Uncertainty

Tim sat across from me in the small exam room. He was a friend, a colleague, and my doctor. He’d seen me for many years. “We’re walking a tightrope,” he said. Tim’s words rang true. We were balancing my many, complex medical problems.

For me, each day had bocame a carefully choreographed dance. Medications, IV antibiotics, a feeding tube, breathing treatments. A series of precisely coordinated steps, all to forestall my death. I learned to duck under the terror, to tamp down my fear.

I’m not sure why I scrawl quotation marks around the word “dead” when it should be bolded or underlined.

During a regular physical two years ago, my internist offhandedly commented that he’d heard lung sarcoidosis can recur. I smiled to myself as I thought how strange he should mention that, exactly fifty years since my own diagnosis with the disease. I remembered its onset as if it were yesterday—bronchitis, Bell’s palsy, the painful bumps of erythema nodosum, general respiratory symptoms, and a positive skin test.

My subconscious is wiser than I am, and I’ve learned to pay attention to what awakens me at 3 a.m. Maybe others have had that experience, too ― no patient, no friend, no one ― has ever complained when I call (after sunrise) and start with, “I woke up this morning thinking about you.”

Part of why the subconscious is wise, I think, is because it gets to work in a brain that has slowed down from the too-busyness of the day. In the stillness of the night, it asks, “What about this?”

Even as a child, I realized that the only constant in life was change. That recognition brought me angst, resulting in many panic attacks. I am a person who likes routine. I am a person who likes to know what tomorrow will bring.

Dear Pulse readers,

I think it’s fair to say that we’re living in uncertain times.

A pandemic, urgent calls for racial justice and an election year all cry for our attention against a backdrop of global warming. The stakes are high. The outcomes are still unknown.

At the same time, in our personal lives, we need to make choices based on the information at hand. It’s not always easy.