Fear and Eleanor Roosevelt

I met a woman recently who said she read that Eleanor Roosevelt said "Every day, we should do something that frightens us".

My first thought was geez, must we fill each day with an unpleasantness??

The second, always better, thought was: Those of use who survive SCA (or experience death as a temporary state) would have very little trouble adhering to Eleanor's advice.

If you come back after SCA --- fears abound; they jump out from around corners, they lurk in the most unexpected places. We tackle them and wrestle them to the ground one by one. There may be one or two that win out (I still can't quite bring myself to scuba dive).

My latest facing-fear-story sounds dumb, but here goes: a mammogram. Skippy the defibrillator went through his first mammogram this week. Not my first by a long shot, but his first. And I was so frightened about it, it honestly approached terror. It took everything I had in me not to cancel the appointment.

Disproportionate fear. Mammograms are never comfortable, but I just couldn't quite envision how all that pulling, tugging and tough compression would happen without "breaking" Skippy or setting him off. (and unlike actual people, if the anthropomorphized Skippy gets 'set off', it means the defibrillator fires). I haven't experienced a fire (yet) and I deeply dread it.

I didn't cancel the appointment and the tech was sympathetic, understanding, skilled and patient. The test does get done a little differently on that side to avoid "disturbing" Skippy. But aside from the fear, it was moderately more challenging than every other mammogram.

But fear is lethal. Fear may lead us to poor choices (and sometimes to good choices, admittedly). It is uncomfortable, unsettling and can invoke our flight response. The desire to cancel that appointment was not insignificant.

But I remembered Eleanor.

I was proud of myself for not cancelling. One more fear wrestled to the ground.