Weird Superpowers

And the fallout from them...

Photo by Dan Parlante on Unsplash

I have a weird superpower. Actually, I have a couple of them. One is infinitely useful which is writing, but the others that I have are a bit stranger when it comes to the general practice of life. One is that I can select a greeting card for anyone, assuming that I have a general idea of who they are and their relation to you, in a matter of seconds after arriving in the greeting card aisle. This talent is taking a bit of a hit in recent years, as the supply line is diminishing the selection that is available, but I can still do it, and provided that your recipient is somewhat emotional in nature, it is pretty much a guarantee that they will cry when getting the card that I select.

That is not the weird superpower that we are going to discuss, however. We are going to discuss another one of mine that I have had for a very long time, and that is knowing what is wrong with a person medically with very little information provided. I am not psychic, so no, it isn’t that. Likely this superpower is the result of my interest in obscure medical information, reading and listening to information about odd medical situations like symptoms that aren’t common presentations of an illness, and my ability to file these things away, but not so far away that my brain will immediately access them when it is reminded of them.

You have no idea how many people I have known that tell me about the random symptom or two that they are dealing with, only to have me tell them, “Oh, you have X”, out of nowhere. It isn’t a guess on my part, I know that is what they have, and as many people that I have said this to, nearly every single one has gone to the doctor, had the testing, and I was completely accurate. Now, you might be thinking, “Athena, you said ‘almost”. Yes, yes I did. There is one that still has the exact same medical issue and they have yet to ask a doctor about it. Does this stop them from complaining about it? No, no it does not. However, I gave them the information, so what they do after that is on them.

Now you might be thinking, “Well Athena, all that’s… very interesting… but I don’t know why you think I care about your weird talent. It literally has nothing to do with me.”

You’re right, and my telling you about it has very little to do with the actual talent, and it is more about human behavior. You see, in my life, I have known more than a few people with weird medical things happening to them, and I have also known many people that have had to deal with long-term and chronic illnesses. In dealing with these people there are a lot of things that I have observed, both from the patients themselves, and from those around them, including strangers. Let’s start there, shall we?

Do you know how often strangers feel the need to tell a patient how to deal with their illnesses? It’s kind of remarkable really. For whatever reason, if a stranger finds out that someone is dealing with something medically, they will find a way to relate it to something barely related that someone that they know dealt with and then tell the patient they should do the same thing. Often this will have to do with diet. I get it, diets are a big deal to a lot of people, and when they start a new diet they dive into it, do a bunch or research, and feel empowered by that information. They meet someone and think that this information is going to save their lives and feel that they absolutely must tell them about it. Everything… they need to tell them literally everything about it right this very moment… no matter how interested the other person is in hearing it.

This has always interested me in terms of behavior. I think that this is an empathetic response when coming upon information that the other person doesn’t actually know how to deal with, so their brain searches for something to feel less powerless in the interaction. It’s weird to find out that someone is dealing with cancer, and it can make a person come face to face with their own mortality. I think this is why people have this knee-jerk reaction of telling them something that isn’t particularly useful.

It should be noted that this tends to be the response from people that have not dealt with something like a difficult illness personally, but rather through someone else like a friend or a cousin. The reason that I say that is because if they had been in that situation, they would be less inclined to offer their sage advice. Why is this? It is because they would know that a person that is in that situation has searched high and low for every single thing that might make an impact on their predicament, and has already tried it, or has done the research to know that it won’t work. I mentioned that diet is a common suggestion, but so are many other things like treatments that won’t make any difference, but they sell a great deal of hope in a small and expensive package.

Humans search for relevance in their interactions with others, and they want to help. Someone that is ill inspires that desire in them but sometimes the desire does not in any way equate to having helpful advice. When meeting someone that is ill, I have always made the suggestion of less is more. Offer less, and listen more. You may well have direct life experience that can be helpful to them, but if they have been on their journey for a long time, telling them what they should do comes off as dismissive of the work they have already put in.

If you meet someone that is dealing with something like that, consider that they have already heard what you are about to offer them a thousand times, and aren’t likely to be receptive to hearing yet again, how this magical thing might fix their lives. That isn’t how the world works. Now granted, I am speaking about medical issues, but I assume that this happens with mental health issues as well. I don’t know a great deal about this journey, but it stands to reason that people are going to tell someone what they should do to fix all their problems in this arena as well.

You can’t. However, what I think that we should all agree on is that physical and mental health are very connected with the health that we are in overall. If you are ill, do what you can to be in the best health possible. Beyond that, you have to live your life and accept the fact that many people will think that they know better than you do about how you should be handling things.

For those of you that are dealing with the illness of another, it sucks, especially when the illness is terminal. This is likely the hardest version to deal with. If someone is chronically ill, you may not agree with how they handle it, but you at least will probably have them around to disagree with. When someone is terminal it is a very different situation. On the one hand, you want them to be around as long as possible, on the other hand, you know you are going to lose them regardless of what you do. In your mind, you think that you can negotiate more time out of the hands of death, and sometimes this makes you detached from reality, and unreasonable.

First and foremost, they are terminal. They will die, and these last years, months, weeks, days, moments, are the last that you will spend with them. It is a very painful thing to reconcile, but you do not get a choice. The choice has been made for you, and there are going to be wars fought about accepting that reality if this is someone that you care about.

People often speak about terminal patients in words like “brave” or “courageous”, or “inspiring”. Dealing with a terminal illness is messy, and the person suffering, along with their family is not in a movie, they are living real life. The problem with real-life is it isn’t clean and nice. Often times it is really ugly.

When dealing with someone that is terminal, it doesn’t change their personality for the better necessarily, and it can very much turn them towards the negative. It can be trying, it can be thankless, and it can make you feel like the person is already gone.

I have seen this in cancer, and I have seen it in dementia where the family is worn to the ends of their nerves, and they are just numb when the end finally arrives. This isn’t a verdict against them, it is a testament to how difficult this sort of situation is to deal with.

I have known several people that have been in this situation, but I will tell you about one particular one, where, Drew, whose twin, James, was dying of cancer and the twin didn’t have an appetite. James was very thin, and Drew wanted him to eat. He didn’t just want him to eat, he begged him, guilted him, cajoled him, and did whatever he could to make him eat. James, however, was sick, didn’t have an appetite, and had without a doubt, slid into the terminal stage of his illness. Eating wasn’t going to help him, and it certainly wasn’t going to make him feel better, but Drew wasn’t thinking about it that way.

In Drew’s mind, James not eating was him giving up, and that made him angry. He wasn’t ready to lose his twin, so a fight ensued. Looking back on it now, he understands where he was at, and could take a better approach to his emotional state. Getting angry and being extremely short and frustrated with a home hospice patient was not what he should have done.

It was fear, anger at the situation, grief, rage, and denial that created that response, but really it came down to his love for his brother, and not being ready to face his impending death. That sucks, it really does, but it wasn’t James’ problem. He had enough going on, and dealing with his twin that wasn’t able to come to grips with reality isn’t a wonderful thing to have to deal with.

The point of that story, and the rest of it really, was to illustrate that often you really aren’t thinking about the other person. You might think that you are, but in reality, you are very focused on the self. What you suggest to them, or what you believe about their situation, might only make sense to you, and it may well be a stressor on them that is unnecessary. Cognitive empathy is very helpful in these situations.

Now, for something that I have observed about patients and their prospects for doing well, I have a tidbit for them. When you are ill it is normal to seek people that are in the same place as you are. You want to know what they have tried that worked or failed, what doctors are good, what treatments work, but most importantly, that someone understands where you have been. That said, if the support group you choose to attend is nothing other than a never-ending stream of people telling the same story over and over again, and wallowing in their suffering, they are not going to help you. They are going to drag you down into a pit of misery.

I knew someone that got a rather stressful diagnosis. It was suggested that she go to this support group to get resources and connect with people, but after attending a few she just seemed down. She asked me to come along with her to one. She couldn’t place her finger on why this place wasn’t helping her, even though everyone said it would be good for her to go, so I went.

From the moment that we arrived, every single person regaled the group with their backstory. It was filled to the brim with detail and experience that you could cram into a story, which maximized the time past when the group was meant to meet. It would have made sense if this had been the first time that the group had ever met, but it wasn’t. The person I was with was the first new member in six months, and had ample opportunity to give her the low-down on the group’s history. After we left she again expressed her feelings of discomfort that she couldn’t figure out the origin of, and so I asked her, “Is it always like this? Do they always talk about their stories like this week after week?”

“Yes”, she told me. Of course she was miserable, she was attending a misery factory. The group’s intent wasn’t to help anyone there, it was to soak in the gelatinous glue of victimization and to revel in it. Can you imagine meeting every single week, with the same people and telling your story of difficulties over and over again? What about that is meant to be cathartic? They are just mired in their illness and making it their identity. When she went back to her doctor she mentioned this to him, and what I said about it. She thought that he would be in favor of the support group, and perhaps that I was being a bit harsh. He said to avoid places like that like the plague.

If you are a patient, and you find a support group that is seeking to help, by all means, find solace there. If they are looking to trap you in the identity of an illness, run like the building is on fire and about to collapse.

That’s it, that’s my advice that has been born out of a weird superpower. Take what you will from it, remember that you don’t know what someone is going through, and being a victim is not something to aspire to.