Who Controls What?

Task 16, April 18 to April 25

“What consumes your mind controls your life.” Anon.

I had an operation this week. A semi-severe one, btw; not life-threatening, but it will leave me with a fantastic scar that I WILL show off to my friends and family (and, oh hell, to strangers as well) whenever the conversation turns to health issues, which it often does in my circle of friends.

But, putting the scarring aside, the run-up to the operation wasn’t pleasant, because a medical procedure, with the visits to a doctor’s office, the blood tests and MRIs, the EEGs, referrals and the endless reiteration of one’s name and date of birth, put me into territory that I couldn’t control, and that is not territory that I am comfortable in…

Because I like to be in control. And when I’m not, I get prickly. Now, I’m not irrational–I understand that there are things that I can control and things I cannot, like whether we binge watch “The Last of Us” (me) or “The White Lotus (significant other); but at least my significant other lets me pretend that I had a choice in the matter, while the medical practitioners that I had to deal with in the months before my procedure were, as only medical practitioners can be, unflinchingly straight-forward, relentlessly bureaucratic, or in more colloquial terms, it’s their way or the highway...

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I get it…for a plethora of reasons (many legal, I suspect), the tail is NOT going to wag the dog in a doctor/patient relationship. But that just made me more anxious as I was being pushed, prodded and poked (in several inconvenient spots) towards O-DAY (operation day), when I would find myself in the ultimate “I’m not in control” situation–being drugged! Are you kidding me?

Needless to say I was a mess when my wife and I showed up at the surgical center at 5:15am. In short order I found myself in a pre-op room, sans clothing and dignity, answering questions about my medications, my allergies, my family, my voting record, my feelings about kale and of course, my name and birth date, over and over–I reached a point where I thought I would explode–why the hell was I here? Why me? Why now?

Then it dawned on me. I had to relinquish control. I had to take a step back, throw my arms up in the air and let them do what they are going to do because I needed the operation–no question about it–and at that point it was going to happen whether I liked it or not.

And it did. Happen, that is.

Later on I read about a distress tolerance skill called Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance is NOT approval, but a form of self-care that emphasizes acknowledging and accepting the current reality, even when it’s painful and undesirable.

And it was. Painful and undesirable. But I survived, and I have a wonderful scar to show off at Happy Hour. Boo-yaw.

Task: Think about what you can control, and what you can’t.