Denial
I am not a big advocate of denial. People can waste years of their lives unable to face a difficult truth. I have spun my wheels believing situations are not really so bad. My new AIDS patient is wasting precious time refusing to be tested for HIV and therefore delaying initiation of life-saving treatment. Sometimes though, a situation is so horrible and impossible that some stubborn denial may be all that gets you through.
I have a patient with MS who lives full time in the assisted living ward of the infirmary. Her sentence is such that she will be with us the rest of her life, a long slide toward incapacity. Some people I work with refer to her crime and say that she is getting what she deserves. I do not subscribe to this concept at all. Plenty of good people have MS also and plenty of inmates who have done the same and worse are walking around healthy.
My MS patient is very stubborn and she is in deep denial sometimes. This is what allows her to fight back. If she is loosing dexterity and can't put in her tampon then she blames the brand of tampon, insisting that the prison must have switched makers. They haven't. She will blame her wheelchair, her bed, her shoes, anything.
At one point about a year ago she was bed-ridden. If I found myself at that point I would probably feel like it was hopeless, resign myself to the bed, get pneumonia and die. On a fundamental level she refuses to accept that this disease has ultimate power over her. She has fought back to be more or less self-sufficient, even taking a few steps with her walker when transferring from wheelchair to bed. I have to admit admiration for her in this accomplishment.
Her right leg is worse than her left, weaker and not as apt to take direction from her. She will tell me every night how stubborn that leg is, "but I'm more stubborn than that leg," she assures me. I tell her I believe her. I've seen the results. She believes every day that she can beat MS. Everyday that she puts her pants on by herself, goes out to her classes, and goes to chow she does.
posted by flying carpet @ 10:03 PM
1 Comments:
Karma can be a mean bitch that is for sure. I have no thoughts on the "getting what she deserves" thing. I am always too busy trying to keep an eye on my own karma to think about other people's situations. But something interesting that I have been thinking about lately, and that your post really made me see, is the difference between "denial" which creates resistance-- and makes whatever you are struggling with stronger-- and what I call "refocusing" which is what I think she does. Re-orienting your own perception of reality so that you are stronger than whatever you face, and your obstacles are not overwhelming (ie, the wrong tampon brand is alot easier to fight than the disease of MS, etc). Your life is very interesting to me.
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