Sunday, March 24, 2019

Keeping Things in Perspective


The other night I was watching the TV show New Amsterdam.  It’s a somewhat different hospital show where the Hospital director is fighting throat cancer while trying to run one of the biggest hospitals in the US.  There are a number of scenes where he hangs out with regulars in the cancer ward while they all get their chemo treatments.   This particular show they were renaming musicals as if they were cancer based.   I was too busy laughing to remember them all but two that I do were Croaklahoma and Mucus Man.    

It reminded me of my twice a week visits to the outpatient cancer center where I would go to get my chemo and blood.   Picture a large room with 20-30 lounge chairs filled with people of all ages/sex/race.   Without patients the place looks like a Lazy-Boy show room.    The nurses had their standard set of questions they would ask when you were settling in.  To tee up the relationship for the next 8 hours I would try to find creative ways to answer them.

Nurse:  “Have you fallen in the last 12 months?” 
Response:  “Only in Love”.  
Nurse:  “Do you have any fear of physical or sexual abuse at home?”
Response:  “Not in the last week”
Nurse:  “Can I get you something to drink”
Response:  “A different bag of blood, this one doesn’t taste good”
Response:  “Bourbon on the rocks”

I once had a pretty young nurse who was all business.  When she asked if she could get me anything.  I figured I’d lighten things up and asked for a kiss.  She looked me straight in the eye and said “I’ll get you another bag of chemo.”.

They say keeping a sense of humor in the tough times is good medicine.    Certainly making jokes about cancer and death would seem inappropriate, but for the patients in the middle of treatment it is way to deal with the stress.    When I was in treatment, I use to make jokes about “kicking the bucket”.   I thought they were hilarious, Pam was not impressed.   

In a lot of instances, I find that humor can take the stress out of an otherwise intense situation.    It was definitely true in business and somewhat true in fighting cancer.  Typically there’s nothing funny about cancer but when you are in the middle of treatment (and even afterwards) the absurdity of the situations you face can be rather humorous.    There was nothing humorous about having a catheter until I realized you can drink all you want and never have to miss a minute of a football game rushing to the bathroom.    You can find an upside to almost everything if you look hard enough.  

I think this carries over to every day normal life as well.     It’s easy to get caught up in the little challenges we face and turn them into big issues that look overwhelming.   Trying to get back to running certainly falls into that category.   Discovering a way to put things in perspective helps me to take some of stress out of the situation.   One trip to a pediatric cancer ward has a way of putting all my challenges in perspective.  That, and a bit of self-deprecating humor goes a long way towards my mental stability (or at least my perceived stability).

I love the Humphrey Bogart quote from the movie “The African Queen”.  “Things are never so bad that they can’t be made worse”.  

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