Waves up on waves

My mom had back surgery this week.

After years of crippling pain, she made it to the top of the list, and had major back surgery. We believe that this launches her into a new lease on life!!

She’s walking straighter and more comfortably even just a few days.  It’s remarkable what modern medicine can do. She’s grateful, I’m grateful. We are amazed and relieved.

Also, this week, I found out, for the first time, that dad can make a pretty table all by himself.  I went to their place for breakfast yesterday. Cheese sliced on a plate, orange juice in a wine glass, oranges cut up, all with beautiful china.  Who knew?

He grew up in an age when men didn’t do it…but he had it in him all along!

Men, big tip here: When you don’t just make a meal, but make the table pretty, the ladies swoon.

Little details like folded napkins matter.

Elegance speaks volumes.

Nuff said about that.

As we sat at the table, she talked about her experience of the week.  The admitting process, pre-op, being in surgery (she missed everything after the anesthetic took effect) and the recovery room…saying so many good things about the experience, the professionalism and kindness of hospital staff.

This surgery experience’s roughest spots wasn’t pain from the surgery, or the challenge of rehab, or anything directly related to major surgery related to an excruciating back condition.

To be sure, the cutting open of her body and the fairly drastic surgery that removed chunks of bone was a big deal. But she knew it would be hard, and she was prepared for that.

The roughest spots of the week were much more mundane:

1. My mom was a nurse before retirement.  She knows how she was trained.  On her first night after surgery, she waited for 4 hours for a nurse to come check on her so she could ask for pain meds. She wanted to “not be any trouble” so mom avoided ringing the bell and waited for the nurse to come when she had time.  When she couldn’t stand it any more, she rang the bell to ask for them…and the nurse reprimanded her for not ringing the bell. My mom is a sensitive soul, and it hurt that she was criticized when she’d tried so hard to be helpful. She remembers being scolded for trying to be kind.
2. The ward didn’t have the type of painkiller pills that she was prescribed.  They didn’t even have one step down painkiller meds…so they gave her three pills of the two step down painkiller meds. These pills weren’t coated to protect her gut…so three pills dissolved on the way down to her stomach creating severe heart burn for hours. It made her nauseous and sick. She was miserable. She could hardly wait to get home to use the kind of painkillers the doctor ordered.
3. Her roommate had his days and nights switched up.  The gentleman snored all day, and was up all night.  The other part of being up was going to the bathroom every hour…which involved much grunting and shuffling.  He moaned intermittently.  All. Night. Long.She was exhausted…not from the surgery, but from her roommate. He was confused–he did nothing with malicious intent–but knowing that didn’t make the night hours drag by any faster.**
4. My mom is that person who is always dropping off flowers and cards and food when someone is going through something.  She emails and texts people when they face a challenge so they know she is thinking of and praying for them.  It’s a lifestyle for her. So, when she had this surgery, tons and tons of people just naturally reciprocated out of their affection for her.  Flowers and fruit and cards everywhere.  Texts, emails, phone calls piled into her phone. People calling while I was there visiting.  My mom is the exceedingly grateful type…but she is recovering from surgery.  During my visit yesterday, she was struggling with how to respond with thanks for all the kindness.  She was worried that some wouldn’t be acknowledged in a timely way, and that there would be hurt. It was stressin’ her.

I found it interesting to hear how the hardest parts of her week  didn’t have to do with the “big deal”–the major surgery.  Rather, it was the side challenges that came with it that no one could have predicted, that she was reviewing and grappling with.

She was prepared and had braced herself for the big hard.

She handled it like a trooper.

It was the flotsam of the week that were weighing her down.

Even the kindnesses of the week had a weight on her that no one would have intended.

I thought back to my time at the ocean a few weeks ago, spending hours in the sea. We would be bob in the waves…sometimes letting them pull us into shore, or other times diving into them, other times just working to stay in place but feeling the rise and fall as they came along past us. Hours of time spent with the waves…

I noticed that the big waves were made of smaller waves, and the smaller waves had loads of ripples in them.

There was no such thing as a single big wave…the big waves are layered with medium waves, which are layered with smaller waves.

Life’s like that, I think.  Smaller and medium waves being part of the big waves.

…and I think sometimes we get caught off guard because we brace for the large wave, but get sunk by the inevitable medium and small waves that happen.  We aren’t expecting those–we’ve been too busy anticipating the big waves. and the medium and small waves happen that we weren’t expecting.  We prepare for the big wave…and that preparation allows us to handle it well.  We knew it was coming. But we can’t prepare for the inevitable lesser (but still impactful) waves that are a part of the big wave.

The smaller waves in life are the ones that actually broadside us.

We knew to look out for The Big One.

But we are so busy responding the big challenges of life, that the little challenges that sneak in alongside the big ones almost sink us.

That’s happened to you too, right?

• Losing the job means all sorts of things that are big and scary. One side effect is less meals out…and suddenly the friend that you’ve gone weekly for wings with drops off. Doesn’t return calls anymore. You hadn’t counted on losing the friend when you lost the job.
• You’ve been battling the clinical anxiety with medication, therapy, exercise.  You’ve been kicking anxiety’s butt with deliberately doing all the recommended strategies. You’re feeling good about it. But then the hot water tank goes…and the anxiety about because something suddenly going wrong in your house unexpectedly highjacks you. And then you have a fight with your spouse and that gets you worked up too.
• You’re dealing with cancer in the family.  Lots of doctor’s appointments.  Chemo. Radiation. Side effects.  You’re handling it, staying on top of it.  Expecting the challenges and dealing with them. And then family calls and tells you that you haven’t been communicating enough with them about treatment…they are feeling rejected by you. And it’s the family complaint that sends you over the edge.

There is a strong temptation to get down on oneself when you are worn down by the little challenges.  

We forget the toll that the big wave takes.

The challenge is to extend self compassion to allow those medium and little challenges to affect us without beating ourselves up for it.

Who can run a short sprint at their best when in the middle of a long marathon?

When you're trying to soar like an eagle in the middle of a huge life challenge, you're vulnerable to being nibbled to death by ducks. Click To Tweet

The little stuff matters and is harder to deal with when you’re already challenged by bigger stuff. It’s easier to take the little stuff more personally, be more sensitive…simply because buffering against the big stuff increases your vulnerability in general.

Struggling with the small challenges in life doesn’t make you weak.  You’re not a basket case.  You’re just dealing with life when your hands are already full.

Are you able to let the medium and small stuff feel really hard the middle of the huge hard?

**and in true mom fashion…when I ran this blog by her before publishing, she emailed me to say she loved it and was grateful (of course) but was concerned that it put a negative light on her care.  She wanted everyone to know that the ward was great and the everyone did the best they could. She is grateful to the nurses who looked after her.