I'm Turning the Other Cheek

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I'm inspired to write this post by a friend who sent me a tweet last night asking me how I was doing. She also mentioned that she hadn't seen me on Twitter much over the past week. Touched by her concern, I replied back letting her know that I was OBE: overwhelmed by events.

It seems like since I've gotten back from my trip to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, people back home here in Los Angeles have all gone a little crazy. Not that they weren't crazy before I left, just that it seems like they've taken crazy to a whole new level. Unfortunately for me, this new level of crazy involves pulling me into situations that require my attention. So I've decided to turn the other cheek.

You're probably wondering right about now, "What in the world does she mean?" So let me explain.

You see, I've been thinking about the way I've been handling the recent set of circumstances presented to me. While I am not particularly religious person, I still do want to try to be a good human being and handle things in the best way possible. Given my Catholic upbringing, I guess there's a little bit of What would Jesus do? floating around inside me. Which got me thinking about what Jesus said: If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Concerned that maybe I hadn't responded in this manner, I decided to do a little research and figure out what this command really means. What I discovered is that you can't truly understand what this statement means unless you understand it in context. In the case of this phrase, this is what I learned:

From Wikipedia: "A literal interpretation of the passages, in which the command refers specifically to a manual strike against the side of a person's face, can be supported by reference to historical and other factors. At the time of Jesus, striking someone deemed to be of a lower class with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person "turned the other cheek," the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. The other alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect demanding equality."

I admit that this discovery was an unexpected but pleasant surprise. All these years, I thought that statement meant I was to somehow tolerate mistreatment, to ignore it and not respond to it. I am comforted to know that it actually encourages me to stand up for myself and asked for better treatment in the face of injustice.

Furthermore, I am pleased to share with you that how I've chosen to respond to the recent challenges presented to me has been to demand to be treated with respect, to have my voice be heard and to have my rights be honored. Yes, I have demanded my equality in ways that have been assertive, not aggressive.

I share this with you today because I think my recent experiences hold a message for all of us living with chronic illness.

As another friend mentioned over the weekend, sometimes healthy people see those of us who are sick as weak and vulnerable and try to take advantage of us. Because living with chronic illness does sometimes mean we are less able to stand up for ourselves, we may unwittingly find ourselves in a position of being less than.

In those moments I believe we need to find the courage to stand up for ourselves and say, "It's not okay for you to treat me unjustly."

In so many ways, living with chronic illness is hard. And this is on top of how hard just trying to live life and get along with other people can be sometimes. Thank goodness for the heavenly guidance that we can take a stand and not let life, or chronic illness, beat us up or take us down. I wholeheartedly agree that sometimes the only way to get equality is to believe that we deserve it and demand it from others.

In light of what I know now, I can now always feel good about turning the other cheek.

My Advice: Try Walking In My Shoes

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Recently someone said to me, "I'm sorry to hear of your affliction."

I believe that they were referring to my fibromyalgia and other chronic illnesses, but honestly I was too taken aback to ask. This person is a stranger, not someone with whom I would share my personal situation. But I do choose to put some of my personal issues out here on my blog and, lo and behold, they read my blog and decided to comment on it.

Affliction is such a weird word.

I guess if I had been born 100 years ago, affliction might have been used by my family and friends to describe my current health problems. Although I imagine that 100 years ago, I would not have lived past my leukemia diagnosis to go on and develop chronic illness.

Honestly, the word affliction makes me think of the word sanatorium. You know, the medical spas popular in the first half of the 20th century for people with tuberculosis. Apparently the ones in Arizona also attracted people with rheumatism, asthma and other disorders. While there, patients received a healthy diet, plenty of rest and fresh air.

Which sounds quite appealing, especially on my more challenging days...

Then I thought to myself, 'What the #$@%! This is 2011 and I do not live with an affliction.'

That got me in touch with the fact that having someone call my chronic illness an "affliction" made me feel demeaned and degraded. It took a while, but I finally got beyond my discouragement about a lack of disabled-friendly language to a place where I wondered what would happen if anyone in this person's family even became ill or disabled.

My opinion: I can't imagine this person being a fountain of support or understanding.

Which leads me to think that what this person needs is to spend some time in my shoes.

So I turned all my mixed emotions into a video for the song Walking in My Shoes which I will debut tomorrow as a Wordless Wednesday post.

We Are Meant to Be Here

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I do not think we can ever know how much we will affect all the people we meet in our lifetime.

Perhaps, for those people closest to us, we can momentarily see how our words and deeds effects them when they are right in front of us. But when we part or move on, we have no idea what lasting effects this contact will have. I often wonder how I have affected the people I have met in my lifetime so far. I know that many people have impacted my life and that some of those people will never know how much they affected me.

Let me share one such story:

When I was a undergraduate student at UCLA I worked as a clerk in the medical center for a orthopaedic oncologist. He saw patients with bone and muscle tumors. One of his patients was a teenaged boy diagnosed with a particularly bad type of bone tumor.

While I never met this patient, I did have contact with his mother over the phone. I set up the initial consultation appointment. After his referral to an oncologist, I heard back from his mother than her son was refusing treatment. Devastated, his mother sought my help and I arrange a second opinion with another recommended doctor closer to his home in Orange County and made sure all his medical records were copied and sent to this doctor.

Even after this second consultation, the teenager continued to refuse treatment. Instead, his family took him to a clinic in Mexico. Occasionally, the doctor I worked for received medical updates and I would read them as I filed them into his chart. With each report, his cancer spread and worsened. The last report was from the Emergency Room. He arrived in very poor condition and, having finally changed his mind, he was asking for treatment. He was admitted but did not live long enough to receive it.

My heart went out to this boy and his family.

About 9 months later, I was diagnosed with cancer: acute promyelocytic leukemia. I remembered this boy and his story. On the day I was given the results of my bone marrow biopsy, I asked to be taken to UCLA so I could begin my cancer treatment.

I did not know if I would live or die, but I knew that if I didn't follow whatever treatment course my doctors recommended, I would not survive.

Twenty-three years later, I am still asking myself, 'Was this boy meant to be in my life? Was his cancer experience a cautionary tale to prime me for my own cancer experience? Would things have been different if he had not touched my life?'

I do not think we can ever know how much we will affect all the people we meet in our lifetime. Sometimes we need to be reminded of this, especially when we are feeling down, useless or a burden on other people. I believe that we are meant to be here, in this moment, even if our purpose for being here is not clear to us or our effect on others around us never truly revealed.

Gratitude For All the People in My Life

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A while back someone asked me to write about what makes me tick. Intrigued, I pondered how I might answer the question and became completely and totally stumped. I mean, how can one possibly figure out what makes them tick without examining their life from every perspective and without being able to review every memory to ascertain the pivotal moments that molded and shaped their personality, perspective and outlook on life?

Quite the impossible task I concluded.

Most recently, I was asked to write about gratitude. An easier subject, for sure, but one that has many facets. I became overwhelmed by all the possibilities: should I write about my family and friends, the medical personnel who have helped me over the decades, my teachers and professors at school and university, my co-workers and bosses? My list could be endless if I considered all the people who have ever touched my life in a positive way!

At that moment, I suddenly realized that it was the people in my life that have made me into the person I am today. What makes me tick is a result of all the experiences and all the lessons I have learned from all the people in my life. And when I say all, I mean all. Not just the ones who interacted with me and created fond memories; all the people I have interacted with, including the frustrating, mean, belligerent, scary, negative, manipulative, soul-crushing and destructive ones.

I need to be grateful for all the people who have touched my life.

So why be grateful for those people I don't like and don't care to be around?

The more I think about those people and how they threw roadblocks across my path, made me cry, made me angry, told me I couldn't or wouldn't or shouldn't, the more I realized that I learned to be persistent, defiant, creative, self-confident, courageous, ingenious and rebellious because of their actions. And let's be honest. For this life I am living, where I have been diagnosed with cancer and a lot of chronic illnesses, where things haven't always gone the way I have planned and where I have faced more than my fair share of challenges, these are the lessons I needed to prepare me to live my life. All these people taught me that I was stronger, more resilient and more capable than I ever imagined.

More elegantly put, in this quote from the movie Mulan, "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all."

It has taken me decades to appreciate just how rare and beautiful I am between all my illnesses and struggles. It has also taken decades for me to see and appreciate how deep and how wide my inner strength, courage and passion for life are. While I hold out hope that life's challenges will become fewer as I get older, I nevertheless am more confident than ever that I can survive and thrive despite whatever life throws in my direction.

I have all the people who have touched my life to thank for this. I am very grateful and very fortunate indeed. I truly do have so many blessings to count and be thankful for this and every Thanksgiving.