KW and FW (married) were here today. They are both having nerve problems: one in the hands and one in the feet. PN was here, she has Parkinson's with autonomic features. She is fainting again. She doesn't take enough fluid. BM (I know, bad initials) came in for pain from neuropathy which was a little worse. KC was here. She has Lupus, and I'm worried it may have affected her brain. Actually she has seizures from it, but now something else is up. VR came for follow-up from his stroke. He has aphasia, so he can't talk well and he gets frustrated at times. He went to speech therapy and that helped. LW came in - I don't know what happened to him or what he had. I had thought at one time he had Parkinson's, but I was wrong. I think he had drug-induced parkinsonism that I diagnosed wrong. I'm not seeing him again for a year because he is doing great. CL came in because she doesn't want to have back pain after surgery that she's going to have in two weeks to take out her kidney (she has cancer in her kidney). There's not much I can do for that, though. HN came. Her husband (he was my patient) died from Myasthenia Gravis (MG) because someone told her that his symptoms of swallowing trouble were not related to MG so he went into a "Myasthenic crisis". Anyway, she's doing better now. She gets migraines. There were three new patients today, all with nerve problems - either neuropathy or post-herpetic neuralgia.
Everyone who sees me is "sick", or they wouldn't see me. (Although there are a couple of people who insist on coming in even though they are REALLY not sick. I've tried to tell them that they don't have to come in here anymore and they just show up sooner than if I schedule them for a follow up. They develop some sort of new problem.) But there is a certain degree of "sickness" that I expect. In the morning I look at the schedule and see who is coming. Then I know how much "illness" there is. Today there was a lot less illness than expected. This is good, because it's harder when there is more than expected.
Anticipation is very interesting. It puts the reality we experience in context. We need to try to see what happens as what happens rather than as what happens compared to what we are expecting. Obviously, I don't do that very well with my days. I anticipate how much illness there will be. So at the end of the day today I am happy because the day was "easy". No one was "sick". For someone to be "sick" they would have to be worse than I expected. If they are better than I expected, then they are "doing well" - that isn't "sick". Perhaps my happiness is a "good thing" but it isn't really. It's there only because the events were favorable compared with the expectations.
I'm going to try not to anticipate how "sick" people are "supposed" to be.
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"Happiness isn't a thing in itself, it's only a contrast with something unplesant." -- from a short story, "Captian Stormfields Visit To Heaven" by Mark Twain
Language is a very imperfect method of describing "reality". Perhaps the biggest problem is that everything can be seen in the light of a dichotomy between opposites, or "duality" when framed in language. Reality is not dualistic. In reality, there isn't "happiness" vs. "something unpleasant". There is never any "thing" that's a "thing" if it's a concept. This is currently creating a stir with respect to the "concept" of money.
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