A Road to Emmaeus

Last week I contracted mononucleosis and ended up spending five nights in the hospital. It was the worst experience with physical illness that I have ever gone through. Despite the relatively brief duration of my symptoms – a mere two weeks – the pain of the disease has forced me to see my life from a new perspective. After some reflection, here are the five main takeaways from my illness: 

1. Pain has a way of narrowing the aperture of your world. When you are in constant pain, you can think of nothing else. You plot ways to escape from the pain. You think about your life before the pain and contemplate a hypothetical future after the pain. There is no reality other than pain, and the possibility of living with the pain for an indefinite amount of time terrifies you. During five days of severe, mono-induced headaches, when I felt an invisible vice ratcheting pressure on my skull, I thought only of treating and overcoming the pain; I lost interest in any other aspect of life. I became distant from my wife, unable to connect with her emotionally, even as she cared for me and experienced her own anguish from my then undiagnosed condition. I lost my appetite, a trend that continued during my hospital stay. The crushing headaches, followed by the five days of severe tonsillitis, simply obliterated all other concerns in my life, reducing my existence to the omnipresent reality of pain. It is difficult for me to imagine living with constant, chronic pain, and yet I know that there are many who face precisely this kind of life. If nothing else, my experience with mono has helped me to sympathize with their plight. 
2. Suicidal thoughts are far easier to contemplate than I had thought possible. During the worst of the acute headaches, I experienced suicidal ideation for the first time in my life. I distinctly remember thinking: I would rather die than live with this pain. For a brief moment, I saw death not as something to be feared, but rather a respite from the misery that I was then experiencing. The ease with which I thought of death in this way is, in retrospect, astonishing, but I have the benefit of looking back now that my life has been restored and I am no longer in pain. There are many others who are not so fortunate, and who struggle for years with mental and physical illnesses that make death an attractive option. I think that I can sympathize with them, as I see how easily one might walk the path from suicidal ideation to actually attempting suicide. 
3. The most beautiful things in life are either free or available at low cost. After spending eighteen hours waiting in a hallway, I was finally moved to a room to spend my second night in the hospital. In spite of my delirious state, I managed to lift myself from the bed and take a shower in the private bathroom I shared with my roommate. As the warm water rushed across my weakened body, I found myself on the verge of tears. The comfort of a hot shower contrasted with the misery of my physical state, temporarily dulling my pain and reminding me of my former life. Showering, which I did every day, was my way of asserting my dignity even as I passed most of the day languishing in bed. I had never before seen showering or brushing one’s teeth as beautiful or life-affirming, but being trapped in the hospital altered my perspective. Other, everyday comforts – my wife’s physical presence, the smell of the outdoors, a walk in the sunlight – assumed far greater significance by virtue of their absence. Post-illness, I am thankful for the basics of life. There is much joy to be had in this kind of ordinary beauty, and I realize that you can’t fully appreciate this until you have been subject to some kind of deprivation. 
4. Despite how much pain you’re in, there is probably someone who is hurting more than you. After the staff finally found me a room, I soon discovered that my new roommate was the loudest and most disruptive patient on the floor. He screamed for the nurse every fifteen minutes, all through the night, and effectively prevented me from sleeping. I developed an intense anger towards him and judged him harshly for what I thought were his manipulative and dishonest tactics to maintain the attention of the staff. It was only upon listening closely to his interactions with the nurses that I realized a key truth: the man was blind. His blindness was not the reason for his hospitalization, but it undoubtedly contributed to his feeling of helplessness and his obvious fear of abandonment. He was a black man in his mid-fifties, and while I never actually saw him from across the curtain separating us, I imagined him in my mind’s eye: emaciated and lonely, fearful and resentful. Despite my own pain, I realized that his was greater, and with this revelation I was able to relinquish some of my judgment towards him. The morning after that restless night, the nursing staff apologized for the man’s outbursts and soon transferred me to another room. I don’t know what became of the blind man or how long he remained in the hospital, but my bout with mono seems trivial in comparison to what is in all likelihood the lifetime of suffering he has endured. 
5. This last one is more observational than philosophical: the hospital is not a place to recover. I stayed five nights in the hospital and it was a miserable experience. I do not fault the doctors and nurses, as they were mostly lovely and did their best to take care of me. Rather, I found that the environment itself is not conducive to healing. I simply could not sleep, no matter how I tried to configure my body using the bed’s various motor controls. The headache, fever, and inflamed tonsils made sleep difficult to begin with, and the stiff mattress, constant light and noise, and regular interruptions ensured a continuously sleep-deprived state. I longed for sleep and begged the nurses to give me something that would make such a blessed release possible. They did eventually give me a pill, but it hardly helped at all. I cannot recall ever fighting so desperately for sleep. I closed my eyes and lied for hours in an exhausted state, and all I could manage were snatches of half-sleep for fifteen minutes or so at a time. I existed as a zombie for about seventy-six hours, only regaining my humanity after being discharged. I am sleeping normally now, at peace in my own bed. The impossibility of sleep in the hospital is as strong an incentive as any to never return there if I can help it.

As a I write this, I am enjoying a day of sick leave, free from any concerns about work. Mono is now a distant memory. There will likely be more illness in my future, though hopefully not for many years. The aforementioned insights will, I hope, help to steady me against whatever is to come.