Lag

Lag is a term for when the time is takes for two internet servers to ping (or contact) each other takes too long. We use it a lot; jet-lag, getting lagged, feeling lagged.

Something has been happening recently in appointments of mine.

My doctor has something really, really important to tell me. It's going to change my life, I can tell. The air changes, solidifies, thickens. The doctor pushes their chair back, moves around the side of the desk, leans forward with their elbows balancing on their knees. They stare at me, dead in the face, taking a deep steading breath. I know something is about to happen, I know they have something to say, and I can tell by the tears balancing in their eyes that I am not going to like it. 

The moment comes. With another deep breath, my doctor reaches out, and speaks a sentence in a tender, compassionate, yet firm voice. I nod, tentatively. 

"Ok," I say. "I see. What does that mean?" My facial expression hasn't changed yet, but my brain has gone numb. Lag. I'm lagging. 

With more of that tender, compassionate, yet firm voice, my doctor speaks more on this very important subject, and I'm hearing only the words. But what I'm seeing is desperation. My doctor's face is growing increasingly desperate behind those steady words, those eyes are boring into mine, pleading with me to understand what they're trying to convey. 'This is bad news, 'those eyes say. 'This is very bad news. You should be crying. What I've seen with this... '

Lag. Lag lag lag. I know it. I know at that exact moment that there is far more tied up here than just the bad news, just a diagnosis, just what I'm hearing on paper. There will be stigma. There will be consequences. There will be a whole host of horrible things that this doctor has experience with - personally - that I can barely wrap my head around right now because I cannot, in this moment grasp any of it. I'm lagged, I'm out. 

I'm like a child who doesn't swim who has just been thrown into the deep end of the pool, but doesn't realize yet that they need to breathe. 

Because whatever that doctor knows, whatever that doctor has seen, whatever they are trying to convey, I cannot understand it yet. I'm not there yet. It's a knowledge gap, it's an experience gap, it's two servers trying to ping each other and the call never connecting. 

I'm lagged. 

Later, when the appointment is over, and I've read a little more, I will cry. The next day, when I meet with another doctor who will explain more clearly the unsaid consequences of this, I will break. A month later, after a seizure and side effects of seizures, a severe neurological response, I will finally, truly, honestly understand some of what that doctor, my doctor, my son's actual doctor, was trying to communicate with her tearful eyes. 

Ping. 

Ping. 

Pong.

The lag abates. 

You can have comprehension without knowledge. You can have knowledge without comprehension. Experience will determine the bridge between the two. 

Summer is here now. The season of true freedom. We will live this summer to the fullest possible. I love the outdoors.