The Gift

Where I work in a fitness center there is a member that caused me to pause the first time I saw him.  I had only been working there a short while when he crossed my path.  He didn’t recognize me, nor did I expect him to.  I recognized him immediately and just as immediately had to deal with unpleasant emotions.  This member had been my doctor at least one and a half decades earlier.  He called himself an internist, but he was really just a GP with a one man practice. I’ll call him Bob, not his real name of course.  I’d guess he’s currently in his 70s and likely retired.

He puts an immense importance on detail, at least when it comes to his workout, walking around with a virtual notebook in which he records every set, repetition, weight, and probably heart rate – every visit.  I would suspect that he is not a particularly spontaneous individual and likes the control that comes from compartmentalizing specifics.  He wasn’t my physician long, maybe 3 years or so.  I saw him infrequently and therefore cannot honestly say whether he is (or was) good at what he did relative to his peers.  I do know his one employee, his nurse/receptionist, was so unpleasant that we’ll just refer to her as nurse Ratched.

My animosity toward this man (and his sidekick) evolved from my last communication with them both.   I got sick – very sick.  I had flu-like symptoms which over a period of a couple of days would crescendo to levels of crappiness I couldn’t recall reaching before.  I resisted but finally called Bob’s office and asked to come in.  Miss Ratched receptionist switched to nurse Ratched and said coming in probably wasn’t necessary and I should first try a liberal application of aspirin and clear liquids.  At that point I was actually getting too weak to consider arguing. 

After another half day of feeling really bad I called back and asked if I couldn’t come in to see Dr. Bob as soon as possible.  I was rebuked for not waiting long enough to give aspirin and soup time to work.  I then started to plead (an embarrassing thing to recall).  Ratched finally said she’d talk to the Doc and he would call me back.  He did and essentially continued to rebuke me for my insistence and lack of metal, I suppose, for not dealing better with a simple flu.  He ended by saying I could come in…if I really had to.  It was the last words I would ever hear him speak.

Going to an emergency room didn’t seem like an option at the time.  Bob had convinced me that it was an ordinary illness and, besides, there isn’t too much in life I hate more than a hospital emergency room.  I felt lost and decided to ride it out. 

I stayed in bed maybe a couple of more days before I started to feel better, with one notable condition – I lost most of my hearing.  More accurately I lost some range to my hearing entirely.  This continued a week even as the rest of me began to feel quite normal.  I remember driving around in my little Ford pickup and having it sound like I was driving a Mercedes C-Class.  I wasn’t worried assuming the hearing would come back in time, which it did.  However, when it did come back something remained:  a loud “ringing” in my ears.  I had developed Tinnitus (pronounce tin-ah-tus or tin-eye-tus, either way).  It’s a non-threatening malady which is relentless and incurable, and can drive some people into mental illness.

There is also no magic pill to make it go away.  The only method that had any success was an odd one: it suggested that the victim of the “ringing” simply not listen to it.  It was odd because it isn’t a ringing that you actually “hear”.  Rather it’s an internal noise, not unlike that sound you hear by placing conch shells on both hears…only louder.  The idea was to accept the reality of the noise, then just pay no attention to it.  That sounded absurd.  Yet it wasn’t.  It took me months, but I learned to do it.  The hardest part was, of course, accepting it.  Now when it’s quiet and I’m suddenly aware of the loud “ringing” I stop, listen for a while as an observer, then get on with life.  The ringing has no power over me, so it’s pretty much the same as not being there at all.

More importantly, it taught me, in a very dramatic way, the importance of both accepting and not resisting.  One can intellectually know that not resisting and consequently accepting robs the force behind misfortune or conflict. Therefore, not being controlled by circumstance frees one to find solutions to deal with it.  However, it sometimes takes a real experience to make such knowledge intuitive.  This happened to me with my tinnitus and it was a gift.  It allowed me to have a multitude of similar experiences since and life, in general, is just plain better. 

Now when I see Dr. Bob I still think of him as a horse’s ass, but I also smile as he passes me with all his little notes and figures and silently say thanks.