stepping stone sunday: be a bell

Having reached the highest point of frustration possible with traditional medicine and medical "practices," it was time to go back to her for wisdom and caring and more than a 10-minute "audience" with someone too rushed to listen, the rest of the time relegated to a nurse feeding information between me and the doctor in a maddening game of "telephone," where the message once related bears no relation to the original message.

Nurses take my blood pressure without speaking to me, without a hello when they enter the room. "What is my blood pressure?" I ask as they hang the rubber tube back up.

"It's normal," they say.

I take a deep breath, softening my urge to scream, stifling the yelly voice in my head.

"What does normal really mean?" I muse out loud. "What exactly was my blood pressure? What did the little tiny numbers say?"

They make little notes in my chart when I dare to ask my blood pressure. I can only imagine what they say. "Challenges authority," or "where did she get her medical degree?" or "how dare she ask for her exact blood pressure; doesn't she know WE'RE in charge here?"

"What seems to be the matter?" doctors ask me as they breeze in.

"I don't reckon I know. That's why I'm here," I respond with a smile. "Here's what I'm feeling…"

"Let's get some blood work," they interrupt.

"If we can do anything else for you, give us a call."

"Yes, you could try your hand at DIAGNOSIS! What a concept! You could walk with a cane, take Vicodin by the handfuls, be rude to everyone, write my symptoms up on a white erase board (or on the wall itself if no white board is handy), and call in a team of very talented, if flawed, doctors to help you figure out what's wrong with me instead of doing blood work and calling it a day!" I think to myself.

And then my time is up. Mr. Man in Green with Plastic Holey Shoes comes and takes blood. Soon, I'm sure a nurse will call and say everything is normal, and I'll have to take a deep breath again to avoid screaming.

What was I thinking?

I have returned to my acupuncturist, so frustrated by Western medical doctors. She is a healer in many ways. I trust her touch. She touches me! Imagine what a radical concept this is in our modern interpretation of medicine. It is almost nonexistent.

Last Thursday, my first time there in almost two years, we talked and she did some points, leaving me to rest for a long time, knowing that–perhaps–what I need most is rest in a simple room with soothing music and darkness.

This week, we talked for a long time. And as she left the room to let me relax into the treatment, an eye pillow making the room very dark, soothing music surrounding me, a warmed sheet over me (A WARMED SHEET!), just before she left I felt her slip something cold and metallic in the crook between
my thumb and index finger.

"A small bell for you," she said very quietly, "in case you need me."

I heard her walk softly to the door.

I smiled and could feel my eyes tear up under the eye pillow as she closed the door behind her.

Of course. A small bell for you, in case you need me.

Sometimes we all need a small silver bell slipped between two fingers to give us the peace that we need, the feeling of being seen and cared for.

Not a big bell, not a loud one that demands attention like a song and dance number from Chicago the musical, but a small one that will be heard by those attentive for its ringing.

Not a bell set on a table near us, or across the room, or in the same county, but exactly within reach, just there in the crook of our hand, so no effort is needed to ring that bell. Not a bell placed precariously between the tips of two fingers to demand tendons tense up to balance it, but in that deep wide space between thumb and index finger so no effort is even needed to hold it. It sits perfectly in that spot, like a child in the low crook of a tree at a river.

She didn't say, "if I can do anything else for you, let me know." I wouldn't have even known what to answer. No, she simply slipped what I didn't know I needed into my hand.

How could you offer someone a bell like that this week, as a stepping stone for them? Perhaps simply tell them this story and say: I offer you a bell.

Perhaps provide someone with the only bell you know to:  an afternoon of babysitting or adultsitting so she can sleep, a gift card to a movie theater so he can take the kids on Saturday even though he's been laid off, an invitation to breakfast at your kitchen table, a jar of homemade soup left with a crusty bread on the front porch, a real letter in the mail with two tiny feathers in it, a kind word, a bell.

A small, quiet bell placed just so.