A tiny fire started in my microwave last Friday and I didn’t catch it until the smoke rolled into the dining room. We were 20 minutes from leaving town for the weekend, so I set up the medical-grade air filter and figured the smell would be gone by Sunday night. Um, no. Although I never actually saw flames, the smoke damage ruined the microwave and permeated the walls and cabinets.
This was a minor household mishap — no one was injured and the damage is small and fixable. What I can’t get over is that I found the situation funny.
Really? Who reacts to a house that smells like smoke and days of cleaning with amusement? Yet neither daunted me. I could only see that my kitchen would be the cleanest it has ever been and that I might be required to paint the kitchen cabinets, which I’ve wanted to do for years. Isn’t that weird?
Trying to figure out the sources of my amusement led me to chronic illness. The many strategies I’ve learned to keep illness from subsuming me are useful for managing any sort of distress. A problem that doesn’t bring harm to anyone and doesn’t permanently damage my home just isn’t that big of a deal.
The fact that I actually feel well enough this week to do the work played a large role in my response. If I were relegated to the couch and had to smell the smoke without being able to do anything about it, I’m sure I’d be pretty frustrated. Still, this is the kind of thing that would have sent me into a tailspin even in the years before I got too sick to cope with the world. Being stuck on the couch this week would have been annoying, but I don’t believe I would have been fretful and distraught.
Chronic illness has given me so much valuable perspective. I’m not grateful for being sick and I will never say it is a gift, but after being so sick for so long, the minor inconveniences of life don’t matter all that much. I do appreciate the perspective.
Hi Kerrie! Thanks for writing about this. I know that for myself, when something (big or small) happens, depending where I am on the pain scale at the time, it can be next to impossible to see things clearly & my coping skills completely evaporate. When it’s a particularly bad pain day, any inconvenience or obstacle or mishap – big or small – can send me into a tailspin and life will suddenly seem completely unmanageable. On a day when the pain is less, it’s a whole lot easier to see the big picture, to get proper perspective, and to even to find the humour in it.
It’s interesting to me (and I only just realized this about myself lately) that it’s my reaction to these events that leads me to to recognize that I feel better or worse than I thought I did. Linda
Hi Linda,
Absolutely. How I feel migraine-wise really affects my ability to cope. That’s a great point about your reaction to events being what tells you how you feel physically. It’s the same for me. Only in recent months have I been able to tell that I’m in a terrible mood and it’s because a migraine is coming on. It’s a very helpful observation!
Take care,
Kerrie
yes! i experience this all the time. the other day someone hit my car and caused significant damage (no note, it was a hit and run) and my reaction was essentially, “oh well, nothing i can do about it. i’ve got bigger things to focus on.”
Velouria, I’m sorry you know what it’s like, but it sounds like you’ve also found it kind of freeing to not fret over such things.
Take care,
Kerrie