How Long Could It Take?

April 13, 2012

New day - new learning.  After two years of wondering, I am finally closing in on some answers to questions about my physical state.  That feels great!

However, to do so, I must re-enter the world of metropolitan bureaucracy, and that takes some adjusting.  I'm not 70 for another six weeks, so I am going with it.  Still flexible after all these years!  

The rules I had forgotten involve how doctors' offices protect their docs from any contact with the outside world other than the outside world's scheduled 15 minutes with said doc.  The paths are labyrinthine and lead  inevitably back to the beginning.

When I finally reached the ENTER sign for the 5th time, I just had to laugh.  Life here in the middle of nowhere certainly has it all over the city in the communications arena.  

Here, we converse when on the phone with someone in a local business.  We trade recipes, tell jokes, give sympathy when needed, and pass information to those in search of it.  I confess to being spoiled by smallness and friendly voices on the other end of the conversation.  Not, for years, having had a taste of the frantic, stopwatch mentality I used to understand, and even imitate, I fall prey to it.  What was that thump on the back of my head?  Oh, I guess it was the window of opportunity slamming shut.  Time's up.

My daughter wrote at length, recently, about a huge bureaucratic cockup in her new city home.  She handled it far better than I.  At the end of my encounter with time management, I saw the caller's image of me: a mosquito - almost invisible and really noisome.  In 30 seconds, I was over it.  Now, I just feel smug, because I know that no matter where I call or stop by, I will feel welcomed, and my welcomer will feel my appreciation of it.

As we grow older, we fear being unseen and unheard.  Nowhere is that fear more often realized than in the world of medicine.  The learning inspires me to make a sure to make loving contact with others.  My first thought, then, is to the person with whom I didn't chat today:  "I hope your tomorrow is better."

March 21, 2012

It's Spring!

For a week, those cherry blossoms and magnolias and birdies and bugs annoyed me.  I mean, it was still winter!  Last year, the magnolias didn't struggle out till May.  The weeping cherry begged off entirely.

I marvel at their beauty from under my hard hat.  I mean, with climate change, nothing is predictable.  12" of snow might plop out of the sky all at once and at any moment.

I'm not alone.  I hear from people I'd never expect would say anything like it, "Things are beautiful, and I'm uneasy."  I know what they mean.

A few years ago, when the term was "global warming", people put signs out in record snowfalls pointing out that the snow seemed to be proof against it.

Last year, when a record number of tornadoes killed a record number of people, I remember The Weather Channel staff making very guarded comments about climate change as a reason this might be happening.

Maybe it is the experience of unusual weather in the aggregate that accounts for the caution I am hearing from others.  What is important is that the tension is there, now.  This could be a teachable moment.  People, taking a collective breath, say, "It's too quiet around here.  What's up?"  Interesting that it took a flower to bring the thing to our attention.  There's still time.

Forget clouds! This is sun!

As many of my friends know, I and my heart have been working together to recover from congestive heart failure, afibrillation, and other complications of  taking Rx medication without careful monitoring.  A leaky mitral valve and some damage to the lower left quadrant occurred.  I've been seeing my heart doc, a really good one, every month to six weeks.  Last time I was there, he did a second cardioversion, which seemed to take; but our visit this morning would reveal whether it had held.

Turns out that my heart, for the most part, seems to be trying to move back into normal rhythm.  This morning, having had to leave early for Canton without breakfast, I had not taken the pills.  Even so, the afib is less easy to spot, and normal rhythm is at least a half, if not more, of the pattern.  Doctor Satti said that the stethoscope is not picking up the afib.  That was good news.  Of course, the requisite EKG did, but that's OK.

Further, it is time to do another sonogram to measure remaining valve and quadrant recovery.  But, he wants to give me more time to heal, because, as he said, we don't plan any heart surgery.  Also good news.  And so - and this got me kind of revved up with hope - he doesn't want to see me for six more months, when he will do a sonogram.  That means my heart is self-healing.  Yes, I have to keep on taking the meds during the time.  OK.  Yes, they tend to slow me down.  Also OK.  But I wake up in the morning with energy, I can bend to pick things up without getting dizzy or short of breath, and the afib is hard to hear with a stethoscope.

To double check what I thought he was saying, I called my nurse daughter.  She was excited and confirmed that all of this news, especially, "Don't come back for six months", was excellent.  I came home flying!

I've been down for almost two years, as various parts of my inner and outer anatomy have been tweaked toward better health.  This was the first news of major import that I am headed in the right direction.  It allows me to take a worry break.  Inertia is not my enemy, and neither is light exercise.  The thrill for me is that I could actually come back before it is time for me to wind down for good.  I wasn't sure of that until today.  Nice feeling.  This is definitely sun!

Sun and Clouds

You know, today we are having rapid turnover between sun and clouds.  There has been a little rain, and the robins and cardinals, not to mention the Grackletown citizens in our pine trees, have been toting food and nesting materials into the branches of our trees and bushes.  Yesterday, there was a prolonged battle between two male robins for territorial rights.  They kept popping up into the air and then down behind a small hill for more than 15 minutes.  I'm not sure of the outcome, but I wasn't choosing sides to begin with.  It's all life - clouds and sun/sun and clouds. 

Here's a reply to my email response to hate mail yesterday:

The emporer is muslim at heart. Since he has been in the blacks in congress have become arrogant fools. Sheila Jackson lee, foghorn Clyburn, jesse Jackson, rev wright, the black from ca that steered 5,000,000 to her  husbands bank, al sharpten.  We have many great blacks in this country but these fools make me and many others racist. I know 2 women in their late 80’s that have never done anything racist in their lives that call the emporer and his wife niggars. Check on snopes and see what divinity school that jesse and al went to, or did they buy it for $45. I hope you like your tax dollars going for  the emporers vacations. $1,400,000 for xmas. If he is going to spend that kind of money he should his wife some clothes.. oh yes, your taxes are paying for her to have 22 assistants, great. It is way too late to blame bush, it all belongs to this ass. ern

Taking a moment out of life to contemplate this deathless prose, I discover that, like the robins, we are going up in the air and down over territory that I don't want.  So, I have handed over to this friend the rights to his viewpoints, while telling him frankly that I am glad they are not my own.  My life's moments have no further time for mindless arguing, either his or mine.  And within days, his wife will tell me that his health suffers when he gets into one of these "discussions".  He has had a number of health issues, and his medicine cabinet is full.  Look.  One robin has stopped hopping, and now the other one can rest.  Easy, there.  There are many healthier places to speak out.  Sun and clouds/clouds and sun.

The Beat Goes On

I just got some email humor from  people I've known for fifty-some years.  Onion domes on the White House.  Marlboro cowboy on a camel.  Colonel Sanders wearing a turban.  A Shell oil sign with the "S" taken off.  The message was that I should think before voting for that guy Obama.  I don't remember any more of the pictures; but I do remember the sigh that escaped me as I closed the mailing.

I threw it out and wasn't going to respond, but then I did.  I wrote, "BooYah!  Let's use racism to make our voting choices for us. 'Oh, say, can you see,  By the...' Oh, wait.  No, you can't."

I've  refused to let politics choose my friends for me.  These aren't intimate friends, but we went through school together and then our paths diverged.  We'd reunited and were having a good time, when in came the Bush years.  We were told, then, that we couldn't trust our neighbors.  They might disagree with what the government was doing, and that would make them a) Unpatriotic  b) Terrorist sympathizers c) Both, and worse.

It worked.  We focused on distrusting our friends with different political views, and we focused away from the destruction of our economy, our status in the world, and our mission statement while all three were being strangled to death.  I've read that in George Washington's time, the same ploy was used.  Poor whites were taught to hate black immigrant slaves, so that they would stop resenting what the rich white landowners had.  See "Jefferson's Pillow" for details.  And that, boys and girls, is how we became racists.

Having resisted the efforts to de-friend me from old acquaintance, I stand here on my little piece of ground wondering why I cared enough to stay friends, in this case.  These folks know and dislike my views and have called me names, while reminding me they love me.  Why do I bother with the ripostes?

I must admit that I think I can come up with some pretty funny stuff, and that is a part of why I write back.  I'm good at snappy comebacks.  I want folks to know that I don't just lie down and take the crap being served.  At the same time, I look for things we can both agree upon and share those as conversation.

I guess the other part of why I respond is that when the world goes belly-up on hate, these folks will remember when they knew some people with another point of view.  That will be just before the Morlocks sound the whistle calling them in to be made into food. Is it worth it?  I'm thinking that over.  (sigh)

What'll I think of next?

OKAY.  I am a tad calmer, though I admit to having sent a harangue to Sen. Brown about those mini-drones flying around in my airspace taking pictures...  You know about them, yes?  No word back.  Hope he didn't take it personally.  It's just that he is the only legislator other than Bernie Sanders and a few others, perhaps, in whom I feel I can confide my true feelings.

Here's the antidote to any moments of despair you may have about the state of our union:  History.  Reading a chapter or two out of "Lies My Teacher Taught Me" set my train car back on the track.  I spent my learning time reading about what Woodrow Wilson was really like.  Then I remembered the good old days of slavery as slavery, and not just enforced poverty, and I was back to my old self.

My old self understands that this government has never been a pretty thing to watch - not counting the music from "1776."  If I fool myself into thinking that we are currently on the steep downward slope to hell, I look at history and realize that the slope has been there since the first minute.  Then I walk away from looking at politics again, for the 99th time, and find the beauty in my world.

The author of the book (something like Louen, can't remember the spelling and don't feel like going to get it) challenges me to name ten famous Americans who were game changers (sorry, Ms. Palin) and who were not politicians or heads of state or any of that political stuff.  Tough challenge.  Besides sports figures, they're the ones who have been crowned heroes.

And by the way, Betsy Ross had as much to do with designing the American flag as the Breck Girl had to do with making shampoo.  'Kay.  I've had all the fun I can stand.  Oh, wait, here's the chapter on Christopher Columbus...

The past two years are gone, and I am not!

Thursday, March 15, 2012

What can one say?  Hello.  I was downed by a number of illnesses - related and unrelated - and I forgot how to write.  So I may ramble a bit at first.  I'm being patient with me.

First, allow me to celebrate the strong, sane, and sensitive men in the world.  The lovers.  The laughers.  The givers.  You are a blessing to the planet.  This column does not apply to you.  Remember to breathe.

This morning, for the first time in a long time, I was conscious of myself making an angry fist.  Because it so seldom happens, it's noticeable.  And I said to my dogs (because, of course, I never just talk to myself), "I am an angry woman."

I had just read the fourth installment of Gary Trudeau's castigation of legislation against women in the state of Texas.  A newly pregnant woman who wants to terminate the pregnancy is being physically invaded by a doctor with a transvaginal sonogram wand, at the same time that he admits that he has been legally empowered to rape her with it.  At this point, one feels compelled to ask, "What is the state of Texas?" and to answer, "Complete and utter white male insanity."

Women are being brutalized for having sex urges and comfortable compartments into which to insert the male penis.  Men are not being brutalized for placing their penises in said compartments and jiggling them till they feel good.  Oh, and let's round out this Catch 22:  the same deviates who have voted to have their way with women's rights from the congressional chambers also want to deny women the right to obtain birth control so that such things as pregnancy will not occur during sex.  Oh, but that's because they have religious objections?  These yobs make the Taliban look inoffensively liberal!  They are doing the raping, with their clothes on, and looks of righteous bliss on their crazy faces.

Unless you are fortunate enough to be gay, it is my understanding that it takes one of each gender to make sexual congress.  Where do men plan to go for sex?  More and more women are soon going to be in an ugly mood about obliging them.  Anger is replacing desire.  Ladies unaccustomed to making a fist in anger are surprising themselves daily.  Lysistrata is more than just an old, old story.

I remember a film of about 25 years ago, I think a Dutch film.  Name? Forgotten. Point?  A bunch of women in a shop killed a male shopkeeper who had verbally abused another woman.  None of the people had known each other when they entered the scene, but they all went to the same place when the incident occurred.  Further, they never spoke of what happened, though they went to prison for it.  I say let's get a group together and go visit Austin for some shopping!

Men appear to be so screwed up about sex that they whirl like dervishes around it.  They create the demand for the woman's body to be just so - sometimes dangerously anorexic if they want to work in film;  or for women to display their bodies ala Victoria's Secret models, and to sit astride Rigid Tool products; and at the same time, they scream, "Sex is dirty.  Save it for the one you love."  Tell me again, Newt, what is the definition of marriage?

We know that most, if not all, of the Republican candidates for President have behaved hypocritically, male and female.  But if this High Horse they're riding is a mare, watch out!