Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable

Earlier this year I did something really stupid. A direct result of doing too much. A consequence of not being in the present moment. A reminder to take my time when doing things and to pay attention, my stupidity forced me to slow down. It also reminded me of how much I take for granted. And how in life, sometimes it is important to learn to sit with the uneasy, to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

I was planning to visit my family in the country. Just me and my daughter. As the boys were painting the outside of the house, I thought I would make them a nice dinner before we headed off. And while I was at it, I popped into the oven a pot full of left over mushroom risotto from the night before, for me to have for lunch. We don’t have a microwave. We haven’t really ever had one, other than when we were together in our first year. It broke, we never replaced it. We have lived without one ever since (much to the surprise and shock of many, in particular the friends of our teenage children).

I have never liked the microwave concept, never really liked the plastic taste it gives food. So in the oven went my risotto. On the tray above was a full cauliflower, coated with tahini, cumin and more. A delicious recipe. A gift from a dear friend. On the bottom tray was the pumpkin slices splashed with coconut aminos, an accompaniment for the main dishes bubbling in pots on the stove. A chickpea curry and an eggplant curry. I juggled their cooking times and wooden spoons. Juggled their cooking while cleaning up the kitchen and occasionally heading to the bedroom to pack. Juggling the cooking and packing while checking the fire app to make sure it was safe to drive in the direction I was heading. My attention narrowing only for the oven timer. The oven telling me it was time to check on the pumpkin. I popped on an oven mitt and pulled out the hot metal pot that had my risotto in it and placed it on a chopping board while I shook the pumpkin in the tray to loosen them up and move the flavours around. My hubby came in, we started talking about something and I turned to grab my risotto pot to put it back into the oven. Without thinking, not concentrating on what I was doing, I grabbed it with my dominant hand. My bare hand. My ‘oven mitt-less’ hand.

I held the metal handle of the pot for a split second. It didn’t take long for my body to tell my brain that this particular item was damn hot and had to be dropped, well actually ‘thrown’ down. It took milliseconds for body to tell my brain my hand was hurting, hurting bad and required swearing, lots of it. Which I did as I examined my hand, which looked just a tiny bit red. I thought, ‘It can’t be that bad, I held it for like, no time at all, it will be fine.’ The pain escalated with this thought so I quickly popped my hand under the tap, finally remembering some first aid. After five minutes of holding it under running water, the pain was not subsiding. So I rushed to a new solution and asked for some ice. Hubby dutifully got me some wrapped in a towel. Within seconds I new that was a bad idea. Next idea, put some ice in a bowl of cold water and stick my hand in it. At least then I could sit down. Which I did. This seemed to reduce the pain a little, or maybe it was just the feeling of relief to be sitting down at long last, after days of running around trying to get everything done before my holidays ended. Every couple of minutes I impatiently pulled my hand out of the water expecting to be cured and pain free. But each time I was met with a pain and heat like I have never felt before. It was like some invisible sadist was sitting next to me with a red hot branding iron and was sticking it into the palm of my hand every time I took that hand out of the water. Burning the hell out of it. Again and again. Nasty invisible sadist.

What do you do in this situation as a fully fledged adult, who has lived independently for over 30 years, given birth to two children and raised them to teenagers? Of course, you ring your mum. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how adult you think you are, your mum always knows best. Particularly if she has a medical background. And on her advice, off to the emergency department I went. And I went carrying the disappointment of my ruined plans. Mum doubted that I would be visiting her today or driving anytime soon. How right she was.

Leaving our house to get into the car, the heat outside seemed to make the heat inside my body worse. The water in the bowl hurt my hand as it moved when I walked to the car. The water hurt my hand when it moved while I sat in the car cradling the bowl on my lap, as my husband drove me to the hospital. He patiently held his tongue as I whinged about the pain and his driving, which was ‘making the water move too much’. Yep, I was in a ridiculous state.

At the hospital I realised my first aid knowledge of burns was very poor. Holding my hand under water for 5 minutes was absolutely not sufficient. It is a minimum of 20 minutes. A figure I will never forget going forward. A friend days later told me a great way of remembering this is to ‘hold your hand under running water until it goes numb and you can’t feel it.’ Hold it under water until it goes numb. And that is exactly what I did. The hospital found me a ‘free sink’ where I could sit uninterrupted for 20 minutes with cold water running down my hand. I couldn’t help but think of the precious water I was wasting, all because I wasn’t paying attention. Water we so desperately needed while fires were burning everywhere that day. They popped me into the designated chair to wait for someone to dress my burn, but after a minute they put me under the water for a second time, as the pain had come back, full force. Water running down my hand the pain subsided once again and my guilt increased, as more water went down the sink.

When I could finally sit in the chair and hold the pain, I was given a tetanus shot (side note: this time I am definitely writing down the exact date of when I got one, because unless you are really sure and confident you had one in the last 10 years, they talk you into getting another one). A bit of magic silver dressing on the burn, a very elegant bandage and a heavy pain killer and I was on my way home, with orders to come back in two days so they could check if I needed plastic surgery. I contemplated how over the top this idea was as I sat holding my hand against the air conditioning in the car trying to keep pain at bay until the drugs took effect and knocked me out. Which they did. I woke up on the couch pain free, my dignity in tatters, sleep drool on the couch.

With a bandaged hand and a sore arm from the tetanus needle, I wasn’t good for much the next day, or days after. It was a bonus to get out of doing any house cleaning and dishes, but boring not to be able to drive anywhere, help paint the house or do the things I wanted. And having a shower, brushing my teeth and other such activities proved quite difficult. I got quite annoyed at the incompetence of my left hand, which never normally gets to play the lead role in the life of hands. Numerous times as I struggled trying to do something that should have been simple, which my right hand would do without even the brain hand connection being noticed, I cursed my left hand. Eventually I realised my folly. Without my left hand, at that moment, I was nothing. I was completely useless. It was time to be grateful for this hand, which was trying its best to learn new tricks. It was time to get comfortable with the difficulty of trying to use my non-dominant hand. Once I got comfortable with the uncomfortable and started appreciating my left hand, I actually noticed an increase in its ability and cooperation.

And during my bandage time while others made dinner, cleaned up and weeded the garden, I sat and contemplated the idea of getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. I thought about how, sometimes, this is the only way forward in life. Embracing the hard tasks and the difficult conversations. Just getting on with what needs to get done, even if we don’t like it. I thought about how being uncomfortable can make us grateful for the comforts we once had. When you find the good in the hard stuff, the edges are softened. Things aren’t so difficult. I thought a lot about how stepping outside of our comfort zone, is how we grow.

Sometimes it takes physical pain or discomfort to stop us in our tracks and remind us to be grateful for what we have. Remind us to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. I realised that burning my hand and learning to live with the inconvenience which followed, had a greater lesson than just the day-to-day adjustment of getting things done. It also reminded me, that when you don’t pause, the universe will do what it has to, in order to make you stop, and listen.