This is my site so I’m not going to pull any punches. Some of the stories I’m going to share in this series on “The Stories We Tell,” won’t be pretty. Many of them will probably hurt more in the writing than in the reading. Some will be funny later but aren’t funny today. Still, I have a sense they need to be told, so I will tell them. I am, after all, a storyteller.
Shame, Embarrassment, and Panic
If you follow me on Social Media or you’ve read past blog posts, you know that I spent almost the entire month of November (2021) in the hospital battling COVID pneumonia and three other types of pneumonia.
For most of my time in the hospital, I was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), only the last 5 days of my stay were not.
I’m going to confess right now, prior to this experience I had trouble asking for help. I did everything I could to not need anyone else for anything, even if I had the people in my circle of friends and family who could do whatever it was I needed quickly, easily, and with great joy. I preferred struggling through it, even spending hours doing something that would take someone else minutes. I didn’t know the root of this or the fruit of it until I was in the hospital.
The first week or so of being in ICU I wore a mask called a BIPAP. It covered my mouth and nose and forced air into my lungs. Initially, I was on 100% oxygen. You may not have ever considered this, but when you can’t breathe everything else becomes somewhere between difficult and impossible to do alone. EVERYTHING.
Let me paint you a little picture so you get the full effect:
I was naked except for one of those hospital gowns that didn’t go all the way around. The front wall of my room was floor-to-ceiling glass and there was a desk outside one of the windows that people sat at when they were doing rounds. The staff had morning meetings and took the time to stand outside each room in the ICU and talk about the patient in that room. I couldn’t hear what they were saying because I had COVID so my room was closed but I could see them watching me, pointing to different things, and shaking their heads giving me sad looks.
The second week I spent most of the time I was in bed, on my stomach. Meaning, if the blankets moved then I was mooning the entire ICU staff and between the wires and hoses I was attached to, and the muscle weakness, there was not a thing I could do about it.
All this to say that modesty eventually went out the window, especially when it came to going to the bathroom. Not only did I need help to and from the commode that was near the bed, but I also needed help wiping. And, because of the medication I was on and having stress incontinence, many times I found myself sitting in a lake of my own pee. To take the sting of embarrassment and shame out I called it “pee sea.”
Unfortunately, at least initially, that shame and embarrassment, and, yes, pride, kept me from asking the nurses to come and change the bed for me unless they were coming in for something else. Sometimes this meant I was in “pee sea” for a couple of hours or more.
One evening, my primary nurse was a male. He was great but it still made me uncomfortable asking for help, particularly with going to the bathroom, wiping, and cleaning the bed. Unfortunately that night I was coughing a lot and between him and the nurse assisting, my bed had already been changed two or three times.
Then it happened. He came in and helped me to the commode (this normally took 20 minutes or because my oxygen dropped when I sat up, then again when I stood up, and again when I sat down on the commode) while the other nurse changed the bed again and gave me a clean gown. He wiped me and helped me back into bed, another 10 minutes or so. When my oxygen numbers were finally above 90% again, they both left.
I honestly don’t know how long it was after that but at some point, I started to cough and began to wet the bed. The more I coughed the more I peed. The more I peed, the more ashamed I become. The more ashamed I became the tighter my chest grew and the harder it was to breathe. The harder it became to breathe, the more I panicked. The panic gave way to more shame and more coughing, which meant more peeing. In what was probably less than two or three minutes I had completely soaked the bed again and my vitals were in the danger zone.
I was so consumed with the story, I didn’t realize I was dying.
But I didn’t know that my oxygen numbers were low or that my blood pressure was through the rough. I didn’t realize how many alarms my vitals were setting off in the nurse’s station just beyond my door. The only thing I was aware of was the story going on in my head.
It went something like this: “I can’t believe I’m wetting the bed again. I’m so worthless. The nurses are going to be angry that they have to change the bed and my gown AGAIN. Why can’t I get it together? Why can’t I control my bladder better? This is so embarrassing. I’m so weak. Such a failure. They have better things to do than clean up after me. There are people here who need their help. I shouldn’t be in this situation.” On and on. To the point, I hardly noticed that both nurses were in the room trying to get me to focus on my breathing and calming down. I was so consumed with the story, I didn’t realize I was dying.
I was only aware of the pee, the shame I felt, and the story. I kept trying to apologize for wetting the bed again. Kept interrupting as they tried to get me to stop hyperventilating, to make sure they knew I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to make them stop whatever they were doing, put on the PPE, and come into my quarantined room and clean up another mess of pee.
Finally, the male nurse looked me right in the eyes and very sternly said, “I don’t give a shit that you peed on the bed. I’ve cleaned up worse! This is my job and part of what I signed up for. I know you can’t help it. What I do care about is keeping you alive. So focus on me and breathe!”
I hadn’t thought about it before.
He, and the other nurses, were there because they cared. It’s why they went to school, why they took jobs in ICU. They knew what they were getting into and they did it because it mattered to them. I mattered to them. They weren’t thinking any of the things I thought they were. The whole story I’d been telling myself was a lie. And as this dawned on me, I felt the Holy Spirit wrap His arms around me and say, “Do you see how the enemy uses shame to lead to panic and uses panic to lead to death and destruction? Do you see how it’s all in the stories you believe? Are you ready to believe a new story, a story of your value, your worth, and how much you are cared for?”
Without the receiving, there is no strength left to give. Without giving, there is no space left to receive.
Slowly I began to relax, to do the hard work of breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. (It’s hard to breathe in through your nose when you have air blowing into it making it difficult to even feel your own nostrils.) As my breathing slowed and my vitals began to stabilize, I realized that I needed to give myself grace and space to need others and that it was strength, not weakness, to allow those around me to do what they do best while I focus on doing what I do best. That this is what it means to be jointly fit together – both giving AND receiving. Without the receiving, there is no strength left to give. Without giving, there is no space left to receive.
The next evening, the nurse who had helped me the night before took the time to put on the PPE and come into my room. He came in to tell me that he was glad I had lived through the night. He told me how close they had come to losing me during that coughing fit. (I had no clue until he told me, I had been so wrapped up in shame and panic.) Then he told me again what he had told me the night before, only more gently this time. “You know, Anysia, we’re here to take care of you while you can’t take care of yourself. Let us do that. None of us care how many times we have to clean up the bed or how long it takes to help you to and from the commode. We don’t have something better to do, someone more important to take care of. YOU are the reason we’re here. What matters to us is you. You getting better. You getting stronger. You going home and being well.”
After that, I began asking for help more readily, not for everything but for most things and I started giving myself grace and space to need others. Instead of beating myself up for reaching out, I began speaking kindly to myself and celebrating the fact that there were those around me who could and would help.
Changing the story and recognizing that I was not an inconvenience that the nurses resented, but I was a patient they wanted to help, helped me see a value in myself that I had never seen before and helped me treat myself and my own heart with greater care and esteem than at any other time in my life.
The story of being a burden, of being too much, of being unworthy of help still comes up with the invitation to isolate and withdraw but today I know that is a story that leads to death and destruction. When I recognize it’s familiar cadence, I turn to the heart of God and listen, instead, to the story He is telling – the story of my worth, my value, and my place in a community of people who each has something to give and something they need me to give. A story of belonging, acceptance, and connection.
The interesting thing to me is how aware I have become of the fact that the story I choose to believe, does not just impact how I think but it impacts every area of my life: how I feel physically, my energy levels, how I do or do not engage socially, my connection to God, my emotions…all of it. The stories I believe impact how I view myself, those around me, and the world in general. So, I’m making a point to pay close attention to the stories I tell and the stories I believe, asking the Holy Spirit to help me, so I can see and engage in life from a place of less distortion and more truth; less pride and more grace; less fear and more love.
