Chapter 7

[Rachael]

Post from Dr. Mueller: “What did Dr. Fredrickson mean by her reference to “tipping point” and the relationship b/w water changing from solid to liquid as it relates to languishing vs. flourishing?”

[Donna]

Ok, so I guess I will answer my own question with a real life example…yesterday, I found out a friend of the family is in hospital with COVID, on ECMO (heart lung bypass) because their lungs are so damaged and they will likely not recover. I instantly felt the pain in the soul of the person who delivered the news. I also remember the pain of delivering such news to families and ran the gamut of the roller-coaster of my own emotions from days of giving that very same kind of news to patients in the ICU and CCU’s at Abington, where I did my toughest rotations. I can still remember being with one beautiful black family after sickle cell took the life of their matriarch and the entire family came to sing gospel hymns as care withdrawn. It was at the same time one of the saddest and most joyful scenes I have ever borne witness to.

This person who is sick with COVID declined to get vaccinated based on bad information. This tipped me emotionally into the languishing territory very quickly. As a physician it breaks my heart to hear these stories and it hurts to know that people are falling for bad information intentionally delivered by others to create division and the result leads to suffering. The last 23 months I have only even taken to social media in any form (had never had any SM accounts prior and would not have ever used this platform) in desperation to inform my patients and others about the best facts as they are available re:COVID. Ironically and bizarrely one of the first things that happened during COVID is we shut down our medical offices and I was separated from my patients in person. I started to share COVID avoidance info, but now that there are treatments and preventative strategies I have at times mentioned these too.

The person who delivered the news to me about the sick family friend on ECMO was angry at the person who was sick w/COVID, I could only be sad. I explained to the family member as medical personnel we are trained to “hate the sin, love the sinner”. In other words, we do not get mad at the Lung Cancer patient for smoking. We do not blame the alcoholic for drinking themself into cirrhosis. We may chose to send them to other providers if the relationship not therapeutic (I.e. if we feel we are starting to judge the patient and not be able to care in an unbiased way for him/her).

We can try to feel compassion for the person(s) impacted, using a meditative technique. Here is a chance to try to put into practice Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) described in a study by Dr. Fredrickson: “ LKM involves a range of thoughts and visualizations, and it directly evokes only select positive emotions (i.e., love, contentment, and compassion) and carries some potential to evoke negative emotions. Moreover, given the possibility of gradual shifts in people’s outlooks and personality traits, we expected the positive emotions generated by LKM to increase over time.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Allow me to write this out loud to try to turn a languishing mood back to flourishing one, w/God’s help, may someone who needs this info read it:
1.) Vaccination is the biggest boom to enhancing the
Public’s health since the invention of the sewage system.
2.) COVID vaccines are appropriate for almost everyone five and over, at this time being only approved for those older than five years old. Even people who are immune compromised can be vaccinated, but they may need another drug (one in particular lasting 6 months called evusheld) to help protect them better.
3.) At the time that I write this, universal masking with a high quality (N-95 or KN-95) mask is the best way to prevent the spread of this virus.
4.) Seeking out appropriate medical advice (at minimum by calling a doctor/medical provider) or getting a test a good first step should you fall ill.
5.) Certain drugs PRESCRIBED by an authorized medical provider, such as anti-viral agents or IV antibody drugs (only one antibody drug helpful during this most recent Omicron surge) may help reduce the risk of hospitalization, serious illness, or death. Unproven Internet treatments DO NOT WORK and may cause serious harm or delay obtaining appropriate treatments.
6.) You can and SHOULD be vaccinated even if you had “wild COVID”. In fact it will improve your immunity over time according to a study recently released in JAMA done at Oregon State Health University, written by a team of researchers lead by PhD and Principal investigator Dr. Fikadu Tadesse: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s....
7.) Stay home if you are sick, the world will go on without you. Quarantine at home, get curbside pickup instead of going in somewhere if you must go out…but most of all show yourself LKM and boost your own health by getting rest and taking care of oneself.