The last time I wrote, autumn leaves were fresh and abundant.  Today, rain has flooded down, and the first snow of the year--falling just two days ago--is as completely gone as if a dream.  Where has the time gone, and why have I been so silent?

 

Shortly after my last entry, I began experiencing shoulder and neck pain, along with shooting pain down my arm.  I sought help from a physical therapist, and for a brief time I thought the problem was under control.  When the pain returned, it did so dramatically and relentlessly, taking over my life in thought and action.  

 

The past six weeks have been a flurry of appointments, increasing anxiety, and long nights of poor sleep with me propped up against a fortress of pillows.  The fact that I’m writing this entry now tells you that my story has a happy ending:  I am much improved, though sobered by the experience (I’ll write more about the solution at another time.)

 

The point of my writing this is not just to explain the sudden interruption in my entries, nor to garner sympathy.  Rather, the experience has led me to think about what some of our clients go through and, in tandem, about how we as clinicians recognize and express compassion to our clients.

 

Because of pain, I was miserably limited in activities.  I could not use the computer beyond a few single-finger taps; I could not manage housework or shopping.  Going to the gym was unthinkable, and even walking outside was difficult.  My normal routines came to a standstill, and I felt increasingly frustrated as I was cut off from my activities and myself.  I was suddenly disabled, and I was somebody’s client.

 

My life was in limbo.  As a result of my limitations, my appointments were the highlights of my week. (Is it any wonder than an individual with aphasia, unable to communicate and separated from many hobbies and pleasures, would become so attached to therapy sessions and the clinician?)  I wanted my providers to have the answer, I wanted the magic bullet that would stop the pain and restore me to my life. I wanted kindness and a jot of sympathy, and above all I wanted professional skill.

 

I have been a speech-language pathologist for a long time.  Perhaps I have become so used to meeting clients and learning why they come for services that I do not always remember the intensity attached to the experience. These past six weeks of pain and therapy sessions have reminded me:  clients are looking for answers, for assurances, for as close to a magic bullet as they dare hope.  As much as they anticipate therapy sessions, they approach them with a mixture of hope and dread--hope for the longed-for solutions, dread for the inevitable limitations.  Clients want to know that you take them seriously and that you are neither shocked nor stymied by the problem.  Clients want to be taken care of and also made strong.  Clients are willing to do their part, but they sure won’t mind if you make things easier for them.  

 

I am writing about how clients feel and what they want because I felt all those ways and wanted all those things.  From this, I can imagine the confusing mixture of hope, fear, anger, gratitude, and disappointment that other clients may experience.

 

 

What does it mean that compassion is “never competitive”?  It means that my pain does not have to be exactly the same as yours for me to use it to understand you better.  I do not have to hit a designated point on a pain scale before it “counts” as a loss.  The only requirement is that I pause and reflect on how my small speck of suffering (or large, as the case may be) gives me an appreciation for what others go through.  I may understand more because my experience was similar to another’s or, ironically, because it was different--acknowledging how little we understand can also make us more compassionate.  In this way, our own life experiences of illness, loss, and short- or long-term disability will teach us, inside ourselves, what we need to know to be more true and more compassionate to our clients.