PERSPECTIVE

Have you ever gone back to your childhood community and thought it appeared so much smaller than the memory you held of it? Recently, I drove up the street where I grew up and had participated in some fierce kick ball games on hot summer days and wondered how we could have ever played that game on such a narrow street!! As a child, it appeared larger than life but looking at it through a different lens and under different circumstances forced me to completely rethink my point of view. Dr. Wayne Dyer said “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change,” and I certainly discovered the truth of these words over the last few weeks.

As I prepared to leave for a winter vacation with my son and his family, the day started off early. In the beginning, the long flights that were overbooked and delayed seemed a small price to pay for a cruise to the warm southern Caribbean islands, but by the time I finally arrived at my destination in San Juan, I was tired, hungry, thirsty and crabby. The small hassles of travel seemed so significant at the time, but just two hours later after fainting and fracturing my ankle, they seemed trivial at best. Perspective.

Because it was a complicated injury, I was transported to a hospital in Puerto Rico. I am a nurse so a medical facility is familiar territory to me but my expectations are grounded in my familiarity of my experiences. The emergency room was so crowded; patients were lined up against the wall; others on the floor. It was a cold, damp and dirty building with outdated equipment and lack of staff. It took seven and a half hours to see a physician who never looked at my foot or ordered any pain medicine. X rays were completed after another four hour wait and I was put in a diaper when I said I had to use the restroom.

After seventeen hours, we finally met an orthopedic resident who was willing to help us. My son and I decided we were going back home despite the possible consequences of flying with this injury but she informed us that she needed to perform a reduction of my displaced fracture with what she called “conscious sedation” before we could be discharged.  The resident then administered Propofol into my infiltrated IV that did not work without obtaining my consent or using any monitoring equipment. My foot was then manipulated and placed into a splint for transportation. Because this hospital had no crutches, my son ran five blocks to Walgreens to purchase some so I could make my way through the airport. We finally hobbled our way to a taxi.

After a twenty-hour ordeal and surviving the long flights home with a traumatic injury and significant pain, I was admitted to the hospital where I am employed. The stark contrast of where we were to where we had been was astonishing. A clean, state-of-the-art building with professional staff was something I had taken for granted for so many years and now it brought tears of joy to my eyes. In the past, I had complained about the placement of the soap dispensers and other petty incidentals in my day to day work but after the experience of those past two days, I had an entirely different outlook. Perspective.

I relate this story not to belittle a healthcare system or to complain about poor medical treatment, but to dig a little deeper into the concept of perspective. Those doctors and nurses were not inferior compared to the standards in their country. They did the best they could with the experiences that were familiar to them. Of course, I would not want to settle for this healthcare model but instead, appreciate the one available to me. But perspective goes a little deeper than appreciation. The word “perspective has a Latin root meaning “look through” or “see through.” I often would tell my young sons that if you look at the Rocky Mountains through a telescope, all you see is a piece of ugly rock, but if you remove the narrow vision piece and see the entire view, you witness a gorgeous mountain range.

How many times have we stood in a grocery line complaining about the wait with no perspective of the availability of all the nutritious foods around us that are not accessible to some people in our own country. How many times have we complained about a twenty-minute wait for a doctor’s appointment with no perspective of the quality of the health care we take for granted.  Does this mean that we just accept things as they are because others do not have what we have? Of course not. We should always strive for improvements but with a sense of appreciation of what we do have and where it all fits in the perspective of life.

I would never want to repeat the medical encounter I experienced in San Juan, but that event made me appreciate not only the excellent health care I take for granted in my day to day life but also the realization that the small inconveniences that normally aggravate me really aren’t that important when you put it all into perspective. Abraham Lincoln said, “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

As I recover, perspective is challenging me head on. Before my accident, if one of my expectations didn’t happen the way I thought it should, it could ruin my day. If I had put all those interruptions of the best laid plan to get to my destination that day into perspective, would I have fainted from dehydration and heat? Maybe not. Each day I have to count on others for my basic care which is difficult for an independent person, but putting it in perspective, I am so grateful for the support. Oprah says that the universe originally gives you a nudge to get your attention and if you don’t heed that, then you get a knock over the head! I am trying to put my “knock in the head” into perspective and figure out what the message is for me.

My experience could have left me bitter and angry but instead I am trying to see the good in it. I am fortunate that it was just an ankle injury and I have the help of family and friends. I am trying to take this recovery time to contemplate any changes I may need to make in my life and hopefully become a better person because of it.

So, at the Heart of it All, we are given lessons along the way and it is our responsibility to put them all into perspective so we can enjoy this Glorious Thing called Life.