Authority and Anxiety

Today’s blog is not so much a story as some musings…

I sat in the cardiologist’s office on Tuesday on the verge of a stroke -- okay, a melt down.  It all started last October when I got my pre-op lab work done for surgery on my right knee.  No problem.  The blood vampire took six vials of blood to test.  Then I ran to the doctor’s for an EKG.

The nurse who did my EKG looked at me funny and left the room.  Then the doctor came in and said it came back abnormal.  

Something about K-waves or T-waves or something like that.  And that I might have had a silent heart attack along the way because these results come back when part of your heart tissue is dead. Yikes!  (I thought, ironically, all these years after my divorce, my dead heart had grown back!)

 So she sent me to the cardiologist.  He said it could possibly be an old heart attack.  Or maybe nothing – just a weird heart (why should the heart be any different than the rest of me?)  But he thought it would be okay for me to go ahead and have the surgery.  Then after I recovered from the surgery and after the new year, he’d put me on a treadmill for a stress test.

And Tuesday was the test.  I can usually take most things on head first – though maybe with a little trepidation.  But this time I actually had anxiety attacks all morning.  

By the time I reached the waiting room (15 minutes early) my heart was racing and wooshing in my ears and I could feel my blood pressure through the roof.

I signed in and they said the treadmill was not working and they were trying to fix it.  The panic increased.  

As silly as it sounds, I was more worried about being a failure or of being judged than of finding something might be wrong with my heart.  (There is something seriously wrong with that!)

Then they informed me the treadmill was working, but the computer was not talking to the treadmill...

I doodled with some plotting for the novel I’m working on, and then started thinking about this week’s journal.  And I was impressed that I should maybe talk about authority and fear.

Don't get me wrong.  Dr. Schiff is a nice guy. Last time I was in, he did his exam, then sat down on the table next to me and explained things.  He dictated his report right then and there and zapped it over to my doctor’s office a couple of miles away with a touch of the computer.  Then he printed out a copy for me, rubbed my shoulder, shook my hand and said good-bye.
 

So why was I afraid?  He was a regular guy under that white coat.  He probably even has uncertainties somewhere in his life too.  

For goodness sake, he pees in a toilet just like me!  The man doesn’t walk in water. And if he says your heart is weird or you were a wuss on the treadmill, so what?

(Okay, not quite the same as me.  When I asked him how he was going, he said it had been a kinda long day.  He was in  at 7:30 that morning and performed the first open heart surgery they’d ever had in the new hospital!)

By the time they got the treadmill talking to the computers and I joked around with the fantastically funny nurse, my blood pressure was a textbook 120/80 when she took it.

I took the test and though I panicked each time they upped the incline, I did rather well for an over-weight, fifty-one-year-old woman!  No heart attacks, no chest pain.

Okay, just slightly out of breath at the highest speed and elevation, and then had an almost imperceptible seizure from overheating and breathing too fast, but after sitting in the darkness for a while, that too passed.

Dr. Schiff reviewed the many, many pages of print out and said there was nothing wrong with my heart and I am fine.  I have no need of a cardiologist.  

So unless something horrible comes up, I won’t ever have to go back to him!  (Liz is happy!)

But while I sat there waiting for (and panicking over the impending test), I came to (or maybe revisited) some realizations.

You see, I was raised to have a great respect for authority.  Not that either of my parents was really strict or anything.  They just taught us to be respectful.  Yes, my mother spanked the Carson kids when they needed it; and some needed it more than others.  I remember being spanked once (and Patty probably received the most, if anyone’s keeping record.)

But my father was a Navy commander and all that saluting must have factored into it somehow.  And I remember hearing my mother often repeat the words of her childhood: “Children should be seen and not heard. Speak when you are spoken to; come when you’re called.”

In the Catholic schools we were taught to jump to our feet (as an entire class of forty students) if a nun entered the room and greet her in unison, "Good morning, Sister so-and-so!"

On the island, we were expected to greet people we met - especially elders - on the streets or in stores in town.  Kids were often scolded sharply, swatted or slapped on the legs if they were too tardy in saying "Good mo'ning!" or "Good afternoon!"to an elder.  And the scolding was not limited to a woman's own children.  All women have the right to reprimand anybody's child.

So I grew up with a great deal of respect.  I did my best to teach my children to understand consequences and respect authority.  I believe in the admonition, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”  

By the looks of the fine young man my son has grown up to be, it appears that that must be true.  It wasn’t always easy being the bad guy when it was deemed necessary, and sometimes I even hated it.  But it paid off in the long run.

And though I taught my children to respect authority, the time came when I also had to unteach them, in a manner of speaking.  

There are times when respect for authority is not good.  Sometimes authority is abused.  Just because an adult says or does something doesn’t make them right.

I think of my 2nd grade principal – a friend of my mother’s no less – who used to fondle me inappropriately.  But because I’d been taught to respect my elders and authority figures, I told no one.  He was the principal; the ultimate authority.  I certainly was no one to question his authority.

And then there was my 3rd grade teacher, Sister Marcelina, who beat me across the knuckles each day until they bled, yelling to the whole class that I was possessed by a devil – for the simple reason that I was left-handed.  (But that is a story for another day.)  

Not only was she a teacher (which was way, way up on the respect-o-graph), but she was a nun (which is next to God! – or so I’d been led to believe.)  

So I silently took my licks, and said nothing.

Or in 7th grade when my teacher, Mr. Navarette, would keep me (and sometimes my best friend) after school for detention for imaginary infractions.  And then he would say horribly explicit things and I had to keep on the move so that a row of desks always stood between us.  

And I told no one.  

Respect your elders.  (I mean, who would believe my anyway?!)

But then (from an adult’s perspective) there are two things from my childhood that stand out significantly.

The first (which I’ve written about in another blog already in "The Night the Lights Went Out") was when my mother stood up to my father’s commanding officer because of an injustice.  Something more important than respect for authority was involved.  And doing the unforgivable for a military wife, she fought for what was right.  

Eventually he gave in and opened a school for the disabled – who up until then had been denied schooling.

Then there was my father.  When we first moved to the Virgin Islands, my father was fresh out of 30 years in the Navy.  Thirty years of respecting those above you.

He got a job selling real estate, at Weisner Realty. Just after he’d bought that five-bedroom beach house by the yacht club, his boss asked – no insisted – that my father engage in practices that were not only morally, but likely legally wrong.
 

Even though my father was the sole provider for a family of eight, with what undoubtedly must've been a very large mortgage, he refused to engage in deceitful activities.  His boss threatened him.  If he didn’t do it, Mr. Weisner would fire him. 

But knowing he could not, and would not do what he knew to be ethically (and likely legally) wrong, he quit his job.

Just weeks later, my mother died, and life went very much askew. 

My poor father…  

But you know, I asked him about it much later – in early adulthood.  And he said that he would not change the way he acted if he could do it again.  He had done the right thing, and he still stood by his actions, no matter how devastating the consequences had been.

So, though respecting authority is important – no critical – in a society.  That respect should not be blind. 

If it comes in conflict with what we know to be right, then we should always side on doing what is right.  

There should always be truth, and certainly there will always be consequences.

Liz Carson Rosas
12 February 2010

He who spares the rod hates his son,
       but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

                                                    Proverbs 13:24

But from everlasting to everlasting
  the LORD's love is with those who fear him, 

and his righteousness with their children's children-  

  with those who keep his covenant 

and remember to obey his precepts.    
                                                Psalms 103:17,18

Blessed are they whose ways are blameless,
    who walk according to the law of the LORD.

 Blessed are they who keep his statutes
     and seek him with all their heart.

 They do nothing wrong;
     they walk in his ways.

 You have laid down precepts
     that are to be fully obeyed.  
                                             Psalms 119:1-4

but I gave them this command:

Obey me, and I will be your God 

and you will be my people. 

Walk in all the ways I command you, 

that it may go well with you.  
                                               Jeremiah 7:23

But Peter and John replied, 

"Judge for yourselves whether it is right 

in God's sight to obey you rather than God. 

                                                      Acts 4:19 

Peter and the other apostles replied: 

"We must obey God rather than men!  Acts 5:29