i'm home from the hospital. for two days, crushing headaches have not been the defining aspect of my existence.
my home health nurse came today; i'll meet an occupational therapist and physical therapist later in the week.
after all i've gone through over the past year and a half, my doc is being ultraconservative, so I'm on bedrest. i have to heal this time.
my lessons on true simplicity continue. i'll stay in bed and thank the stars that 61 days of severe spinal headache are over. post operative back pain seems like a breeze compared to that. but there will be no leaping for joy for a few more weeks or months. expressions of happiness must be confined to non-physical exuberance.
i hate to mention it, since i'm so grateful to be free from headaches, but my recovery is not without complications. I came home with a raging case of thrush. my doc called in a script and my mom took a cab to go pick it up, and i have my four times daily swish and spit added to the routine.
my mom is in town to help me out, but her back is out so she can't drive and is in terrible pain. she was sort of mad at me when i made her lunch today. it's just another note of irony in my experience.
all of this is absurd.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Reality Checks
My last blog post was interrupted by a well-timed phone call from a dear friend. He knows all too well what I'm going through. We talked about magical thinking and the double-edged sword of the statement, "It could be worse."
Yes, we KNOW it COULD be worse. It IS worse for many, many people. But he could relate when I said, "Sometimes I want to tell people who tell me, 'It could be worse,' 'Yes, it could be worse. Try climbing into my life for a few minutes and it WOULD be worse for YOU.'"
Of course I never say that to anyone, because anyone who says those words to me has the best intentions and he or she wants, sometimes desperately, for me to feel better. When I'm in the mood to even THINK about sharp retorts, I wonder if my misery is a true affront to my friends' sensibilities. Does it scare them? Does their inability to help me feel better force them to resort to the caste system of misery that exists in the world, and be reassured because I'm not any lower than I am right now?
My opinion on the matter is that EVERYONE suffers, and attempts to make comparisons are futile and a waste of mental energy and the breath used to speak of them. Not one of us can step into another's shoes for an instant. If Stuart and I could manufacture the device we call The Empathizer, then people would be able to be in another person's situation for just five minutes. This would be a requirement for anyone approving and denying medical care or other services to help those who suffer. It would be a great fraud detector, too. Maybe it would prevent ill-advised marriage and/or mating. Regular applications of the Empathizer and a good pre-nuptial agreement might prevent divorce. The possibilities are magnificent.
The only way to access The Empathizer is through art: we have to put it in music or story or comedy. It has already appeared in Douglas Adams' work as the Point of View Gun in the movie, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and in Brainstorm as the recording and playback of actual human experience.
I may or may not receive any reward for having survived the hell of the last 57 days, or from any of the previous three surgeries and recovery periods, or the bitter, contentious legal battle that put an end to my marriage, or episodes of post-partum depression, or the past five years of chronic pain, or the loss of friends and family members to death by illness, accident or their own hand, or any of the myriad occasions of deep suffering that I've survived in my life. Heartache, betrayal, grief, illness, and the rest don't have a clause somewhere that says you get ANYTHING for having weathered them.
But those of you who read this blog probably know me pretty well, so you won't be surprised that I'm going to WREST something good out of all of this, and take it to my heart as a souvenir, a little Purple Heart or Congressional Medal of Honor from the Congress of Heather. Like the wanderers in the Wizard of Oz, I'm on a quest for something I already have within me.
I would like my prize to be something I can wear inside my soul that can never be taken away or diminished, but that I can distribute at will without losing any of it. It has something to do with genuine appreciation for my life and loves. It also has the flavor of unconditional compassion and an ability to be of service to myself, my children, family, friends, students and colleagues in ways that really matter.
Perhaps it is my life's work to figure out exactly what The Prize is, so that I can put it into words that have some authentic impact... if only on myself, so that I can recover from this without forgetting any of it. I keep saying that I must have some BIG LESSON to learn, or these medical challenges wouldn't recur. I'm still trying to stop trying to be open to it, whatever IT is.
So. A few more hours to go. I need to eat, to appease my Eating Coaches who want me in fighting condition for tomorrow's ordeal. I need to sleep. I need to get through the nausea from the morphine and finish packing my little hospital bag. I need to putter around a tiny bit and pay some bills and make myself feel ready to leave for another journey into outer space, which is disguised as Northwest Medical Center. I'm sure I'll be attended by my old friends, the angels on the Neuro ward who wave at me as I go by on the stretcher, "Hi, Heather. So sorry to see you again."
Sigh...
Yes, we KNOW it COULD be worse. It IS worse for many, many people. But he could relate when I said, "Sometimes I want to tell people who tell me, 'It could be worse,' 'Yes, it could be worse. Try climbing into my life for a few minutes and it WOULD be worse for YOU.'"
Of course I never say that to anyone, because anyone who says those words to me has the best intentions and he or she wants, sometimes desperately, for me to feel better. When I'm in the mood to even THINK about sharp retorts, I wonder if my misery is a true affront to my friends' sensibilities. Does it scare them? Does their inability to help me feel better force them to resort to the caste system of misery that exists in the world, and be reassured because I'm not any lower than I am right now?
My opinion on the matter is that EVERYONE suffers, and attempts to make comparisons are futile and a waste of mental energy and the breath used to speak of them. Not one of us can step into another's shoes for an instant. If Stuart and I could manufacture the device we call The Empathizer, then people would be able to be in another person's situation for just five minutes. This would be a requirement for anyone approving and denying medical care or other services to help those who suffer. It would be a great fraud detector, too. Maybe it would prevent ill-advised marriage and/or mating. Regular applications of the Empathizer and a good pre-nuptial agreement might prevent divorce. The possibilities are magnificent.
The only way to access The Empathizer is through art: we have to put it in music or story or comedy. It has already appeared in Douglas Adams' work as the Point of View Gun in the movie, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and in Brainstorm as the recording and playback of actual human experience.
I may or may not receive any reward for having survived the hell of the last 57 days, or from any of the previous three surgeries and recovery periods, or the bitter, contentious legal battle that put an end to my marriage, or episodes of post-partum depression, or the past five years of chronic pain, or the loss of friends and family members to death by illness, accident or their own hand, or any of the myriad occasions of deep suffering that I've survived in my life. Heartache, betrayal, grief, illness, and the rest don't have a clause somewhere that says you get ANYTHING for having weathered them.
But those of you who read this blog probably know me pretty well, so you won't be surprised that I'm going to WREST something good out of all of this, and take it to my heart as a souvenir, a little Purple Heart or Congressional Medal of Honor from the Congress of Heather. Like the wanderers in the Wizard of Oz, I'm on a quest for something I already have within me.
I would like my prize to be something I can wear inside my soul that can never be taken away or diminished, but that I can distribute at will without losing any of it. It has something to do with genuine appreciation for my life and loves. It also has the flavor of unconditional compassion and an ability to be of service to myself, my children, family, friends, students and colleagues in ways that really matter.
Perhaps it is my life's work to figure out exactly what The Prize is, so that I can put it into words that have some authentic impact... if only on myself, so that I can recover from this without forgetting any of it. I keep saying that I must have some BIG LESSON to learn, or these medical challenges wouldn't recur. I'm still trying to stop trying to be open to it, whatever IT is.
So. A few more hours to go. I need to eat, to appease my Eating Coaches who want me in fighting condition for tomorrow's ordeal. I need to sleep. I need to get through the nausea from the morphine and finish packing my little hospital bag. I need to putter around a tiny bit and pay some bills and make myself feel ready to leave for another journey into outer space, which is disguised as Northwest Medical Center. I'm sure I'll be attended by my old friends, the angels on the Neuro ward who wave at me as I go by on the stretcher, "Hi, Heather. So sorry to see you again."
Sigh...
Lucidity is Over-Rated
One day to go. In fact, in 24 hours, I will probably be in recovery, waking up into a hazy, strange world, looking through Vaseline-treated lenses, maybe even lying on my back. Looking up at the world from flat on my back will be a definite improvement.
Today I woke up exhausted. The last two days I've DONE TOO MUCH and today is when the physical body and its limitations come calling for accounts due. No putting off paying the price for movement and attempts at semi-normal living. How dare I even try to go out and eat a bagel or take a car ride for eight miles or do anything remotely connected to the Real World?
I am having a hard time today, fending off despair and hopelessness. The phone keeps ringing, with long-distance good wishes and rejection of home health care requests and hospital preoperative questionnaires and other people/institutions asking me to Take Care of Business. Those calls and the poetry of Rumi as presented by Coleman Barks are keeping me here and not letting me fall over some Edge that I perceive just around the next corner of time.
I am still lamenting my dependence on morphine to get me through this, and I must talk about it more than I realize. Today my own sister scoffed at the idea that I would ever be addicted to morphine or any other drug; perhaps her words were the tipping point--no one else in my life thinks that this will be a problem. Maybe I could relax and just take the damn pills already and be grateful for a return to my body that can only take place if I'm taken sufficiently out of my body to survive its proximity.
I'm angry and restless and grateful and hopeless and eager in turn. I can conceptualize some vague notion of a productive and somewhat effortless return to living and being and doing... most of my life has focused on the DOING and it has worked well enough to plant me right in the middle of a thorny garden of illusion that I have some control and autonomy in deciding what to do, and then just DOING it.
The past 57 days have done a pretty good job in destroying my ability to depend on my capability to DO anything. Yet I yearn for it... the ability to get out of bed, dress myself and two sleepy, squirmy boys, feed them and get them to school and daycare, and then return home to work--the money-earning kind, the money-saving kind, the obligatory tasks required to hold household entropy at bay, the blessings of maintaining social and familial connections, and the processes involved in basic personal hygiene... oh, how it goes so effortlessly to shower, shave, floss, style hair, apply cosmetics... when one is well, that is.
Now I wonder which tasks will REALLY happen at all. Just the hygiene part is impossible for me now. Which work will be most insistent, when I begin to get well? Which work will I wave away for now or forever? Will I ever be able to do good work to contribute to a Good Cause or to Earn A Dollar again? What will I have left after this that is of value to anyone else?
Today I woke up exhausted. The last two days I've DONE TOO MUCH and today is when the physical body and its limitations come calling for accounts due. No putting off paying the price for movement and attempts at semi-normal living. How dare I even try to go out and eat a bagel or take a car ride for eight miles or do anything remotely connected to the Real World?
I am having a hard time today, fending off despair and hopelessness. The phone keeps ringing, with long-distance good wishes and rejection of home health care requests and hospital preoperative questionnaires and other people/institutions asking me to Take Care of Business. Those calls and the poetry of Rumi as presented by Coleman Barks are keeping me here and not letting me fall over some Edge that I perceive just around the next corner of time.
I am still lamenting my dependence on morphine to get me through this, and I must talk about it more than I realize. Today my own sister scoffed at the idea that I would ever be addicted to morphine or any other drug; perhaps her words were the tipping point--no one else in my life thinks that this will be a problem. Maybe I could relax and just take the damn pills already and be grateful for a return to my body that can only take place if I'm taken sufficiently out of my body to survive its proximity.
I'm angry and restless and grateful and hopeless and eager in turn. I can conceptualize some vague notion of a productive and somewhat effortless return to living and being and doing... most of my life has focused on the DOING and it has worked well enough to plant me right in the middle of a thorny garden of illusion that I have some control and autonomy in deciding what to do, and then just DOING it.
The past 57 days have done a pretty good job in destroying my ability to depend on my capability to DO anything. Yet I yearn for it... the ability to get out of bed, dress myself and two sleepy, squirmy boys, feed them and get them to school and daycare, and then return home to work--the money-earning kind, the money-saving kind, the obligatory tasks required to hold household entropy at bay, the blessings of maintaining social and familial connections, and the processes involved in basic personal hygiene... oh, how it goes so effortlessly to shower, shave, floss, style hair, apply cosmetics... when one is well, that is.
Now I wonder which tasks will REALLY happen at all. Just the hygiene part is impossible for me now. Which work will be most insistent, when I begin to get well? Which work will I wave away for now or forever? Will I ever be able to do good work to contribute to a Good Cause or to Earn A Dollar again? What will I have left after this that is of value to anyone else?
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