First I want to start this response off by commenting on how cool I think he ended this section of the book. “I make another vet appointment; I will help him sleep. As my hand rests gently on his side, we wait for the injection. He is quiet, his breathing shallow. Maybe I just met this cat; maybe we are old friends; maybe it doesn’t matter. I wonder as the flicker leaves his eyes. I am stricken with unrealized grief. It is time for yoga” It seems like when the life or light left out of the cat it transferred to him. Though he was stricken by grief it was what he needed to start trying to live again.
This blog will a little different than the last because I want to address a concern I have about the hospital staff. This issue I have with the hospital staff was present in the part one but so many other things were present in that part as well. It bothered me how uncaring some of the physicians seemed. I understand the need to not foster false hope in your patients but goodness sakes he was a child still; there are better ways of dealing with a child sensibility than to tell them “nope what you feel isn’t real…it is all in your head…..get over it”. This is a prime example of planting a negative seed. The crucial moment between beginning to live and struggling to survived and the doctor pushed him firmly to the struggling to survive with the simple statement “what you are feeling isn’t real….it is better if you forget you felt it”. People in general do not understand how detrimental saying something like can be to a fragile person or even a strong person. That one statement…that one negative healing story followed him for twenty-two years. Twenty-two years of him saying to himself “what I am feeling is not real…..I should just forget about”. It is no surprised that he felt disconnected with his body and with his action because in his mind…in that negative silence it didn’t matter what he could have, would have, should have felt because it wasn’t real anyway. The worst thing that can happen to a negative seed is for it to get fertilized with more negativity. I could have kicked the males PT butt for one he needed to understand everybody heals different. He should have also known that the worst thing you can do is compare one patient to another in a negative light. This type of discouragement only intensifies the feeling of disconnect. However, telling a child (which I know it, was a different PT but still) “you tricked us with fake foot movement....you didn’t really move your foot…….so forget it happened focus on your arms” was unnecessary. First of all he didn’t do it on purpose so say “you trick us” implies that he did(Matt points this out in the book). Secondly, the PT not only re-established what you feel isn’t real but they also planted the seed of what you do isn’t real either. The doctor and PT effectively said to Matt and made him believe that “what you think you feel and what you think you have accomplished is not…therefore it is not important so you should just forget about it and focus on what everyone else knows is best for you”. So moral of this rant is mind your words because someone may live there life by them one day.
Speaking of a small action affecting someone’s life; “This second issue came down to an ill-advised decision by a sand-truck driver not to sand on the morning of November 26, 1978. He hit the snooze button and rolled over-beginning the innocent unfolding of an accident. The result was not one, but three cars slid down that embankment within a span of twenty minutes. Our family sustained the only serious injuries”, no one would have thought that one hit of the snooze button caused three wrecks, two deaths, one paraplegics and a family course change forever. The moral of this story you are given responsibility for a reason…..the reason being someone is counting on you to do them.
There are so many things I want to talk about with this session the presence of dreams again this time as a helpful source of information instead of a way to comfort. I could also talk about Matt return to school and his “relatively normal life”. I could talk about how the quote “It takes more than three years, but I am ready to acknowledge just how damage I am, how difficult my life is. My will is tired, my body is tired, and my mind finally admits to living in a protracted survival mode. It is not a relatively normal life.” I could say so much about that statement but I will only say this……is at the moment you finally admit you are not okay and you are not fine that you can start moving towards being okay and fine. What I want to spend my last couple of sentences talking about is James. James the only person who walked away with nothing but a lot of emotional trauma and no one to see it or help him through it. I want to dedicate some part of this blog to him because before Matt brought it up……James was just the person in the background nothing happened to. I can’t even begin to express how sad I feel for James now the person who suffered because he was healthy. The son that came out healthy…… so he should help his mom and younger brother. The son who came out healthy……..so he shouldn’t get any type of financial settlement. The son whose trauma is only on the inside so nobody notices he needs as much help and acknowledgement as Matt. He needs to live a “relatively normal” life as well. My heart goes out to James. I hope he found the positive healing story he needed as well.
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