When stress stresses
Recovering from a stroke, I have to acknowledge that many people who texted, emailed, and attempted to visit were all mostly well-meaning, but I have to respond with the cliché about the road to hell being paved with the best of intentions, especially when the advice sent in was accompanied by a diagnosis that the stroke was caused by stress and loads of advice (please, don’t repeat the aspirin advice; it’s not as simple or safe as it sounds).
I thought many times about whether or not I should tackle this stress bugaboo (looking for someone or something to blame), and decided I need to because I see more harm than good coming when people throw the word around when trying to “help” people recover from illness.
The reason is that “blaming” stress for a person’s illness becomes a paradoxical combination of victim blaming (ayan, ayan, sinabi ko na, you’re so overworked) as well as as on the other side of the coin, creating learned helplessness (relax lang, take a vacation). The fact is that different people have different thermostats and definitions of work—I get sick having too little to do!
Also ironic is how stress, great stress, may be present, but the well-wishers do not even know half of what’s happening. In many cases, as with my own dilemma right now, the stress comes from within the family and/or workplace, where you are trying to protect the miscreants. And please, please let’s not go into scolding the person for being a martyr.
I take after my mother, who had many health problems in her life, including cancer, in circumstances very similar to mine, but she (and UP, more someday) taught me to endure the trials without necessarily becoming martyrs. We learned to take on the challenges, including how to fall “properly” (spare the head, cover vulnerable parts). We’d roll our eyes at inappropriate advice, the most common being, “watch your diet”—my mother and I had mostly vegetarian diets and “exercise more” (ha! Look who has a better figure).
Then, too, more than our figures (smile), we always tried to maintain our sense of humor.
If I might go back to the point about stress: The world is stressful, and it’s crazy to think we can banish all the stress together with health problems. Especially in the kind of work I do (and that my mother did), which often boils down to caregiving: children, grandchildren, people in need), we can’t retreat into a make-believe world without problems.
Caregiving isn’t just sitting by someone’s bedside. I teach, I write, and to do that effectively, it means keeping in touch with the world. The afternoon I had my recent stroke, I had to teach, and although I had the class postponed eventually, I was still thinking of what to include in the lecture until the last minute.
I start the day, too, reading the papers (on the internet), and there is not a day I do not weep with the news, often from dismay but also from joy. Yes, joyful news can be stressful too, welcome stress. It’s a matter of amplifying the positive stress. Chichi, my assistant, helps a lot—dogs know and will approach you, quietly providing comfort.
Last weekend, I asked my family if we could change our weekend routine. Friday night, I watched a replay of “Tales of the Manuvu,” the original first presented in 1977. For Sunday, I asked to go to Pintô Art Museum in Antipolo, where, fortunately, Dr. Joven Cuanang was around and updated me on his dreams of strengthening the inclusion of the arts to promote well-being. Dr. Cuanang, the authority on neurology in the Philippines (yup, throw in strokes), and just talking with him about neurology and wellness made me feel better!
My kids clamored to visit Crescent Moon Cafe and Abueva pottery hub, so therapeutic too (and I don’t mean in the sense of the movie “Ghost”). Yes, you can still buy pottery/ceramics at P200 per kilo.
Sure, there was a lot of “be careful,” “go slow,” “mind the step,” but always offered with care and a helping hand. As we moved to midafternoon, one of the “kids” (I know, they’re not young anymore) said, “Dada has work to finish. It’s Monday tomorrow.”
We need to tune in to each other when handling illnesses. So let me apologize, too, but I am discouraging visitors and phone callers because that can be stressful, too, especially if unsolicited gossip is thrown in!
I’m getting better, really, I am, thanks to so many people. Special thanks to the Inquirer Opinion team, who have been amazing with proofreading, including word counts!
My mom had a flurry of transient strokes and a big bloody (hemorrhagic) one in her 70s. She lived to be 98, and until the very end, I had to whisper in her ear several times, toward the end, “It’s all right, mom, we’re all OK.” When my time comes, that’s all I’ll need for comfort.
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michael.tan@inquirer.net
