Experience Point: Cure Serious Wounds

Some of you may have noticed there was no Experience Points column last week for the first time since last November. Hopefully its absence was felt like a giant vacuum in your week. How you survived the last week without it is the great mystery of our time. I'm back; you can relax.

I wish I could say it just slipped my mind, but I'm afraid that greater, sadder forces were at work. Our family had to make the painful decision to put down our beloved family dog, Onyx, after having her for 14 wonderful years. That sucked just about exactly as much as you think it did.

It's not like this was entirely unexpected. Dogs don't live a whole lot longer than that; we knew it was coming. I'm happy to say it was really only in the last month we saw her decline to the point where this was the right thing to do. She lived not only long but relatively healthy until the very end. I'm not sure any of us can ask for a lot more.

It was a rough decision but it truly went as well as could be hoped. The only treatment options available were ones from which she was unlikely to recover. My wife and I were in total agreement about what needed to happen. So there was no disagreement or worry about whether we should have done more.

Even with all those factors being as good as one could hope for in such a bad situation, I was completely gutted by it. I'm a very emotionally stable guy. I'm a very emotionally resilient guy (I'm writing this a week later after all). But it was still one hell of a rough week. I was surprised by some of the effects it had on me.

I'm very much a people person. There is little I enjoy more than talking to my friends and clients. But last week I didn't want to talk to anybody. My throat was tight and sore and my emotions were bruised and battered. I stayed close to home, ate very little, distracted myself as best I could. I needed a Cure Serious Wounds.

One of the ways I distracted myself was playing this cute little computer game I picked up called Don't Starve. It's a game world full of Tim Burtonesque 2d artwork full of things that are almost cute right up until they are terrifying and try to drive you insane and kill you. Here too I saw, when my Health and Sanity were low, I stuck pretty close to home. Kept the fire going. Looked for anything I could turn into medicine. I needed to recover.

It reminded me of some tense moments in our RPG's over the years. The times when hit points were low and we were still deep in the dungeon or wilderness. When you were huddled around the fire (or afraid to make a fire because it might attract something with teeth), hoping the night would end soon. Hoping that one more bad thing wouldn't happen. You might not survive one more bad thing.

It's a lot better when you have a place you can feel safe. It's better if you have people you trust around you. People who love you. You can lick your wounds and rest. Scrounge together a few potions or healing spells. Recover. Then you start to feel like a hero again and can get back out there adventuring.

I'm happy to say that my week of recovery allowed me to do just that. I dealt with the pain and loss. I managed to start feeling like myself again. On Friday we drove to the US National Whitewater Center and did a bunch of fun, adventuresome stuff. Zip lines, leaping off a 45 foot tower, rock climbing, a ropes course. Really cool stuff. Then we got up the next morning and did the Warrior Dash, which was also relatively close to the most adventure you can get these days without going some really remote places. I felt great doing all of that stuff. I was able to celebrate my birthday on Sunday without feeling sore and destroyed.

I had managed to recover.

I think when you feel that kind of beat up and abused by the world, when you've literally lost one of your best friends, taking the time to recover is important. Remembering that you've managed to recover before is important. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Has something laid you low lately? How did you recover? What did you accomplish when you came back from it?

 

[Southern Oracle]

I haven't lost my dog yet, though I know it's coming -- he's 14 as well -- but I did have a transient ischemic attack (mini-stroke) several weeks ago, and it's been doctors' visits and testing ever since. I just had a trans-esophageal echo-cardiogram and the good news is, there's no hole in my heart. Nevertheless I've been contemplating my mortality lately; at 42, I'm too young to leave this world, I feel. I'm still working through things, and there's more testing to come...but I'm trying to remain positive. After years of Magic and D&D, I'm starting to look at new games and try them out. I really enjoy Android: Netrunner and want to play the latest edition of Shadowrun when it comes out, as well as Numenera. I hope I can convince my gaming group to give them a try as well.

 

[Umbran]

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

I hate to say it, but this is flatly untrue. There are things in life that hit you, and are done, and afterwards you are, in some sense, stronger, yes. But more and more I see things around me that are not acute injuries from which one recovers - they are chronic conditions, that change your life for long periods, or forever. You don't heal - you adapt. But each time you do that, you don't then gain more ability to adapt - eventually, you have too much burden of adaptation, and you break. Scars build up over time, and each one limits your abilities, rather than extending them.

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed as diabetic. He will never "recover" - barring some new miracle of science, he'll be diabetic forever. And there's no real sense in which he will be stronger for having diabetes, and he never gets to put it behind him. It is something that will make pretty much everything else in his life more difficult until the day he dies.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We've had a parade of pets over the years. The end never gets easier. Our current twosome are 7 and 1.

I'm 45, and both of my folks are still around. We come from a long-lived lineage: those not laid low by disease lived into their 90s. But we're all cognizant of our mortality. We have all kinds of risk factors for this or that; I'm an attorney & my dad is an MD. We get peeks at The Reaper fairly regularly.

When I was younger, I tried wallowing in sorrow and drinking, and that didn't work for me. It nearly killed me. When I get down these days, I recover through my hobbies, my friends, and my family. MUUUUCH better.

 

[Rel]

I hate to say it, but this is flatly untrue. There are things in life that hit you, and are done, and afterwards you are, in some sense, stronger, yes. But more and more I see things around me that are not acute injuries from which one recovers - they are chronic conditions, that change your life for long periods, or forever. You don't heal - you adapt. But each time you do that, you don't then gain more ability to adapt - eventually, you have too much burden of adaptation, and you break. Scars build up over time, and each one limits your abilities, rather than extending them.

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed as diabetic. He will never "recover" - barring some new miracle of science, he'll be diabetic forever. And there's no real sense in which he will be stronger for having diabetes, and he never gets to put it behind him. It is something that will make pretty much everything else in his life more difficult until the day he dies.

I disagree. I'm speaking as somebody who was diagnosed as Type 1 Diabetic when I was 21 so that means I've officially been diabetic now for as long as I wasn't.

Has it made me stronger? Hell yes.

I'm under no illusions that it is extending my life. I'll probably die a few years sooner than if I was never diabetic. But it has forced me to become stronger in other ways. Neverminding the fact that I stick a needle in my stomach several times a day, I'm certainly disciplined in ways that others are not. I don't eat sugary stuff except on very rare occasion unless I'm suffering from low blood sugar. I've had to become better about exercise as a result and I'm probably in better physical shape than most of my non-diabetic friends.

But mostly dealing with a chronic disease has given me a glimpse of my mortality from a very young age. I approach life with gusto, happily squeezing every drop of fun from it, roasting its remains over a crackling fire, cracking the bones and sucking out the marrow. There are plenty of days I curse this crappy disease. But it has made me stronger. No question in my mind.

 

[Janx]

I disagree. I'm speaking as somebody who was diagnosed as Type 1 Diabetic when I was 21 so that means I've officially been diabetic now for as long as I wasn't.

Has it made me stronger? Hell yes.

How about we meet in the middle and agree that some things that don't kill you may make you stronger in some ways, but other things that don't kill you may leave you weaker than you were before.

basically, your mileage may vary depending on the nature of the incident, the damage it causes and the person's recovery/adaptation from it.

I got a friend who got to over 300 pounds and was diagnosed with diabetes. They put him on a diet and some drugs and he's now 220 pounds in SIX months and he is now no longer classified with diabetes.

You can easily say the disease didn't kill him and he got stronger from it. In fact, for practical purposes, I don't think he suffered in any way that a diabetic worries about during his time in that category.

I think the real world is chock full of people who have suffered cascade failures/problems that most assuredly have not left them stronger than they were before. I know Rel subscribes to the "avoid negative thinking and negative people" school of thought, but to insist otherwise is to belittle their experience and situation.

Furthermore, I would question the evidence that an catastrophic problem can/does make a person stronger. It would not be simple to run a side by side comparison of a person with and without the degradation event to see which becomes stronger in the end.

However, Levitz work described in Freakonomics indicates Nature holds more influence on a child's success than Nurturing exposure. Therefore, a child's initial circumstances (the setback) do not as fully impact his getting stronger, as compared to the genetic combination of his parents in yielding an exceptional child.

Case in point, a child in a bad Chicago school district applies to attend a better school district. It turns out, that statistically speaking, those children who applied, will excel, regardless of whether they are approved for the better school or remain stuck in the poor school. This is because they posess greater genetic traits that are appreciative of better education than their non-escape-attempting peers.

As a result, being poor and attending a crappy school as their "setback' did not make them stronger. They already possessed the inner qualities to excel, as compared to their downtrodden peers. The statistics say they were just as successful whether they actually got a better start in life or not.

My point, is that while I appreciate folks keeping a positive attitude and finding the good from the bad, taken to an extreme it can be disingenuous and disrespectful to those suffering real hardship that were not blessed with the ability and opportunity to get better. While there is good value to "surrounding yourself with positive people who don't bring you down with constant negativity", taken to the extreme, you become an elitist who isolates himself from the lesser masses. There is a trend, that unfortunately bleeds into politics, to blame those who are unable to overcome their problems as their own fault, which denies that their circumstances are a slippery slope that few are able to escape.

So, I ask, that while Rel wants to keep a positive outlook, that we also accept and acknowledge that not everybody gets a positive outcome, regardless of their personal outlook. Life is not that simple.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I hate to say it, but this is flatly untrue.

As someone who works with military medicine researching the "three P's" (PTSD, post-concussive syndrome, and pain), I can concur that the idea that all adversities are opportunities is untrue and prejudicial towards those who don't recover. Do some people react well to adversity? Yes. Is recovery from illness or injury possible? Often. But many other people who are exposed to physical and/or psychological trauma clearly live poorer lives because of it and never recover.

Trying to understand why people react differently to traumatic events is really one of the frontiers of medicine.

Has something laid you low lately? How did you recover? What did you accomplish when you came back from it?

To retain this theme while getting back to the thread topic, I have had some very bad things happen to me (including the loss of pets under difficult circumstances and many worse things), and I dealt with it by confronting the issue. I do research on people who have suffered similarly, and plan on treating them someday. I also explore the fallout of traumatic events artistically, particularly through the stories I tell using the rpg medium.

I used to try avoiding pain, and that didn't work. Nor did searching for a magic bullet, a solution that would make certain problems go away. Thus my route now is to embrace negative events and learn from them. Not the easy road.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The opening lines to The Serenity Prayer, I feel, have a great wisdom to them, and resonate with Ahnehnois' last paragraph:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

If you can't change a negative thing in your life, ask yourself how you can reshape your life in reaction to that negative thing and possibly come out a better person. Or at least, figuring out how to mitigate its damage in your life.

Look at those words in the light of the life of executed murderess, Karla Faye Tucker. She paid the ultimate price for her crimes. However, because of what she did between conviction and execution, she was nearly spared. She could not change her sentence, but her conversion to Christianity led her to change herself. A number of other inmates, guards, and even the warden attested to her being beyond a model prisoner. She didn't just avoid trouble, she helped others turn their lives around.

It IS hard, but it is potentially rewarding to be aware of the difference between things you can and cannot change in your life. Being able to let go of something can do wonders for your stress levels...and all the things that attach to that.

 

[Umbran]

It IS hard, but it is potentially rewarding to be aware of the difference between things you can and cannot change in your life. Being able to let go of something can do wonders for your stress levels...and all the things that attach to that.

Okay, I hate that phrase... "let it go".

If a big man comes to you, and takes a Louisville Slugger to your knee, such that it bends in directions it was never designed to go, you won't be able to "let it go". That knee's function will be impaired, period. You can get surgery and a cast. Then go to physical therapy. You may recover, but you are likely to be walking with a cane. You will get arthritis in that knee. You're likely to develop a lifelong NSAID habit to deal with the aches, and those pills still won't touch it on those rainy days when it hurts so bad that you don't want to get out of bed. Your knee is there with you, always. It cannot be "let go". You may be able to choose to just accept it, but it is still there. The guy with teh bad does his job right, and you will never be a distance runner again.

Now, something like emotional abuse of a child, or beating a spouse, or combat PTSD, is like someone taking a Louisville Slugger to the parts of your brain that process emotion. The issues are *NOT* just a "state of mind" - there's actual physiological changes in what neurochemicals your body produces. And, like with the knee, you can go to therapy, you can get medications. And those will help, but your emotions are going to be screwed up. You cannot choose to "let them go".. Your brain produces them. That is it. You have to deal with them, for life. You may become functional, but your emotional function will always be impacted. You will not be emotionally stronger.

People have this dumbass conception that these things are under our conscious control, that you can will them to go away. You walk up to a person with clinical depression and tell them they just need to "let it go" and you show your profound ignorance of the actual functioning of the mind. It is right up there with "I know how you feel" for harmful things that can be said to someone suffering such an illness.

We, collectively, like to lump problems into small packages with simple solutions. Doing so often belittles the actual work required by the people suffering and working to get through.

Sorry, folks, but this is currently a passion of mine. Yes, there are lots of things that an already-healthy person can get through. Death of a loved one? Sure, most of us manage just fine. But there's things for which that expectation isn't reasonable, or fair.

 

[Janx]

People have this dumbass conception that these things are under our conscious control, that you can will them to go away. You walk up to a person with clinical depression and tell them they just need to "let it go" and you show your profound ignorance of the actual functioning of the mind. It is right up there with "I know how you feel" for harmful things that can be said to someone suffering such an illness.

I forget what side of the discussion you were on in my old "are we just moist robots" thread, but this point supports the "yes we are" claim. There are a lot of things that people do not have actual control over in their brain, that others insist that they do. If nothing else, a "healthy" brained person is able to overcome the adversity because they do not have a brain that is literally preventing them from succeeding.

Those are poor terms, but the crux is, I am very wary of cure-all catch phrases and that kind of thinking. Like Umbran, I find that it demonstrates a lack of empathy for the complexity, difficulty and hidden barriers that those who remain stuck in their problems are suffering with.

My wife has a friend with an alphabet soup of diseases that affect her judgement. She's not dumb, but I can plainly see a chain of activities that I can say "If you stop doing X, Y and Z, things will be better." However, I have to remind myself that she is disabled, and the very nature of her problem that causes her to make dumb choices makes her incapable of seeing the stupidity of her choices before she makes them.