The Inside Out of Caring

Life can be going along just great, when all of a sudden out of the blue it hits you: a pain in the chest that just does not go away, a wave of nausea, becoming diaphoretic and your worse fear happens: a myocardial infarction. The 5 minutes of denial quickly move into 10 minutes of terror as your colleague drives you to the heart hospital, and you hope you can make it as the pain continues to get worse. Your colleague tries to reassure you, but you know she is concerned and you try your best not to scare her.

Hurried from the car into the emergency department, taken right to an examination room and you hear your colleague breathe a sigh of relief as she recognizes the nurse caring for you. She tells you he is good; just let him do his job and I as a patient relax and just let go.

There is no more control, there is no more being a nurse, there is just letting go and allowing the people around me do their job, which is to "care"for me. A whole new understanding of "caring"rose within me and the illusion that each one of us has that we are in control was suddenly dissipated. We are not in control. So why have we put so much stress on ourselves, trying to control so much of our lives? When in reality the best any of us can do is to let go; to do the best we can and then just trust. How A much less stress would each of us have if we could or would just let go?

It was decided very quickly that I had an evolving myocardial infarction and needed to get to the cardiac catheter laboratory immediately. Once there, it was found that my left anterior descending artery (known as the widow maker) was over 90% blocked. The medical team was able to open this with a balloon and then place a stent within it. My life was saved but it was changed forever.

Through this experience, I learned much about understanding caring at a deeper level. I knew a lot about caring before this incident. I was a good nurse and I knew how to care for patients. I found that being a patient in a life-threatening situation and needing to let go of all control took me to a much different place-a place of love, a place of trust, a place where there is no fear. There needs to be the essence of resolve to do the best you can with what you are given and to let others do the same. Wow!! To experience caring and love from the perspective of a patient resulted in my becoming a more compassionate, caring nurse.

I also learned a deeper level of caring for self. I knew how to do that, after all I had been teaching it and writing about it for several years. And I lived what I taught. I felt I had to be truly authentic as I walked the talk, practiced what I preached, and in many ways was a role model for self-care. However, even though I took care of myself, I still had a heart attack. So what was that about?

I took this opportunity to really ask the question, "What am I to learn from this experience?"I believe that if you can understand the learning from an experience, you will not need to repeat it. And, I did not want to repeat this experience.

So in that question I found that I had done much for self-care over the years; however, many of my self-care practices, especially the ones that really balanced and helped me center, had gone by the wayside. I was talking a good talk, but I was not doing them as consistently as I had desired. This was leading to a type of stress that was not good for me. It was a loss of resilience that is the ability to let small things remain small things. My struggle to be perfect was a deeply held belief. feeling that only perfect was good enough was still driving me. I had even used the very words: "when you compare yourself to perfect, you will never be good enough and yet nobody is perfect. We are human and that is much better than perfect."Now I was finding that I was falling into an old trap, one that was not healthy for me. But it changed on September 19, 2007, when I had to let go of control and accept that my body was not perfect. I had coronary heart disease and I had suffered an attack on my heart. I realize it came from me. I knew I could change; I could create a new future. A future where I lived, and played, and worked, and enjoyed life [horizontal ellipsis] if I let go.

That is the lesson for each of us. We are not in control and it is not healthy when we tell ourselves we are. We are not perfect, just human, and it is alright. It is only in letting go that we will find what we truly are looking for [horizontal ellipsis] that inner peace. For me it was learning the inside out of caring.

Philip Authier, MPH, RN

Guest Editor Partner, Edgework Institute Grand Rapids, Mich