From my dear friend Judi while we were in LR
From my dear friend Judi while we were in LR
“There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.” – Bill McKibben
When Dave and I were in Little Rock during the holidays in 2008, he was emotionally and physically struggling. He was sad, some would argue depressed, in pain, insecure, frightened, unhappy, etc. I remember the day we were doing his first of two Stem Cell Transplants. It was December. He had just recovered from the collection and now he was slammed again with another four days of high dose chemotherapy. He was incoherent most of the time, and continued to be very introverted and disengaged with anyone else around us.
As we were waiting in our room, alone, for his stem cells, which I was told would be very anti-climatic, and it was, there were Christmas Carolers on the floor singing songs. We could hear them. Dave began to weep and motioned for me to close the door. He just couldn’t bear it.
I understood. But I felt sad, that he was so sad. I didn’t know what I could do to bring him out of it, to help him see all the things we could be grateful for. Sometimes, you just have to wallow in it for a while I think. Its OK, he was entitled. These were his feelings and they were real and true for him (albeit exasperated exponentially by loads of drugs). He wasn’t even “up to” having a conversation about it to help feel better. He wasn’t there yet and I needed to just BE there for him. No judgement, no anger, just BE THERE FOR HIM. So I closed the door and sat with him, in complete utter silence, until they came in to give him his stem cells.
A couple of days later his mother commented to me that she was worried about Dave, he sounded so bad on the phone, couldn’t “they” give him something to SNAP him out of it. I tried not to be offended, I tried to understand. She’s on the other end of a long distance phone line “hearing” her baby boy and she was worried. I enlightened her as best I could that Dave had just undergone four days of very powerful chemotherapy and he’s not likely to feel very good physically or emotionally after something like that. That perhaps she could just talk to me for a few days until he is feeling a little better, and no, I didn’t know how long that would take.
When Dave did come out of it, and he did, I said, “You know, your Mom is pretty worried about you.” He was perplexed. One of the things I have noticed about all this chemo stuff, Dave has complete and utter amnesia on a whole lot of it! It blows my mind sometimes. Anyway, he was surprised, so I recounted for him how he had been the last few days and that she was thinking they should give him something to “snap out of it”.
Dave is not a particularly humorous guy as a rule. But with his mother he is unrelenting. He will call and disguise his voice or pretend to be his brother, among other things. He loves pulling her chain and its cute. So he called her and said, “Hey Mom, I was thinking, I should ask the doctors for some Happy Pills. You know I can get anything I want here! They’ll give me ANYTHING Mom. What do you think? Should I order up some Happy Pills?” I was dying. I was motioning Dave to stop, that he was going to get me in trouble. He refused and he walked away from me on the phone, having fun, playing with his mother.
What a relief, even if I did get in trouble with his mother, which I didn’t.
My view was that it was a completely and appropriate situation for Dave to feel the way he did. I observed him and granted him a lot of space to feel however he wanted. When it seemed appropriate I would gently try to move him along to a better emotional place. I notice in our society that we often will take a pill for every unwanted, uncomfortable, emotion that comes our way. The trick, if you will, is to figure out if its appropriate for what is going on. If it is, I recommend, in my non medical capacity, that you NOT do that. You simply get through it. You’ll be better off then to try to mask it. Its better to confront it head on. However, if it goes on and on and on and on, and begins to not seem appropriate then yes, something needs to be done. But I recommend trying to talk about it as the next step. And don’t evaluate what the person is sharing with you, just listen. Sometimes that is the hardest thing to do and yet it is by far one of the most valuable things you can do. Just listen. Don’t judge. Acknowledge what they are saying. “I understand.” From there you can begin to lightly suggest other ways to look at it, or how you are feeling, being very gentle. I find typically that one of the partners has to pick up the other one for a while and then it swaps. As a caregiver you may have to do this a bit more during this than in the past. I’m incredibly proud of Dave, and his mother. This was not easy for them and they have both come through it extremely well, sans the “happy pills”.
