Melody's Musings

Last evening, I was spending time with my son who is currently 4 years old and I was making some jewelry to update the stock in my acupuncture practice with. He found some star shaped beads as I worked and immediately fell in love with them and started playing little games with the beads- it started off with the string that he decided was a train and he was singing a song-

"Choo choo here comes the train. Choo choo here comes the train"

Then later on, he started playing with the stars that were not on a string any more and the game evolved to The Star Robot.

"This is the star robot and his job is to give everyone stars. You get a star mom"

Me, looking to defer because my hands are full "Oh? What did I do to get a star?"

"You get a star because everyone gets a star. Star robot's job is to give out stars."

Me: "Why is he giving out stars?"

"Because people don't think they deserve stars."

Me: "Why don't they think they deserve stars?"

"Because they don't have any"

That stopped me right there because I did not expect that. I also feel like that's a really good point, little one. People often do feel like they don't deserve what they don't have. Not having something does not necessarily mean we don't deserve it either. We don't become any more or less worthy based on our merits. 

Today I saw another patient and we went over the very same sequence of events as last time but this time she had had another incident of her symptoms. The first time she told me, I did not have much to go on other than what the doctors had said as they ran their tests. This time, as she told me more of the story, a detail stood out. Both times her symptoms came on, there was a stressful interaction followed by her taking a shower. Same sequence both times. Stress, shower, symptoms. When she told me that, the missing puzzle piece snapped into view. The specialist had run every test and found nothing wrong with her heart. They were right- her heart was fine but her nervous system had learned a pattern. Her blood vessels were responding to the stress in a way that mimicked a heart attack.

That made more sense than her diagnosis of "There is nothing wrong with you."

I explained to her excitedly:

"This is why I like to talk to people for a while when there's a weird symptom or something that isn't explained. So often the patient will tell me the story and there's this weird little detail that sticks out and solves the whole thing."

I kept coming back to that moment with my son as she talked because what she was giving me wasn't just a list of symptoms. She was giving me a story. The throughline here is stories: the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we are told by doctors, the ones we carry from childhood, the ones our bodies hold onto when our minds have tried to forget.  The story mattered just as much as the physical presentation. The story isn't just key to the diagnosis- sometimes the story or even the way it is told tells me about a person's inner world. The way someone talks about their symptom(s) can say a lot about their mindset, their current pain level, how it is affecting them, etc without having to name that specifically. I've learned that people with trauma will downplay their symptoms so I have to also rely on body language and eye contact to tell if they are being direct with me or not.

I treat a lot of people carrying things that don't show up on an MRI. Trauma has many sources and most of them aren't physical injury. After working with people long enough, I realized that when something terrible happens to a person, especially more than once, the brain does a terrible thing. It stops asking 'Why did this happen?' and starts concluding 'This is what I am for.'

I see this exact dynamic every single day.  The body remembers, the nervous system remembers- and somewhere along the way, the story becomes: This pain is my natural state. This mistreatment is what I attract. This is what I deserve.

I have gotten used to telling women in my treatment room: 'Just because it has happened to you in a medical setting doesn't mean you deserved it.' And: 'Just because it happens doesn't mean we should normalize it.'

That word again- deserve.

'Deserve: a verb that means to have earned, or to be worthy of, a reward, punishment, or specific treatment based on your actions or qualities'

According to Duck Duck Go any way. Further down 'Basic rule: It shows a sense of fairness or balance in what comes to someone.' What a loaded concept!

My job isn't just to treat the symptom. It's to sit with someone while they untangle the story that says they are supposed to be in pain. Because until that story changes, the body doesn't trust relief.

And hearing my son say that made me realize this isn't just an individual problem: it's a cultural one. 

Coming back to star robot and his mission, I think about how everywhere else in the world has universal healthcare but the united states. Why? I think because we don't have it, we don't think we deserve it. I think about wealth inequality in this country also- why do we allow this disparity to grow larger every year? We think we didn't earn it.

I think the collective needs a real star robot right now- but the stars aren't really star beads- they're the sense of fairness and worthiness all wrapped in one complicated blanket concept. Keep shooting for the stars kid. You'll go far.