Problem Solving: The Five Step Plan

The summer of 1996 was the bleakest time in my dear friend Barb's life.

Within a month, this nurse who had dedicated over thirty years of her life to helping care for others, learned that she had breast cancer, had a lumpectomy and then while that was healing, while she was still in the hospital, tore the rotator cuff in her right shoulder.

This caused excruciating pain which, in turn, caused her to lose the use of her right arm.

The next day her doctor said the breast cancer was worse than he suspected so they had to do a mastectomy. Right after that Barb started chemotherapy which caused her to become violently ill. She lost her hair and had to get used to wearing a wig during the hottest part of the summer. Then, her beloved 88-year-old mother-in-law , despondent over her son's divorce from Barb years earlier and also saddened by Barb's cancer, as well as her own health problems, committed suicide. Barb was too sick to even go to the funeral. The day after her mother-in-law died, Barb's mother was in a traffic accident which demolished her mother's car and caused Barb's main care-giver lots of stress. All that within a ten week period. The following month Barb's 82-year-old, healthy-as-a-horse father was suddenly diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic and liver cancer.

As Barb's life unfolded that summer I felt like I was caught in the middle of a horror movie or in the eye of a tornado. All I could do was swallow hard and wonder, How can anyone survive all this?

But as Barb continued to share the details of her life, I became aware of her great strength and faith in God. Her friends and family had rallied around her with prayers, visits, cards, letters, and offers to help. She'd moved into her parent's home temporarily so her mother could take care of her during the chemo treatments. Then Barb enrolled in a cancer study group that would provide a new medicine for her treatment.

As a nurse, she was excited about the prospect. In general, Barb was covering the bases of what needed to be done to solve each problem that had come her way.

I started thinking about all the problems and struggles we humans must face in life. I wondered if there was a formula for solving problems logically. One day after a long conversation with Barb, I was talking to two of the airline pilots who use my home as their Milwaukee-area "crash pad." I asked Dave and Lyle how pilots remain calm when something disastrous goes wrong in a plane. They both smiled and said, "The Five Step Plan."

Lyle continued, "The same ‘Five Steps to Problem Solving' the military uses: One…Retain control. Two…Define the problem. Three…Review your objectives. Four…Develop and evaluate the alternatives. Five…Decide on a course of action."

"In other words," Dave added, "When you have an emergency on a plane, the most important thing is not to get distracted and forget to fly the plane. Then you list the symptoms and get to the root of the problem. After reviewing your ultimate goal, you work out possible solutions. Finally, you decide on a course of action, which is usually to try one possible solution after another until the problem is solved."

I've thought about the pilots' "Five Steps to Problem Solving" many times since then and have come to the conclusion that it's the perfect, most logical way to solve problems of any sort, including medical problems. I could just imagine my friend Barb retaining control, (thanks to the many prayers she was receiving); defining her problems (with help from the doctors and other medical professionals who were on her case); reviewing her objectives (that's where her nursing training would come in handy); developing and evaluating the alternatives (after long discussions with her doctors, friends and family); and finally deciding on a course of action. In spite of her tragic circumstances Barb was moving forward, one day at a time, doing what she knew must be done to pull herself out of the gloom and doom of her life into a more positive and healthier future.

What I learned from my friends Barb, Dave and Lyle, especially as I watched Barb struggle to recuperate and get her life back in gear, even though she faced many more horrible chemotherapy treatments…was this: Whenever life puts us into a tailspin and we feel like we're about to crash, we just need to remain calm, pray like gangbusters and adopt the "Five Step Plan."

By Patricia Lorenz