5/28/18—Letting Go Of Sickness

My brother made a suggestion a couple of weeks ago that made a bigger impression on me than he imagined, I think. 

For years, I've had my medicines sitting on my coffee table, right in front of the sofa. Sometimes there would be many months worth of inhalers piled up. They were convenient there. And as my condition got worse and worse and I spent more time on the sofa, I valued the convenience. 

In one sense, they were so "normal" there for me that I didn't see them. In another sense, I couldn't help but see them as they reminded me many times per day not to forget to take my pills.

So, a couple of weeks ago, my brother suggests I move them someplace where they wouldn't remind me I was sick all the time. It made sense. I found a box to fit them in and now I only see them once a week when I fill my pill box. 

But it got me thinking...it was time to stop being sick all the time, too. It was time to pick my life back up and stand on my own again. It was time to stop playing the "surgery" card. 

On one hand, it seems silly to say, because I do still have aches and limitations and I have a three-month rehab coming up. It's still early. I could elicit sympathy for at least another few months. And I do have legitimate complaints. 

But on the other hand, I'm not sick anymore. I suppose anything can happen...I could go into afib again or my new valve could somehow fail. Any one of us could face an unforeseen malady. But the fact is, I had a bad body part and it was the culprit that dogged me for years. And now the source of that issue is gone. And, while still recovering (who knew coughing and sneezing could hurt so much?) I'm better than I have been for a long time. I can't walk as far yet, for example, but I can get around a grocery store easier than I have been able to for years, actually...and without sweating profusely and turning red to the point of humiliation while I'm at it. 

I'm not sick anymore. I'm recovering, and well along my path in that regard. It's time to start living like a normal human being again. 

For years, I wore the "mysterious, debilitating illness" label. I really had no choice because it was so prominent in my life. But it gave me many excuses—remaining stagnant and becoming more reclusive among them. And as much as I hate to say it, I got to be a victim, too. Even when life sucks, there are payoffs...excuses, attention, victimhood...glum indulgences. "How can I possibly move forward when my energy is still low and my incision isn't fully healed?" I could hold on to that excuse a bit longer. Its sell-by date isn't yet expired. But what am I waiting for? WHY am I waiting?

It's really no different from someone facing an empty nest, a career change, a child, a marriage, a divorce—there are times in your life when you have to stop being one thing and choose to become another. If you hang on to the old thing, life will eventually start to crumble around you. There's a card in the tarot—The Tower—that depicts the inevitable destruction of some aspect of your life. We can move alongside change or it can come crashing down upon us. But make no mistake: change will always win in the end.

Normally, I'm not beyond hanging on for dear life until I HAVE to change. But I no longer want to wear the cloak of darkness I've been wearing, no matter how it might benefit me and keep me from the discomfort of change. I'm starting to shed it, whether it's ready to shed me or not.  

So that's what happens when you suggest I move my medications...haha. It wasn't just staring at the medications that was keeping me in the "sick mindset". And even though I think I can milk it a little longer, I longed for this day for years. I feared this day would never come. And while I can forgive circumstance and medical oversight for delaying my wellness for so long, I don't think I could forgive myself for stretching it out any further than is necessary. There's a difference between being victimized and being a victim. 

We can choose to re-label ourselves at any time. If we don't like a personality trait, we can change it. If a label is untrue or has outlived its validity, we can re-label ourselves. If a life phased has passed, we can move on to the next adventure. We don't even have to slough the old way entirely. We can just de-emphasize one behavior and emphasize another. 

The timing, however, is key. Do it too early and you risk being ill prepared to greet your best future. Hesitate too long, and you just keep getting more and more miserable as life changes around you and threatens to leave you behind. The best path forward, it seems to me, is to be honest with yourself, accept your new role and greet it fearlessly. Easier said than done, I know. But also not as hard as you'd think.

5/21/18—Regaining My Life Force

By the time I awoke, most of the tubes and devices were
gone. But it's kind of dramatic to see all the "life support."

 

I'm preoccupied lately. Obviously. Which is why I haven't blogged lately. 

I'm preoccupied with assimilating the many lessons and changes that have come from finally figuring out what has been wearing on me for years, then having a pretty major surgery to correct it, then recovering physically and emotionally. That recovery, by the way, is nowhere near complete. They say it takes a year to recover physically from having the sternum separated, and also the trauma my body has been through. 

Thankfully, the hard part of that is over. But I am still physically limited, with my boundaries increasing with each week. Right now that just means walking to end of my street and back. In June I will stop working with the hunky home PT guy and I'll go into cardiac rehab and they will push me harder. Right now I'm not allowed to push myself too much physically. But all my other restrictions—no driving, lifting, pushing, pulling, raising my arms up, etc.—are lifted. 

The first month was horrific. I wasn't feeling much better. I was in afib the entire month. I couldn't sleep. My body was swollen. My legs were rashy and scaly. And I ended up in the hospital again, where they shocked me back into rhythm. My body was so inflamed that, in the six weeks since, I've lost 30 lbs of fluid. Most of that happened in the first 10 days. Since then, bluebirds are singing and flowers are smiling at me. 

Since then, I've also realized that it wasn't just breathlessness, weakness and exhaustion that had been plaguing me all those years. It was something that, in some ways, was scarier. My life force was nearly entirely depleted. 

I imagine this is true of anyone with long-term issues. Your body and mind need life to produce life force, and if all you can do just survive, then that life force gets drained. It is different from depression. It's as if the very soul inside of you—the you inside of you—is fading away. 

Of course I never would have thought of it that way back then. I just thought it was breathlessness, exhaustion, etc. And I can't say whether the loss of life force caused the breathlessness...or visa versa...or maybe they just all go hand in hand. 

The reason I can see it now is because my life force is returing. Something behind my eyes and in my core is burning brighter. Its current presence is making me recognize its past absence. It slipped away so slowly that I didn't even notice it going.

Its return is manifesting in many ways. I'm able to meditate again. I'm taking daily showers...haha. (I'm not sure if that's just because I enjoy taking showers sitting in the old-lady shower chair I no longer need, though.) I'm cooking more. I am being more active and adventurous because I'm not as worried if I'll be able to walk from a parking lot into a store or restaurant or park. I'm really enjoying my ready-for-summer back yard. (My brother did about 90% of the work. All I did was pot plants and bark commands to him.) I'm cleaning more things around the house. I'm going to stores again. (I couldn't even manage a 7-11 a few months ago, and now I'm browsing at places like Home Goods.) And I'm also back to visiting the farmer's market, having processed a bunch of fresh garlic three different ways recently—I froze the cloves, made a paste from the membrane around the cloves and also made garlic scape pesto in two different flavors. 

I guess you could say I have more joie de vivre. 

I don't want to overstate, though. I'm really just starting to reawaken. I'm just beginning to trust I'm finally OK. But I can see myself being "normal" again one day...like normal people who can walk a few miles without stopping. Like people who aren't afraid of other shoes dropping. Like people who can take things like stopping by a grocery store—or even a 7-11—for granted. I went months where I couldn't manage anything that didn't have a drive through. Getting out to my car, in the first place, was hard. So this is a welcome change for me, and I believe it's just the beginning. Just to feel hopeful and confident about my future is something "new". 

There are many things still to process. I willed myself into an intentional state of denial prior to my surgery. I felt if I thought too much about the surgery and the outcomes, I'd be a total mess. So I just stopped thinking about it. Then I was in a daze for a month with that horrible afib, the effects of the anesthesia and my sore body. And for the past six weeks I've been digging out of my hole and discovering life anew. But I think I need to allow myself a good cry over my struggle, the misdiagnoses, how bad things got before they scheduled surgery, a house of horrors rehab center I spent a week in (OMG, the stories I have), and spending a month in afib and having to get to the point I couldnt breathe until they did something about it (I do feel let down by the medical community).

Spiritually speaking, I don't know why this had to be so long and difficult a road. Why did it have to get so bad? How did that figure into the grand plan? All I can figure now is that it showed me my will to survive...my will to keep things like work and home stuff flowing despite my state. I never gave up. Not even for a minute. 

But I feel like I've lost five years of my life. And while I'm spending most of my time being grateful that it wasn't worse—I didn't have a heart attack or stroke or even a clogged artery—I do think I need to honor the trauma I've survived. And maybe cry for all those times I couldn't cry because it took too much energy. 

I did the same thing when my father died, though...put off emotions until all the drama surrounding his death (he was murdered, so there were investigations and trials) had passed. Then I found that so much time had passed that I no longer needed to cry. And everything seemed surreal, like it never happened to me—my detachment from reality confused reality for me. I'm not sure it was the best approach, but there have been a couple times in my life that have been so big that I felt I had to shut down a little to ensure my survival. If I were a turtle, I would have been deep inside my shell. 

So the long and short of it is that I'm processing. And while I won't guarantee being back weekly, I do think I'll have some lessons to share for a while as I work through this. I've relinquished a lot of control during this process, I've had to trust and count upon others, I've set aside worries about money and my dogs, and I've yielded to my limitations, just to name a few "foreign" concepts I've had to embrace. 

I'm no longer who I was when the year started, nor am I the person I've been for the last five years or so. Constant change is a constant...we're always changing. But I feel like this has been a major shedding of my skin—a line drawn in the sand. Again, that's a lot like the deaths of my parents. In a way, this has been a death of the me I've been for quite some time. I feel like I channel as I write and work through complex things by blogging about them, so the coming weeks should be interesting.

3/26/18—Checking In

Just a quick post to let everyone know I'm alive after open heart surgery and on the road to recovery. I had a difficult time at first and spent a week in rehab regaining my energy. It was both a good thing for me and a nightmare experience akin to something from a Stephen King horror. I'm sure I'll tell you all about it at some point. But we were able to escape the facility on Friday and I spent my first days at home this weekend and I have all confidence I've got what it takes to get past this recovery stage now.

My brother (who wants to be known to my blog audience as the hunky housekeeper) spent the weekend with me and really helped make my transition back to independence. He also did some cleaning and other chores around here. Having a brother who is ADD and obsessed with cleaning can be a good thing. I will still need help with some things on a daily basis...I get tired quickly and suddenly and need to sleep a lot. But my sister in law is on spring break this week and will visit often, plus I have neighbors and friends volunteering to come by. Plus I will have at home visits from a physical therapist.

Soon I'll be as good as new. It's a different kind of exhaustion than I was feeling before. I have less energy, but also less breathlessness. I'm being kind to myself, one of the many wisdoms I've learned from this experience. Please keep me in your thoughts and send me energy and well wishes!

2/19/18—Facing The Black Hole

Here's a classic post from my tarot-draw days. I may be doing classic posts for a while. I feel like I have little to contribute these days.

I could depress you by telling you how scared I am about the probability of having open heart surgery, but I don't want to put words to those fears—surgery is what will bring me back to the "normal" I've been missing for so may years and I want to be grateful.

I could tell you about how I was left gasping for air after navigating the rows on the left half of a 7-11 while in search of toilet paper. That's how limited I am—I haven't been to a grocery store or drug store for months because they are too big (thank god for Amazon Fresh)—and that is heartbreaking for someone who has three dogs, used to power walk five miles a day and do the "difficult" hikes at the park.

I could also tell you how frustrating it is to live like this while the doctors slowly lead me through a battery of tests because apparently there's no rush because, I guess (I don't know), I'm not at risk of dying. This bad valve doesn't qualify as heart disease nor is it an imminent threat of heart attack. At least I don't think it is. I'm sure they'd be moving faster if I were at that level of risk.

To go into detail about any of those things would send me into a black hole I may never crawl out of. And I need to stay in the light right now, because some days that's all I feel I have going for me. I wish I could be wiser or a better observer of the spiritual world right now, but I just can't. So here's today's classic post...


Today's Draw: Nine of Swords—The Black Hole—from the Science Tarot. Do you often feel that something's missing in your life? Is there a bad habit or excess you'd like to eliminate from your life? How often do you spend time by yourself with no distractions—no radio, not when you're driving the car, not while you're reading—just you, yourself and thy sitting around being good to each other?

A black hole is when a star collapses in on itself, pulling all its mass into something so small it can't even been seen. Everything in its vicinity is pulled inside, too, never to be seen again. Not even light can escape the prison of a black hole.

Even though all that mass compressed into an invisible black hole is tough for even my favorite astrophysicist, Neil de Grasse Tyson, to wrap his head around, on one level, we kind of understand it, don't we? Because each of us has one inside us...a black hole so vast that no amount of Oreos, no kilos of drugs, no number of children, no posse of pool boys and no storehouse of sparkly things can fill it. Its gravitational field pulls us in. Nothing can escape it, least of all the light of peace.

*mindlessly filing my nails while some of you slit your wrists over this ugly truth*

So today's Nine of Swords comes to us for a couple of reasons on the final day of "how to create peace" week. (See this week to read more about peace.) The first reason is that it's in the suit of swords, which is the suit of the mind. Yesterday's card was a Swords card, too. And both of them are pretty dreaded cards to get in a reading. Not because they predict bad things, but because they point at things we're already doing—the  ways in which we allow our own minds to defeat us. Yesterday's card was about the negativities we dwell upon and today's is about disillusionment and the lies we tell ourselves. 

Really the two cards are very interconnected. Some of the negative stuff we dwell upon is about us and our abilities and potentials, for example. On one end of the scale we tell ourselves that a prince will come in on a white horse and we'll live happily ever after, thereby ruining every relationship we forge under that belief before it even starts. On the other end of the scale we tell ourselves in one way or another that we are somehow limited—not smart, lucky, pretty, creative or deserving enough to reach for the highest star. So these are some ways in which our minds defeat us. And with all that noise up there, with all our limited potential and dashed dreams, how will we ever find peace?

Gratuitous photo of my next-life boyfriend, the phenom known simply as NdGT.

But the other part of this Nine of Swords is this black hole inside us. The one we fill with food, alcohol, social engagements, television and other, more innocent sounding distractions like music, books and gardening. (Oh, yeah. That.) None of those things are bad by any means by themselves and in moderation. But when they build up into a ball of noise and roughage so huge we can't hear ourselves think...when we use them to numb the pain inside...when they keep us from listening to our inner voice...when we expect them to fill the void...that's when they create problems. 

I think this is probably the #1 thing society is in denial of. Somewhere inside us, though, we know. We know "something" is missing. We know something else is excessive. A big part of it comes from looking to something outside of you—romance, children, potato chips, possessions, thrills—to make you happy or rescue you from the burden of your "self." Our fears overtake us and that black hole looks like a source of comfort, but it always ends up leaving you cold.

So what's the answer? Some of the answers have been given this week. Learn how to love and trust yourself, learn how to accept yourself and others and start a healthier relationship with yourself...listen to yourself, give yourself a break. That's the thing that's missing—a healthy, loving, respectful relationship with yourself. Yeah, I know it's hard to do. There's no Cliff Notes version. It takes time. Trust me, I'm still working on it myself. It's a practice, more than an event, meaning it's something you form the habit of doing every day. Just like you formed the habit of second-guessing yourself way back when. 

Still not sure who Neil deGrasse Tyson (NdGT) is?

But the biggest part—and, honestly, the reason I think you come here however often you do—is to stop being afraid of what you'll find when you look within. Have the balls to ask yourself the tough questions and be honest about the answers, which so many of you are already doing. So much is stuff we've been struggling with since childhood. The input we got from back then is deeply rooted and nobody escapes unscathed. Sometimes I swear I think we come here to this earth to heal our childhoods...haha. But another way of looking at it is that our childhoods happened the way they did to give us the cues we need to heal our souls. 

One of the reasons I'm so frank about my own life here at times is to show others they're not alone. Monsters thrive in the dark, and until we shine light on these things and deal with them as they are, we can't defeat them. But we can't do that if we think we're the only ones who feel emptiness or disappointment in our lives and in ourselves. The energy we spend holding on to the shame could be used to escape the black hole. This may not be possible in outer space, but it is possible within.

2/12/18—Chasing Sasquatch

A classic post...

Although I've lived all over the eastern half of the US and have many roots in the midwest, I've lived within a five mile radius of where I'm living now most of my life. So it has surprised me this weekend to learn two new things about this area that I never knew before.

The first was actually a well-kept secret for over 60 years. My favorite tree resides at Fort Hunt, a local park I've visited all my life. At the park there are prison cells and a watch tower, but the stories I always heard was that the park's role in anything exciting was fairly benign. It provided some defense during the Spanish American War and some training for other wars but not much else in terms of wartime activities.

Turns out, though, during WWII, the fort was code named PO Box 1142 and its mission was to extract secrets from German POWs, mostly scientists. They got all kinds of groundbreaking secrets out of them involving things like rocket science and microwave technology. And they didn't beat it out of them. They cajoled it out of them.

The other thing I learned was about something called the Mount Vernon Monster. In the late 1970s, local residents heard strange noises coming out of the woods in the region of George Washington's home. Some say it was kids playing recordings over loudspeakers. But some people witnessed a bigfoot-like creature and many others had encounters with the creature nearby, but not visible. They swear that there's no way it could be a hoax from the way things happened...the way the sound moved through the woods.

Now, I didn't live here in the late 70s, so I can see why I wouldn't have heard of it. But Bigfoot is, like, my favorite "mythical" creature. And to think one might have lived here? Exciting. Right now, in the very same area, people are saying there's a cougar on the loose. Maybe Bigfoot never left. Maybe he's a shapeshifter! :D

I don't consider myself much of a historian, so I'm not surprised I don't know everything there is to know about my little suburb. But it did surprise me to learn two BIG things in a single weekend—perhaps the biggest things ever to happen here (outside of George Washington himself.)

It's interesting all the layers of stories and lore that form like layers of sediment over time. Everyone focuses on our founding father's role in the immediate area, but there were layers of history stretching hundreds and millions of years before him. Indigenous people were all up and down this part of the river before the Brits even arrived. Dinosaurs, no doubt, drank from our waters. We're just about an hour or so as the crow flies from the some of the world's oldest mountains and, right here in the same state, is a river known to be older than those mountains and considered by some to be the second oldest river in the world. (In a bit of irony, it's called the New River and it runs backwards, just like the Nile, the world's oldest river, does.)

If you sit with nature long enough, you can feel mysteries yet untold. And not just because of backwards running rivers, ancient mountains and Sasquatch sightings. You'd feel it in the middle of the desert or along the Panama Canal, in the center of New York City or in the depths of Asia. There's magic and mystery and history everywhere there's earth. You don't have to dig to know it's there, because it's part of the vibration.

Many years back I had a "paranormal" experience in that park where the POWs were held. Now I understand more about why that happened. Whether you have the data in the form of recorded history  and artifacts or not, the body always knows. We just have to learn to use what we have and trust it.

2/5/18—Admiring The Birds

Photo found online, credited to photographer Todd Henson.

I've been watching birds a lot lately.

Many mornings I'll sit out back with the dogs and drink my morning hot beverage—cider, hot chocolate, sometimes coffee. And since most other critters disappear in the winter, I find myself watching the birds.  

This morning I noticed a downy woodpecker carving out a nest in my tree stump. Of course I didn't know it was a downy woodpecker until I googled around. And I learned the bird is a she, because males have red on their heads. And, apparently, the males keep the females from foraging in the most productive spots—small branches and weed stems—and leave them to forage in tougher spots, such as large branches and trunks.

Typical males. 

But that also shows just how impressive the females are. This particular gal had excavated a small hole in a large tree branch that went deep enough for her to disappear inside, turn around, and come out again. Not sure whether she was in there feeding on larvae and things, building a nest or both. The male might have helped if it is a nest, but she was the one doing the work today. 

Watching her excavating the hole made me think about how impressive birds are. Birds see colors invisible to humans. They also see in the ultraviolet spectrum. Their eyes are relatively larger than humans', so they see better than we do. And an eagle's vision is up to eight times stronger than a human's. 

Then there are the murmurations of starlings, swarming in incredible unison, responding to each other as a group, rather than as individuals. Birds of many species can fly hundreds of miles away for the winter, only to find their way back to the exact spot year after year. Flamingoes mate for life, staying with their love for as many as 50 years. Female ostrices will care for another female's eggs. A falcon can fly at more than 100 miles per hour. An albatross can soar for up to six hours without flapping its wings. And a parrott can amass a vocabulary of 800 words—significantly more words than our president can speak. 

With a few exceptions, birds can achieve feats way beyond our ability. In fact, most animals possess qualities beyond human capability. A dog's capacity for unconditional love is certainly superior to a human's, for example.

So as I observe animals, I wonder what makes us "more evolved?" Some say it's our ability for speech, but why is that more evolved than communicating without it? Some say it's our ability to reason—rational thought—but many predators certainly display the same kind measured thought. Of course, you'll often hear it's our opposable thumbs, allowing us to build and do fine work. I don't see many animals suffering without that ability, however. They all find food, water and shelter easily enough. 

So, beyond the enormous egos that make us believe we are superior—the same egos that imprison us in ways that other animals aren't hindered by—what is it really? Is it our ability to kill and destroy? Does that make us more evolved? I doubt it. 

As I sat outside for an hour the other morning observing the birds, I noticed a small group of mourning doves perched on the utility wires the entire time, seemingly just gazing out into the beyond. They clearly had more time and freedom to enjoy the view than I. Plus they can store thousands of seeds in their throats, live off of seawater, and not for nuthin', they can also fly. 

There are many benefits to being human. I'm not saying there are not. But being human can be emotionally painful and just far too damned difficult much of the time. Our "evolved" brains torment us far more than we fully know. So sometimes as I watch the birds, I wonder how much easier life would be if our brains were smaller and less troubled, we could see things humans can only imagine and, with a few flaps of our wings, we could catch a breeze and soar far above the cares of "more evolved" world, perch someplace entirely different, and enjoy a whole new perspective on life.

1/29/18—Reconnecting With The Past

This is NOT me and my friend. I found it on google.

Today is a rainy day and I'm not feeling my best. So, aside from writing this blog and throwing out some trash for the morning pickup, I've decided to spend most of the day sleeping and/or snuggling with my babies. 

I find it interesting that a few old friends have reconnected with me recently. Some before I landed in the hospital, some after reading my blog about that adventure, and one old work colleague who connected completely out of the blue in the past week or so. Whether aware of it or not, there's a mysterious connection that prompts people to reach out at just the right time. 

One of these people is a woman I knew for five months when I was 10. The military is such a transient life that the people that make marks on your memories are often people you didn't know for very long.  

As I consider our friendship, it strikes me that we had an unusually memorable friendship. My perception—and overwhelming reality—is that it took me a long time to make friends. But this girl lived next door to me, and we were clearly fast friends. I remember spending a lot of time at her house rehearsing a truly horrific dance we performed for our classmates. (Thank god video cameras weren't a thing then!) She remembers raiding my brother's bedroom to borrow his albums. He would be flattered to know he had "the good music."

Anyway, we spoke last night for quite some time, reminiscing over those five months, the people we knew and both our lives since. I don't have a very good memory of childhood things, but I do remember that period in particular. It felt like longer than it was, too. I remember that it snowed on my birthday, which was quite exciting for me. I remember learning how to play tetherball at that school. And I remember something I didn't mention in our call, but if memory serves, this friend broke my finger while she was performing a handstand and she subsequently helped me write out my homework a few times because I couldn't do it myself. My guess is that I probably milked that for all it was worth. :D 

Coincidentally, (if coincidence exists) she and I are on similar trajectories right now, with bodies that refuse to cooperate with our desire to do the things we most enjoy. We're also both due for surgery to correct those this issues within the next month or so. 45 years have passed since the last time we spoke, but we find ourselves living next door to each other once again, figuratively speaking (and literally, kinda, as she's local.) Let's hope we don't decide to make up a "really cool" dance to celebrate.

She did say something to me, though, that I found interesting. She said she remembered telling her mom that I was soulful. I'm not sure how a 10-year-old is soulful or how another 10-year-old knows to identify someone as such, but I found it interesting because I never would have thought of myself that way at that age. It struck me the same way it did when a high school friend recounted a story about me saying something spiritually wise and comforting that stuck with her all her life. My perception of myself was that I had none of that in me at all until my 20s. I considered myself an atheist for the first couple decades of my life and had no concept of spirituality. So maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe I've been walking this path far longer than I ever knew.   

I'm really struck by the number of people who have reached out to me out of the blue since, say, November...probably around 10 people. Compare that to maybe zero in the rest of rest of 2017, and it's pretty remarkable. Add to that a couple of clients who are going out of their way to keep me working and earning money before I might need time off, and I feel blessed. Anytime you're facing surgery, you're also facing your mortality. I don't know anyone who goes under anesthesia or the knife lightly. The universe seems to be letting me know that I've mattered and I do matter. I don't feel that way—or perhaps LET myself feel that way—very often. But it's nice. And I'll take it.