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I dreamed...
Aug. 30th, 2005 06:39 amI was standing outside, at night, watching the starlit sky and a truly spectacular meteor shower... in which a host of tiny meteors burned their way through the earth's atmosphere and came to rest in the neighborhood around me.
A large-ish one (6" diameter) burned through the atmosphere and landed almost at my feet. I walked the five feet to it and picked it up in the grass. (Yeah, my subconscious should have had me use potholders, because in real life, it would have been a very hot rock. Hush. It's a dream.) I turned it over in my hand, marveling at the rock that had come so far and had made a spectacular journey through the atmosphere, and that now lay in my hand--- alternating patches of black and gray, and slightly, mysteriously, shiny.
----
I think I know what my subconscious is trying to tell me. I'm having a rough time at the rehab hospital, because the pace is slow and because most of my patients are elderly. I rehabilitate them so they can go home and live at home safely (at which point the home health care therapist takes over, and visits the patient at home maybe three times a week). In many cases, the life I'm rehabilitating them for is no life I'd want to live: We make sure they can get in and out of bed and on and off the toilet safely, and if a family member will have to assist them, we train the family member to help. This... is a life worth going home to? Are my efforts really helping to make things better? Is this really "better"?
So. I look at the elderly I treat, and they're collectively a mess-- they're weak, they're overweight, they're deconditioned. They wrinkle and sag. Their joints don't work. Okay, they're old. You know the story. I am reluctant to treat them, because I fear the same fate. Perhaps subconsciously, I fear that their condition is contagious.
Ha. (I guess I'll get it if I hang around them long enough. ;-) Otherwise, that is cargo cult thinking on my part, and oh so wrong. Thinking that way is not helpful to them or to me.
Which brings us to the meteors: I think I'll do better if I think of them as the shooting stars in my dream-- people who've had long and interesting lives, who have a universe of different experiences, who may be near the end of their journeys. (Experience has shown me that I do much better with patients when I frame working with them in a positive way, and this seems like a good and positive way.)
A large-ish one (6" diameter) burned through the atmosphere and landed almost at my feet. I walked the five feet to it and picked it up in the grass. (Yeah, my subconscious should have had me use potholders, because in real life, it would have been a very hot rock. Hush. It's a dream.) I turned it over in my hand, marveling at the rock that had come so far and had made a spectacular journey through the atmosphere, and that now lay in my hand--- alternating patches of black and gray, and slightly, mysteriously, shiny.
----
I think I know what my subconscious is trying to tell me. I'm having a rough time at the rehab hospital, because the pace is slow and because most of my patients are elderly. I rehabilitate them so they can go home and live at home safely (at which point the home health care therapist takes over, and visits the patient at home maybe three times a week). In many cases, the life I'm rehabilitating them for is no life I'd want to live: We make sure they can get in and out of bed and on and off the toilet safely, and if a family member will have to assist them, we train the family member to help. This... is a life worth going home to? Are my efforts really helping to make things better? Is this really "better"?
So. I look at the elderly I treat, and they're collectively a mess-- they're weak, they're overweight, they're deconditioned. They wrinkle and sag. Their joints don't work. Okay, they're old. You know the story. I am reluctant to treat them, because I fear the same fate. Perhaps subconsciously, I fear that their condition is contagious.
Ha. (I guess I'll get it if I hang around them long enough. ;-) Otherwise, that is cargo cult thinking on my part, and oh so wrong. Thinking that way is not helpful to them or to me.
Which brings us to the meteors: I think I'll do better if I think of them as the shooting stars in my dream-- people who've had long and interesting lives, who have a universe of different experiences, who may be near the end of their journeys. (Experience has shown me that I do much better with patients when I frame working with them in a positive way, and this seems like a good and positive way.)
