Healing Without Recovery

It’s the day after the hurricane, which came, swirled above my life, threated mass destruction and death, and left, leaving no scars but the tiniest one in my left eye, and greatly improving the landscape. How was it all for you? A normal Tuesday.

It was a minor procedure—nothing like the old days, when having a cataract removed was a one-week affair of lying in bed, patch shielding the afflicted eye, and nurses guarding you around the clock. I would have hated it, and yet, I miss it. Recuperation, recovery of sight, should be marked by something more than a discharge from an ambulatory clinic an hour or so after light and clarity were reclaimed. Nor should it be I putting in the sacred drops, the potent elixirs, the magic potions into the knived or lasered eye, but rather virgins dressed in white, their nursing caps pinned firmly to their hair, their appearance marked by the swish of their starched dresses.

And so I have spent two days progressively seeing more and more. The black of the words on my computer screen, for example, is a revelation: before, they had appeared as my face does in the morning mirror, after my shower. Now, each letter snaps out at me, screaming, demanding to be seen.

Oh, and did I mention that the floor is back to having black and grey tiles, and that grout appears between them? Previously, it had just been grey….

So sight has returned, and I rejoice, and yet… Something is missing. Yes, it’s wonderful that modern medicine has found a way to put a 450$ lens into my left eye in a procedure that lasted only fifteen minutes. Yes, it is wonderful that I walked into the surgery, and wobbled home from it afterward. And certainly, it’s wonderful to hear the doctor say, “no restrictions,” meaning that I could go back to work, go back to playing the cello, go on with my normal routine.

Wonderful—or is it? Because today, I’m tired, listless, a little over-caffeinated but feeling lazy. Yes, the weather—it’s been raining for three days—doesn’t much help. But there’s something else.

I feel gypped. I went through a long period in which I was losing my sight incrementally. This document, for example, is being written at 200% amplification, not the 100% that I used in the past, and always assumed I would use forever. I have had several prolonged fights with an excellent insurance company—excellent except that it had no ophthalmologists on the island. So that involved calling California, and having multiple conversations, all variations of this theme:

Insurance Lady: Marc, you absolutely covered by the plan!

Marc: OK, but my doctor would like to know how much the plan will pay for the procedure…

Insurance Lady: We’ll pay 100 percent!

Marc: Yes, but 100% percent of what?

Insurance Lady: 100% percent of our usual and customary fees!

Marc: And what is that, exactly.

Insurance Lady: 100%!

Marc: but 100% of what? If the doctor charges 10 million bucks for the operation, will you pay 100% of that?

Insurance Lady: Oh no, 100% of our usual and customary fees.

Marc: Ahh, and what is your usual and customary fee for a cataract operation?

Insurance Lady: Well, we can’t tell you that.

Marc: Why not? What am I supposed to tell my doctor?

Insurance Lady: Tell him you are 100% covered! 

It went on for weeks, during which it developed that if they actually told me what they were willing to pay the doctor—what their “usual and customary fee” was—that would amount to a “preauthorization,” which they utterly could not do. So I dithered with the insurance company, during which time life became dimmer and dimmer. It got to the point where I could no longer read the numbers on my cell phone. And then, blessedly, because of the court case Windsor, the company Raf worked for decided it wasn’t going to be in the business of deciding who was married where.

Because it was obviously going to be a Human Resources nightmare—especially for little companies like Walmart, with over a million employees in the United States, and even if you could figure out who was married where, and who was working where, and what that state’s policy was…well, what happens when you transfer that excellent gay manager from Massachusetts to turn around that region in Alabama? Because that health insurance for his or her spouse is a major part of the compensation package.

And so all three components were at last in alignment: we had the blind eye, the surgeon who could unblind the eye, and the company who would pay for it. What didn’t we have?

Well, trawling as I do for things to write about, I came upon Brené Brown talking about vulnerability. That resonated, since lying on a stretcher, moving from slot number three, seeing patient number one get wheeled off, moving to slot number two, only to see the new slot number one get wheeled of, only to arrive at slot number one? Meaning that in twenty minutes it will be your turn to entrust your eye to an essential stranger—though you have looked him up on line, and peered at his board certifications and wondered: were they real, or were they purchased for five cereal box coupons and fifty dollars?

Your mind, in short, knows perfectly well: everything will be OK. Your body, however, is telling you: there’s still time, get the hell OFF this stretcher! You can still write. You’re not walking into too many walls, yet. You can get it done later.

That, Dr. Brown, is vulnerability.

Then I pursued Dr. Brown onto another show, with Jonathan Fields, who has The Good Life Project. And that’s when I broke my vows to Brené, and listened to Fields talking to Sara Gottlieb about biohacking your hormones and reclaiming your life.

So I was fifteen minutes in, when I got the strangest feeling: something is completely disordered. After months of growing progressively blind, a surgeon in less than half an hour has restored my sight, and after one day I can go back to my life. Which should have meant that I could go back to teaching my classes at the island’s biggest bank. I should have stopped writing. I should have stopped worrying about the debacle that was the midterm elections. So where should I have been?

Flat on my back in a hospital bed, with the blinds carefully drawn to shield against the harmful, blinding light, with doctors appearing carefully to peer into my eyes, and with nurses gently, oh so gently, turning me to my side, so that they could give my nightly backrub.

We have perfected medicine so much that we have eliminated a crucial component of healing, and that is recuperation. Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, it’s non-productive. But I wonder if, indeed, it is. I spent one day recovering from the morning’s surgery. The next day I was listless, irritable, and completely unproductive.

Today, I have to worry about biohacking my hormones, and it might be a good thing to do. I definitely should check into it. But I’m too tired—not in body but in spirit. Know where I really want to be?

…in bed!