I had the second sitting of my root canal last tuesday, and while the procedure itself went pretty well, I developed some pain after a few hours had passed. I asked the dentist and also read that it can be “normal” to feel pain for a few days, so I waited it out.
Now it has been five days after, and I am sitting here with a swollen upper lip with my oura ring telling me I have been running a low grade fever overnight. The pain overall has gotten better progressively though, so I am desperately hoping I’ve turned a corner and I am not going to die of sepsis (half-joking).
It is difficult and stressful for me to visit the dentist again, because I am more afraid of getting covid than having a potential infection. Each time I have to beg for the first slot of the day, request that they wear n95s, be psychologically uncomfortable because I seem to be asking so much of them in order to protect my own health, make sure I apply enough nose sprays and mouth wash before and after, then hope I don’t show signs of having a covid infection the few days after. This seems to be my permanent reality for medical visits now. I am very conflict adverse, so making requests stresses me out a lot. I wish I can otherwise.
And this is just teeth (although bad oral health can cause heart disease and cancer.) I can’t imagine if I develop more pressing health issues. Someone on mastodon told me that nobody masked in his chemo ward, so even a basic level of healthcare is no longer afforded to people who are obviously immunocompromised. I guess this is the world we live in now. Advocating for our own health is difficult, because it is against the norm. Society conditions us to simply let things happen to us.
So I have been pretty unwell for the past few days. I have no physical or mental energy to do anything except eat and sleep. I recovered from the first sitting of my root canal within a day or two so this is unexpected, since usually it is the first sitting that is more difficult to recover from as the tooth was just infected.
I am frustrated because exercise is my coping mechanism. I am tired of being tired and perpetually haunted by a pain that is not severe enough to be concerning, and yet it is still bothersome and disabling. At this point I think about the story of the second arrow: where there is the actual physical suffering, and the suffering caused by our response to the original suffering.
This was when I realised that knowing how to be, when ill, is also a skill. I can be sick and be equanimous about it, letting myself focus on healing and be zen whatever comes, or I can be angry and frustrated on top of being ill.
I am obviously angry and frustrated. Especially when I was expecting 2-3 days of recuperating time, not almost a week and counting. I can’t relax into my illness, worrying, fretting and googling at every other moment.
But I can see that there’s this other way of being, even if it is inaccessible to me right now. And this other way of being is not only necessary during times of illness, but also as a way to live in this horribly illogical world. If I have a terminal disease and have only months to live, I wouldn’t want to spend that time being angry and frustrated. I would want to spend every moment doing things that are meaningful to me, or savour moments that my health would permit, or at least be at peace. This is also how I feel about trying to live in this decaying world.
I think about Han Kang:
My migraines are always reminding me that I am human. Because when a migraine comes, I have to stop my work, my reading, my routine, so it’s always making me humble, helping me realise I’m mortal and vulnerable. Maybe if I was 100% healthy and energetic I couldn’t have become a writer. — source
I have personally written similar things in my private journal before: having had this clarity that I would have become a very different person if I wasn’t chronically ill. I am not saying that my suffering has meaning (I hate it when people say this), but just a recognition that there would simply be a different outcome.
My chronic illness and my writing are deeply intertwined. It is writing that has allowed me to at least express some of my actual reality so that my existence can be real instead of completely disappearing into people’s projections of me. That there is a part of this world that cannot erase and deny my illness. And I appreciate that even as I am sitting here with a painful swollen lip and exhaustion I am still able to write.
Being ill can be clarifying. There are no longer that many distractions, the distractions we seek when we are able and healthy. It is just us, our exhausted minds and our sick bodies. It is emptying. I have already become a lot slower as I age, but sickness almost makes time stop. I feel helpless but yet to an extent it is kind of liberating, because without energy there is nothing I can do that I think I should have done. There is very little doing, only being. I don’t like being a sick person, but I feel like I have to learn to be sick in order to not let this time become a waste. It is ironic I know, that if I could at least learn to let go I am still learning something even when I am doing nothing. So much for being zen.
Maybe one day I’ll stop thinking in terms of value and meaning. But today is not the day.