Mr. Blue Sky / please tell us why

by dailies

I found out I was wrong about the difficulties with my procedure on the twelfth. My sudden post-surgery illness was not due to a medication miscalculation or reaction, but rather the trauma of the surgery itself. “You had a really blocked-up system,” my urologist frowns at me. Like I did it to be naughty. “Like a cork,” he adds. He tells me it was so bad they did what they could but they had a limited amount of time.

I am shocked they didn’t tell me how bad it would be after the procedure, or give me something I could take for the pain. It would have saved me terror, agony, stress, and a second hospitalization.

Mostly – the fear. I haven’t had pain like that before. I thought something was terribly, unutterably wrong. And then things did get wrong. I am glad I recovered. I have learned a lot.

So now I am in a patient place, waiting for the next test. I am thinking about pain, and fear, and my Buddhist practice. I am going to get to go deeper than many people do.

Meanwhile I am well enough to work. I have several writing assignments, a web site (my new job!), and several sewing plans in the works. Tomorrow I meet with a client about custom garments. I’m tired but I’m doing okay. I get to be careful, to pace myself.

My child, my eldest, is off on a retreat this weekend – she is at a gathering meant to support children of alcoholic families. You can imagine how impressed I am of her, how much I love her for embarking on such a thing. Still, I miss her. She hasn’t been texting us much. I am lucky to get the lion’s share of the messages.

Night time and it’s time for kitties, for snuggling under blankets. For something easy to watch. To drift off to sleep. 

Tomorrow is another day!

no matter how I try to disabuse you of that notion

by dailies

Nightmares.

They’ve plagued me since my procedure, eight days ago. Two hospitalizations and one visit from paramedics, in the space of four days. Dehydration, secondary infection, and constipation. All of these are resolved today, but the combination made me so very ill and so very quickly so, that I am sobered by the experience. Now I’m on a regular medication schedule and that has been very interesting; I’ve never before taken loads of ibuprofen.

So in the last few days I’ve been able to do some work. More importantly, I’ve stopped fearing a sudden onset of pain that cannot be remedied. During the worst bouts, I had very dark thoughts indeed. Amazing how easily we can be brought low.

So the nightmares – why? Medicine? Stress? Both?

My children have been mastering more household work. Surprisingly, my son seems more focussed. My daughter has trouble.

Last night I sit at the edge of her bed, in the dark, and I ask her. Why didn’t she take the dog on his walk earlier? Why didn’t she finish laundry? She tells me, I don’t know. The room is heavy with her sadness. I ask, “How can I help?” She tells me it’s her thing. Her problem. She needs to fix it. I ask her if she still wants to do what she signed up to do. She says Yes. Her voice is firmer, now. I tell her, It’s okay, just try again tomorrow. It can be hard to learn new habits. I sense her easing off. She feels better. I say goodnight.

Downstairs to my son who has snuck my laptop and is trying to procure a half-dozen starfruit through mail-order means. He arranges his time these days between playing outdoors until all hours, and gaming in his little studio (Minecraft, mostly), and doing his household work. And then piling on me like a bag of sticks. Watching a little television in the living room while I’m resting after a bout of pain. He tangles up and kisses me over and over. I ask him, “What would your friends think if they walked by and looked in the living room to see you kissing your mom?” He smiles and says, “If they teased me I’d just say, ‘Oh you don’t like your mama? That’s so sad.'” We are giggling and wrestling a bit and he is trying to crack jokes, to make me smile. He wants me to feel better. He’s a child so he thinks its his job to fix me. I can’t really make him not feel that but I can reassure my children whenever I can.

We’ve had a break from hot weather; balmy days with an ocean breeze, but a threat of heat. In the night when I wake to take medicine, I pad into the kitchen for a drink of water and there is Herbert Pocket our little tuxedo kitty, all curled up on top of the stove. I know I should shoo her off but I can’t. I have to pet her and she stretches and splays out her back toes and curls her spine, belly up, asking for some love. I don’t particularly like being up in the middle of the night and being ill, but I do love my house and the safety I feel, and that I have in some measure provided the same to a few other sentient beings. 

the untrained mind

by dailies

Tonight I wrote, by hand, a letter to the men responsible for my child’s sexual assaults.

I wrote by hand until my hand cramped. I wrote as articulately as I could. Even as I wrote I knew I had a bit of spiritual wisdom; wisdom I did not used to have. Even as I wrote I knew that these men had destroyed my sleep, my peace of mind. They had taken things from my child, things that can never be fully restored. Doubtless they had taken things from other children. They had removed my security regarding the person I love most.

But they had not taken my compassion, and they had not taken my faith.

Folded-up sheets of yellow paper sit at my elbow. I will read my letter to one of my spiritual mentors, the woman who told me to write this letter. She is a Catholic and I am a Buddhist but she is the only human being who has given me lasting comfort because she is not afraid to tell me the truth. Of all those I have had the dubious honor to deal with during this time – the advocates, the professionals, the social workers, the counselors, law enforcement – many who have added to my confusion, one who has misled us intentionally, some who have caused my child more harm than good – this woman alone has been able to help me because she has been where I have been and she knows the thing, the Bravest thing, the truth about faith that so many are afraid to surrender to.

I will likely never meet the men responsible for what happened to my child. I wrote the letter anyway because my friend told me to, and I trust her.

People think a sexual assault is just the assault. But when the law gets involved, it is much worse. We have had agencies, strangers, crawling up in our family business. My child has had interviews in a police room, suffered many night terrors and panic attacks (for many months we were entirely ignorant as to why), been submitted to a rape exam, and had many freedoms curtailed. My child has endured mistakes by the adults, professional and familial, who are supposed to protect. My child has endured the inept, clumsy, and stupid mistakes Ralph and I have made – because no parent is prepared to deal with this well, no parent.

This has been the hardest thing I’ve gone through, no matter how carefully I’ve tried to do the right thing. Since late September my world has changed and it has been relentless. My anger, my confusion, my grief has exhausted me. It has kept me depressed and anxious so that even while I function “properly” and do the things I’m supposed to, I am never without this pressing fear, a fear few intuit or even think of. Prayer and meditation have helped; helping others has helped immensely. “Restraint of pen and tongue” has been a godsend. Doing the next thing I’m supposed to – doing the housework, returning texts and calls, helping friends – has kept me sane.

Tonight I needed there to be a point to all of it. To what has happened. Because I know there is. So even though she was dead-tired I grabbed my friend and mentor. I talked with her and she told me some things. I cried – but less than you might think. Because I am ready to understand a little more than I’ve thus been able to understand.

Before we parted she told me, “It’s like that tree across the way. The leaves will fall soon and they’ll pretend to be dead. But you and I know they’re not dead. They are fertilizer for other things to grow.

“This experience is going to be food for you, it is going to make you stronger;

“But first you have to fall.”

bravery is required

by dailies

Spring emerges. Skunk cabbage, and newts in the small freshwater streams. Flowers have erupted from the still-cold and seemingly-inhospitable earth. It felt like things weren’t going to change. It was dark. The light is spilling in.

Tonight I flush a pain prescription; yet, afterwards, I feel foolish and uncertain. What I’m really trying to do is stop struggling. The most insane of struggles that I take up, time and time again: fighting my fears.

Stop worrying. I am beginning to think one day I will lose a kidney. Despite my efforts, despite the care of physicians. For a person who has a severe fear of even minor surgical procedures, the concept of something like that is very difficult.

And it feels wasteful to flush drugs I could sell on the street. Yes, I am shocked I even have such a thought, however fleeting. I have never sold drugs and I do not think that is ethical behavior. I know it isn’t legal. And yet the thought occurs because my mind has been overrun with fear. How will I provide for my family, how can we make Rent.

It is the most powerful seduction: there is something I can do, there is an action I can take Right Now, that will sort out my life.

In the car the other day, a beloved friend and I were talking. I said – in gratitude – “God supports me,” and she responded, “Well. I support myself. I provide for myself.” I drove on for a bit and then I said, “There is a lot of suffering in that idea.”

I am going to stop saying “God” when what I mean are the three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. I am shy about Buddhism because where I live it is a minority faith tradition. If you say “God” people might be prejudiced but at least they might not be outright bigoted about it all.

I can be a little bit brave. A little at a time.

little snagglepaw with her sad whiskers

by Uncategorized

Two days ago I began to worry for the health of our little kitty Hammy; yesterday I was down for the count for several hours with severe kidney pain. Today as I recovered, my daughter’s earache got bad enough she began sobbing from pain. Missing a car – it is in the shop for an unexpected repair – I was fortunate enough to get my mom’s van to take Phee up to the ER.

It’s been a rough couple of days.

I am in a place that instead of being anxious we are racking up an ER bill I can be grateful we have access to medical care. I am glad I know my kidney pain is not a serious health condition, it is merely severe pain. I am appreciative of friends who’ve sent loving emails, tweets, and texts about my kitty, and for a friend who offered to let us use her vet credit balance so we could take Hammy in. Little Hamilton seems to be getting better as we bought some high-protein high-calorie food and have been carefully feeding her small doses every couple hours (she won’t eat her regular dry grain-free food).

Phoenix is on medication and feeling better.

Despite my experience of gratitude and support, I am a little down. I thought I’d be honest about that here and in other public spaces.

Thank you, again, to the friends who’ve been so loving and supportive.

i’ll take, “confusing and upsetting birth defects” for $500, alex

by dailies

“People who have kidney stones often report the sudden onset of excruciating, cramping pain in their low back and/or side, groin, or abdomen. Changes in body position do not relieve this pain. The abdominal, groin, and/or back pain typically waxes and wanes in severity, characteristic of colicky pain (the pain is sometimes referred to as renal colic). It may be so severe that it is often accompanied by nausea and vomiting. The pain has been described by many as the worst pain of their lives, even worse than the pain of childbirth or broken bones. “

The hot bath helped only a little, but now overwhelmed with pain I lean over and throw up violently into the draining tub. And again. And again. Aware I might not have an appetite for the meal I’m rejecting. It smells foul but not as bad as the benign and delicious confectionery I’d smelled a few minutes before, just as I felt myself getting violently ill and when the nausea began. Vomiting is constructive and briefly supersedes the pain. Sick, dizzy, and in breathtaking pain, now, all my evening plans dashed. For the moment. I ask my daughter to bring me a towel and I wrap myself up and lie on the couch and pray.

I never know when I’m going to have just a little ache, a distraction that leaves me slightly breathless, or whether soon I’ll be sweating and my blood pressure up and then, vomiting. The vomiting at least relieves the nausea, or so it seems. Sadly I’m watching my pain meds leave my body, not that they make enough of a dent to make it all go away, but they help a bit.

It goes on and on for seemingly forever, but it’s only about two and a half hours of horror.

A friend gave me a book today and when finally the pain eases of to being only minorly-distracting I can read. Gratefully. Then, get dressed. Slowly. I remain on the couch and finish this good book; Hutch pads over and lets me give him good scritchinz. Ralph and the kids take him for a walk as I am too sick, already thinking of earlier today when I took my dog on his first off-leash walk, which was awesome, and I was irritated I didn’t have sunglasses, but I didn’t think I’d be going through this crap tonight.

“It has been said that kidney stones are the worst pain imaginable.” You know I’ve been through labor pain and I’d rather do that. At least with labor pain you get a break. And as my daughter reminds me, “you get a baby too.”

By the way I hope a reader can send me a graphic old-timey rendition of kidney stones, like my old favorite, “the gout”. Maybe you have to go through it to understand.

Another day, and hoping for a night where I don’t wake up gasping in pain.