Danger! Danger!

 



Danger, Will Robinson!


I have a robot. He lives inside of my head. I installed him a few years back, with the aid and expertise of friends and sponsors,  to help protect my recovery. Whenever a relapse-inducing character defect approaches the outer perimeter of my thoughts he detects it and sends out an early warning alarm. Danger! Selfish act approaching! Danger! Self-centered fear! Danger! Ego-driven reaction forming!


Over the past weekend my recovery-bot was on red alert. Two incidents drew me perilously close to thinking and acting in a manner which would have created self-anger, which would have lead to self-loathing, a diminished sense of self, and, ultimately a craving to drink.


Must. be. Avoided. At. All. Costs.


I was working a twelve-hour ER shift at a small hospital way out in the boonies, I am relatively new there, and was doing my best to get off to a good start with the staff. This involved not putting on a friendly facade, but instead being the best version of myself I could be- just like any day, really. I maintained a good bedside manner with the patients, recognized and respected the opinion of the nurses, and kept the department efficiently flowing along. All was going very smoothly, until I made a clinical decision that the nurse manager disagreed with. Given my background and previous experience with similar situations, I felt  my judgement was in the best interest of the patient. 


Within an  hour I received a call from the CEO of the hospital (who identified himself as such), a man I had never met in person, who also made the point to tell me he was on vacation. He suggested to me that I re-think  my clinical decision. Suddenly I was put into the position of either appeasing- acquiescing to the demands of a glorified administrator 1000 miles away  to the detriment of the patient, or sticking to my guns, thus putting my job at risk.


Danger Will Robnson! Self-centered fear! Character defect of appeasement approaching!


I chose to hold firm, explaining to the head honcho that I would not sacrifice a patient’s well-being, and that my decision was final. He curtly hung up on me. I might get a reprimand. Probably not.


The next day, I was asked by a person close to me for a favor that would have put my safety at risk. It was a request made to me last-minute, without regard to my personal well-being. The deed requested of me did have noble origins, and would have been on its own an important act. But rearranging my life on short notice would not have only inconvenienced me and others, but literally would have put me in an unacceptable degree of danger. Unlike the hospital CEO, this person is very close to me, and although her intentions were pure, it was clearly a request asked out of unrecognized self-centeredness. If I did not agree to the deed, it might have put our relationship at risk. However, saying no to a friend is much harder for me than denying a complete stranger, even one with “power” over me.


So I blinked. Against all instincts, I agreed to do it, knowing it was the wrong decision. I didn’t want the fallout of saying no. I did not want to risk losing the connection with my friend.


Danger, Will Robinson!


Fortunately, in this case my  Higher Power intervened. By some  “highly unlikely twist of fate,” a  colleague was able to help me with my (bad) decision in a manner that made the consequences MUCH safer for me. This was a case where my character defect of appeasement actually won out, but God cut me some slack and created a win-win scenario. Still, I must live with myself in this moment knowing I could have put my recovery (and life) at risk. I triumphed, but for the wrong reasons.


So is the way of recovery, one step forward, a half-step back. Spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection. In one instance I felt VERY good about myself; in the other, quiet relief that the situation had been diffused, despite my bad call. I accept. And between my warning robot and my HP, I am sober today, and all is well...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Intubating Alcoholics

Image
In the past week I have put three alcoholics on life support. The first one was 39 years old. He arrived to the emergency department by EMS unconscious with almost no blood pressure. I placed my ultrasound probe on his heart and saw it was beating alright,  just very little blood was entering his ventricles. This is because he was bleeding to death. When I intubated him I saw pooled blood in the back of his throat. His liver was so far gone, so cirrhotic, that blood could not easily pass through it, and the backup and created high vein pressures on sensitive areas like his esophagus and stomach, whose linings themselves were eroded from the caustic effects of constant boozing. He was literally hemorrhaging internally, and it took many units of blood to even get a pressure back. He made it to the ICU, and later that night, died. We later learned from family that he had moved back to town "to get sober." Case two was  a 53 year old chronic alcoholic who came to me con...
Read more

Whiskey on the Walls

Image
Alcoholics in long-term recovery maintain a keen awareness  of any booze in our immediate vicinity. Whether sober a week or twenty years, we keep a heightened sensitivity to its presence in a room. So when my hospital chose to line the hallways with it, needless to say the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. These days hand sanitizer has become as ubiquitous as cellphones, face masks, and Bradley Cooper; you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dispenser. Companies simply cannot keep up with the demand. This being the case, a local valley distillery came up with the brilliant idea to temporarily convert its operations from whiskey to full-time sanitizer production, and began to supply local medical facilities. My hospital has been buying the stuff in bulk, restocking its depleted stores,  and filling all its dispensers with it. Here's the problem. Distilleries using equipment which had been continuously producing hard liquor for years can't magically c...
Read more

Baby Soul

Image
It’s  Baby Soul Day! In my younger teen years, I worshipped the iconic band Rush. At age 14 I was small, nerdy, intellectual, and afraid of my own shadow. Geddy Lee's voice, Alex Lifeson's guitar, and Neal Peart's lyrics encapsulated perfectly how I felt growing up in 1980s suburban North Jersey surrounded by big studly Italian boys and athletic Irish kids.  Neither the albums  Moving Pictures nor  Signals left my turntable *ever* unless I was simply swapping out one for the other. I hid in my room, pretending how I was going to somehow be cool, be accepted, break out. 30 years later, as I felt myself inevitably sinking in alcoholic quicksand, I read Neal Peart's memoir  Ghost Rider . Having lost his daughter to a car crash and wife to cancer within the same year, the legendary drummer one morning mounted his motorcycle and embarked on a two-year tour of the Americas, riding wherever the wind (his HP?) took him. While journaling his geographic advent...
Read more