I Will Survive....

Hey, Folks!!

I am home with the craziest migraine today. I get them from time to time. I can mostly muscle through them, but I've had this one for 3 days. Just sitting here looking at this computer screen makes my left eye feel like it wants to explode.

Definitely time for some intervention, so I am going to get a shot of Imitrex in a little bit. Its nice to be able to get seen at the doctor's office on a moment's notice. Membership does have its privileges.

Its funny how we get our inspiration sometimes.  I've been somewhat of an insomniac for the past few years, usually getting by on 4 - 6 hours sleep in a good night. That's 2 - 4 hours on a really bad night. Sleep has never really been a close friend of mine.

Part of managing my migraines is making sure I don't go without enough sleep for too long or it will catch up with me. And since I've probably only slept a total of 10 hours the last 3 nights, the severity of this migraine has come as no surprise to me.

But Sunday night when I found myself imitating a raccoon at 2 am, I started flipping through channels on the TV and landed on channel 72, which is the Oprah Winfrey Network. I was kind of geeked to see that "March of the Penguins" was about to come on. I guess if I was going to sacrifice a good night's sleep, watching these odd little birds and listening to Morgan Freeman's flawless narration was as good a reason as any.

It was the first time I'd seen it since it came out in the IMAX theaters in 2005. If you've never seen it you should. It is one of the most beautiful films I've ever watched. The plot revolves around the migration and mating rituals of penguins in Antartica. Their existence hinges on the thousand year old tradition and for reference, the animated movie "Happy Feet" is loosely based on the premise of "March of the Penguins."
 
After mating, the female penguins leave the mating grounds, with their eggs in the care of the male, to make the long hike back to the water's edge to gather food for their soon to be born chicks. That journey takes nearly 2 months, which means that the male penguins would go without food for that entire time. Many of the male penguins would not survive those two months and in turn, neither would their chicks. For the father penguins that did survive, if their chicks hatched before the females made it back with food, there was a good chance that they would die of hunger.

I was lying in bed, thinking that being a penguin might be the most awful thing to be in the world.  If I was a penguin, I'd pray that some adventurous human caught me in a net and sold me to the zoo. They could put me with a nice, civilized male penguin. Once my egg was laid, the nice zoo people could put it in a warm incubator until it was ready to hatch. See all that hiking back and forth in all that cold, dodging walruses, and scrounging for food when there is a good chance that in the end it might all be for nothing??? Stop playing. Ain't nobody got time for that.

As the scene of the female hike cuts to the mass of male penguins huddled together, plodding slowly about the mating ground, trying to shelter themselves and their unhatched babies from the bitter cold, Morgan Freeman's easy voice interrupted the silence.

"No matter how cold it is or how hungry they are, the fathers must keep moving. If they don't, they will die."

It's easy to forget that "survival" is a relative term.

What we consider necessary to survive is completely based on our own egocentric view of life and what we have gotten used to.

Same for penguins.

Same for my patients.

Last week, I saw a young, female patient who had been living on the street for years. She had been trying to get a bed at the shelter for some time, but she had to kick her drug habit before they would take her in.  She had been given temporary housing at a half-way house but said that she did not feel safe there. So she chose to live and sleep on the streets.

I asked her how she could feel safe sleeping in public bathrooms, in parks and at transit terminals, but not in a secured, supervised place.

She looked at me and said, "Yeah. The house I grew up in was supposed to be a secure, supervised place, too. I expect to find trouble in the streets."

That was lost on me until her case worker let me in on her history. She'd suffered multiple kinds of abuse at the hands of her stepfather, who had actually beaten her to within inches of her life at one point. Her mother would make the excuse to the schools that it was discipline for her rebellious nature. DSS had taken her away for a short time, only to send her back to have the cycle repeat itself. Broken jaw. Bruised lung. Forced abortion under the suspicion that the baby was her stepfather's. She finally left when she 17 and never looked back.

She was kind of like the penguins.

No matter how cold or hungry she got in those streets, she had to keep moving. Her survival depended on it.

On Friday afternoon, as I was leaving to go run an errand, she stopped me and told me that for the last few nights she had been sleeping on the sidewalk. She had used flattened cardboard boxes for padding and a trash bag for cover. She asked me if there was any way I could get a blanket for her.

I told her that I would see what I could do, but I had all intentions of telling her I asked around and could not find one when I came back.

But as I pulled back into the shelter parking lot and pressed my key fob to lock my car doors, I remembered that I had one of my daughter's blankets and pillows that she used for school naps and road trips in my trunk.
It took me a second to decide that I would let my patient have them, because it was my baby's pink velour blanket and her Disney Princess pillow, which I knew were her favorites. Having "favorites," though, meant that she had a variety to choose from.

Even in a matter of life and death, my patient, like the penguins, didn't have as many options.

So I popped my trunk, took out the blanket and pillow and walked back into the shelter courtyard where I saw the patient looking like she had waiting on me.

When she saw the blanket and pillow in my hands, a grin spread across her face and she ran and hugged me to the point that I was embarassed by the attention that it got from the other residents standing outside.

I told her that my child would be very upset if she knew I had given away her favorite blanket and pillow.

The patient apologized and said, "I'm sorry. I hope she's not too sad."

The truth is that it's ok.
She might be sad for a second.
But the important thing is that she'll survive.

Towanna