the state of the elf.

I spent a good portion of my afternoon playing

Skip BO

yep. I played cards in the middle of the neurology nusrsing station for two hours. The patient (Ms Smith) has severe MS that effects her/his mental capabilities.  Ms Smith also is stubborn and nearly impossible to place in a nursing facility because he/she is so difficult!! Ms Smith  has been in the hopsital three times during my neuro month.  Ms Smith  is more with it than we all her give credit for, mostly she is ticked at her lot in life.  She remembered me from two weeks ago, remembered I sometimes am on wheels.  On her little bio that her/his family filled out they said she/he likes SKIP BO. Well I happen to know where they keep Skip BO in the child life room so I took a little unauthroized field trip and brought it back to the adult side. And she taught me how to play. She was so grateful and did not require any sedative and took her meds.  The Chairman of the neuro dept is on service this week and saw what I was doing and was impressed.  I blushed, told I her I wanted to do peds and said thanks.

What I should have said was this was as much thearpy for me as it was for my patient. Skip BO is about order, numbers, you make orderly piles of 1 through 12. Everything has a place, a match, an anaswer. Skip BO is the oppositte of my life. I can control Skip BO so can my patient. Maybe thats why she loves Skip BO because she can understand it and control it . How do you understand your immune system eating your brain, your memories, your emotions, your relationships?  How do you understand not being able to be cared for at your own home, not being able to feed yourself at times and not signging your own consent forms…. How do you accept not having control of your own body, your own life, your own fate?   You don’t ever really accept that. You don’t ever really get used to the idea or understand it.

In reality so much of mine own fears are caught up in control issues. I like playing doctor because I am on top, I am in control I can make decisions. I dislike being the patient for the opp of all of that. I dislike the match process because in the end I trust my fate to a computer system and God. Spiritually I struggle to really trust God, to surrender control.My problems are small in comparison to my patient but I think maybe I understand her just a little.

So I play Skip BO with my patient and we both feel better and we both feel less likely to bite the next person who annoys us or reminds us what we have looming over us.