Over 53 years of life my physical body has been challenged a lot. From broken bones and dozens of operations, to Endometriosis and C-Sections, to seizures, migraines, colitis, back injections for ruptured discs, and busted up knees, I feel like I have been so blessed with a body that continues to bounce back from trauma. This body ran three full marathons for me, delivered three children and continues to respond well to my treatment of it and I am grateful. I know the body must complain with use. I’ve often heard, if it’s not complaining we aren’t using it enough.
I get all of this. But somehow when a new challenge arises I quickly move from appreciation for my body’s resilience, to frustration that it is twisted up again. This may not sound impactful, but my thumb is busted. It began as chronic pain that has now become acute. So today, when everything I do with my hand is affected and painful, I’m not thanking my body for being resilient. I am wondering what my next best move is with this thumb.
A while back I recall learning about the difference between animal paws, and human hands. I don’t remember the name of the documentary, but I did learn that the major distinction between paw, and hand, is, well, obvious I guess: Paws don’t have functional thumbs, and human hands do. What I most remember is trying to see this for myself by functionally operating my hand without the thumb. It didn’t take me long to realize the hand is lost without it.
This chronic now acute pain has gone from annoying and pestering, to downright painful. As I’ve resisted the need to protect it by wearing the brace I got months ago, I’ve been learning the hard way what I’d heard about our hands. Without the thumb, our hand is just a paw.
You might think this dysfunctional thumb thing is pretty mundane. I did also, until it went over the tipping point. Because as it turns out, drawing up 10 medications, using the pill crusher to dilute them, and preparing multiple bolus feeds per 24 hour period to care for our son Zach, requires two fully functional thumbs.
For example: The tops of the medications need to be unscrewed (requiring rotation), unless you are Divinely blessed (as I have been) with a partner who gets pop-tops for the med bottles so it doesn’t hurt so much to open them. The feeding syringes need drawing, measuring and cleaning with every feed. The G-Tube itself has two ports which need to be opened and closed and the syringes need to fit in those ports with a taught connection, otherwise a mess ensues.
In summary, the administration of food and medications through a G-Tube is incompatible with the limitations of having only one functional thumb. You might be thinking “Good to know…” as in “Why the heck are you talking about thumbs and G-Tubes?” Glad you asked. I am talking about them, for two reasons:
The First: I find it interesting that I still operate in a way that consistently puts Zach’s needs in front of my own. I am not contending that this is a problem, or that it is not a problem. I am just observing that although Zach turns 24 next week, I still see myself through the lens of how useful I am to him, his survival and his well-being. I imagine many people with compromised thumbs might initially be upset that they can’t text because it hurts too much. Or that washing hands or dishes is nearly impossible, as is wringing out a washcloth, or opening and closing anything that has a lid. Challenges like these may have been noticed more quickly by another individual. But for me, I initially felt the limitation in terms of my ability to respond to Zachary and his needs.
When it comes to prioritizing the fulfillment of needs, how do you see things? Are they through the lens of your professional eye? Do you look out for your team first? Perhaps put your partner’s preferences before your own? Maybe you are last on your own list? If so, don’t judge yourself. We aren’t saying this is bad, or good. We are just observing that if we are seeing the world only through the lens of how we are of value to others, we miss our very own goodness and love. I invite you to try and become more aware of this if you are doing it, like I do sometimes. Noticing it is the first step in discovering that there is another way to live. So yes, I see everything through the eyes of what Zach needs first, but I am able to see that I am of value because of who I am to myself, not to others. It’s a process but a worthwhile one.
The Second: I love when I stumble on what seems like a fresh way to help us cultivate empathy. Trying to understand how others are feeling, particularly with something as complex as grief, can be nearly impossible. Plus we never “know” if we actually got close to experiencing the reality of another because we don’t get to actually feel what they feel. But physical ailments are more concrete in nature. And here is where I will ask you to go out of your comfort zone and try something with me.
Take a piece of tape and secure the thumb of your non-dominant hand in a way that makes you unable to move it. Then see how far into your day you can get without noticing it. How long does it take to become annoying? When does inconvenience transition into you taking the tape off because it’s too much of a pain? What activities first reveal the lack of functionality? Are you caring for yourself or someone or something else when you notice?
For full impact, try to keep it there for 24 hours, and bring awareness to all the ways it affects your mind and your physical activities. If 24 hours is too long, do it for as long as you can. And before you go to set your thumb free, pause for a whole minute (use your phone to time it) and imagine…just imagine if you could never take it off. Imagine being without that thumb for the rest of your life. What would change? How would you need to adjust? See if you can touch this hypothetical dimension of experience, while keeping in mind “THIS IS FOREVER.”
To complete the experiment, let’s integrate these concepts by connecting the practical experience of losing thumb access on one hand, to the profound pain that arises when we lose someone we love. If someone important to you died today, how long would it take to experience the pain of their absence? How far along could you get into your day, your job, your family, your breath without feeling the agony of the loss? How often would it “get in the way?” The metaphor is a stretch, but it will help illustrate an important point, which is this:
We cannot possibly know what someone else is experiencing, but we can try.
A little tape on the thumb might not thrust you into the grief experience of another. But seeking the relief of removing the restraint so you could return to “normal” may just be. Because pausing before removing the tape, to ponder the finality of losing your human hand and now having to live with a paw instead, CAN give you the existential perception of how final death is.
Consider: How many tasks were difficult to complete without that thumb? How many did you discover in just 5 minutes? An hour? An afternoon? If you lost a loved one, imagine how much of your life you would discover was changed, over a week? A month? A year? How long would it take for you to discover the scope and scale of your permanent condition, before you stopped tripping on new ways it was hard to function without your thumb?
That last one I can answer: It can take a lifetime. It can take a lifetime because that’s how long we have to live without our loved one. And our lives continually change. So we constantly discover new ways we have been affected, by grief, injury or by loss. So why should we care about putting ourselves in touch with the experience of someone else? As long as our thumbs are working, we’re good. Right?
Right. You’re good. As long as you only care about and love people who have working thumbs. Otherwise, your ability to relate to and interact with people who are different than you are, will be stifled.
I am not suggesting we borrow worry. This is not an experiment to conduct for an unlimited amount of time. If you know someone in pain I am not saying you should completely immerse yourself in their experience as if it were your own. But I am saying that by participating in little experiments like this one, you may gain a deeper understanding of someone who is different than you are, in this example someone who has sustained loss. Just because we are not the ones grieving doesn’t mean we are incapable of sitting still on the sofa, alone in the quiet, for just 10 minutes and trying to imagine what that hurting loved one might be experiencing.
We don’t participate in experiments like this one for our own benefit. We don’t pursue the cultivation and expression empathy for ourselves. We do it for the people in our lives. We allow ourselves to imagine. We close our eyes and humanely make our hearts available so that we can better support and love that person into a future that is brighter than the one they can see right now. We try to get a glimpse, a taste, a scent of what their pain must be like. And we allow it to sit with us.
Anyway, we don’t seem to have a hard time doing this with joyful experiences? Ever try to feel like you WERE Michael Jordan when he was flying through the air playing basketball? Or like you WERE the honoree at a ceremony you were attending, or the one getting interviewed after winning the Super-bowl? Yes. We DO know that feeling. Because it is natural to tap into the energy and emotion around us. It is just that, we have been trained to block the painful stuff. So we are fine to imagine the fun stuff, just not the tough stuff. Yet, difficult times leave us in our most vulnerable states, requiring as many people as possible to help us feel less isolated, victimized and alone. So Yes, we can do this with painful situations. And we should. So we don’t leave those whom we love vulnerable AND alone on their journey toward healing.
Let us know how the experiment goes! And always remember that we can never, no matter what we think we know, what has happened in our lives, or what we may believe as we observe a situation through our own distorted, subjective eyes, we can never know the experience of another.
For more on the mind-body connection check out this post: The Body Keeps The Score from March, 2022.
For another experiment to cultivate empathy, inspired by a PICU patient of mine, check out this post: Humility from October, 2021