My son challenged me to a game of basketball last week. I’m competitive at sports, and we both play hard. It was a dog-eat-dog game, and when he went to steal the ball, I felt a pop in my finger. I looked down at it.
My finger did not look like a finger. The adrenaline kicked in. I tried my best to stay calm and said, “hey buddy, we gotta take a trip to the ER.”
An hour later, I was alone in the waiting room at the ER, still hoping to be seen by a doctor. I could hear over the loudspeaker that they were busy. Lots of code blues and calls for doctors needed in surgery. So I tried my best to breathe through the pain. After all, I wasn’t as bad as the people in the operating room.
As the minutes passed, the pain got worse. My finger turned purple. The pain was shooting up my arm. But I said nothing. I didn’t want to burden the hospital folks who needed to help the people worse-off than me.
Finally at the two-hour mark, I cracked. My wet eyes started sobbing, and I couldn’t stop. I found the closest person that looked like they worked there and said, “I’m sorry. I think I need something for pain.”
In less than 30 seconds, I had two nurses and a doctor in my room. They took an x-ray. Shortly after, I was receiving a giant shot of lidocaine. The pain was gone. The doctor encouraged me to look away, then he stretched out my finger, put it back together, and splinted me.
Later, when he handed me my discharge papers, he looked again at the x-ray and said, “That was a painful injury. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
I didn’t know how to answer. There I was in a hospital. I had paid a $500 co-pay to get help. People everywhere could help me. And I was sitting there suffering because I had created a narrative in my mind, that somehow asking for help meant denying help to someone else “more deserving.”
Reader, as I type (very clumsily) tonight, I want to share my lesson of the week: we need to ask for what we need. You are not burdening someone by asking. Advocating for yourself is important. Hiding my pain at the hospital did nothing but hurt me. At the end of the day, I am my most important ally, and I could have spoken up for myself.
Go out there and be your best friend this week, Reader. I’ll see you next Monday. -Em
