Are You (Still) Feeling Down?

I know how you feel!

Most weeks I feel like I am an unwilling rider in a non-stop roller coaster ride.

There are the regular ups and downs. There are the stomach-churning left and right turns.

And of course there are the dreaded loop-the-loops wherein I feel I am moving at high-speed but I know that I am going nowhere.

And then the ride ends as abruptly as it started this morning and then even before I can catch my breath and fix my hair and outer garments to look decent enough, the roller coaster ride of my life starts again, the next day as I wake up.

Some days I feel like Forrest Gump.

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

And that would be one of the better days, as some days we know for a fact that this day will be the same as yesterday’s, and last Monday’s, and most of the last 100 days or more of my life.

And so it is not incomprehensible to see why some people wake up and just plans to end his existence, even hoping the after-life would be a lot better than their present life. How sad really. And even sadder still, when you hear of fathers, mothers, husbands and wives not only ending their own lives but also taking it upon their own hands to end the lives of their spouses and their children only because of their own hopelessness, their own powerlessness and their own uncertainties for what tomorrow will bring.

I know for most of them, even if we were able to speak to them or even helped them cope with what might be going in their lives before they ended their very existence as we know it, for some of them at least, we couldn’t have prevented anything that they have set their minds and will to do.

But then again we can try, could we?

And so for today, I just wanted to try to brighten up the day of somebody out there (who knows that could be you) and I am hoping that I could do enough to effect a change in them (even in you), a change for the better of course. Or at least put a smile on your face.

And well, if not, then they (or you) can always hop in and ride the non-stop roller coaster ride of their (your) life.

Buckle Up.

Last Sunday, my wife woke up in the morning with a sickeningly nauseating headache. No, actually she described it as waking up from the sensation of falling from someplace high and falling straight down fast into a seemingly dark and bottomless place.

A black hole I suppose.

And then when she opened her eyes, it felt like an unknown hand was violently shaking the bed and the whole room was spinning.

And so what are you do to as you know your day has already begun and you are now strapped to your designated seat in your personal roller coaster which has started to run even as you have not been strapped in right?

You would close your eyes for one. And then scream. Hold on to somebody, anybody or anything and ride it out!

If she tried to open her eyes, the room will only spin faster, so even standing up or even moving is out of the question.

There is only one thing left to do, try to bawl yourself back to sleep. Not that you have any other option and not that your mind is sane enough to think of any other thing to do.

But my wife was able to lull herself back to some kind of restless sleep and thus buying a few hours of priceless unconsciousness.

But as in people say, “all good things come to an end”, that precious “blackout” did.

And my wife was back to where she was when she first woke up and then some. She now has a sharp pain in her right side and throwing up.

Okay, 911 anyone? Sounds as good a time as any but we didn’t make the call. We rushed to the ER ourselves, checked ourselves in and the nice thing about it was as we were doing this the guy in front of us was also checking himself in and wanting to voluntary check in to the psychiatric ward.

Why? Well it wasn’t hard not to overhear that he was having a manic attack and showing anger management issues which was the least of what he was having for that day from what he was saying and from what we are seeing. Yes, I am not a doctor but talk about having a bad day.

And talk about being in the same nurse’s station with a huge man who was saying he could be violent any minute now, while two nurses were checking his and my wife’s vitals and asking routine ER questions.

As I said, buckle up.

Okay, we were sent to our own private bed if you call closing the overhead hanging curtains as privacy.

Doctor comes in, checks up my wife and asks us “What’s going on?”

Blood was drawn, other bodily fluid specimens taken, my wife was hooked up to the monitors, x-rays taken, intravenous line put in and all those things you dream about experiencing on any given weekend.

And then we wait for the lab results, for medicine to take effect and for the entire contents of the iv bag to go down the tube. The nurse said we could expect to be there for some four hours. And it did last that long, to the minute. But it felt like four days.

And you couldn’t imagine the never-ending line of ER patients on gurneys or wheelchairs and EMT personnel shuffling them in and out. Also we kept hearing continuous paging for medical personnel to come to the ER for x-ray, EGK and other medical machines as well as moans, cries and shuffling of feet all around us, along with the rhythmic beeps and sounds of the monitors.

What am I trying to say here?

I am telling you point blank that whatever condition you are in right now, there will always be somebody else next door who would be in a much worse condition and also they come and go or get better from worse, just as you will be.

Take, the lady to our left, she came in with burns all over her lower body and legs, she was crying and moaning but she was weeping more to her husband because she was so foolish and careless and especially now that they were both unemployed and with no medical insurance.

Or take the ones that were there ahead of us, a teen who overdosed and an old lady with a blood sugar reading of 400+.

There was also the continuous flow of patients needing heart monitoring and other life threatening conditions.

You see when you are surrounded by so much pain, so much suffering, so much anguish, your own seems to vanish or seem nonsensical or even comical.

And our four hours have passed, the headache, vomiting and room spinning were now gone.

Even the sharp pain on her side vanished. And all the lab results came in negative or normal and all the elevated readings in blood pressure and blood sugar levels were normalized. It was as if we only gave enough excuses to be admitted into the ER. The doctor was almost mystified. And then he told my wife, “You’ll live.”

Although he might have meant, “you’ll leave or should be leaving right now as there is really nothing wrong with you and we need the bed for somebody else.”

And as we left the ER though, we will still have to check in with our primary doctor within the week. But miraculously we left with a sense of peace and optimism and also the willingness to move forward and more importantly there was a complete change of focus and transfer of concern which unknowingly we weren’t having for the past few weeks.

I am not advising you to check yourself in to the Emergency Room of your neighborhood hospital but you know what, doing so might do you some good if nothing else has helped.

Seriously, there is so much more to life and living than our own problems and concerns, our own aches and pains. We all have those, some much worse than others but normally they come and go and life goes on.

And why is it that some people with so little in life and those who have much more problems than us seem to be happier, more content and in higher spirits that we do?

Maybe, just maybe because we are focusing on the wrong things and maybe just maybe we need to do some refocusing before we find ourselves in the ER just to see what we are missing out.

Have a great day!

ADDENDUM: My wife hasn’t had a spinning room episode and any of the same aches and pains and the elevated readings since that Sunday in the ER. And for nothing else, we celebrated her birthday yesterday by eating out last night, enjoying the happy moment and praising and thanking God—it does seems logical to thank somebody and God do seem like a good choice on who to thank. Try it out for size sometimes, for if you cannot praise and thank God during the good times, you sure cannot do so during the bad times. If you don’t believe in God, then thank your waiter and don't forget to leave a good tip.

Hub Number: #024

Date: 2010-May-07

First Hub: http://hubpages.com/hub/Does-It-Really-Matter-If-I-Believe-Or-Not