Tempus fugit, and Don't Forget It

In my day - I was born in 1942 and grew up in the fifties - a girl couldn't even contemplate a sport like this.  I was 30 before I ever met a woman who could pilot a plane.  I was awestruck. 

A lot has changed since then, thanks to the many cultural revolutions, including feminism.  And my bones have changed, too, and are, oh, brittle, due to a lifetime of scorning milk and kidney failure and also just plain aging.  I know what broken bones are, and there's no way I would try a jet-ski or even surfboard now.   Or anything that might jar me sufficiently to lead to a long, long rehab.

We do age.  And the time keeps coming and coming and you realize that today you can't do something you could do only yesterday.  Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.  So live with no illusions about tomorrow - you don't have forever to get to Paris.



When I picked out the above video and listened to it, it seemed so sweet, so innocent, so sort of Buddhist in its emphasis on this day, and I'd thought John Denver was like the public persona honored in the video.  Just now I read over his bio in Wikipedia and found that his life was not innocent or easy.  He was only 53 when he died crashing his private jet. He'd survived crashing his Porsche two years earlier.  From Wikipedia -

 In 1996, nearly a year before the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration had learned of Denver's failure to abstain entirely from alcohol after his drunk driving arrests, and had previously revoked his medical certification. . . . [Therefore] he was not legally able to fly at the time of the accident. However, there was no trace of alcohol or drugs in Denver's body at autopsy.

I know.  It's sad. I didn't think this post was going to go this way, and I suspect he didn't think that flight was going to end that way, either.  I'd been playing over in my mind all the people I've known who have lost abilities as they aged, including me and, actually, every old person I know.  Actually, that's more real to me, because I've been close to people who didn't see it coming and had nothing else to turn to. 

Time to go to the bottom of the blog, again, and think about The Five Remembrances.  Cheers.

We're Not That Different

I'm trying to remember the last time I posted a commercial - Oh, I know - never.  But I see this one every night when I watch the news, and I enjoy the fact that we hippies are now harmless and charming in the popular mind.  And how about that message - we're connected.  Buddhism selling car insurance.

You may think you are very unlike a crazy person, especially if you have one in your life.  We can be hard to take.  I have never found a good program to teach me the techniques of managing my spectacular feelings.  I think such programs could exist, but they'd have to be extensive and expensive. I've had to work hard to keep myself from blowing up my life periodically.  Nevertheless, I think I am like other people who are considered sane (or undiagnosed), but enhanced.  A sort of high-def version, which is not always fun. And not always possible to medicate away.  Don't believe those stories celebrities tell about being all fixed up by a little lithium.  At least, I've never personally known a bipolar who could be magically turned into a Muggles.

When we’re manic, we have to manage a creative flow that can be strongly impelled, a desire to talk that can be so hard to stem it's a symptom called "pressured speech."  (Doesn't everyone have an aunt like that?)  Much difficulty sleeping, concentrating, finishing things.  Feeling really good can lead to giving all you have to the poor or, on the other hand, buying yourself a brand-new Lexus (I know a woman who did that).  It can lead to being so excited and intrusive you get every single person in your life mad at you, and that's a shame.  It is a disorder, but hardly anyone cuts us some slack.

 When we're depressed - you know how that is.  It can be like the worst break-up of your life.  It can mean really really not wanting to bother getting dressed or anything else, just sitting trying to read something but feeling distracted by pessimistic thoughts, trying to distract yourself somehow to just get through the day.  Sometimes depression leads to easy anger and ill-advised obscenity.  And, not so funny, there are the dark, quiet depressions that give rise to thoughts of escaping your misery through suicide.  I've been there, too (and would like to comment, parenthetically, that another person's suicide attempt is not about you). 

The big difference between me and formerly-normal me (my bipolar broke out in my mid-thirties) is that my moods may not be connected to any situation in my life, may just turn on and off with chemical switches nobody understands yet, like clockwork, or in respond to a change in air pressure.  Or they may be connected like anyone else's to life events like a lengthy power failure or a beautiful spring day, but more extreme. 

In other words, a bipolar is basically a human being, like you, but maybe with special needs. Special needs programs for the mentally/emotionally challenged.  That's a thought.

Nobody Understands Me

My favorite Cezanne, Still Life With Apples

Remember that little song from childhood?

Everybody hates me, nobody loves me,
Think I'll go eat worms...

I'll stop there.  It was common in my youth, maybe because it poked fun at something we all feel sometimes - that nobody understands us.  And still do, even in old age.  That is especially true if you are making some radical change in your life.  Your actions make other people wonder if, well, maybe they should join the Peace Corps or go vegan.  Even when you mind your own business, if you are different than the flock, you are an agent of change.  A therapist cautioned me once that nobody likes an agent of change.  She didn't say this, but look what they did to Jesus.  Gandhi.  Martin Luther King.*

So recently I found myself high on a windy hill, and I gave this some thought.  One of my conclusions was, If somebody feels overly responsible to you (a parent, a sibling, a grown child), they get frightened that they're going to have to bail you out.  I think being over-responsible is itself a stressful way to live.  Another thought was, If somebody really would never think of doing what you're doing, but now if you do it, they might have to think about it - obviously, that could engender defensiveness and hostility.  Or if what you're doing scares them for whatever reason, they may prefer to detach from you.

And so it is.  When people you know and love are critical and reactive about a choice you're making, they have a problem.  You have an opportunity to examine your actions thoughtfully, and be brave.  You have a problem insofar as you depend on someone else's affection or understanding. 

In spiritual traditions the idea seems to emerge time and again, that maturing is sometimes a lonely road.  I remember the chills I got when I read the first lines of Dante's Inferno:

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost.

 There is also an intriguing Zen koan that John Tarrant has spoken to:

 "The moon sets at midnight; I walk the streets of the town alone."

And there you are, with nothing but your vow of pilgrimage and maybe a map (though, as we know, the map is not the territory).  And these days, your GPS.
~~~~~~~~~~
*Not that I compare myself to them. Joan of Arc, maybe.
 

Because I Don't FEEL Like Smiling, So Shut Up

So this morning I of course got something in my inbox on How to Master the Whole Universe from someone who ultimately wants me to buy his book.  He had some good advice on how to step out of your comfort zone, who doesn't? but the last point was - SMILE!

Smile!

He added, If you can smile while being uncomfortable, you can learn to be happy with discomfort.

(Parenthetically, you should not be happy with discomfort.  You should adjust your seat.)

This advice has been given by illustrious people, namely Thich Nhat Hanh, who wants you to "wear a little bud of a smile."  The only thing he has in common with the entrepreneur in my inbox is, they are both men.  Generally, men are not as nice as they should be, and are not trained to keep smiling.  Women are. But is that good?  You should think about it.

Once long long ago in a faraway land where I still had my figure I had a few meetings with one of those social workers who should have been screened out of the program, because she was critical and superior and in it to fix you; you know the type.  But she accidentally said one good thing to me.  I had a very heavy load at the time, a teenage daughter who had gone worse than wild, an alcoholic husband who was worse than I knew, had moved to a new town in redneck belt.  In the midst of expressing myself on this, I said to Mrs. DoGood, "Sometimes I get tired of smiling."

She said in a not unkind voice, "I bet you do." 

Wow.  That stopped me.  She had noticed how hard I tried to keep smiling.  It evidenced a bit of compassion, which I wasn't getting anywhere else.  It helped, though nothing could save me.  I have been reminding myself ever since that I don't have to smile. I try to be kind these days, but that is a million miles from Put on a Happy Face.

So here's what I say to womankind:  Don't keep smiling.  Keep being a person.  Be a real person.  Dance if you want to dance, scowl if you want to scowl.  Take a lesson from your cat, who doesn't give a rat's ass what you think.

Tardar, the Grumpy Cat

Women -  notice I'm not calling you Girls and I'm not calling you Ladies - you are grown up, and I bet you work hard for a living and not in lace cuffs, either - it is not your job to present a pretty face to the world.  You are a person, not a decoration.  It makes me feel like there should be a children's book titled "The Princess Who Scowled Whenever She Felt Like It."  You are welcome to the idea.  If you dedicate it to me, I won't mind.

Snap!

A further note on how we handle things, springing off yesterday's post.  Barry Magid says we can have two approaches to illness or pain:
1.  try to always tough it out, and never admit anything is too much for us.
Or
 2.  easily feel overwhelmed and always think things are too much for us to handle.
But wait - for me, though perhaps not for everyone, there is a third way "I", my bipolar body/mind, can react:
                      Snap!
I do snap.  People do.  You might be surprised.  My own mother did when she found my father carrying the phone number of a slim, intelligent divorcee.  I won't put the whole story here, but he apologized and she came home and spent months sitting in a housecoat in the breakfast nook smoking and saying over and over, "That woman's evil.  Evil."  My mother was a regular ordinary non-bipolar oppressed woman of her generation, and her generation didn't put crazy people away or even on medication.  I tell you, my father paid heavily for apparently not even having the affair yet.

Part of my problem is simple chemistry.  I need to get off Seroquel, it's causing tardive dyskinesia, an ugly problem.  But without it I can't sleep.  I have not been able to get to sleep without medications since the transplant until Seroquel because of the 1000 mg of steroids they injected me with because they think that helps prevent rejection.  There was no negotiating a damn thing with them. They are surgeons.

When he saw the symptoms, the shrink had me ramp down and off on the Seroquel and I did and now I can't sleep again, and furthermore, I am going snap! snap! at people like a f--------- bowl of sugar snap peas.  The shrink now recommends 3 mg of melatonin.  I recall that the transplant people took me off that at the time of the transplant, and told me not to use it.  So I called the transplant nurse this morning and told her my story.  She explained why it may be Monday before she can get with the doctor about this.  Okay.  Meanwhile, I still have Seroquel, which, BTW, is a hideous drug of the kind mentally ill people go off of, because it makes you stupid. STOOPID.  Next thing you know, you're capitalizing things and using lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!!! and trying to think positive.

And here's something else that occurred just now, NOW, in the f------ present moment.  Backstory:  Tom has been going around in a black cloud of anxiety for a month about a family meeting with his mother's estate attorney that was to take place this morning at 10:00 this morning.  Meanwhile there was all his angst about, IF they ever got his new van ready, IF he had the van in time, then should he drive up there, if so should he have a friend help him drive or should he drive alone and stay the night. There are no simple decisions in the Tucker family. Christ, you ought to see them make macaroni and cheese.  I'm sorry folks, I seem to have turned into Phyllis Diller or something, only without the facelifts.  But if it's funny it's not mean, right?

Anyway, they called at 10:00 am, the time the meeting was scheduled for, to say the meeting is abruptly cancelled.  Without explanation.  Not the first evidence of this lawyer's flakiness.

See, it's not about me, it's all just karma wheeling all around in that vast potential, things happening for reasons that are not my fault or choice, entwinement through no act on my part in the lawyer's karma (maybe she killed herself because she just couldn't face another meeting with the Tuckers!).  But it comes down here and bites me because Karma is a bitch, and I go Snap!

I am not a little dot at war with the universe, as if the universe was sending evil ugly orcs up over the hill one after another specifically to fight me, and all I have is my magic sword.  Anyway, girls don't have swords, for obvious symbolic reasons.  I have to rely on Wonder Woman and her magic jewelry for imagery.  She's not all bad if you can see past the soft-porn costume.  Neither is her Wikipedia article.  Reading it I feel better already.  Maybe I've snapped out of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
p.s. It's Saturday now, 10 am, and the financial planner who was coming to meet with us called to cancel. Merciful Buddha giving another lesson in how to roll with the punches. Ah, no meeting!

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Now you can find the phrase "engulfed in flames" in headlines about truck accidents, but it's a strange locution.  Engulfed is a water word, with synonyms like flood, overflow, deluge.  Wikipedia explains where David Sedaris got the title of the book above, which features an early van Gogh study for a cover.  Van Gogh's life was not all sunflowers.

Sedaris was a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central June 3, 2008. During the interview he recommended moving to Japan for three months to stop smoking. This smoking cessation method, which cost the author $23,000, is the subject of the last essay of his book. He also described the genesis for the name of his book. It was the name of a chapter in a book he found in a hotel room in Hiroshima, Japan. 

There is something gruesome about that, and he knew it. Maybe, like me, he was once assigned to read descriptions of the holocaust at Hiroshima.  You don't forget that. Or, I don't. And we shouldn't.  It's too easy to engulf this planet in flames.
~~~~~~~~~~
So it's, what do you do when you personally feel engulfed in flames?  Overwhelmed?  Life can be like a tsunami, big problems tumbling in on the shore even as the waters rise.  That's how I felt last night when I started this post and ended up diverting myself by rereading David Sedaris.  Not a bad strategy, but not enough to get me to sleep.

My biggest anxiety now, the one that put my stress over the top, is this infarction in my eye caused by a  landslide of household stress a couple of weeks ago.  It hurts, and it may or may not heal itself.  I got to a good doctor and have a followup with him in three weeks.  I'm talking with my psychiatrist about this sense of overwhelm.  Meanwhile, how to deal with the feeling?  I turned to a talk by one of my favorite Zen teachers, psychiatrist Barry Magid, on Practicing With Sickness.   Here's a bit of that talk, formatted to clarify the points for myself.

If we're going to practice intelligently with illness or with pain, what we most need to do is cultivate a psychological awareness and honesty about how we handle ourselves in the face of it. Do we -
1.  try to always tough it out, and never admit anything is too much for us?
Or do we
2.  easily feel overwhelmed and always think things are too much for us to handle? Real practice should equally expose and challenge both of these positions.  Our practice should always be about watching our selves as honestly as possible - and keeping that honesty intact and functioning is the real goal.

There.  Isn't he wonderful?

So to end with, another van Gogh.  He found nature healing, and I find his paintings healing.

Wheat Field with Cypress, Vincent van Gogh

Waking Up All Over Again

Wheat Field, Vincent van Gogh

I have learned that waking up to reality means waking up over and over - these can be called realizations as opposed to more mystical epiphanies.  You realize something.  Then years later you realize it a little better, more deeply.  This is about one that took me fifteen years.  Therein lies a tale.

It is the story of when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 - a diagnosis that put me into the second half of my life in an instant.  By that I mean that all six urgent imperative things on that day's to-do list crumbled to dust.  Goals, dramas, everything - my God, you mean I could die?  Let me emphasize that:
  I could die?
What, at 53? 

I had no symptoms, no family history.  The growth was found on a routine annual mammogram that I'd put off for six months because, you know, I hate mammograms.  They hurt.  The small but mighty growth was already invasive.  The surgeon told me that by the time a lump was noticeable, it would have metastasized everywhere in my body.  I am alive today only because I had a privileged life that took good health insurance for granted, and I was raised to be a dutiful person.

My body will die.  You may think you know that, whatever age you are, but what I've learned is that most people don't, really.  They can live to be 90 and get mad that they're dying.  Astonished that their 80-year-old mother dies.  I knew a woman of around age 50 who died of a heart attack in the recovery room after an elective surgery, but was revived.  I visited her in the hospital and she was so delighted and relieved to be alive.  She was in a weekly group I was in, so I saw her bright eyes glaze over as the weeks went by until she was her old self again, overscheduled, on yet another fad diet. Sleepwalking.

After my own surgery I went for radiation therapy five days a week, all by my brave little self.  It was wretched.  They strap you down, they shut a big lead door.  You have never been more alone in your life. 

I was so anxious that through all those treatments I recited the 23rd psalm over and over to myself in my mind.  I belonged to a Unitarian church, and it had been decades since I would have called myself a Christian, but I had not rejected the good parts. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.......That's what came to me.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.  He leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul.

Water Lilies, Claude Monet

 I often waited for my treatment in a tiny waiting room, shivering in my hospital gown, with a cheerful African-American woman named Mary whose kids had bought her a beautiful yellow satin pajama top because none of the gowns were big enough for her.  She wore a pendant with a portrait of the pretty Caucasian Jesus of my Sunday School posters. Maybe that had inspired me.

One day we were talking aimlessly and she said, "At first I thought, Why me?  Then one day I realized, Why not me?"  I took that in, but I knew I didn't quite get it, though "Why me?" had not been one of my own thoughts. I don't know if I had thoughts, or just panic.

Here's what I think now:  "Why me?" comes from being located in our small individual self.  It's easy to see that you have friends whose lifestyles are way worse than yours, and you eat right, and yet you're the one who got hepatitis - it isn't fair.  In some subtle way, we believe things should be fair.

I don't know what made me think of this recently, but when I did I said to Tom, "Oh.  I get it. Why not me? comes from realizing our oneness."  Buddhist talk, meaning that the larger point of view understands our common humanity and mortality.  Everything and everyone's going to die - why would I be the exception to that?  Everyone's subject to accidents, why would I not be? 

If the idea gives you the shivers, The Five Remembrances are printed at the bottom of this blog.  This traditional Buddhist chant has helped me get used to the idea.  Well, somewhat.

What a Long, Strange Trip it's Been

If I titled this One Easy Way to Make the Right Decision Every Time it would go viral.  We all want free, easy, guaranteed.  But hey, there is no such thing as "the right decision."  You go from the available data and your priorities, you try to put it through a logical process, you take the next step and throw the outcome to the winds.  Because you can never guarantee the outcome.  Okay, maybe you can think of exceptions.  But not when it comes to decisions about these soft eccentric human animals we are.

However, there are better and worse processes. 

I'm interested in this today because I just made a couple of decisions, large and small.  The smallest (maybe) was, I am not donating my Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Psychedelic-era billed hat to the church fund-raiser auction.  I put that in my mental heap a couple of weeks ago, when the auction people started asking for donations.  That hat came to my mind, and I decided to think about it.  There was no urgency to the decision, since the deadline for contributions was two months away.  I like non-urgent things.  I wish my whole life would be non-urgent.  I hate to rush around these days.  It jangles you up.

Now.  This decision had nothing to do with function. I have a tender scalp and never wear hats, and if I did, it wouldn't be a billed cap that makes you look like you have a big square head. No, it was about the heart, about keeping something that makes me smile.  Because there is a story behind this hat.  I got this hat through taking a tremendous risk.

It started out as an adventure.  We still had a Border's book store (remember the old days?), and they announced that the Ken Kesey bus, Further, was coming to their parking lot and would be full of latter-day Merry Pranksters.  Now, I have missed an awful lot of cool things in my life, and you don't get another chance to join the Peace March.  That meant I immediately wanted to go to this event.

And event it was.  There were maybe 200 of us crazy people in the parking lot on that sunny day, almost everyone younger than me, kind of bopping because they were playing music. And they were going to throw off hats!  When I heard that, I threw caution to the winds.  I was into my fifties by then and knew what it was to have a stress fracture in a foot (horrible), I knew that crowding forward screaming and reaching for a hat might mean someone would step on my foot.  I didn't care.  I wanted that hat.  And I got it!  I got it!

Now, there it is.  The unedited hat, slightly linty.  When I got it off the closet shelf to decide whether to give it to the auction or not, I knew I wouldn't take $100 for this hat unless I needed it to pay the rent.  It is a memento of having a silly adventure, of throwing caution to the winds, things I don't do often enough, if you ask me.

Idiot Compassion for Dummies

It has been some years since I first heard the term "idiot compassion" used by Zen Teacher Joan Halifax. Her example was that you don't help a friend commit suicide; that might seem like compassion, but it's idiot compassion. After much thought, I'd have to say, "That depends." What if someone you love were wasting away in a painful terminal illness, and too ill to hasten her own exit without help, and asked you to help?

I think idiot compassion interested me because I grew up in an alcoholic household, my father the alcoholic, my mother the explainer.

"He didn't mean it."
"He has a headache today."

The setup was that he chose me to be mean to, to delegate as the family scapegoat, as it is known in family systems theory. The scapegoat is the one cast as the only problem in the family: If it wasn't for Jeanne, this would be a happy family.  She ruins everything.

My mother's interpretation was that he was "strict" with me, which she said in a wondering way.  No, this was not true.  He was not at all strict with anyone, including himself, not setting clear rules and enforcing boundaries as a father should.  He lashed out at me and demeaned me whenever he noticed me.  My mother did this too; when she was ruminating on her simmering anger at him, she would insult me or kick at me.  Really.  That sweet Sunday school teacher. 

I think that however much he disappointed and angered her, she loved her role as "the martyr, always the virgin," as my father put it.  Her role was to be kind and protective of her Man. If he had treated her son that way, it would have been a different story, but I was just a girl.

If I complained to my mother about something brutal he said to me, she might say, "His back has been bothering him," her voice assuming a rounded, sacred tone.  She was speaking as a ministering angel.  She loved that role.  When I was sixteen, I did my best to commit suicide. 

Here's the thing:  it does not matter what motivates someone to harm others - the harm is done. We might need to help that person or lock them up.  But to excuse out-of-bounds behavior, to explain it away and let them do it again, that's idiot compassion.  You're not helping them, you're not helping the victim, whether that victim is your child or yourself. 

It's not uncommon for women to excuse away bad behavior, and not just with their partners.  I've watched with some disbelief how people accept and excuse rude behavior from a woman in my (former) social circle because, oh, she's worried about [fill in the blank].  My response to that is my favorite line from the movies:  I don't care what she's worried about - she's hurtful.  And I don't like to be hurt. 

In case you haven't seen "The Fugitive," Tommy Lee Jones is a federal marshal chasing an escaped murderer played by Harrison Ford.  In the confrontation above, Ford is trapped in a huge sewer pipe.  He turns and tells Jones he is innocent.  Jones' response is, I don't care!  Because it's not his job to judge innocence.  His job is to bring the guy in.  And all you men and women who are putting up with partners who are mean to you and your kids, that's not your job, either.  That's not what compassion does.

The Practice You Need

Collage August 26, 2012

My goodness, here it is Sunday and I haven't posted here since Tuesday.  You don't even want to know why, the chaos around here.  It's a new day, and I have awakened with optimism.  For a long time I have seen Sunday as a free day, a sort of sabbath to rest from the things I feel responsible for, not even demanding of myself that I meditate or exercise, though I do have to follow my elaborate pill schedule and drink enough water and brush and floss and wear my compression sleeve and leg things and shoes with insoles.......Yes.  And glasses and hearing aids.  Just to stay alive. It's not easy being me.  However, Sunday is my day off from all the rest of the catastrophe.  As much as is practical.

A while back a reader asked me to write about my practice.  I'm wary of being specific about it, because my practice suits me in my circumstance and this body, and after this many years along the Buddhist path.  So for now, to start with, I want to more generally talk about what I think that path is - in other words, the overview of the practice.

Based on the prescription attributed to the Buddha that is called "the Noble Eightfold Path," I have three goals:

understand reality deeply
be fully present
behave

Zen compels me to point out that I can't fully explain what I mean in words.  Furthermore, these three aspects of the path aren't separate. If you are entirely present and aware in a situation, that means you understand its nature, and the large nature of all reality, our interconnection, karma; and that means you will  try not to do harm by your speech and actions. These actually all point toward one goal, to practice being awake.

So maybe this is the point to use the word "enlightenment."  When I started on this path, that's what I wanted, and I understood it as a condition of no more suffering.  Of being relaxed and clear and free of stress and all those negative emotions like fear and anger, transcending pain.  I was suffering a lot then so I worked very hard, and after a while had a grand spiritual experience.  But the bliss and ease it rolled in with was eroded by the drip . drip . drip . of  life. I had a lot to learn about my own behavior, how I thought and what I did that made me suffer more than necessary.  I also had to learn that I was not going to be entirely free of suffering, that no one is.  If you read the Buddha's story/myth, he continued to suffer, too.

That learning came about through "spiritual practice," and I have done many kinds, through which I have chipped away at  my delusions and inched toward clear seeing and doing less harm.  I think I'll stop here for now.  It is Sunday, and I want to make it to coffee hour at church.  One of the things I've learned is that you have to have a community in which you feel valued and which shares your values.
~~~~~
p.s.  Had a delightful lunch after church with good friends and getting to know each other better.  But Panera's charges a bit much for a bowl of soup.  And you don't want to know how many calories are in a pastry.  Really.

Met by Angels on the Way

Yesterday's awful hospitalization is now yesterday.  The tests showed I had not had a heart attack, and had no lung problems or infections to explain the vertigo.  I was very happy to talk with an intelligent and respectful doctor, and be discharged.  And home, and had the best night's sleep of my life.  The vertigo is less today.  What I've learned is that there are many possible causes for it, and sometimes (a nurse told me this) they can test you for everything and come up with no diagnosis. We'll be alert.

But I wanted to write here about what happened yesterday after I got through the (awful) nuclear stress test.  Here's what I wrote in my journal:

There was Kim, the nurse's aide, so friendly, reassuring, happy to help with coffee and extra cookies.  Then, being wheeled back to my room, talking to Barb on my phone - and she is great, she'd delivered my medicines - there was Rod, an elderly wheelchair valet who told me he was a retired doctor, and reassured me that I’d done the right thing to refuse contrast dye, and humorously encouraged my revenge fantasy, probably thinking it would fade.  There was Kathleen on the phone [a friend who is a chaplain].  Then the male nurse’s aide who came in and put Abbott and Costello on the TV for me, laughing, "You've got to see this."  Then Cassie calling again to stay in touch. 

One person after another.  It felt better and better.  And I thought, it's like I was surrounded by those angels Teri S. had wished for me when she read what I was going through.  We got home, there was Gini on the phone, and we talked and laughed like crazy.  Then Chris and Scott called.  The thought persisted - What if these are angels flocking toward me?  What if there is something felt in the universe - which is made up of energies - among people who are connected and care for each other, some intuition that draws the compassionate toward a person in need?

That idea gives me a little thrill of goose bumps even now.  I first heard the prayer from Hansel and Gretel as a girl, and I loved that idea of a protecting squad of angels.  And why not?  Anything's possible.