Sick of this weather?

Worse, my body is officially sick again - a kidney infection, at least - and I've been observing some things about being sick.

First, you don't have to be miserable.  If your serotonin is up - and it is April, after all - you can be in a  good mood while sick and tired. 

Second, if you hurt a lot, and my left kidney really does, you can forget about it while concentrating on something else.  In my case, it was picking up the antibiotic and $100 worth of no-effort food at Kroger's after the doctor visit.

Third, being sick gives you permission to indulge yourself.  I picked up various little things I like, including ~

Double-stuf golden Oreos (quick low-blood-sugar treatment), on sale
Two bars of nice-smelling soap, on sale, for my dresser drawers
A package of those pink cupcake things with coconut on them that used to be made by Hostess.

Now really, I thought, why do I have to be sick to treat myself to these little things?

A pointer:  Be prepared.  Feeling ghastly last night (serotonin way down) I bought a dumb e-book for my iPad.  I took the iPad along to the doctor's office where it amused me while I waited, and so I would have it if they decided to admit me right then, always possible.  They take transplant patients seriously.

The infection is in one or both of the old kidneys.  It would have been nice to take them out when they put the new one in, but it doubles the length of the surgery (which is over 3 hours anyway), and that's riskier the older you get.  Or younger, if you're getting younger.  Haha.

I also realized that understanding Buddhist thought is as important to my happiness as meditation is.  I don't know how many times I've chanted The Five Remembrances and told people about them (they are at the bottom of this blog).

I am of the nature to grow sick; I cannot escape sickness.

Really, you can't.  Therefore getting sick is not your fault, no matter what your father said.  Shit happens.  Karma is very complicated, and most of it is out of our control.

This is why so many people have been disappointed by TM, Deepak Chopra, and a squillion other gurus and programs and face creams that promise to fix you.  We are of the nature to fall apart, and all repairs are only temporary.

Not that I like it, you understand.  You don't have to like it, as long as you get it.
~~~~~~~~~~~
update:  It wasn't a kidney infection after all, but a muscle problem caused by my lifelong scoliosis and a bad fall last year, which fractured a vertebra and led me to become even more sedentary than is my natural state. And I didn't have to go to the hospital. Still, you should always take your tablet. You never know.

Take Care of Yourself Because It Sure is Winter

Ha.  The blog went over 200K hits when I wasn't looking.  And I've never earned a penny from it.  You have to be nasty to get a million hits online.  Generally speaking.

My life:  this moment stopped reading a good article on "The wisdom of no escape" put on Facebook by a good artist I've never met to take my 9:30 a.m. pills....

We have no water except drinking water in bottles and what we are getting through a hookup to a kind neighbor's hose, except that yesterday they shut the water off and the hose froze, which we really didn't want to happen...... Our water main to the street broke eleven (yes, 11) days ago. The front yard is all torn up again with a bobcat sitting there.  It awaits a city inspector now.  Will they come?  Will we then get water?  I am not optimistic.  The glass has been empty, after all, for a long time.

Can't take pills while typing....where did the other one go?  Ah, on the floor.  Good thing I don't let the cat in my study. (I'm very allergic to her.  Russian Blues are the kind to get if you want to develop a big cat allergy.  They have these very fine little hairs in their plush undercoat.)

Tashi's favorite medium is sunlight

About the time the water went out, the Roomba battery wore down.  We like to let the Roomba run around the house almost daily to keep the cat hair in check.  Tom sent for a new one, but not overnight express.  When it came it had to be charged for like 3 days.  Half our house is carpeted and the cat walks and rolls on it all the time, distributing hairs and dander.  So....

This had me screaming at the cat.  (Of course, she sees me as a big cat, and they growl sometimes.  It doesn't seem to have affected her desire to sit on my lap and waft allergens up to me.)

So with all this, my practice slipped, and in fact, I got really pissed off at the very idea of practicing equanimity.

That's why we Buddhists pay attention to our attachments.  The stronger the attachment, the bigger the suffering.  You can soften your ego trips, but attachment can't be avoided, of course.  You get attached to people and they get sick or move or die or won't speak to you anymore (which is sometimes just fine).  Loss is often a surprise.  Death, especially.

Today I am babying myself, not doing too much physical work, because I have pain and congestion in my right ear and blood coming from that sinus, and a mild headache.  Allergy, virus, who knows.  And I've been having fibromyalgia flares with all this "it's-not-climate-change" severe winter.   Chocolate chips in my oatmeal seemed to help.  I'm doing nasal rinses with this excellent inexpensive system that prevents and cures sinus infections, which are common in the Ohio Valley.  BTW, antibiotics very seldom cure sinus infections.  You should not talk your doctor into giving them to you.  You shouldn't even see your doctor about it unless you're running a temp.  Your doctor should know about nasal rinses and hot/cold compresses, but probably does not.  You should listen to your grandma.


Here's what I wrote in my morning journal this morning, starting with a quote from Janet, an online dharma friend:

The human being by nature is inadequate, practices zazen inadequately, realizes true nature inadequately. This is the Virya Paramita*. On and on we persevere, like a small child determined to learn how to walk while continually falling down, or like a very old person getting up in the middle of the night, lurching from wall to wall to reach the bathroom.
                                                       Robert Aitken, The Practice of Perfection, p. 69

*This "perfection" of zeal is defined in Wikipedia as "an attitude of gladly engaging in wholesome activities." Doesn't that sound good?  

I also wrote instructions to myself:

feed this body-mind good food
move this body-mind to rhythm
rest this body-mind enough today
treat this body-mind well
treasure this body-mind
recollect that this body-mind 
is woven into the great fabric,
and treat it well, too

I should listen to myself, too.

Contemplating Bad (I think) Karma

Well, Gentle Readers, it's heartening to check my stats just now and see that this tiny blog gets read, even though I haven't been around much.  I've been awfully busy dealing with that statin AE (I started writing about it back here), and not back to myself yet.  Not driving because the right foot and calf are still numb.  And I don't know if I ever will be.  Even if I get back to that norm, I've lost three+ weeks of my life, days that can never be recovered, and so has Tom, taking care of me full-time.

I wish I thought someone could learn from my experience, but does anyone ever learn the easy way?  Do you?  I remember vividly learning the wrong thing at least once.

Plenty of time to think propped in bed, icing the ankles alternately.  How to handle the "friends" who didn't come through.  Keep?  Discard?  Express my feelings to?  Put them on Most Unwanted posters in my study?  Vow every morning to remember what they did or didn't do?

I don't know yet.  I do know I've revised my concepts of several people and of our relationships.  It's given me lots of practice in restraining my impulses, especially speech and online writing.  And I've had difficult spots when my raft kept bumping against rocks of vindictiveness, for even sweet old ladies are human.

I feel wronged by a lot of people, most of all Big Pharm, which campaigned vigorously to get doctors and citizens alike to believe statins (think Lipitor) work, and to minimize the incidence of horrific side effects.

Buddhism has lots of guidance on these issues, such as "Hatred is never overcome by hatred, but by love alone." That doesn't mean I have put away the idea of litigation.  Somebody has to use the courts, or the legal system wouldn't work at all, as opposed to just being a travesty, or at least a muddle. (However, I'm glad to live in a country that has one.)

How is other people's carelessness overcome?  Every mother and manager deals with this all the time.  It's one thing when it's your kids or employees, but what if it's friends and family?  This whole thing has demanded I work overtime on these questions. 

I am also putting energy into having compassion for myself in this sorry mess of a life as the designated scapegoat in an abusive alcoholic family.  This is crappy karma (I think), and you know what they say about karma.

All these years later, and most of my family dead, I keep tripping over alcoholics and addicts.  They take a lot of forms, you know.  There are many who buy the marketers' picture of the good life and are worn out partying and travelling and consuming arts and entertainments and more stuff and stuff to organize it in and expensive food and wine.  Naturally, Wun resents that other people are out doing all this while Wun sits home in a bathrobe too sick and tottery to shower, but in fact, it calls for compassion.

Perhaps fortunately for the world, this illness coincided with an opportunity to begin working with a Zen Master, which feels somewhat like the hand of God throwing out a lifeline. Every Zen Master I've met or corresponded with embodies kindness, and that's the goal.  I keep remembering that every goddamn rotten painful thing that descends on you is a chance to learn, to correct your course. I couldn't tell you how helpful it is to be on a Way.  But if you're reading this, I bet you know.

~~~~~~~~

How to Do a Hospital Visit

I do have a post in progress on attachment, a concept at the heart of Buddhism - or to be exact, detachment (from our desires and delusions) is what we vow to awaken to.  But today I had a post from faithful reader Karen that I am going to respond to instead.  Here are pieces of it:

Jeanne, I'm sorry I'm out of the loop, and don't know what's "up" with your back.......I hope you do write a post on how to do a hospital visit. I cringe away from them too often I think......Have you read "On Vit, On Parle" by Victor Hugo? I think of that poem so often as it brilliantly sums up all the big and little things we do everyday and ends with "Puis, le vast et profond silence de la mort."

I am glad to say I do know today that my thoracic spine (mid-back) does not have a compression fracture or tumor; nothing to worry about, then.  I see that doctor Wednesday to explore options for decreasing the pain.  His usual options are physical therapy, exercise.  Meanwhile I'm reading about how rats are cured with vibration therapy to the spine, things like that that my insurance probably won't pay for.  As for now, my relief is incredible. I am very attached to this body, in fact, that's what I was going to write about.

Last week I did not pay a hospital visit to my friend Tina, who had let the hospital know she did not want visitors, and had not called me when she went in. I imagine she is too tired and sick (COPD, heart) to want to entertain anyone.  So I put together a basket of foolish things, including a pretty little book of haiku with paintings that even a very sick person could lift.  And a rather fun card that didn't say "Get well" or any sentimentalism.  Tina is not a sentimental person.

I have had the unwelcome privilege of countless hospitalizations these last years.  I probably could count them if I sat down with Tom and tried, but who cares.  Here's what I learned from a patient's point of view.

1.  Please don't expect me to entertain you.  Don't sit down in silence in my room looking tired and bored. I can't rest while people are doing that.
2.  Don't come empty-handed.  A good thing to bring is something light to read, a tabloid, a Reader's Digest, I don't care.  Maybe I don't have the daily newspaper.  It doesn't matter if you bring the right thing; it's the thought that counts.
3.  Don't worry about my diet.  The hospital is already imposing grim dietary regulations on me.  Bring me chocolate.  Fritos would be acceptable too.
4.  Or bring a flower, best if it's from your garden, in a little throwaway vase. Or a little cucumber facial cream.
5.  Stand by the bed where I can see you without effort and entertain me with light anecdotes about the news, what the kids did, whatever you and I talk about, thrift-store sales, whatever.
6.  Ten to fifteen minutes of this is probably enough.  But maybe I'm animated and want to talk a lot, or have you walk me in the halls, be willing to do that.  It is rather insulting to be visited briskly by someone who has an appointment for cocktails at six and is just crossing you off their list.
7.  Feel free to lightly hold my feet or massage them.  I mean, if I know you that well.  If I know you that well you could bring a little fleece throw or something for a gift.  Hospitals are always cold.
8.  If I am conscious, talk to me, not my spouse, friend, whoever else is there.  At least in part.

So, the idea is, just pay attention to the fact that I'm sick and probably tired and scared. It is wonderful that you visited at all.  All you have to do is the three things that characterize Zen:
Attention
Attention
Attention

And while you're paying attention, notice if I say the TV remote doesn't work, or the nurses never answer the call (does it work?) or I can't get another pillow.  Maybe there's a little something you could do.

You will, of course, feel obliged to ask me how I am doing.  I may very well not have much of an answer besides, "I'm bored, they won't let me sleep, I hope to go home."  Or I might want to ramble on about my MRI.  In general, it really is the thought that counts.  When people visit, it makes us feel like we still have a place in the world, like maybe when we die it will matter.  And as to your own anxiety making a visit like this, well, there must be people who are so used to it (ministers, maybe) that they don't get a little chill when something reminds them of mortality.  As the guys say, suck it up.

And that takes me back to the Victor Hugo poem Karen mentioned. Here is a link to it in French, with English translation between the lines.  It is a very beautiful summation of this crazy life, and the final peace of death. Which may not necessarily be the dark.

The Fast Lane

Over the last couple of weeks I have had to face the condition of this body-mind - I don't say "my" body because it's pretty clear I'm just renting it from the universe.  I'm getting afraid of getting that final eviction notice.........
And of course, it's not just about that deteriorating spine, cervical, thoracic, lumbar, the osteoarthritis has covered every base.  It's -

Distraction.  Did it take me half an hour to figure out how to put the Google calendar gadget on my home page? then, how to add to it?  And why was I in my e-mail anyway, that caused me to see it?

Actually, that is not off the point at all.  The point is, I'm old.  I'm not just getting old - you could say I'm getting older; I'm old.  Case in point, why do I still have my regular glasses on?  I need to wear my computer glasses when I'm at the computer or I make my neck hurt trying to look through the screen at exactly the right angle.  I can't do that bifocal tilt.  Like I said.....
~~~
And now it's an hour or two later.  1:00 pm, to be exact.  Lunch at 2:00 and I haven't worked on my collage for this week, except in my mind.  It was more important to catch up with my friend Laurie, and to pack a hospital survival gift basket for Tina, who is in intensive care in the heart unit, I'm sorry to say.  She is 76, I believe, and has struggled with breathing problems for years now.  Death will be a relief from that.  She doesn't want visitors, so I'll drop the basket off.  Someday I'll write to tell you guys how to pay a hospital visit.  I do know how.  But I am not only respecting Tina's stated wishes, I also know hospitals are danger zones for me, on immunosuppressants.  So I don't insist.

And my e-mail just beeped to inform me that Sarah's funeral is next Saturday....I can't figure out how to add it to the Google calender now.  Pause to add it to my phone calendar, at least.  It will send me an alarm to remind me, too.  How does any old person get by without a smart phone?....

And got an e-mail from the museum about a lecture on Degas' dancers next week, and I have the perfect friend to go to with it - an artist and a dancer (though no longer dancing on her feet).  Left a message with her.

I was going to say, it's been very very very very hard to accept being this old, as if it happened all of a sudden, though it didn't.  The back thing has scared me, that's the truth.  MRI this Friday eve, so we will have you know, more information.  Then options.....And I think maybe this post ends up showing not only how it is to be old in your body, but also how you begin to constantly lose people you love, and that will go on until all your friends and family are dead, though I dearly hope never to lose my daughter and grandson (still, it can happen).  It's constantly acclimating to the changes in yourself, which feel right now like a snowball rolling downhill.

The Dancing Onion

You can have fun on YouTube trying various versions of this wonderful song.  It comes to us so poignantly from the terrible heritage of slavery in this not-so-nice country.  And to imagine how slaves must have felt singing this in church, in the fields if they were allowed, feeling a resting place in God.

Our little one-act plays are always trivial in the light of history.  But not to us.  I am dancing this afternoon because the followup urine test showed clean!  Healed!  And within an hour the home health nurse was here to take out the PICC that was installed 13 days ago in a long tiring hungry stupid (ran out of adjectives) day at the hospital.  The infection wasn't that painful, but the depression that comes with it was.  And the antibiotic made food taste bad.  It got us grimly talking with the doctors (again) about getting my old kidneys removed.

So now I have asked the universe to give me a week of no new health events.  Just let me get over the shingles, let me get off the oxycodone without too much pain, please let me not fall, or Tom, or Cassie get in a wreck . . . you know, just a nice ordinary week with only 83 problems.  There you are, craving.

But it's hopeful all around.  I drove twice this week, including on the freeway - first time in six months.  And I concluded the weekly massages on my lymphedemic arm.  It is now back to the size it was before I broke my arm.  Another graduation.  And tomorrow I'm getting a haircut. You won't know me.

You can think about this act, "lay my burden down," in other contexts.  It is our practice in meditation to simply be here with no burden other than the present moment.  Practice being here.  No big sack of the past or the future or unfulfilled desires.  This is where you are safe, because you are safe right now as you read this, I am safe as I write this. Getting rid of all those burdens is not the work of a moment, more like peeling an onion down to its core.  I have been attracted to the onion on my kitchen windowsill, which thinks it is spring, and is dancing in its translucent skirt.

What Oprah Doesn't Know

So was looking over a Nov. 2011 O magazine, a workbook on finding your bliss.  You did exercises and then looked to say what “type” you are, that is, what motivates you.  So, what you need in your work.

Five clusters were given, and as I read them and thought about my answers, none of them were about me.  But on the next page was one lonely left-over motivation - enlightenment.  Well, that’s a relief.  Surely that was me.  Though connection and reward and security matter to me, I want most to be my authentic self (or, for you Buddhists, my authentic changing self whose identity is never fixed).

And I think that all of us fundamentally want something we believe security or enlightenment will bring us: happiness.  That’s the flaw in Opah’s whole scheme - it doesn’t go down to the deep layer.  If we are not fundamentally contented and in touch with reality, nothing will make us happy.  If you want an example, look at the latest dead celebrity, or go back to Michael Jackson.  There is no such thing as enough achievement - external reward - if that really matters to you.
~~~~~~~
Health Update:
Monday I went up to my doctor and gave a urine sample.  If it shows too many bacteria, they send it out for sensitivity culture.  You’d think that would be back by Wednesday, but it was after hours Thursday when they called to say it’s a bad UTI and I need to go on an IV antibiotic.
 
So today the Home Health nurse came at 12:30 and made four (4) attempts to get an IV in my one poor skinny overworked arm (the other arm has lymphedema).  She got more and more distressed, but at 1:30 had to give up and make phone calls.  So the word came trickling back that I would have to be admitted to the hospital to have a PIC line put in, a sort of long, fancy IV that stays in place.  Not through the ER, I said.  No, no, we’ll have you admitted directly to the Med Ward.  We’ll call back. 

No call back yet.  I know the PIC team usually works until 5:00 and is in a very bad mood if they are kept over.  So, sigh.  And they just called.  And yes, I’ll be there.  And will have to add a photo to this later.
~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 11:00 pm
Admitted to hospital 4 pm.  Total confusion, what a mess.  Finally at 7pm. PICC inserted, X-ray comes back, it isn't right.  PICC re-inserted, X-ray says okay.  Home 9 pm beyond exhausted and hungry.  Enjoyed grilled cheese and tea and Lilyhammer.  11 pm, PICC bleeding.  Call the help line.  It's normal.  Go to bed.  That's good, because I did not have it in me to go back there.  Turns out you can have a PICC inserted outpatient; you make an appointment.  My doctor didn't know that.  This is so typical.  It's all too complicated and specialized, so nobody ever knows how the system works.  Not for the first time, I wish I was one of Queen Elizabeth's Corgis.  You bet they get good medical care.
Yeah yeah, accept reality.  But you don't have to like it.

Grandma Talks With God, a very short play

God:  You again.
Me:  [shamefaced nod]
God:  Okay.  What's up?
Me:  Well, now there's this odd swelling on my left ankle, and the foot hurts.  I'm thinking it might be the bone edema again.  Also this.  [indicates stomach] Hurts.  It might be from the pain med for the shingles. 
God:  Ah yes.  Now I remember you.  That was what, last month?
Me:  [nods vigorously]  That's  right.  And I'm not over that.
God:  [nods sympathetically.]  I got you the pain med.
Me:  And don't think I'm not grateful.
God:  How can I help you, then?  There's no warranty, you know.
Me:  I know, I know.  I mean, it does seem you ought to get over one thing before...
God:  Does it?
Me:  I mean who designed this anyway?  
God:  Don't ask.
Me:  [sigh]  Anyway, I was thinking, maybe I'm ready to talk about a trade-in.  Trading up.  I mean, I must have some Reward points.  Maybe something with heated leather seats.
God:  [slowly shakes head]
Me:  It doesn't work that way, does it? . . . Okay.  What can I choose?  Country, maybe?
God:  Nope
Me:  Gender? Built-in longevity?  Intelligence?
God:  No.  Sorry.  Your soul - if you have one, I don't know, you're a Unitarian and a Buddhist, aren't you, I'd have to check your records.  Your soul, if you have one, lands wherever it does.  Luck of the draw.  One poor guy last week, he wasn't paying attention and he ended up an embryo in a pig.
Me:  Sounds boring.
God:  You have no idea. 
Me:  What if I don't have a soul?
God:  Ah, yes.  Then zap you're gone.  Your parts, we can call them pixels, go all over the place.  You come up as a buttercup, a drop of water.  You might like it.
Me:  Well, I guess I need to think about this.
God:  Take your time.  I'm not going anywhere.  Any more questions, you know who to call.

The Best Therapy for Depression

Music and laughter - both good therapies, legal, free, and without those unintended consequences we call "side effects."

I see it's been a week since I posted. I was right, the rash is shingles. So it hasn't been a great week. Even doctors agree that shingles is very painful. You'd think plenty of legal oxycodone sounds great, but opiates have disadvantages; notably, they shut down your GI tract. So not just stomach pain, anorexia and and indigestion, but the kind of constipation that can turn into an impacted bowel if you don't bring a whole arsenal of treatments to bear on it.

And then there's the demotivation of opiates and of illness. Yesterday I tackled the heap by my bed - everything I'd worn all last week, on top of everything I'd worn the four days before the rash presented, a stage called the prodrome, in which I felt sick and weird. And household laundry undone.

When this hit I was optimistically planning a life.  I was (am) doing PT for the broken arm, and had just driven two short drives, getting ready to be independent again. Getting back strength and range of motion in the arm has been slow and very painful, and isn't over.

And yes, Christmas day I got a cold. I wasn't over that really when the shingles hit - no one ever seems to get clear of this cold this year - but I took a leap and joined the church choir. Singing in harmony with others felt challenging and terrific. Then the shingles hit.

So I lost ground in my general fitness program and in PT. All sorts of things around the house are a mess; haven't taken Christmas down. Who cares?

This is not so special.  This is old age. I'm not the luckiest 69-year-old around, but I do live in middle-class America with decent financial stability and good insurance, so maybe this is old age at its best, unless you're the Queen of England's doggie.  I had a transplant last year (and had just begun to feel recovered from that), which means I take immune-suppressives, so it is likely this will take months to pass.

This is that present moment we talk about.  Reality.  Growing old means your parts wear down, regardless of how sunny your disposition. Every one of them.  I find I keep thinking of another song that goes -

Dance if you want to dance, sing if you want to sing.
Nobody ever knows what tomorrow may bring . . .

 Can't find it on YouTube or Googles, but I remember it, don't I?

On New Year's Resolutions, Including Mine

I have not been posting much because I've been having fun - maybe too much fun, playing Words With Friends on my new iPad with 4 or 5 people at a time, including my grandson, who likes to play two games at a time.  I tell you, grandmas who don't do the new technology (and I know people who won't even have e-mail) are missing out.  It's made being old and less active much more fun.

But I thought I should post something today, so here is a child's view to think about as you make your resolutions -

(If you friend me on Facebook, I pass along good things like this once in a while, but not too often.)

I called my dear friend Teena today when she didn't show up in church.  We were in meditation groups together all those years ago, about ten years now, I guess, and you form a bond there with people that is warm and lasting.  In fact, this morning two other women came up to me who were in those groups, and who I hadn't seen for years.  There is something terrific about sitting in silence with other people.

Teena says her resolution is "Be open-minded and don't get too attached to anything."  Very Buddhist, I told her. She didn't mind.  She likes to read Buddhist books.

I told her my resolution, arrived at spontaneously a few days ago, is "I'm not going to let this shit get me down."  Can't help it, that was the language of the soul.  And what I meant was this sickness and aging stuff.  It just keeps coming at you, throwing curve balls.  I am already much better with it all than I was, say, 10 years ago, when I practically had a nervous breakdown before my thyroid surgery.  (It is possible to have your vocal cords damaged by the surgery, though unlikely.)  Might as well get used to it, I think now, because aging is inevitable, and this is what it means - things breaking down.  I maintain my current commitment to exercising and doing my various PT exercises, too, for my back, neck, and now right arm.

I hope you don't overwhelm yourself with a whole bunch of self-improvement ideas going into the new year, although we can all vow to be kinder and more generous.  If you must form a healthy new habit, I recommend daily meditation.  It's been good for me in many ways, the best being to have it in place to help you when you're lying awake in a hospital bed.

And of course, no hitting or biting.  Not even doctors, tempting as it might be.

How to do Good

When I follow a blog it's because I find there a real person living their life. A young mother with sick kids, a middle-aged cancer survivor with a sense of humor, a Zen student thinking about big life changes -- they have to do with lives I've lived.  From here, their lives are full of energy and interesting. 

There isn't much action in my life -- I'm sick again, depressed again.  I balance enduring pain with taking pain medication, my stomach is upset by the antibiotic, I can't drive, I'm lonely, I'm afraid I'm going to have to have that major surgery after all - I hear you clicking on to another blog as I write.  No one wants to listen to the internal struggles of that old person, or the same old frustration, the small triumphs of patience with the medical system, the envy of younger people who have goals and plans.  It's a bitch.  But for me, struggling to come up with some positive spin, some way to cheer you up so I don't depress you, has become too hard.  So has enduring the positive thinking of people who still believe you can do anything with enough determination. They don't know what neurochemical depression is, period.

Last week we stopped by the church to see if my pink rain-jacket was there.  It was the most useful and best coat I ever had - bright warm pink with a multicolored flower lining to the hood - I always got comments on how cheerful it was. And the arms were cut big, so it would go on over the fleece jackets I have to wear right now, since I can't get things on and off over my head because of the broken right arm. Worse, it had in a pocket my elastic gauntlet, a half-glove I wore on the right hand to minimize swelling - that's the arm with lymphedema. That coat is somewhere, but we've looked everywhere we go and can't find it.

I ran into Rev. Mark in the hall, and he asked me, "How are you doing?" like he meant it.  Maybe this is what makes a person a minister.  That ministering to the people who have dropped out of life and become invisible.  I told him, how it's hard, and we had a five or ten minute talk.  Mark is a trained professional.  Like other ministers in our church he doesn't dispense wisdom, he engages with you, shares and listens.  I was so down - sick as hell again with a UTI, discouraged - I could feel the bolt of healing it gave, like a shot of warm light.  That and a homemade dinner from an understanding friend got me through the week.

If I could give one lesson from old age to those who have not yet been dropped down on this foreign plain, it would be, be open to seeing and hearing your old mom, your grandma, the 90-year-old lady next door.  To do that you need to be open to your own discomfort with the realities of aging and sickness, your realization that you too could be suddenly disabled, confused, too tired to shower.  Just listen.  Don't do that reactive thing of rushing on or saying some imperious thing that will fix it.  (What you need to do is . . . ) Maybe that half-deaf old lady has done everything possible for her loss of hearing and there isn't a good fix.

If you want this in spiritual terms, it is love, or it is paying attention.  Maybe they are both the same thing.
~~~~~~
p.s. Then there's persistence. Tom insisted we stop by the Spine and Sport clinic, who said on the phone they didn't have the coat.  And there it was, hanging on a hanger on the coat rack. No gauntlet in the pocket.  So.

What I learned from this illness

cat demonstrating yin yoga twist

So it was last Thursday night, just a week ago, that this UTI set in rather ferociously.  Why? after an interlude of four wonderful infection-free months.  First of all, you never know, as I think it says in the subtitle to this blog.  Still, you can usually find a couple of things you did wrong, which is a kind of comfort, as in, I won't do that again, so that won't happen again.  Well . . .

But my transplant nurse actually said to me, in a non-Western-medical moment, "And don't skip your meditation anymore."  Aha.  I had told her I knew a couple of reasons I became susceptible to this lousy e-coli (which is always lurking in waiting, that's the bad news) - it could be summarized as overactive, overstressed by visiting a very sick friend - and too busy to meditate.  For two days straight.  I don't know what made me such a blithe spirit, but it won't happen again.

It happened that the same day Harvard Health News (a nice website) sent me a list of stress relievers.  Here they are -

• Get enough sleep. Lack of sound sleep can affect your mood, mental alertness, energy level, and physical health.
• Exercise. Physical activity alleviates stress and reduces your risk of becoming depressed — and it is good for your all-around health.
• Learn relaxation techniques. Meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, deep breathing exercises, and yoga are mainstays of stress relief. Your local hospital or community center may offer meditation or yoga classes, or you can learn about these techniques from books or videos.
• Learn time-management skills. These skills can help you juggle work and family demands.
• Confront stressful situations head-on. Don’t let stressful situations fester. Hold family problem-solving sessions and use negotiation skills at work.
• Nurture yourself. Treat yourself to a massage. Truly savor an experience: eat slowly, focusing on each bite of that orange, or soak up the warm rays of the sun or the scent of blooming flowers during a walk outdoors. Take a nap. Enjoy the sounds of music you find calming.

It's kind of wonderful that the scientific minds have become convinced of the value of spiritual practices; and almost amusing that they describe them as "relaxation techniques."  And almost discouraging.  You don't see prayer included in that list - it would obviously seem to demean that practice.  On the other hand, it was by emphasizing secular, physical benefits of meditation that Jon Kabat-Zinn has taught the medical profession to see it as something other than snake oil.  Sleep well.

Craving Enlightenment

Back when I practiced as though my hair were on fire it was because I was desperate.  First, I was afraid to die. I wanted to heal, not die from breast cancer. During that time I learned that the body is always fighting new invaders, that there are always cancer cells coming in. So I formed a visual meditation that had to do with T-cells, big spiky things, like those medieval weapons. I believed what I'd been taught, that my individual will could do anything, and if I failed to meet a goal, I was "a failure," and needed to try harder.  Obviously, I thought I was a noun. Like an object.

It's unpleasant to remember being so frightened and alone, grasping with all my might at control over the future, which I did not know is subject to many, many influences beyond me. I wrestled with it like Jacob with the Angel, thinking, reading, writing, meditating up in my second-floor study in the house on Aldrich Road, which I called "my ivory tower." I was sort of joking, but it was true; up there I was secluded from my daily life, studying and writing poetry.


But I'm taking the long way around to my point - as I learned about Buddhism, I began to think the answer to all this pain was enlightenment. I conceived this as a sea change into an unwavering state that was like being in a room filled with morning light.  I thought enlightened people had calm, loving, clear, untroubled minds, an unruffled certainty that everything was alright. I thought enlightened people were perfect, and I had always wanted that, actually.  Now the mess of me - a body that had developed cancer in secrecy - was a sort of stinky garbage dump.

I was a long way from understanding the way life is, the interconnection, the change, the calm of just doing what you are doing in reality and not doing a lot of other stuff in your mind.  I had seldom expeienced a bare, clear moment; my moments were incredibly messy, my mind busy with obligations and desires and standards and hurry.  The core that run up my spine was red hot with fear and desire.  Or take another metaphor: I felt like a cartoon character running madly, trailing flags of Things-to-do.  Or another metaphor:  as I stood at the kitchen sink washing lettuce, these things whirled round me.  I was always a couple of steps into the next moments, the day, the week.

So I was perhaps your basic neurotic. I'd gotten along with myself and my ordinary unhappiness until that diagnosis.  Teachers call the state I was in "a promising situation."  God knows I was motivated to practice.

Well, this is exhausting me to even write this. It was 1997, a long way back, and 1997 doesn't exist now, nor does that version of me.  These memories are merely mental emissions, pathways through my neurons, and have no real existence.  Neither do any of the numerous Big Problems I anxiously worked back then. I have new situations, but now I know that it's me that labels them My Problems. Me that prefers not to have problems.

Intrusion of reality - Tashi broke skin on my wrist a moment ago trying to convince me that it was 8:00 a.m. and time for my Neoral and, more importantly, her breakfast.  So I have to go wash with soap and hot water, rub with alcohol, put on antibiotic cream and a bandage.  There, that's the reality of being immune-suppressed.

I don't know.  I may have more to say on this.

Annoying Mind

(Yes, my computer was down all week.  Same for half the people I know.  Energy of spring.)

here’s a little bitty insight:
yes, I don’t feel quite well.  Am not, with #7 UTI - so found mind tiresome this morning:
Tiresome Mind
I need to accept that I am ill, TM says.  Thus. 
Don't like that acronym - it already belongs to TM.  Let's call it Annoying Mind.
AM is very very difficult to change.  Thurber sd it all in the title, Let your Mind Alone!

The thing is, Yes, I don’t feel quite well.  It discourages me.  Remember, the assignment from Rebel Buddha is to simply feel fully what you feel.  But you don't have to stay there.

The point of Zen practice is NOT to be perfect, but to be fully where you are, doing what you are doing.  This is a great cure for AM, as long as you move on and oh, wash some blueberries for breakfast.  This can be summarized as - Don’t obsess on it.  You don't like it, OK, I get it.  Preferring to feel well is a pretty natural preference.  Instinctive, I think.

Can’t help but have a perspective: pretty soon 100,000 people in Japan are going to feel very not well.  They already think they got trouble, everything gone, homeless jobless lost loved ones and friends and neighborhoods - this will pale in the face of radiation poisoning.
~~
[image:  grape hyacinth in my backyard last spring]

What to do when the resurrection is cancelled

We had our nine-year old grandson, Otto, over the weekend, and as always, played board games and card games. Then he suggested Jenga, which we have played together for years. In this classic game you build a tower of finely milled hardwood blocks, which you remove one at a time and stack on top, trying not to topple the tower. But it inevitably does fall with a wonderful crash, and you are never quite expecting it, so you scream. Blocks go everywhere, on the table and floor. Cats don't like it, Otto does. I like that we played it as a cooperative game, all three of us trying to beat our personal group best (32 levels).

As we played, I thought how this game is like the crash and rebuilding of the self, our ego. Something happens, our trip stops working. Today we might say, Time to Reformat. Robert Aitken comments that Zen teachers consider this an auspicious condition, though he didn't know that when it happened to him.

I happen to be noticing my crash right now - last week I talked with an OSU transplant surgeon about my bad reaction to cortisone. A shot in my hip for bursitis in late January led to moodswings that ended only recently (if they have indeed ended). Now I am "on hold" on the list - that is, they have not removed me (that will probably take a committee meeting), but I will not be matched when a kidney comes in.

I thought OSU had gone to a "steroid-free protocol." They're trying. But the first week after a transplant, it is still necessary to load every patient with steroids to prevent the rejection the body is trying so hard to bring off. Every day the dose would be fifty times the dose of that shot in the hip - which sent me into moodswings for several months. Ten percent of transplant patients end up having to stay on steroids. Anyone who goes into rejection syndrome is put on steroids. In other words, there is no avoiding them. (This story is the same at Cleveland Clinic.)

The doctor told me he has been working with kidney transplant for fifteen years, and he has seen what both of us avoided calling by its true name, "steroid psychosis." He was sincere in explaining that you don't want that to happen. No, I really, really don't. The moodswings of this winter and spring sometimes had me just sitting in a brown sludge weeping gently, thinking I'd rather be dead.

The odd thing about being taken off the list was that I did not have an emotional reaction to it, beyond mild shock. No drama, no need to stuff it down with chocolate cake. I kept wondering about that until this morning, when I realized the more complex nature of my reaction - I am no longer waiting for the call that can come any moment and lead to - maybe - a new life. Sometimes transplant works stunningly; that's why I was willing to be on the list and contemplate a life on immunosuppressants. I kept wondering hopefully, Who will I be when I have more energy? It seems to me now just a bit like a remnant of the fairy tales I loved as a child - the girl waiting for the prince to come and rescue her.

This morning I am realizing that I have responded to this event with a new sense of being right here in my life, in this body in the present moment. The bright future has been cancelled (though Tom reminds me there is all sorts of research coming down the pike, wearable kidneys, growing a new kidney from your own skin cells - anything can happen).

Maybe it was the sense of this new blank page that impelled me to ask a friend to move everything out of the big closet in my study that I call my toy closet the day after that appointment, and put in in a metal shelving unit. This study now looks like I just moved in, boxes everywhere. This room was my last priority when we moved in here, and I was worn out and careless. I stuffed in this huge closet all the stuff I didn't sort in the move, all the stuff I didn't let go of. Every single draft of old pre-computer manuscripts, for instance. Old journals and letters. All those photographs. Old books. A pristine Cabbage Patch doll (whose adoption certificate is somewhere in one of these boxes.)

My path seems clear all the way out to the horizon. I can't hold my breath waiting for the call that will change my life. I'll have to just breathe in and out, pay attention to the body I have, and start sorting.

How to Treat Me

[Photo: an actual book by OSU professor/poet Andrew Hudgins]

Disagreeing is always more interesting than agreeing.
Dalai Grandma

There is a tension between the agreea-girlness I was taught was appropriate to my kind, and the inquiring attitude I learned in college, which was not actually about disagreeing, but about asking, What do I think? Agreeableness is about being Nice, about fitting into the monkey tree; critical thinking, as it was called, blew open the doors into reality and began letting in some light. It's a wonder they allow it.

Today I am disagreeing with an excerpt published in Tricycle magazine online -

There are absolutely no negative thought patterns that are true. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to renounce negative patterns of thought.
Arinna Weisman and Jean Smith, The Beginner’s Guide to Insight Meditation

As an excerpt, it may not represent the author's full intent. This isn't about quarreling with them, then, but about springing off that line of thought. Here's where my mindspring goes: no patterns of thought, negative or positive, are "true." Most likely, they get in the way of reality.

When dealing with my thoughts, we are never far from a homely personal situation that has given rise to the issue. Today it can be summarized as, "Oh dialysis, that's nothing."

The issue came up for me and many thousands of Extreme Kidney Patients last week when Larry King had a singer named Natalie Cole on his show to talk about her dialyis experience. This woman's kidneys were ruined by treatment for hepatitis C, which was believed to be the result of street drugs, or more precisely, of sharing needles.

I watched a bit of the interview, and you can too if you go to YouTube. The woman is clearly out of touch with the seriousness of her condition, as the rich and privileged can be, those whose path to the dialysis chair is smoothed by an executive assistant. What's worse, numerous viewers evidenced that their major abode is Lalaland by sending Larry King e-mails offering her a kidney, even as the show was on the air. Cole had the grace to be somewhat astounded by this, as you should be. To give away 50% of your kidney function in order to save the life of an entertainer you don't even know -- this is the act of someone totally out of touch with the life-changing reality of this major surgery. (FYI, transplant centers are wary of what they call "altruistic" giving, and subject such donors to psychological testing first thing.)

We kidney patients on our transplant e-list had our own particular beefs with the whole thing. Mine went to the keenly personal -- I got mad at the "friend" who has felt obliged to tell me several times about some man who worked full-time for thirty years while on dialysis, and loved his life.

God knows, I don't complain to her. I don't bring the subject up. She does, to give herself the opportunity to fix me again. Well, I have lost patience with her need to find redeeming value in my lousy, limiting, frightening and uncomfortable situation. In the often unpleasant facts of old age, sickness, and death. I don't need fixed on this subject. Period.

I know she's just got a species of insanity. I saw it in action in some kidney patients, as they reacted to the stunning fact that strangers were offering Natalie Cole their kidneys while the rest of us sit on a waiting list for years. And years. Waiting for the phone to ring. There are always people who seize any opportunity to affirm how nice and accepting they are; or who just feel compelled for some other reason to put a positive mental spin on every damn thing. So it is that there were kidney patients who are personally going through anguish with the complications and inadequacies of dialysis, who insisted, Some good might come out of this for all of us, and anyway, life isn't fair, so if she can get her hands on a stranger's kidney, more power to her.

Well, I have my own truth. It is embedded in my experiences, for instance, those little cuts created by the relative who told everyone she just kept working and smiling and pausing to throw up when she had cancer. This gave the rest of the family all they needed to decide that my cancer was nothing serious, and to ignore me. Falsifying the reality was not harmless, then.

I don't ask much. You have your reality, let me have mine. My strategy in life is not to apply either positive or negative thought patterns to it. That's my salvation in life, in fact, to just have my unique individual experience. To be acknowledged as a person. Not to be swatted out of the way with some platitude about how there's something good to be said for throwing up.

Well, I still don't know how to reply to my umm, acquaintance, with her insane need to minimize the gravity of my situation. Not for the first time, I have thoughts about writing a book titled How to Treat Me (and Other People). But don't you just know, the people you wish would read a book like that, those people never will.

I am of the nature to have ill health

Last night I went to bed discouraged, thinking I might have pneumonia; this bounce up from the flu and then back down could indicate that. This morning, another new day, a beautiful day, looks like the last day of Indian Summer. We seem to cherish these days more than spring, because we know it is not June that is coming, but winter.

I knew I was somewhat better this morning as I looked over the paper and found myself having little thoughts and ideas. A certain liveliness of mind. When I am sick, I go flat, uninspired, not caring to stir myself to do much of anything. This state can be mistaken for “depression,” that analytic term we have learned to use to describe our lack of joy and engagement with life.

This flatness of spirit is what I personally dislike most about being sick. It occurs to me, though, that it is the natural and right response of the body/mind, turning all its resources toward healing, trying to put you on the couch where you belong. This is one reason I don’t like medications that manage symptoms enough to enable us to keep plugging along, going to work and the grocery store, foggily spreading the virus, not letting it stop us. Come on folks, I want to say when I see the commercials for miraculous cold medications (which often contain stimulants), let it slow you down. It's okay to slow down.

It is interesting to think about how sickness shines a spotlight on our attachment to our preferences—the way we ourselves like to be, the way we think things are supposed to be. We like to function at our peak, however modest that might be. We like some things, many things actually, to stay the same. We want to go on doing things the way we’ve gotten used to doing them, having every bit of capacity we once had. So it is not really separate from the issues of aging.

I think our impatience with illness also goes to the way we flinch from recognizing our vulnerability. It is curious how The Five Remembrances pushes that mud pie in our faces: “I am of the nature to have ill health; there is no way to escape ill health.” What, no way? I won't accept that!

I recall fondly the time I presented the chant to a study group, and was met by a long moment of dead silence. Then Marianne expressed what others were thinking. She said fervently into the silence “I hate that.”

It does take some getting used to.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
note: The text of The Five Remembrances is given in my November 5, 2008 post.