How've You Been Doing?

“I’m so glad, I know that trouble don’t last always. . . “ those words sung by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers brought me through a lot of challenging times over the years. It may be a successful literary technique to get a protagonist into trouble, then out of trouble, then into worse trouble, but when that happens to you in real life, it’s not entertaining.

There was plenty of that chaos in SINCE I LOST MY BABY, notably one season in which my “fight-or-flight” button got punched so many times it felt like battery acid was flowing through my veins. That was in the mid-1980s when there wasn’t much info about the relationship between stress and illness. However I did find a resource that put things into perspective: The Social Readjustment Rating Scale.

After collapsing from a splitting headache in disco aerobics at the gym one night, then being misdiagnosed with everything from meningitis to a brain aneurysm, I took my Social Readjustment inventory. That involved checking off a list of stressful events that had taken place during the previous twelve months, each with a point value, such as Death of a Spouse (100) down the scale to Outstanding Personal Achievement (28) and Christmas (12). Yes, even happy times are “stressful” as far as your endocrine system goes.

If the score adds up to 150 or less, you have a low probability of developing a stress-related disorder. A score of 150-299 gives you a 50% chance, and with 300+ points, you are the lucky winner of an 80% likelihood of becoming seriously ill.

So one dark and lonely night, after months in bed, wondering if I was going to wind up an invalid . . . or worse . . . I took pen in hand and did the test. My twelve months had included the deaths of both my parents (and all the family / legal shenanigans and drama that come with that), plus a full -time job and writing a calligraphy book to fulfill a contract from a major publisher that my father and I had gotten before he passed. When I added up my score, I burst out laughing.

My score was 500.

And finally I knew why I wasn’t well, that my symptoms weren’t life-threatening after all, and that everything was going to be okay.

The year 2020 and the last twelve months have been stress-filled for all of us so here’s a link to the Social Readjustment Rating Scale in case you’re wondering where you stand. I hope with all my heart that you will be proud of what you’ve survived. And maybe even have a good laugh, just like I did.

Keep your head to the sky.

Adapted from SINCE I LOST MY BABY: A MEMOIR OF TEMPTATIONS, TROUBLE & TRUTH