The Story I tell Myself …

If you’ve read Brene Brown’s book, Dare to Lead, you might recognize this phrase from her discussion about resilient leaders. She provides a personal example of how this question can be helpful in personal relationships as well as in a larger setting. The basic premise is that as we experience the world, we interpret it through the lens of our own experience and when we begin to react to circumstances or an experience, a way of sharing how we view something in a non-confrontational way is to begin with “the story I tell myself … ” to test how what we are thinking/feeling/believing matches with the others involved. As I was thinking about a recent experience with some of my medical treatment, this framework helped me to think about it differently.

Let me set the scene …

I traveled a little over two (2) hours to get some scans completed more quickly last week because some of the bloodwork I’d had done the week before that indicated the cancer in my body isn’t behaving itself. After getting up before 5 a.m. (not my norm) and driving two (2) hours in the rain, I didn’t arrive in the best frame of mind. Due to what the facility is calling “misunderstandings,” the same vein in the same arm (pretty much the only one I have available these days) was accessed twice in the space of about an hour. I usually insist that we use my port, but it’s not a power port, so when scans require contrast, they have to use my vein, working around the scar tissue that is starting to cause problems. Lest you think I was passive in this experience, I did draw attention to the fact that I had multiple scans scheduled back to back and that all of them required contrast. I was told emphatically that I did not need an IV, resulting in two needle sticks unnecessarily.

The story I told myself was that the people treating me did not believe avoiding further scar tissue in that vein was important because they believe I will be dead soon and also that they didn’t care about my comfort or how the wounds bled more significantly because of the two sticks so close together.

See, not a great frame of mind.

Instead of sharing this feeling with the employees in front of me at the time of the scans, I shared this feeling with my husband and some trusted friends. By the time I followed up with a nurse in my medical oncologist’s office, I was calmer and able to hear that there was a protocol the staff didn’t follow and that information may have been available to some but not others. I was able to make a plan for the next time I have back to back scans like I did last week and who to speak with if I’m told similar things.

Setting aside that none of this management of my care is my responsibility as the patient, I am always glad for specific actions/verbiage/etc., that I can employ in the future. In this Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) experience, I am painfully aware that not much happens once. Knowing that I will be in treatment for the rest of my life means that I have to think differently about these encounters, I have to plan for the next time versus accepting a particular explanation and moving on. It is easy to interpret or experience behavior like this as a lack of understanding or care when it is more typically associated with different issues.

And so I’m working to review and check these stories I tell myself before addressing concerns. I wish all the time that our medical system would actually put the needs of patients first and that these experiences that seem so small to others but so large to me wouldn’t continue to occur. Until that happens, I’m thankful to those who continue to talk me off the ledge.