It was quite intriguing to me that while the whole world was in an uproar over a red coffee cup, I had quite a valuable lesson from my own.
It was the last place I thought I would learn an insight, but then again this special mug had been holding the elixir of the Gods for me for five years so I’m really not sure why I was surprised with my brown mug’s revelations.
Just recently I had the great fortune of attending a workshop put on by Hay House publishing, the trailblazers of self-help. This weekend course was entitled Speak, Write, Promote. I almost didn’t go. Several excuses were made: it’s too expensive, I don’t want to be a public speaker or the real truth…I’m scared shitless to talk in front of a crowd but I know I have lots to say and maybe even teach.
But there was one more excuse that I tried to avoid acknowledging. Something was going on with me and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I had spent the last week anxious, nervous and blocked in my writing. Even when I did not want to acknowledge that some unknown was stressing me, my body screamed it with the large ugly cold sore that was sitting on my lower lip. It was a clear, nasty sign some personal issues needed to be addressed.
Knowing the spiritual, cosmic energy surrounded by any Hay House event, I understood a Universal force was going to show me my uncertainties. I wasn’t sure I had the strength to deal. But I listened to the signs all around and the cousin that so rarely gives me advice.
“Go, Charlotte! This is your career we are talking about!”Heeding her words because the few that she speaks are always very powerful, I signed up for the course twenty-four hours before it started. Thank god there was still space!
The second morning of the conference, I crept in, brown coffee cup in hand, and took a seat in the back, as usual, attempting to avoid being seen or singled out as I had done most of my medical training. Sitting next to this smiling, free-spirited young woman who I instantly felt at ease around, I was surprised when she commented on what a great coffee mug I was holding.
“It is pretty fabulous, right?” I replied admiring its sleek look. Her casing appeared to be that of the glossy wood trim you find on the interior of a brand new high-end car. She was edged in chrome. But what I secretly loved most about her was that her inscription read “Henry Ford Residency 35 years.”
I don’t tell people I am a doctor when I go to these things unless I am specifically asked. They treat you different so I simply explained I had gotten my mug at a reunion. It did not even strike me until that moment why I loved that coffee cup so.
Grabbing for her every morning to start a new day or shift in the emergency department reminded me of just where I had come from. My skills had been born at one of the hardest and best emergency medicine residency programs in the country off the icy inner city, bittersweet streets of West Grand Boulevard. That mug represented my blood, sweat, tears, sacrifice, pain, knowledge and compassion that had been born from the teachers, mentors and mostly destitute patients who chose to spend their lives in the bleakness of Detroit.
Smiling at my mug and my memories, I went on to ask Amy about herself. She was a charming soul with a legend she wanted to write. “What’s your story I asked truly captivated?”
Amy divulged that she was a stage four-breast cancer survivor. Chills covered my body as I listened. She had first been diagnosed at the age of twenty-nine and had the conventional medical treatment of mastectomy, radiation, and chemotherapy. When it returned a few years later in one of the lymph nodes in her neck, I gasped and shared that the same exact scenario happened with my own mother.
But unlike my mother, Amy’s oncologist gave her no hope.
Her doctor informed her that she might as well accept the facts. There was nothing that could be done for her medically. She was going to die and it was going to be soon.
“How did that make you feel?” as I thought of the many patients I had treated who had been given the same fate. Some resigned themselves to such a destiny and usually did die quickly. The rare few, like Amy, refused to accept those words. The rare few like my Cathy.
“It empowered me. It made me seek out another conventional medical doctor who was open to nonconventional medical therapy. I refused to just give up and die. I knew I had to explore other options and he not only supported this but helped me find the treatments that ultimately cured me.”
My mouth dropped open as I finally confessed to Amy that I was a doctor and I loved her story. She had to tell me more. She went on to explain the nutrition changes and the vitamin C infusions that she believed helped but it was the trip to Austria that her oncologist had recommended that blew me away.
In addition to multiple treatments, they made a unique vaccine from her own specific tumor cells that was injected directly into a lymph node in her groin. Grabbing her phone to find me a picture, now giddy, “You will appreciate this,” she laughed.
The first photo was of her sitting cross-legged, completely hairless after one of her magical treatments with the biggest, broadest smile. Her husband had photographed her in such a peaceful and happy state as she looked like the laughing Buddha to him and I had to agree.
She swiped left and then showed me the real photo she was after. Tears started to surface below my lids and my body started to quiver. I was looking at two of her scans. One showed the metastasis in several different bones all over her body. The other showed nothing. I was crying not only because she was sharing her miracle and the power of the soul but also because I saw my dear departed Cathy in those scans. I gasped when at the top of the photo it read, “Augusta.”
Cathy and I met in Augusta in the ER. I was her doctor and diagnosed her with a terminal brain tumor. We became fast friends but soon I moved. She and her husband came to my going away party. She brought her own scans, the one I took in the ER and her most recent after treatment in Duke. The results had been astonishing as that gremlin tumor was barely visible and she had survived long past her prognosis.
Amy and Cathy shared that same spirit of survival and hope and stubbornness. And I was so honored to be a witness. And I felt Cathy’s spirit all around me even though she had now departed this earth. I gave a little gratitude to that damn coffee cup right then and there for this moment.
Then the conference started and by the end of the day, I was elated and exhausted. So much that when I walked into my home, hugged my daughter and threw my bags down, I realized I had left my coffee mug at the hotel and almost cried again. “It’s just a coffee cup,” I had to coax myself. I resigned to look for it the next day and be grateful for the memories it held and meeting Amy.
Making sure to arrive early, I sought out the organizers and asked if anyone had turned in my special cup. No one had seen it or really, no one cared. I was sad but determined to just move on. But that damn mug remained in the back of my mind. Hours went by and we had a little break. On my way to urinate, I saw a group of hotel employees setting up for a function. Overcome with this mug quest, I interrupted their work and asked a young man with piercing green eyes where lost and found items would be delivered.
He seemed glad to take a break and offered to show me personally. “Did you lose your cell phone?”
When I explained that it was, in fact, a precious coffee cup, his face expressed confusion at the clear waste of time on a piece of plastic. But he quickly let that go, as his countenance turned to one of being elated to be free of manual labor even for a brief period.
The hotel property was enormous and he had literally taken me to an unseen, underground city. By the time we arrived at our destination, I had shared with him the magic of the mug. He to was now on a quest to see it returned to its rightful owner. We searched several rooms but alas there was no chalice.
His last hope was to find security. This led us deeper into a labyrinth that is rarely seen by the patron of a five-star resort. There were no frills, no plush Persian carpeting or grandiose chandeliers but it was still such a lovely experience.
The busy bees stopped for a brief moment to redirect their comrade through the maze. Two very serious guards behind a bulletproof glass office down a stark white long hall greeted us without smiles. Again I explained that I was looking for a little brown coffee mug. Quizzically we again got redirected, this time to the underground massive dishwashing station.
While my little green-eyed fellow performed some reconnaissance into an area where non-employees were not allowed, I nonchalantly waited and just took in the scene. Even my determined ass was beginning to think I had lost my mind. Here I was rallying the underground employees to help find a five-dollar cup.
My lips were pursed, preparing for the motion of yelling out to just forget the whole thing when I was approached by one of the previous guards. With a pad in hand, he wanted a complete description of the coffee mug, the more identifying facts the better. Plus he wanted my name and phone number. Was this a pickup?
Laughing at this scenario, I gave him a complete depiction as Green Eyes reappeared shaking his head. He had interviewed everyone and there was no trace of the missing mug. Touching his shoulder, I reassured this young sweet man that he had gone way beyond the call of duty and it seemed to me, I needed to let go of this coffee cup.
Walking me back to my conference, we passed the security desk once more. Out came the other guard, requesting another full description. Explaining that I had just given it to his partner in detail, I started to laugh hysterically.
“I know this must seem absurd. Here I am in search of a freaking mug while you guys are really drudging away so we can be exceedingly comfortable and enjoy our resort experience. I just didn’t realize how much that cup meant to me. It had my old training hospital’s logo on it at Henry Ford. I’m sorry for stealing your time.”
And then the Universe laughed. The guard took a step back and then really interrogated me.
“You mean Ford? Off of West Grande Boulevard in Detroit? he asked.
“Yes. I trained there. I was an ER resident at that hospital.”
He knowingly smiled sadly and replied, “I was a paramedic in Detroit. I knew that ER well.”
A sigh of relief left my body as if I had just found my long lost comrade, “Then you understand this search and what that mug means to me.”
We chatted and realized, our paths had probably even crossed. He had been in Detroit the same exact time as me. He could even describe the triage and the old resuscitation bays just as I had remembered them. He vowed to contact me if that damn mug decided to show up.
I giggled as I drove home, feeling completely exhilarated from the conference and even that coffee mug search. And then within the next forty-eight hours, it happened. I knew it was coming as soon as I hit “complete purchase” on my computer for that class before it had all culminated. All that shit and stress I had been avoiding was thrown right in my emotional lap. It was time for me to look in the mirror and the issues I had been avoiding.
There were several. Feelings of abandonment, guilt and neglect and my part in it all were placed right before me. But it was that coffee mug that gave me the biggest lesson of them all.
For the last few years, I had been inching myself away from emergency medicine. I didn’t know why but my body had been screaming for me to find another route, my own divine, passionate path. That made sense to my spiritual mind but not my scientific one. I had spent over fifteen years in the field. I was a great doctor, I helped people, they helped me, it was fulfilling and it was a grand, comfortable living.
But I realized it was also traumatic. It had taken a toll on my body and soul. Death and suffering was part of the job but what price was I paying?
Losing that cup made leaving my job as an ER doctor real for the first time. Giving up on my quest to find the mug felt like I was giving up on those that had dedicated themselves to my education. But that path was becoming clearer and I had been choosing it for a while. I was tired and traumatized and that was an extremely hard admission.
Wasn’t I supposed to be invincible when a lifeless infant was rushed in by a hysterical mother or lovers of fifty years were torn apart by a cardiac arrest? No, I wasn’t and neither was that paramedic turned security guard. I saw it in his eyes.
Maybe it really was time to let go. But what I knew was I did not have to let go of the patients, colleagues, and lessons that had touched me so. People like Amy and Cathy and the countless others that I had been blessed to observe.
A few more days passed and the only time I thought of coffee mugs was when I perused my Facebook page to find staunch observations and declarations about a solid red, now very infamous coffee cup. My cell rang me back to my reality.
Apparently, I had more important coffee mugs to attend as I heard Mark, the security guard’s excited voice on the other end of the line. “Dr. Charfen, I think I found it! I found your mug!”
“What? Are you serious?” thinking maybe someone was playing a practical joke on me.
“Once I met you, I had everyone I knew keep an eye out and search the property. It just turned up today in a closet. I knew how important it was for you to have it as someone that lived a very similar existence in that god-forsaken land. It was an unacknowledged war and you endured, scars and all. I get that. I almost didn’t survive. It nearly cost me my marriage and my sanity and my goodness. I sometimes think of going back but I’m not sure I can bear the cost.”
And so I will always cherish that coffee cup just as I cherish my time as an emergency physician, just as I cherish Cathy and Amy, Mark and Green Eyes. It will always be part of me. But I will never again question the motives behind losing a coffee cup or the need to find peace in letting it go. The soul knows before our physical selves can acknowledge our true motives to let go and the future that will open from such a surrender will be miraculous.
