You and I Are Too Old Not to Celebrate "Non-Toothache"

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

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Are you and I wise enough to be grateful for no-pain?

Shortly after midnight, 7/22/2024. I curled on the floor of my main bedroom toilet, hugging the porcelain throne, my puppy lying nearby, watching me carefully. I’m screaming in pain between bouts of vomiting. I have no idea what to do with her, but a good idea of what’s happening to my body. I’ve been here before. I’m passing a kidney stone and it’s reduced me to rubble. Four hours later, out of options, I call 911.

Let me back up.

Thích Nhất Hạnh died at the venerable old age of 95, long recognized for his work making Buddhism far more accessible to clumsy Westerners like me. One of my favorite books of his, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings, sits in the throne room where I was trying to empty my guts.

I grab it every so often and just let the pages open where they may. (Somehow that particular morning I wasn’t moved to do any reading, just saying)

Invariably they open to a passage where the words land with all the subtlety of a hockey stick to the head.

Last week about this time, I was at River Bend Hospital in Springfield, getting ready to come home. I had my discharge papers, but the stone hadn’t yet passed. The idiot-in-charge determined that since it had made its ugly way to my bladder, SURE, send her home.

I was standing in the exam room with the nurse when the pain hit me again, doubling me over the bed, grimacing. If you’ve ever passed a stone, you know. It’s beyond description.

Sure, send her home, she’s just FINE.

She’s still doubled over, screaming, but she’s FINE. She’s taking up valuable ER space. We need to make a profit. Get her out of here.

I had a script for pain meds. Precisely how I am supposed to get that filled when I can’t drive, Sparky?

Modern medicine. Driven by profits, untrammeled stupidity and shareholder worship, it has nothing to do with care other than the face-to-face interactions you have with good clinic staff. The business of care has no business being in healthcare, because its only business is money. Not care.

But it is our reality and we have to plan for it, like it or not.

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, I live alone. While I am much closer to town, such events are mine to manage. I’ve been doing my best to build community here in my new city of Eugene, but not all attempts have paid off. I’m still completely on my own if I have a serious emergency.

Figuring out what to do with my puppy creates a whole other level of complexity.

As I was loaded into the ambulance, I had no clue who to call or how long I’d be at the ER.

As it was, Peace Health’s pushy eagerness to get my aging ass out the door and out of the way for more paying customers got me home swiftly, where Mika celebrated Mommy’s return by clawing anxious scratches all over my arms.

My dog is more worried about my well-being than my hospital. Of course she is. I fed her, walked her while grabbing my screaming right kidney, then crawled into bed with her until 1 pm.

It took most of last week to recover. Still we went to the Coast. On Thursday I went out rafting with a bunch of wonderful women. By the weekend I was mostly all right.

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I’ve celebrated non-kidney stone ever since Mika left her claw marks on my arms. Anyone who has ever undergone this kind of pain can relate. However it’s about far more than that.

Can you and I celebrate non-anxiety? Can we celebrate the space left by toxic relationship? Can we celebrate the room the Universe delivers us when we end a chapter of our lives and can begin something new? Can we find a way to be grateful for an insight that allows us to move on from a lousy job and into work that feeds us?

Can we find a way to be thankful than a difficult event allowed us to experience courage and resilience we didn’t know we had?

That’s the message from Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teachings for me. To acknowledge healing, non-pain, growth, the price we pay to be where and who we are today.

Celebrating and valuing non-toothache is a critical part of gratitude.

There’s also a toxic side to this in today’s meme-happy society.

A while back I read

F*ck gratitude!

which I understand completely. I also understand the power of genuine gratitude in the face of all life’s shit shows. The more I practice it, the more powerful the skill. For me, it’s not Pollyanna.

It’s a superpower to be grateful for the kidney stone.

Yes I did just write those words.

I now know that first, whatever diet I was on to prevent them will not guarantee much more than perhaps not as many and not as big. Some stone formers just…form stones anyway. Welcome to my world. That means I need a different treatment plan and a better way to manage this body.

I need serious medications in my house within arm’s reach next time around.

Second, this incident absolutely forced me to create a backup plan for my dog. It will happen again about four years from now, when another stone marches through. That’s the pattern.

Plan for it, fool.

Like it or not, such events push change, change that needs to happen. For those things, I am indeed grateful.

Here’s a paragraph from Annie’s piece that underscores what I’m trying to say:

Hate your job? Be grateful you have a job. Got a toothache? Be grateful it doesn’t hurt more. Mother died? Be grateful your father’s still alive. Practicing gratitude can be a fancy way of saying “shut the fuck up”.

Absolutely get this. I also practice gratitude for all these things, if for no other reason than the alternative doesn’t work for me. I am no fan of toxic positivity any more than Annie is. So let’s call this out:

At times, the meme version of gratitude journaling is just another shaming tool.

Screw that stupidity. The far larger point, at least for this not-very-adept student of Buddhism, is that certain kinds of pain are inevitable given this body. Second, how can I change my mind about that pain, what it teaches me, and what gifts are laid at my door as a result?

Third, I got caught unawares and unprepared. Stones are a reality, even with all the measures I’ve taken. How do I ensure my own safety and that of my pupper when they strike again?

You and I are way Too Old not to be able to see how the worst we’ve been through has often resulted in something far better, if we’re wise enough to seek it.

That’s deep and hard work. Nothing toxic about it. What’s toxic is when people shame us for not being able to be all la-de-dah joyful that, say, we just found out that the person we loved was cheating on us.

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Louisa Wah

just how that process plays out.

You get it. We can have gratitude, when we’re bloody well ready. We can feel gratitude when we’re done grieving.

I guarantee you that I was feeling zero gratitude while hugging the porcelain throne, my pupper’s cold nose inches away, her eyes bright with worry.

I am grateful for paramedics who located her leash, walked her, kenneled her and shot my ass up with medication. I am grateful for having a fire station with paramedics less than a mile away.

I am grateful for many things. Most especially, non-kidney stone pain.

Nothing toxic about that kind of gratitude. But to Annie’s point, no amount of social media shaming is going to force me to feel gratitude for life’s shit shows.

Such thoughtless memes are likely written by people who have yet to be shoved through life’s meat grinder. Talk to us after, say, a car accident takes your family and your ability to walk. Talk to us after you get a diagnosis for Parkinson’s. Or when someone you love beyond words dies of cancer.

Finding our way to gratitude after such events is an Everest hike of terrific proportions. As with Everest, most don’t get there. Those who do find a way to be thankful no matter what, and I’m not there yet, are worthy of our utmost respect.

Those lessons we learn only on our time, in our way.

We can be bitter, or we can learn to be better. That’s a choice. One is indeed toxic. The other gives us a path forward.

I am grateful for non-kidney stone. I have a path forward.

As hard as it feels sometimes,

Let’s play anyway.

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I wish no one the kind of pain I was feeling a week ago. However, we all experience terrible pain. Given that I do indeed wish relief from that pain, and whatever wisdom might come of the experience. If this article was valuable to you please consider

If you know someone who is struggling with toxic positivity, this piece might offer perspective. Please also consider

Above all, let’s not layer resentment over life’s inevitable pain. The lighter our hearts, the more joyful the journey.