When our beloved dog had cancer, we did all we could to help him be comfortable toward the end of his life. Because Rottweilers are so strong, they require a lot of pain medication, so we essentially had to give him what seemed like horse tranquilizers. While we were all caring for him, my daughters were in charge of giving him his daily meds. One day the girls were gone, and as I grabbed his handful of meds I thought, “When’s the last time I took my stuff?” So, I gathered all my vitamins, got a glass of water, and swished down my pills. Then I turned and looked at the counter, and my vitamins were sitting there. In that moment, I realized I’d just taken all of my Rottweiler’s meds.
I stood there for a minute and decided to call the vet. The vet tech on call wasn’t particularly reassuring, so I called poison control. (Mind you, I have never had to call poison control before. Not for my own kids or for any children in my care. But there I was, standing in my kitchen, calling poison control on myself.) When the pharmacist answered the phone, I said, “I just did the stupidest thing ever,” and proceeded to describe exactly what happened. There was a significant pause, and then out of her mouth came, “This happens all the time.”
Maybe you’ve had one of those moments where you know that what the person trying to comfort you is saying is not entirely true. I think we can agree, this does not happen all the time: Random 47-year-old women are not calling poison control because they’re so disconnected from themselves and their immediate surroundings that they’ve taken their Rottweiler’s medication. But in that moment, I didn’t care because it was so massively reassuring to just have someone with that presence be able to remind me that I wasn’t alone.
[For more on this story by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, go to https://www.yesmagazine.org/ha...-be-present-20181108]
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