feeding him and helping him move or just comforting him and interpreting for him. I remember thinking she was like a parent who, after hearing two unintelligible grunts from their toddler, proceeds to explain in about 5 sentences what their child has just 'said'! I felt really sorry for them. The lady next to me was probably in her sixties and had some problem with her knee and was in constant 'severe, almost unbearable' pain and kept calling herself a 'junkie'... pronounced in Dutch (yunky) which sounds stupid I think (sorry!) to everyone she spoke to on the phone (and she spoke to a lot of people!). It took her bloody ages to actually work out how to answer her phone each time but when she did, she made full use of time and of course at "train carriage" volume... i.e. VERY LOUD!!! What was even worse was her toilet etiquette; she wasn't very mobile so had a commode next to her bed, which is understandable. What isn't understandable, or forgivable was the fact that she didn't even use the curtain! I mean, of course you can hear everything anyway, the least you could do is make a pretence of having some privacy by closing the curtain!

So apart from entertainment value and distraction, or disturbance (snoring and bodily function noises at night...) another thing sharing the ward with other patients did was make me look at myself and try to imagine how I appear to others. When I looked at my 3 cell-mates, I was definitely the 'healthiest looking' and most mobile (you know the standards are low when you get a sense of pride from being able to get out of bed and go to the bathroom!) and that made me think about perspective; am I as sick as him/her? Do I look as ill as they do? What can I do that they can't?

Then I took the perspective idea further; my situation is crap, but I have a huge loving family and network of friends, I have a home, a job I love, enough material possessions to provide entertainment (iPad, books, music, etc.) and things planned to look forward to (visitors, trips home, concerts, dinners out etc.) and am lucky enough to be living in a country where the healthcare is excellent. What about refugees who are risking their lives every day to get to countries which in actual fact, despite providing them with safety in terms of lack of war, are far from the paradise many of these people expect or hope for? Is my situation worse than those who are fleeing from war zones, or have been abused, or neglected, or are permanently homeless, without family, without friends, isolated, suffering from mental illness which will never disappear?

Of course, you can apply this to every situation. E.g. I complain about the fact that my students are really lazy and disrespectful and I do not feel they appreciate the time I spend planning my lessons. For me, at that time, it feels significant and affects my mood, motivation, self-confidence, attitude to the group, maybe it affects my free time because I might lose sleep over it. Looking at it from a someone else's perspective (e.g. from an unemployed person who has been on benefits for years and cannot afford to feed their family) this is so minor that it is not a problem. What are you complaining about? You have a job, which pays well, there are one or two classes out of your whole week which are unpleasant but get over it! This applies to everyone; all our problems, large or small, matter to us. They might not be deemed as 'serious' as other problems but that is a question of perspective. If having to give a presentation causes you to have palpitations, not sleep for days before it, feel sick, not be able to eat, and generally feel extremely stressed then it is quite a serious problem. To an outsider 'giving a presentation' would be stress-free so they might find it hard to appreciate that it is a problem. I have experienced it recently when people avoid telling me their news/worries because they think it is trivial compared to what I am going through. I'm not saying that being nervous about giving a presentation and having lung cancer are equally as serious (!) but what I mean is that it's all about the effect it has on the person involved. If it is important enough to you, regardless of how minor it might be perceived by others, then it is still a problem, no less valid than anyone else's.

And a final note, a poignant example of how one problem sometimes does need to be seen in the context of the bigger picture is the result of the presidential election; words do fail me here, (like they do him sometimes and he just keeps bumbling on and making up words). In the context of this election, I feel truly relieved that I am not an American, or living in America! Maybe that relief will be short-lived because the effects of this offensive, tango-coloured, second-hand car salesman-esque moron will be felt all over the world. That really is a tragedy.