Peace While Plunging

A little over a week ago, I had an MRI done of my brain. I expected the results to be unremarkable. That’s how most medical testing has gone for me—my bloodwork is fine, my chest x-rays clear, my echocardiogram normal. On the surface, this seems like something to celebrate, and perhaps it is. But if you’re in the same boat (and most long-haulers are), then you understand the mixture of relief and frustration that such ‘good news’ provokes. I am of course thrilled that there is nothing obviously wrong with my heart, but that doesn’t mean my heart has gotten the memo and will now beat at a normal speed. So, I expected the same from my brain scan: results that would sharply contrast my lived experience of brain fog, memory loss, dizziness, and blurred vision.

Instead, the scan turned up something more nebulous: a small cyst on my pineal gland and a lesion in my left frontal lobe. Neither of these are especially unusual results, and they may be purely incidental—asymptomatic abnormalities that have nothing to do with my long Covid symptoms. Then again, it’s also possible that they have everything to do with my symptoms. In short, instead of yielding answers, the MRI yielded more questions, more rabbit holes.

The morning after receiving my results, I went for a walk in the woods to clear my mind of its chatter about brain lesions. It was very effective. I’ve hardly thought about my brain since then. That’s because I fell and sprained my ankle. Even my attentions to my ankle have been sporadic, though, since later that day my son clogged the toilet so thoroughly that the plunger broke, and I was compelled to hobble with pot after pot of hot water up the stairs to try to clear the obstruction. My attentions to the clog were also short-lived, because somewhere in the process of plunging and hauling, I tweaked a nerve in my low back. I gave up and went to bed—brain still lesiony, ankle still sprained, back still aching, toilet still clogged.

I hope you’re laughing about this because I am. Admittedly, I wasn’t laughing mid-plunge. Mid-plunge, the whole world seemed comprised of slosh, swill, and shit spray. But just one or two steps beyond, it’s clear to me how lucky I am. I think of those who are fleeing Kabul and those who will never leave it again. I think of overwhelmed doctors and nurses and of children in ICUs. I think of people who have only one toilet and people who have none at all. My ankle is healing, my back feels much better, and Amazon offers two-day shipping on plungers (which is great news since my kids are now sick and we can’t go to the store). And my brain? It is what it is and will be what it’s going to be; worrying does not heal lesions.

There’s a word that’s been kicking around in my mind the past few days: Equanimity. Merriam Webster defines it as “evenness of mind especially under stress.” I think of it as peace under pressure. Peace while plunging.

Equanimity is not indifference. Indifference is a closing off to experience, a giving up, an Eeyore-esque resignation to misery because nothing else seems possible. I understand indifference. I’ve spent some time there over the past eighteen months. Sometimes, we need it for our own self-preservation. I hope I never stay in indifference for long, though, because when it comes down to it, I’d rather feel alive than numb, even though being alive hurts. Equanimity is opening to experience, feeling the pain of it, but connecting with peace at the same time. I’m still learning the art of opening—learning to laugh through my tears, learning to greet my pain with curiosity and compassion, and learning to reach outward from the darkness of isolation.

How do you cultivate peace under pressure? How do you connect with light when you’re in the dark?

P.S. Here is the best life hack ever, which finally cleared our upstairs toilet: pour 1/2 cup or more of dish soap into the toilet bowl (I used Dawn), then chase it with a big pot of almost boiling water, and prepare to jubilate with the gurgling chorus of rushing water and evacuating excrement.