I’ve been in my health crisis for over a year now. I think it was November 2023 that I learned for certain I would need heart surgery. So much has happened since then, even I can hardly remember it all. Soon I will have a second open heart surgery. It’s getting closer.
For weeks now, I have thought my surgery was imminent. It needs to be soon. But then it is not. I get slower. I try not to alarm anyone so I say I am like an old turtle. This is not a frightening image. But I am getting anxious. I have felt this way before and I know what this is.
As time goes by, the term “open heart surgery” becomes literal. My heart is too open. I feel too much. Everything is sharp. Especially words. After all, I’m still a word girl. This morning, I read the phrase “bed blocker” used to refer to elderly, vulnerable patients in hospital awaiting long term care. How awful is that? Truly heinous. This is how frail people are viewed? I guess so. This is, therefore, how I am viewed. I am a wrench thrown into the machine, an ailing human screwing up the system, a scheduling problem.
People don’t understand the liminality that illness brings. They can’t fathom vulnerability if they’ve always been well. They fear suffering more than anything, believing it will be unendurable. They cannot imagine joy can break through. So they turn away. First from suffering, then from any pain at all, then from discomfort and eventually even from mere inconvenience. I understand. To be inconvenienced is one step closer to discomfort, one step closer to pain, and one step closer to suffering. They want a buffer. This is how I have come to understand ableism. It’s part of the buffer. When I see it this way, I can forgive people’s ableism. But that doesn’t mean I don’t expect people to do better.
We are all human. We are all frail. We are all vulnerable. Suffering is inevitable. It is as inevitable as joy.
I’ll write again in a few months. Meanwhile, I’ll be attuned to joy. I hope you will be too.
I highly value and appreciate your blog content Jane. Thank you for addressing ableism, suffering and joy. Your wordsmith excellence adds a graceful dimension to your testament of vulnerability. I look forward to your next one in a few months.
Such a powerful statement! I’m sharing it widely. Thank you, Jane, yet again.
Love you.
And love your choice to find words to describe the feelings you are living with. And then sharing them.
‘Bed blocker’ is a rational word choice for someone at a desk looking at numbers and trying to create solutions.
Until someone steps up and shares what the word means to a real live person in the bed, and the implications of what it says about society, we can’t become empathetic and grow. (And I believe even in the end of days we need to grow).
Life is a series of revelations where we come to understand what it feels to be the other. I have never been tall or black or blonde or Korean or homeless or a Capricorn but I know a lot more about it than I did when I was born. Thanks for your insights into being ill, frail and vulnerable.
Jane, the way you choreograph your feelings with your wordsmith excellence is profound. Thank you for your courage to address these difficult topics you live with daily. Thank you for the vital reminder that we are all human, all frail…vulnerable and that suffering and joy are indeed both inevitable. I look forward to your next post in a few months. Warmest regards.