(A chalazion, the culprit of my travail. It's a bacterial infection that clogs the little tubes in your eyelid, forming a bag of pus below the eye.)On Thursday before Spring Break I went to the ophthalmologist to have a staph infection seared from the inside of my eyelid. I had tried antibiotic goo prescribed by a campus doctor and then two other antibiotics prescribed by the ophthalmologist, none of which were reducing the swelling. Actually, the herbal eyewash (a simple tea made from witch hazel bark) was much more effective until it ran out. But it had been two months since I had contracted the infection and my vision was worsening. I have only taken antibiotics once or twice in my life and am resistant to many conventional medical practices, especially surgery. At last I caved. I was ready to be done with the mess and I wanted both eyes for the beauty of Italy at Spring Break.
I was reticent to have the surgery, first of all, because the ophthalmologist who previously saw me radiated sickly energy. He was not at in his body and seemed hollow when he spoke to me. He had done this examination countless times so his body was able to run through the motions without requiring much mental or emotional input. He also looked unhealthy and not very happy – two qualities in doctors that make me justifiably wary.
(I really don't feel comfortable being operated on by a man who looks like this. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think he is.)Luckily, when I went back in to have the surgery, they assigned me the head doctor (apparently he was the only one allowed to do this surgery now – fewf!). He was much healthier, and I was able to joke around with him, lighten the mood and let him know that I was an intelligent person and not just a patient. (I had been reading Dass at the time so I tried some of his breaking through the roles techniques.) Feeling his positivity, I “[became] much more receptive to treatment because [I] trust[ed] the caregiver” (Rinpoche, 32). Hey, this won’t be that bad!
(Not a particularly inviting environment for a warm and compassionate doctor-patient exchange.)When I am experiencing pain, I usually try meditative techniques of entering the pain and staying calm to cope. Seeing as this surgery was a more significant source of pain – and pain to which I was knowingly subjecting myself – it seemed like an especially good chance to experiment with this approach. As I leaned back in the patient’s chair, I began to slow my breathing, focusing on my biorythms, trying to stay calm. Before I was quite ready, in went the needle, right into my eyelid, injecting Novocain. Don’t flinch, I thought. Take it! Don’t let it hurt. I tried so hard not to respond, to continue focusing on my breathing (I suppose this is the macho attitude many women accuse Eastern spiritual traditions of promoting?). And it worked! The doctor was amazed. He had never seen anyone respond as little as I did. Almost everyone flinches or cries out, and now it was over, he said.
And then started the repercussions. I began to feel nauseous, only slightly at first but it steadily built until I lost consciousness. I was swimming in a swirl or black nausea, stuck energy. I had tried so hard not to feel any pain, which is not what meditation teaches, that I had repressed all the pain that I had felt and the energy built inside me until it overwhelmed me and I passed out. Meditation teaches (at least until it alters your perception so significantly that pain is not perceived as being quite as painful) that we watch our pain, that we not attach to it so that it tortures us. Much more difficult to do once we actually encounter a substantial amount of pain. This “calm acceptance” (Shlim, Medicine and Compassion Introduction, 9) does in fact mean acceptance, and it means letting it pass by like the leaves that Dass watches from the river bank. The monks Shlim treated dedicated their entire lives to cultivating this equanimity suffused with compassion, and were able to remain “kind, calm, and completely unafraid even at the end of life” (Shlim, Medicine and Compassion Introduction, 9). But “[t]here is a real difference between just acting as if we are kind and open [and able to face pain in such a way] to everyone and actually feeling kindness and compassion for all people” (Rinpoche, 51). That is the difference between Shlim’s monks and me. But the only way, I suppose, to turn acting into feeling is to continue to act, to build habits from virtuous acts until they become ingrained. It is a life along practice, and with each failed attempt I learn a little bit more about the direction I ought to take if I am to embrace and truly feel virtuous and compassionate. I certainly learned from this painful, miserable, bloody experience. But I’m still hoping I won’t have to do it (at least this particular surgery) again.
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