Pandemic Positives

I had a crazy thought. 

Each time I walked into a room to see a patient, I would ask them a question that would be more in line with this blog than with the usual “Where does it hurt?” and “What’s wrong with you?” taught in medical school.

Remember that the room” I was walking into was often a virtual room (seeing a patient via Zoom) or an audio room for a telephone visit. Occasionally a live human-to-human masked encounter.

Now, all crazy thoughts are best implemented with a co-conspirator. In this case, I enlisted a wonderful medical student Rachel Rose. For her, it was kind of a “wrong place at the wrong time” type of moment. For me, it was all I needed to turn the crazy thought into action.

The question: “What is a positive that has come for you and/or your family from the pandemic?”

Before any talk about labs, blood sugars or disease, Rachel and I asked our patients this simple question.

Here is what they told us, un-edited. A reminder for all of us, especially as the depths of the pandemic fade away, not to lose the precious lessons this last year has offered us.

The responses: 

I floss my teeth now. I actually have the time to floss.

Keeping in mind that 'this too shall pass'. This has been a test and a trial but I am a person of faith so I believe whatever is unhappy or uncomfortable, it is all going to be okay. We have been through something really big together. This can be an unifying event if we take it that way and look at that way.

I have more time to spent my nephews and great nephew. One of my nephews lives with me and he keeps me company. I have a lot of company.

Spending more time with my wife and helping her around the house. It was just me and her around the house. We have been married for years but I got to know her better and learn more about her. I learned more about what she needs and what she wants and she learned about me too. You could be married for 30 years but don't know much about one another until spending 24/7 together.

I get to spend much more time with my daughter than I did prior to the pandemic. 

I have been able to invest time into something I love, building a garage gym. I have also had the time to show my grandparents I truly love and care about them. Delivering groceries is a lot different than simply saying hello over the phone.

I have realized that I don't have to be rushing around. We can relax as a family and things will still get done. This has been a really good change for me and for our family.

The pandemic has given me the opportunity to put more time into my home and garden. 

I have not let the pandemic slow me down. I still give to others. I pick up food boxes from the food bank and give them out to my neighbors. I know some neighbors now that I didn’t know before the pandemic.

 

 

Life Lessons From Behind the Plate

 

I did not ask for the job.

In fact, I had successfully avoided it for years.

But here I was on a hot Thursday evening trying to fiddle and fuddle with the umpire’s gear.

I was about to call balls and strikes for my son’s little league game.

Yikes!

Nervously, like someone who doesn’t quite belong, I crept behind the catcher and assumed my position at home plate. I thought about what “umpire voice” I might create. I might have even smiled at the idea that behind the COVID and umpire face masks and fashionable shin guards, I could become whoever I wanted for the next two hours.

I could be a bully umpire with a booming voice. I could be the friendly umpire who gave free advice to all within shouting distance. “Kid, make the tag this way at home plate. And by the way, when you invest, it is important to diversify your assets.”

I might torment these elementary school pitchers with a strike zone so small it would lead to temper tantrums on the mound. Or the opposite – calling a strike zone so lenient the hitters would snarl at me as I called strikes on pitches in the dirt or over their heads.

But as reality snuck in, I actually tried to do what good umpires do – stay out of the way and approach invisibility.

Around the 3^rd inning, still struggling to position my COVID and umpire facemasks, I noticed something interesting.

A perfect pitch came toward the plate. Down the middle, waist-high.

“Strike” I shouted in my best umpire voice.

I heard grumbles from batter and parents alike. These were noises of disgust, communicating something like, “Really, you called that a strike?”

I began to listen closer.

Every pitch, whether I called “ball” or “strike” and regardless of how clear the correct call was, there were those grumbles.

I quickly learned to silence this background noise, realizing there was no pitch where everyone was going to be happy with how I called it.

In a way, I wish life and work blatantly grumbled at everything I do as it did that day on the baseball diamond. It is quite liberating to know that you no longer live to please everyone around you. Behind home plate, it was clear that pleasing everyone was not possible.

And thus, even though I was there to “ump” while the little leaguers "played", now I was the one with the biggest smile of all. I might have even been the one having the most fun.

Now, if only I could get these two darn facemasks to stay on.

 

Good Things Lie Ahead

I am guessing you have felt it.

Maybe you have participated or contributed to it.

Exuberant hope

Unmasked optimism

After a year of living in fear and isolation, bound and gagged, there is a loosening of the bonds. We struggle and wriggle to get free.

Relaxed restrictions, a return of sports and indoor dining. Whispers of live music and public swimming pools about to return. Travel without guilt.

All of it like a fresh breeze on a summer evening, a break from the day’s heat endured.

Enjoy it, brothers and sisters.

I think of a patient I saw yesterday in the clinic, where I am still only seeing about 30% of my patients in-person. In this case we got to some deeper things that were going on with the person’s health and in their life. These are the things that are never listed on the “reason for visit” in medicine. As I got up to leave the room, I paused and shared, “I don’t know that we would have dug this deep if this had been a phone visit.” They nodded in agreement.

Take this opportunity to connect with people. That same intentionality that has led us to protect each other over the last year now a chance to connect with one another. There is a lot there under the surface. 14 months-worth of stuff, to be exact.

I also know that this next stage will be hard for many of us. It will be guided by social science and a year of conditioning to be wary and fearful as much it will be guided by the science of COVID prevalence and vaccine rates.

There was a moment in our Running Medicine group a week ago where we dealt with very different feelings about getting the group of masked runners and walkers into a bigger circle. There was clearly not a consensus to form a larger group, and so we kept the circles separate and small. It was not a moment to cite stats on transmissibility of COVID. It was a chance to listen to each other and do what was most comfortable for everyone present. A week later, the bigger circle formed.

Just as we have done since last March, let’s respect each other’s space in these months ahead. Space to digest a new CDC or state update in very different ways. One might exclaim “We aren’t ready to do that yet” while their neighbor exclaims, “It’s about time.” Neither end of the spectrum right or wrong.

Enjoy this stage of the journey.

Connect with others.

Give space and grace for those around you.

Good things lie ahead.

 

 

Petrichor Resplendence

Petrichor: a pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.The word is constructed from Greek petra, "rock", or petros, "stone", and īchōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.

 

The rain fell on our dry, weary, sandy expanse

Filling rivers and roots with life’s flow

 

Once again, ichor of the gods gushing forth

Pouring hope into the acequias of our land and our minds

Deluge of renewal

Wellspring withering doubt and despair

 

How sweet is the smell!

Amazing has indeed graced us

We are found!

 

I asked a group their emotions when the rain fell after 3 month drought

Relief, the most common answer

One week earlier, same word used to describe our feeling from Floyd verdict

Both reminding us to push on

            push through (mud and muck and madness)

            pray do (our hands when rain they meet)

But first

Bathe in olfactory opulence

Squish hands and toes into the mud

We are found!

 

We can breathe again

We can breathe again,

brother of George gasps into the microphone

11 months after

9 horrific minutes left

1 body with breath no more

 

I shudder to think of where we would be today if “not quilty” bell had rung as usual.

How dangerously close we came to digging another grave, tombstone reading “Justice”.

 

Rejoice? No.

Relief? Yes.

 

Brown and black people

    lives

    bodies 

              still pinned to the ground

              oppression’s knee on their necks

              suffocating via more insidious violence (poverty, discrimination, disease)

              white supremacy in uniform

              offering us all lies (“it was addiction and poor health that killed him”) to distract

              from the crime being committed in front of our eyes, in the middle of the street.

Justice? No

A path toward healing? Maybe 

Click here to listen

As part of  this week's piece, a song from one of my creative inspirations and someone I have been honored to mentor during his training as a physician. You I Am (aka Dr. Umar Malik) composed "Breathless" last summer, and I have wanted to find a way to share this as part of this blog for the last nine months. Now is the time. May it offer meaning and healing where you need them both.

"Thank you for the people to wear their masks"

She chooses her words carefully.

“And thank you for the people to wear their masks.”

When we ask our 3-year old Sihasin to pray at the dinner table, she incorporates this into the prayer.

The pandemic, through the eyes and prayer of a little one.

As with any traumatic experience, it is easy to point fingers at this point in the pandemic as we look to lay blame for lives lost, life altered. Indeed, trauma often splits people, families, and communities. If we lack a language and desire to love one another, trauma leads to long-lasting division and turmoil.

Lacking love to guide us, we harm each other instead of healing each other. Our hands inflict hurt, instead of giving hugs.

To the detriment of us all.

I stand with Sihasin on this one. Actually, I want to learn from her. Dad as student, toddler as my teacher.

“And thank you for the people to wear their masks.”

We might start by acknowledging each other as companions in this COVID thing, understanding that we have gone through this pandemic together. Focus the lens on the deep bond of humanity that has been forged simply in enduring this together, forgetting the things that tend to divide us.

Imagine you set off for a 2-hour hike in the mountains with a group of friends. The plan suddenly dissolves as you find yourselves lost. What started as leisure now becomes frightening. The group works together, sharing ideas for getting back, hydration, and food. Finally, you make it back to the starting point eight hours later. In that moment of exhausted relief, your group now has a new, deep connection over enduring the journey together.

That hike, longer than anyone predicted, is our pandemic experience. Let us see each other, first and foremost, as fellow hikers who have endured a tough journey with us.

Having acknowledged one another, we can turn to healing. Like any traumatic experience, there are lots of wounds needing attention. Some are new wounds from the pandemic – fear of others, isolation, small businesses and low-wage workers trying to stay afloat. Some are societal wounds whose scab has been torn off during the pandemic – inequities in education, wealth, access to healthcare.

We must be committed to one another’s healing in these next months and years. The only other option is to allow the trauma of COVID to cause lasting injury to one another.

Sihasin, we hear ya. Loud and clear.

We have endured this together. Now we must heal together.

“And thank you for the people to wear their masks.”

Renewal, Rebirth, Regrowth

 Spring blossoms

              Boldly budding new life after winter’s long stay

                             Renewal

                             Rebirth

                             Regrowth

Sticks that look dead at first glance

Become branches once more, adorned with buds, leaves, flowers.

Some will produce succulent fruits and edible things.

All from sticks playing dead.

 

Nature is presenting us a gift in these first weeks of spring. Easter, Passover and the Iranian New Year – all around us there is celebration of renewal as we pass the spring equinox, day now longer than night for the next months.

What could this mean for you?

Think about the plants in your own yard – I bet you have a plant that in February you assumed had died off which now, only weeks later beams with life, bearing beautiful colors and fragrances.

What is an aspect of yourself that needs renewal, rebirth and regrowth? 

That is now the stick in the middle of winter. Maybe written off by others. Even worse, written off by you, yourself. Like the stick in February, it may be labeled dead when it is simply dormant.

On a bigger level, we have many things that have gone dormant in our pandemic world. Hugs and handshakes. The chance for our children to play with one another. Family get-togethers, community potlucks. All of it dormant, but not dead.

Like the trees and plants outside, this is a moment that offers renewal for all of us. Take in the energy of what nature is sharing with you and boldly grow new buds.

Where you have written yourself off as “too old” to have new growth, I would prescribe a walk amongst the 80-year old Cottonwoods along the Rio Grande as they turn green (yet) again. If “too busy” floats to the surface as an excuse to stay dormant, you might look at the mint or cilantro plants that seem to get only more excited about growth the “busier” they become. Or you may turn to the rose bushes who remind us that sometimes pruning old branches is needed to promote growth to new heights this spring.

Renewal, rebirth, and regrowth to each of you this spring.

Blossom into who and how you are meant to be!