Wellness is the complete integration of body, mind and spirit-the realization that everything we do, think, feel, and believe has an effect on our state of well-being.
Greg Anderson (https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/wellness-quotes)
Still Retracting
Man! Sometimes I am amazed at how, despite all my own growing and evolving, I retract back into a pathetic state of shame and fear when I have to advocate for my own health. My health seeking experiences in the past have been traumatic...trauma on top of trauma, wounding on top of wounding. That sounds so dramatic I know ...but that is the truth of my physical and mental world experience. There are scars clinging to me. Shame and Fear are the results of trauma tissue and it is hard to see beyond them when the scars gets poked. Every time I have to access the health care system...it gets poked. I retract back into that trauma experience...instead of expanding forward. Sigh....I have some work to do.
Healing Through Writing
I have tried to heal in many ways from trauma over the years and have come so very far. My healing usually involves writing and I have written books on transcending trauma. And I have written books on my experience seeking health...a series under the title: "Diary of an Interesting Patient" ...that have proven to be very cathartic. I have also begun writing a book and sending out proposals on improving communication in the health care system...on putting the "care" back in health care when relating to patients and each other within a team. (My inspiration for that book has come from years teaching Communications classes to heath care students as well as my own experience witnessing and personally being on the receiving end of this communications process. ) So writing definitely helped pull me so far into expansion. I am so grateful for that.
Warning: Long Personal Story Ahead
And, I warn you, that I am about to use the cathartic medium of writing to work some things out here. So you may or may not choose to read on as I relay a long winded "personal story" :) I do so, so I can get beyond it. I also hope it may help those of you who are among the many who have had similar experiences.
I have come so far
I have been able to expand beyond my perception of trauma through the spiritual work I have been doing over the years. I see how far I have come. It has been so liberating and wonderful ...taking me so far away from my retracted mode. I truly am evolving!
But....there is always a but, isn't there?
The Health Care System as a Trigger for Retraction
I still retract into an earlier stage of development whenever I have to access the health care system. If I have to step up and go beyond just expressing my signs and symptoms to someone, to actually advocating for myself...man... part of me retracts like a hand away from a flame. It is just a habitual reflex to become that little girl again that was never allowed to be sick.
It is not the health care system and especially not the people in it that causes me the "problem" accessing and advocating. It is my mind and an inherit belief system so ingrained inside me that says, "It is wrong for me...not anyone else...just me... to bother busy people with my problems. If I am going to bother anyone it better be for something damn serious and if it isn't serious enough there will be hell to pay!!" I reek of that belief when I deal with physicians especially.
As if I was manifesting expected responses because of my belief there was "hell to pay" over the years. In the later years, it came in the form of shaming. No one else may have been reduced to a shamed and frightened child by the reactions my health seeking received...but because of my past I was. For example, I once had an internal med sit across from me and call me a "liar" because I was telling him my sister's autopsy report said she died of a fatal arrhythmia. I sat thee in front of him as he called me this, more than once during that visit, feeling like a disobedient child. I had to go home and check to be sure that is what the autopsy said because I almost believed he was right. He wasn't.
Another told me I had a problem "seeking tests" I didn't need and wasting valuable health care resources unnecessarily and dangerously. I was having chest pain at the time (as well as joint pain) that would knock me down and heart rates dropping into the 30's and jumping up for no reason above the 200 range...I was so dizzy and tired some days I couldn't get off the couch. I never asked for one test...even though many were performed. All I wanted was to know what to do about it. But I was left to believe I was just making it all up and wasting resources.
During one emergency room visit when I had to take nitro almost a dozen times throughout the day ( it would work when I took it but the pain kept coming back) another internal med slipped a folded piece of paper in my hand as a diagnosis. I "googled" it when I was released home by him...as he instructed me to do. The diagnosis was "Fat Folder Syndrome."
It wasn't until I began to faint around the same time "more believable" family members started having observed issues with their heart rates (including V tach and atrial fib and flutter...fib and flutter showed up on some of my tests more than once but I was told it was just muscle twitching and artifact even though I was pushing the button recording symptoms at the time) and three siblings had infarcts in their 50's that someone said, "Well maybe she is telling the truth." And even then it was a big "maybe". My integrity was constantly being questioned because of the size of my chart.
Twenty-some years after my health seeking began, I was given three fairly minor diagnosis', each from a different specialist, that each by themselves mean nothing but together can explain my symptoms enough to get adequate treatment. But I really had to fight my way through shame and fear and the assumptions of others to get those. There is still enough external question and doubt about me having a "heart problem" that I prefer not to speak of it anymore. It was all too traumatic and exhausting as well as deeply scarring.
Sigh!
If my series, "Diary of an Interesting Patient," ever gets published, please read it. It is not as whiny as all the above makes it seem lol...It is actually more about the learning and the grace all this experience has provided me, taking me farther from ego and closer to God. :)
Of course....I have not healed completely...thus my relaying a long boring sordid history here. Even though it is all in the past and just "story", as true as it may be, I felt I needed to. Why?
Accessing And Advocating Again
Because once again I am needing to advocate for my health and this time I want to do it differently. I want to learn from my mistakes. I need to let go of my past experiences and the triggers that bring me back to retraction once and for all. I can use this experience to find a way to walk through shame and fear into Love for myself, the system and all those in it, and into a wellness I need to believe I deserve! I will not retract again! It just takes too much from my life experience when I do. I want to expand through this. :)
So...
I made a second call to the breast clinic ( and it was hard to get past shame and fear to do so but I did). I spoke to a nurse ( I love nurses! And not just because I used to be one lol). I said: "I am just wondering about this test that got denied ...I still have this thickening and am now having discomfort in the area." I stressed that "it is probably just ductal ectasia" but that I want someone to tell me that. She attempted to clarify by asking if I wanted the mammogram...and for a moment I slipped back to the accusation placed upon me years ago by the internal med who diagnosed me as a test seeker...and I nearly retracted and hung up...but I didn't. I grounded myself in breath and just said "I don't care if the mammogram ever gets done...I just want someone to tell me this is just ductal ectasia." She was very kind and understanding and spoke to the surgeon who is going to make a second request for a diagnostic left breast mammogram based on my reporting a change in sensation.
This is the very same thing my GP wanted done over a month ago. Imagine...going full circle, creating a month of shame and fear for me, and extra headache for an overtaxed system when it was all so unnecessary. Someone else's ego got in the way. Whomever won't be happy when I show up for this test if I am even permitted to. I anticipate that ego will feel the sting of needing to prove it was right and in order to do so someone will have to be wronged. It will likely be me. :) I will prepare myself for that. Sigh!
A Need for Healing
Anyway...it is what it is. There is no problem...just a need for healing. The only healing that I need to focus on...is not in the health care system or the individuals who work in it...but in me. I have to begin changing my own core beliefs around so I know I have a right to use this system...to know I am worthy of medical validation and care.
I, as all of you do, have a right to wellness. That wellness is much more than just having a lump diagnosed as nothing in order to give us peace of mind. It involves expanding beyond shame and fear into the life and the Love that is waiting for us on the other side.
All is well in my world!
Just got a call as I was finishing up this entry...the test is tomorrow afternoon. :) Now I don't know if I am more worried about something showing up or not showing up after all that lol. It will be as it is.
All is well!
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