in Gift from the Sea: “The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.”6 For both visitors and patients, bedside visits can be tiring and trying. Patients often find themselves needing to reassure their healthy callers that they are fine or will be fine, when they have doubts and fears, or they hear how fine they look when they know it's not true. Patients can be captive audiences, as visitors chatter, tell medical horror stories, or overstay visits. Then there are relatives who seem to be news gatherers, often indistinguishable from bearers of bad tidings, as they pass on stories. Obligatory visits made by well-mannered people are another category. In the midst of a life-threatening illness, a patient may be in a personal underworld and yet be playing the part of a gracious hostess.
To be like Psyche in this situation means saying no at many levels and recognizing the importance of doing so—to hold that symbolic lamp and knife again, to see clearly and take appropriate action. Bedside phones can be disconnected while one sleeps or is not up to receiving calls. Hospitals can let people know that you are not receiving visitors or that visiting time is restricted, which is appropriate medically in intensive care units and other circumstances. Visitors can be limited and therefore selected. However, in convalescence, rehabilitation, ongoing treatment, or remission, there are further decisions that may need to be made because visits from others can help or hinder our efforts to become well.
A clergywoman receiving chemotherapy for cancer comes to my mind. Since she had many friends and a large congregation, there were numerous visitors. In her pastoral role, she was the comforter, and even though she was now the patient, both she and others would fall into the old pattern; she found herself ministering to their concerns for her and hearing about what was going on in their lives. It was draining. While she did not want to talk about herself much, she did not want to be isolated by saying no to having visitors, but something had to be done. With a discriminating heart to feel what was healing and helpful and what was not, she acted and the result was quite wonderful.
What she decided to do fit the needs of her personality and her situation beautifully. She valued her solitude, especially in the mornings, and did not have a knack for the easy sociability that might lift someone else's spirits. She had come to know members of her congregation and had counseled and prayed with them during their difficulties. While she did not want to talk about herself with them, she knew that praying together or being together at a soul level was mutually nourishing. Another consideration was her energy. Seeing more than one person at a time, allowing long visits, or making small talk drained her. On the basis of such considerations, she let it be known what she needed, which was welcomed by people who cared about her. Following her specific requests, she had mornings to herself. No one dropped in. People came in the afternoon for half an hour at the most, greeted her with a hug, had a cup of tea, and prayed in silence with her. They entered a peaceful room, she was prepared for them, and it was a loving and sacred time for both. Each day, it was usual for two people to come, usually separately and as scheduled—for the scheduling itself was part of her solution.
Hearing one woman's story evokes the possibility of doing the same: if she could do that, then what might you do? Her story has made me think about what I might do if I were recuperating or undergoing energy-depleting therapies. The idea of having to carry on insincerely with visitors while sick is more than I would bear. Instead of making small talk, which drains me, I might ask some of my visitors to read aloud from a book that I would enjoy hearing them read. I might ask some to hold my hand and meditate or pray silently with me; like the clergywoman I also know how comforting and healing it is to be together in silence in prayer or meditation. If there was a particular part of my body in need of healing, I would have some visitors lay hands on that place, for I know that love is healing, and that people, animals, and plants grow and heal when touched. I would want to have beauty within sight, and have room for humor, laughter, touch, music, prayer—for soul.
What do you want? What would help heal you? Can you ask for it? Insist upon it? Can you say no to what or who depletes you and bring what you need into your life? Might your actual life, and certainly the quality of it, depend upon choosing to do what nourishes your soul with your time and energy? If you are in the underworld of an illness, then you are in that part of the journey where the task is to say no to anything you do not want to do that takes a toll on your limited strength, no to anything you intuitively realize is wrong for you or wrong timing for you, no to making decisions about which doctors and what treatments you will undergo before you are ready to do so. The ability to act as a warrior on your own behalf may begin with decisions about your visitors and extend from here into the whole of your life.
We take up Psyche's journey as well as her lamp and knife once we face what is wrong and prepare ourselves for what we need to do. Like Psyche, once we are determined to know the truth and are prepared to act decisively, there is no turning back even when we are overwhelmed by difficulties and doubts. In the midst of an illness, treatment, or hospitalization that is a descent into the under-world, we may—like Psyche—find unexpected inner sources of courage, strength, and wisdom just when we need them.
Warrior Marks
My image of what a hero looks like and what heroic means has been changed by watching ordinary people go through the ordeals that an illness and medical procedures take them through. Speaking before large groups of women survivors of cancer, seeing many with turbans covering their bald heads, or heads covered with fine downy hair from chemotherapy, knowing that most also bear surgical scars and some have radiation burns or bone-marrow-site scars, and that all of them have gone through or are in the midst of underworld descents, I have felt humbled by being in their presence. They are veterans, survivors, unrecognized heroes; the rest of us are civilians in comparison.
The only similarity for me was how I felt during my medical school and training years, especially in internship with our thirty-six-hours-on, twelve-hours-off rotations; then it felt that we were on the front lines of life and death, while the rest of the world were civilians. Yet we were not at risk of becoming casualties, of being a statistic or a number in a body count.
Cancer patients are like soldiers in ongoing conflicts: they are living through uncertainties and risks, lose their friends to the enemy, run into unexpected complications, and the appearance of new symptoms is the equivalent of being ambushed, stepping on mines, or being shot at by snipers. The enemy is near, deadly, and for the most part unseen. Patients, like soldiers, can be caught up in a war that lasts for years, while contemporaries go on with their lives as usual. Buddies matter. Members of a cancer support group know what a bad day or bad odds are, as well as how small victories are reasons to celebrate. Support groups that are circles with a spiritual center find that when they meet, check in, and meditate or pray silently together that this becomes a source of invisible support as well.
Medical conditions can flare up or go into remission. Some patients have multiple hospitalizations for diseases such as heart disease or diabetes as well as cancers. Some will have multiple surgical operations, each one an ordeal. It takes fortitude and courage to undergo major surgery when you know that there are risks and can anticipate difficulties, pain, and exhaustion. To do so is heroic, though it is not respected as such.
When my son, Andy, had to go through a series of major and minor operations, I saw his courage, character, and quiet strength emerge. His fate was to have Neurofibramatosis-2, a rare and progressive condition in which non-malignant tumors could grow on any cranial and other peripheral nerves. The year he turned twenty-one, Andy had a nonmalignant tumor removed that was located in a dangerous place. It was pressing on his spinal cord in his neck and had already displaced the cord to one side. If it wasn't removed, it would result in a spinal cord compression. On the other hand, any mishap in surgery could result in serious damage to the spinal cord or the nerves that come off it. To reach the site, neurosurgeons had to go through the bony vertebral bones of the spine, and then the dura and other finer protective coverings. Under the circum-stances, surgery was not only
