I apologize for the paucity of blog posting recently. The month of March was tough. Mentally, I went up and down, sometimes without really understanding why. On the surface, it seems like my stress stemmed from three main sources: my work, my social life and my trip-planning. I know what you’re probably thinking, “Um…you’re complaining about having a happening social life and the opportunity to travel?!” Then maybe an expletive or two? Does that sound about right?
Unfortunately, God’s honest truth is that despite the fullness of my life, I for some reason kept returning to an emotional state that was more gray than my usual. I’ll try to explain but I apologize in advance for the somber tone, the heavy reading and the fact that my point may be a bit convoluted. I never promised clarity in this blog, just a portrayal of my life here.
There were a couple really stressful life things that happened last month. For starters, my boyfriend left. Then a few short weeks later, my old roommates came to visit and left. Sounds like these should be good things and they are. But for some reason, when people I love come visit, their leaving always takes a lot out of me. Then my car, my little Lily, decided to just die on me. Like literally die. On the highway, as I was driving myself to the airport to catch a flight, the engine just gave out. After enlisting the help of some fine young gentlemen to push it onto an off ramp and into the nearest gas station, a mechanic friend managed to come help me. He literally rushed me to the airport then went back and… I don’t know… performed CPR on my car or something so that he could drive it to his shop. He later delivered the news; it would cost at least 10,000 rand to repair. My love for Lily immediately ended and I sold her.
But really, the reason for the general feeling of down-ness that enveloped me last month has to do with work. After getting approved, my project took on a life of its own and then almost immediately, a mysterious fatal disease started ravaging our wards. I was enrolling children in my study, excited about data collecting and tracking how these children grow, then in the blink of an eye, two of my subjects were suddenly gone; both had been less than 2 years old. Then shortly after that, two caregivers suddenly went MIA on me, taking their children with them. It was one disappointment to realize I’d lost some of my subjects to follow-up and yet another to realize they had also stopped attending their appointments at the anti-retroviral clinic. Never mind my little study. Without proper treatment and follow-up, these children are being denied the only tools we have to help them literally fight for their life. Sounds dramatic? Well that’s intentional because to me that’s how serious it feels.
And yet, I steeled myself, knowing this is what I came here to learn. I was learning to face the disappointment of infants dying and others not getting the medicine we desperately wanted to offer them. And slowly I noticed that I was starting to take these figurative slaps in the face in stride. “Do what you can,” my external mentors and internal voice instructed. “Then move on to the next child who needs help.”
Then another child died. This one wasn’t in my study. He was just one that was very familiar to our team because he’d been in and out of the hospital many times. What made his death different is hard for me to explain because I don’t know that I quite fully understand it myself. I just know that it hurt me in a way I hadn’t yet experienced.
This little one came to us with disseminated tuberculosis. We’d found the TB bug in many lymph nodes throughout his body and even in his liver. Fortunately for him, we’d managed to successfully start him on TB treatment two months ago, wait for the TB treatment to start doing its job, and then also start him on anti-retrovirals for his HIV. He was doing well, was one of the success stories and the whole team was pleased.
During those months, I’d also been having a little success story of my own with him. I’d spent weeks and weeks trying to gain his trust, trying to get him to let me into his world if only so I could play with him and distract him from being in the hospital. It’s a small teaching exercise I’ve given myself. Since I can’t physically provide the medications, can’t yet do anything “doctorly” so to speak, I’ve tried to spend some of my time here learning and fine-tuning my way of getting children to trust me.
This little boy was a hard one to crack, trust-wise and I thought I knew why. There were little behavioral hints that had made me begin to harbor the faint suspicion that he was being abused at home. Like a red flag to a bull, the small ways in which he sometimes jumped with fear when you’d wave a hand over his head enraged me and made me want to show him that some adults can be trusted. I pushed myself even harder to bond with him, overriding the professional distance I had been learning to create with the other sick children in the ward.
And slowly, slowly, he began to let me in. Just a few weeks prior to his demise, he’d begun to wave hello and goodbye when I walked into the wards, and flash a shy smile whenever I tickled him. Then, he fell ill with this infuriating mystery of a feverish rash that had killed the others and a week later, succumbed to a terrible pneumonia. One short week later. He was five.
I was and still am devastated. In fact to be perfectly and painfully honest, I’ve had to write this post in stages because the first few times I sat down with my thoughts and feelings about his death, I would get the urge to go lie in bed and cry.
The emotionally taxing nature of this experience colored every aspect of my life. The regular frustrations of life became overwhelming. I became stressed about planning dinners or weekend trips away with friends. I became easily frustrated about people not responding to emails quick enough or about the internet not working well, even though I thought I’d reached a state of acceptance about that one. My car dying and having to sell it for next to nothing became a calamity. I desperately wanted to go home. In short, I had lost the calm, collected baseline I’d come to depend on for mental sanity here. More importantly, I allowed this grayness to infect my life without realizing why or trying to figure out the reason for its existence.
Then one day, one of the pediatric professors here asked me to come into her office to speak with her and then point blank asked me if I was ok. “Yes,” I responded, confused. “I’m fine…why do you ask?” This busy, important woman then proceeded to explain that she might be wrong, but she’d noticed a change in my demeanor, a change in my face. I was floored. Literally shocked because a) this incredibly busy woman was taking time out of her day to do this, b) I had not even realized I’d been feeling down and c) I’d had such few professional interactions with this woman that it was unbelievable she could have discerned what I had not even realized about myself. After thanking her and walking back to my desk, I realized it was time to just face the summed effects of everything that had happened in March and do what I needed to do to get back to my baseline.
What I think was really getting me down was not only the tragedy of the little boy’s death but the fact that I was trying to stay strong and failing miserably. I was struggling emotionally, yes. But on top of that, I felt guilty both about having to struggle so much (because it meant I’d allowed myself to get too close) and about not wanting to have the emotional struggle. I felt guilty towards this child about wanting to go dancing with my friends to forget about him and guilty towards myself for feeling guilty at all. Confusing? I know…. It was very confusing in my mind as well.
I share this personal story for three reasons. First, so people back home can see that even when I’m in the lowest of funks here, some guardian angel appears to help me or shock me back to life. Secondly, because writing helped me and I was wholly surprised by that. Of course it doesn’t help everyone and I’m not saying that all life frustrations and tragedies are overcome with a pen and a paper (or computer screen in my case). But if this blog didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have considered writing and wouldn’t have discovered its therapeutic effect for me. Maybe food for thought for some of you reading this?
The final reason I share such heavy thoughts is because this story exemplifies the truth of the phrase, “This too shall pass.” A good friend of mine once said told me to remember that phrase when I was feeling overwhelmed and it’s been the single wisest thing anyone’s ever said to me. It’s just simply, the truest thing in life. Because now, although I still have to wipe away the occasional tear when I think of that little boy, I can write about it and talk about it without crumbling.
Everything passes. I’ve decided it’s fine if one day I once again feel the need to go lie in bed to cry about the death of a child. So long as I remember that the sadness will pass. I will move on. And that’s not a bad thing.
