week 8

“A good teacher can have as great, if not a greater, impact on the world than the president of the United States.” —Michelle obama

I distinctly remember being a kid, watching the Olympics and hearing an athlete being interviewed, who said they did their sport because they want to inspire other people. I immediately thought that’s what I want to do. I want to grow up to inspire others.

It would feel pretentious, naive, and ridiculous to say that now. But if I’m being truly honest with myself, that is still what I want to do. Somewhere in me, I still feel like the kid who wants to be a writer-figure skater-basketball player-swimmer-surfer-teacher. I still want attention for being good at something. I still want to feel like it’s not too late, like my life is stretched out before me like a red carpet, waiting patiently for me to discover who I am and live up to my potential. I still want to inspire people.

We give so much energy to the stars— the Jordans, the Biles, the Phelps of the world— and their incredible talent and drive. And they are inspiring to watch. But I also think that behind them, their coaches hold more power than us spectators could ever dream of. The Phil Jacksons of the world not only bring out the potential in themselves, but in countless other athletes they coach. Maybe the only thing more powerful than being able to summon your best is having the power to inspire and bring out the best in other people. In that light, I would take being a Phil Jackson over a Michael Jordan any day.

If I really want to live up to my childhood aim of inspiring others, it would make sense to work to not only reach my potential, but to become the best teacher I can be. I think my natural talent is being able to see potential where others don’t necessarily— but the real work of my life is inspiring others to rise to their potential.

trying to cook & eat healthy: mediterranean-inspired soup

Based on my doctor’s advice, we are trying to eat a healthy, plant-based Mediterranean diet. I was ambitious this week with four new recipes, two of which I actually found time to cook: a matbucha, described as kind of a cooked salad that can be eaten as a dip with pita, or poured over couscous, and freekeh and black-eyed pea soup. The freekeh involved roasting red and green peppers and jalapeños and putting them with whole peeled tomatoes to cook. It didn’t turn out too badly. The soup on the other hand was fairly bland and tasteless, prompting this response from my husband: “you did a good job trying, but this is horrible.” We suffered through the soup once, before he had the good idea to mix a little bit of the matbucha in the soup, giving it a spicy flavor that made the mushy texture much more tolerable. I still have a long way to go before feeling comfortable cooking dinner (especially new, healthy dinners), but it was a worthwhile experience and one step in conquering my kitchen fears.

crossword puzzle: getting farther on my own

One of the things that can easily make me feel stupid, after trivia games and geography questions: crossword puzzles.

36 correct/ 79 total clues: 45.5%

Answers:

enduring great pain: my endometrial biopsy

The pain was the most excruciating thing I have ever felt in my life. Having been told that I would “possibly experience some discomfort” and advised to take 600 mg of ibuprofen an hour prior to my procedure, I was a bit apprehensive. Though given all of the extensive and invasive tests I have been put through in my quest to seek answers for repeated pregnancy losses, I thought I was prepared. Nothing could have prepared me for this test, which I can only describe as feeling like my internal organs were being scraped out with an old, rusty, flaming hot sword. If you google “endometrial biopsy,” a bunch of medical journals pop up comparing the discomfort to a pap smear. If you look at real women’s accounts, it is routinely described as the worst pain of their lives, worse than their experiences of “over twenty hours of labor and natural birth,” “a 6000 pound truck falling on my foot,” “walking on a leg that was broken in two places.” The first time they tried they couldn’t complete it at all because my muscles were so aggravated the nurse couldn’t get the instruments into place. They ordered me two valium to take with lunch and come back later that afternoon. The valium worked enough to complete the test, but did absolutely nothing for the searing pain, a pain I can not adequately convey, that I could not “breathe through,” but that still haunts me and will haunt me for a very, very long time. I could not get through the third round of scraping they were supposed to do, and had to stop after two, the nurse saying that she hoped she had gotten enough of a sample, but if I end up having to do it again, to request sedation. Why would they not just warn women and offer sedation to begin with?!

After spending the next day researching real women’s accounts of how horrific, torturous, and barbaric this test is on women, and raging through lasting cramps about the misogynistic healthcare system that undervalues/ believes/ cares about women’s actual pain, I will be adding it to my life’s many missions to educate these doctors and specialists about how to properly inform women about what this invasive, awful test entails. And for the love of God, if it must be done, give women the choice of sedation up front.

Maybe the real failure of this was that I did not do more extensive research beforehand, (which I am always told to not do because things online can be scary and not informative). Maybe the failure was not speaking up more forcefully, or not simply refusing to continue without sedation. But maybe the absolute torture of going through it to the extent that I did under the circumstances I was under will serve as motivation to educate doctors on the reality of this procedure and how they need to rethink how they put people through it.

As always, thank you for reading and happy failing.

Rachel