November 2024
I’m told that in Mexico when you get to your 70s you are said to have reached the 7th floor. Very bizarrely, I was recently on the 7th floor of my third hospital where all the geriatrics were put. I’ve been rather seriously ill with a blood sepsis and near organ failure and the 7th floor was meant to be a rehabilitation ward, but I was in a room with a woman with dementia and some of the nurses seemed to think I too had dementia (very frustrating!). One asked, after my last shower there where I’d washed my hair in preparation for going home, if I knew how to comb it. Yes, yes, yes, I said - irritated out of my brain. I wasn’t there because I’d lost my marbles, I was there just because I needed physiotherapy to walk again, without assistance.
I walked out of there determined to get back into the swing of life and work as quickly as possible, and I’m getting there. I’ve resumed seeing clients online. Please email me on dr_mccardell@yahoo.com for further information.
One of the medical doctors asked me at the second of the hospitals if, in the case of near death, would I want to be resuscitated. I had to think; to weigh up questions of the meaning of life; to consider what matters most to me as a living person. This is, after all, an existential question that we all must face sooner or later. I replied, after some thought, “Life chooses life.” And so it is. I guess that if I was closer to death, I may have chosen death, but I have an abundance of life, more to live, to give, to celebrate.
Being a patient in hospital is a strange disjointed thing, a Dali-esque thing. You are treated as both object and subject, at once. There I was using a bed pan and – at the same time – being measured up for a pressure sore prevention cushion by an occupational therapist. There I was wrapped only in a towel sitting in a wheelchair after a shower and wheeled out into the hallway filled with medical students and no-one noticing anything. Exposed, and yet, not. There I was trying to engage a young doctor in conversation (because befriending people is what I do, and doing so changes the dynamic rather wonderfully between us) while she painfully inserted a cannula into a vein on my wrist. The illness, itself, was felt subjectively, but objectified at the same time: a timely reminder that, as a dear mentor puts it, we are not our bodies. Bodies change, age, decay, but our spirit lives on, just as buoyantly as ever. And we can learn to watch all this happening. For life chooses life, even as if it feels like an energy beyond our selves (which it is).
Learning the art of mindfulness, of witnessing without interpreting according to our problem stories (our neuroses), is the art that I try to encourage in my clients and which I tried to practice in the near month of illness and hospital experiences. I can’t say that I succeeded all the time. My tendencies towards impatience flared up pretty often, but – even these – I attempted to witness without excuses. All this isn’t easy, but I believe, it’s worth it for the sake of equanimity, as well as fairness towards other people.
The practice of lucid dreaming is a helpful start to the art of mindful witnessing. We don’t have to get caught up in our habitual ways of responding, but can choose how to resolve our issues. The dreamscapes of our mind are not predetermined and we can wake from them consciously. I think consciousness is life’s purpose, that, and love/compassion.
One of my greatest regrets is that I was unable to contact all my clients while hospitalized because my new phone had lost a number of contacts. To these people, I’m deeply sorry. I hope that those who were affected have found another therapist, or perhaps would like to contact me again. I do not like leaving people unsupported.
