Flap

During the week at school in New Mexico, we did an exercise of applying the Four Noble Truths to an actual problem. (I loved hearing that Bernie Glassman, Roshi’s teacher, calls these The Four Opinions.) One of the members of my group shared how he tries to dig more deeply into issues: “I’m upset about this.” Why is that a problem? “Well, because of this.” Why is that a problem?

I soon got a chance to apply this when I noticed that a fellow student was making what seemed like quite a loud racket typing on her laptop. I grumbled to one of our teachers, who (correctly) said that I should talk to her (rather than about her), and that I might need to just “fold it in” (which was a nicer way of putting it than “get over it”). I asked myself why the noise was a problem: because she was the only one who was making noise. Why was that a problem? Because she was getting to do something no one else was getting to do.

Aha! It was a sibling issue: my sibling was getting more cookies than I was, which of course is intolerable. I recalled my father saying when I was a small child, “Life isn’t fair.” Indeed it is not. I then asked myself if I have ever been the one to get more cookies. Indeed I have been. And with that, the sense of separation disappeared: I am just like her. Sometimes she gets more cookies, sometimes I do. I did not need to speak with my peer, and the sound ceased to bother me.

There has been some rearranging of staff at my paid job lately, so I am now sharing the office with a part-time staff chaplain instead of one of the CPE students. While I was away at school, without consulting me, my new office-mate rearranged the furniture such that when I sit at the desk I usually use, my left elbow bumps the wall. I felt angry, not so much about the actual changes, which I’ll get used to, but that she didn’t check with me.

When I arrived on one of my units and a nurse greeted me and asked how I was, I said, “Disgruntled,” and told him about the new office arrangement. He asked, very mildly, “Have you talked to her?” I hadn’t planned to. I was going to try just to get over it, but I’m glad he said that because it caused me to realize, with chagrin, that I was talking about my co-worker rather than to her.

Jonas, my colleague and mentor (at the time), made his weekly trip to our campus and he and I and my furniture-moving co-worker had lunch. He and I were scheduled to do joint visits afterward, so when he ended up on a lengthy phone call with our boss, I decided this was probably my best opportunity to speak with my colleague. I told her I had felt dismayed at finding the furniture moved and that it would have felt good if she had checked with me first, since we share the office. She said she didn’t even think of that—when she saw an opportunity to “make things better,” she sprang into action. (She said that one reason it didn’t even occur to her to take my opinion into account was that I “work on Sundays.”) I tried to convey that “better” is subjective, and my colleague did apologize for not talking to me first, but a slight heat also crept into the conversation. Just then, Jonas got off the phone and my colleague said that we were discussing a difficulty, and Jonas said, in a jocular tone, “What? Who got offended about what?”

I said, “I don’t think I used the word ‘offended,’ but I was sharing that I felt dismayed about the change in the office.” Then we dropped the subject and a fourth person joined us and we discussed our palliative care patients and I felt worried that Jonas thought I was a big jerk, not to mention my colleague. I also felt worried that I’m going to end up losing this job because I can’t get along with my co-workers.

I thought about how this would have been handled in the corporate world and concluded that I would never have had this kind of problem, because there are basically just two kinds of people there: managers and everyone else. Everyone else doesn’t move the furniture, and if a manager causes the furniture to be moved, generally no one else complains. However, in CPE there is a huge emphasis on intra- and interpersonal dynamics and communication, so working as a chaplain seems to be kind of a gray area. It’s not quite the standard workplace.

Once the fourth person was gone, I said to Jonas, “Just wanted to see if you had any feelings about my sharing my dismay about the furniture move.” Jonas said, “Oh! No! I think it’s good that you shared your feelings. Some people aren’t bothered by that thing, and some are.” I was glad I checked.

He and I went off to do joint visits, which went very well. I watched him conduct one patient visit, and he watched two of mine. He offered several words of appreciation, about my interactions with patients and about my charting, and said at the end of the afternoon that he had enjoyed spending that time with me. When we were charting, he said, “You’re much more careful about the details than I am.” I joked, “Well, on the other hand, you probably don’t get upset when someone moves your desk.” He thought that was funny, and I felt I had restored my reputation as a not-completely-awful human being, in case that had been in jeopardy.

However, when I got back to the office, I found that my colleague had decided that a drawer in the desk I most often use would be a good place for her to put her random papers, even though it’s a shared drawer, not assigned to anyone. We each have a designated spot where we can put papers. I pointed hers out and asked, hating my self-righteous tone even as the words left my lips, “Do you want to put your papers there?” Ugh.

In the course of my time with Jonas, I finally learned what a “flap” is. I often see this in regard to patients with decubitus ulcers (bedsores), and had pictured a thick steak of flesh hanging from a patient’s body or draped over it like a small blanket. However, it turns out it’s a skin graft that is placed over the wound.