Rainy Saturday

The rains have come with a vengeance. Tasche finished our sukkah, but it has been too wet to eat out there and it promises to be wet all week. The temperature is 57 degrees. The rains are a couple of weeks early in arriving this year. I’m not surprised since it was a cool summer.

I’ve started a new writing class which is put on by the Write Around Portland folks, hosted by the Quest Integrative Center. It’s an interesting mix of people in the class. I really like the work that is coming out of it. It’s quite inspirational to be in a group, churning out stuff, finding out where it will lead. I wrote this piece:

I Can’t Explain

I can’t explain what happened that day. I just know that in an instant everything changed; all of the sudden I went through the bottle neck, released somehow into a new understanding.

It was a moment I didn’t know I’d been waiting for, and I had no idea it would take this form. I hadn’t expected it, but I then again I had, only not on a conscious level. I’m just not that perceptive.

Oh, and I try to be so perceptive, so damned perceptive. I ask for it every day, “Just allow me a little more perception, some intuition, please. I know you’re up the, giving me all this great guidance, but I’m so tired of being deaf and blind to it. Allow me to open like a flower to your rays of light.”

Well, someone up there must have heard and took pity on me because one day it happened. I was walking down the stairs and I didn’t touch the last step; instead, I floated above it. I floated forward effortlessly. “Whoa, I’m levitating!” I though excitedly and immediately dropped to the floor. Hmm.

But it kept happening, usually when I least expected it and always when I was alone. When I wasn’t paying attention, when I wasn’t trying to make it happen, I would float off the ground a few inches, and sometimes as much as a few feet. As soon as I realized I was floating then whomp! I fell back to earth. One time I was crossing a parking lot and I floated up about eight feet in the air. “Oh, wow!” I thought, “This is so cool!” and I immediately plummeted. It was a pretty hard landing and I sprained my ankle. I hobbled around on crutches for days. When people asked me how I injured myself I made up a story because the real story was, well, improbable to say the least.

After a while, though, I began to get a handle on it. I could sustain the float longer, rise higher, and I learned to descend slowly. I found that strong emotions, surprise, pride, or alarm, for instance, caused me to drop precipitously. I learned that if I breathed evenly and kept my mind empty I had more control. I could even move forward and direct myself where I wanted to go.

Then one day I was walking with my husband and began to float up while he watched in astonishment. I looked at him and grinned and gently drifted to the ground. I knew that I had made some sort of breakthrough. Another person had witnessed me levitating.

But of course, it was another bottleneck. Suddenly my pride, my egotism was lit on fire because someone else knew, even if it was only my husband and best friend. I wanted him to be my witness, to brag to our friends about my new ability and I knew that this would spoil my fledgling attempts at control and mastery of my new found ability. How could I overcome this new challenge?

Bicycle Disasters

We’ve been having some major bicycle disasters. First David crashed into a car door as it opened before him at an inopportune time. He got scraped up and twisted out of shape but didn’t break anything. After a few visits to the osteopath he’s achy but doing better. His bicycle fared a bit worse than he and was in the shop for a while, but it’s back now and more to the point, he’s back on it again, riding to work and back.

Howard started the week full of enthusiasm. He signed up for a graduate class in limnology and arranged to audit an Italian class. He rode his bike to the first day of school, attended his classes, and then mounted his steed to ride home. Crossing the street from Neuberger Hall, where he had his classes, he was struck by a car while on his bicycle. The driver was turning left onto Broadway looking right over his shoulder at oncoming traffic and not where he was aiming his car. He hit Howard and bicycle. Howard rode the hood for a while with the car still in motion, then he slid over the left side of the car (taking the side mirror with him) and came to rest on the ground. At that point the car ran over his left foot.

He spent many hours in the emergency room, Andrine by his side. The upshot is that his left second metatarsal is broken. His foot is so swollen that he can’t have surgery to pin it together until next week. He’s pretty frustrated about the whole thing. He tried to attend classes on Wednesday in a wheelchair only to discover that it’s not an option. It was exhausting and frustrating and even dangerous to try to maneuver around campus in a wheel chair with an unset broken foot stretch out in front among oblivious twenty year olds. They wouldn’t even take the next elevator so that he could ride it. He had to wait for several because they didn’t have the concept that the elevators were for disabled people not for healthy but lazy young people.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thrust into caregiver mode again, only not with Howard. Andrine has taken over that position. I’ve been looking after Stephen, our housemate, who just had knee replacement surgery. He came home from the nursing home on Monday, the same day that Howard broke his foot. Now we have two members of the household in wheelchairs. I’ve been cooking and shopping for food to keep the household fed. Andrine hired Petra to clean so the house isn’t falling apart while we are tending to the wounded. Andrine, bless her heart, is cooking tonight.

My energy has been great, however. I recovered from the surgery in record time. The anesthetic didn’t linger as I had feared, and I actually feel like myself again. It had taken a whole year, and I thought that I might never see the day again, but I feel healthy and energetic again. Good thing, because it’s time to spring into action. I must admit, I prefer to be the caregiver instead of the care recipient. Although, don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate everyone who did care for me. It was an amazing year that way, to realize how kind my friends and family are. But I can really appreciate now how wonderful it is to have the energy to contribute to the well being of others. I now can run up and down the stairs with little thought, instead of contemplating it for hours because one trip up or down could use up my energy for hours.

I don’t know if I’m back to 100% yet, but it’s damned close, damned close.

Surgery Went Well

I had my surgery today and it went well, better than expected (by me). I had been pretty apprehensive about getting general anesthetic again, but my anesthesiologist (Dr. Mike Aziz) listened carefully to my needs and as a result I felt better than I usually do when I wake up after surgery. I’m home now and my pain level remains pretty low, about a 2 on a scale of 10.

The week running up to surgery was a very full one. My energy came back and I felt like a reasonable facsimile of my old self. I was able to do several things in one day, run errands, do laundry, that sort of thing. It felt great. I felt like I sprang back to life again during my week in Cottage Grove with Anita. It was very healing for me, being out there in the country, being taken care of by her and her husband Mike. She also got me into doing yoga again. I’ve been doing it every morning, along with deep breathing, and that really helped to revive me.

I’m still a little dizzy, but it’s been only five hours since I was in the OR, so that’s to be expected. However, given how I feel now, I don’t think this will be a month-long ordeal like my previous recoveries from general anesthetic.

I’ve felt so good lately that I have been applying for jobs, although they’ve been part-time jobs. I haven’t got any interviews yet. The only interview that I got was for a Corrections Counselor at the jail, but that’s a full time job. I have no idea how I did at the interview. I may not be corrections material. I don’t have a confrontational style of counseling. It’s a great paying job with wonderful benefits, but if I make it to the second round of interviews, I will have to do an informational interview to find out if it’s the sort of job I want to take. I have been so lucky to have great colleagues and supervisors and work situations in the past that I do not want to break a winning streak. Also 40 hours a week sounds like a lot right now, new found energy or not.

Catching Up: Cottage Grove to Rosh Hashanah

I realize that I haven’t written in a very long time. The first week of the month I went to Cottage Grove to visit my new friend, Anita. I met her at a cancer retreat and we hit it off immediately. She came up to visit a few weeks ago and we all immediately liked her. She, in turn, had a great time at our house. It reminded her of a big old house she had owned in Brookline, Massachusetts, which she had kept full of people. She was delighted to find all sorts of Judaica in our house since she is Jewish.

I had a wonderful time visiting her. She has a guest yurt that is a beautiful space, set in a garden, with a hot tub next it. Could I ask for anything more? The views from her property were exquisite. It was harvest time and we spent most of our time harvesting or cooking the bounty.

She and her husband Mike were so kind and delightful to hang out with. It was a very restorative time for me. I came home feeling much more energetic than when I left. Anita and I did yoga in the morning and I’ve been continuing that practice. I had given up and exercise program for a while due to the fact that my energy was so limited that I needed to spend it on survival tasks, like laundry and cooking. However, my energy coffers are now filled enough that I can do yoga in the morning and still have enough energy left over for other tasks.

Anita taught me the value of the nap. Of course, she’s good at sleeping, whereas I am not. Still, I took a rest for an hour every day and that helped tremendously.

I felt like Anita was the older sister I never had. She and I had endless things to talk about and lots of recipes to share. She sent me home with all sorts of goodies from her garden. Howard came down to pick me up and helped press a load of pears into pear juice. He was rewarded with a bottle of it and it was unbelievably good. In addition, I got plum sauce and fig puree as well as some pickles for Tasche.

I came home and hit the ground running, which is why I haven’t written anything lately. I am acting as Stephen’s patient advocate for his knee surgery. On Monday I accompanied him to pre-op appointments. I had my EFT group Monday night. Then on Tuesday Stephen had his knee replacement surgery so I hung around the hospital all day until he was safely through it and ensconced in his hospital room.

On Wednesday it was my turn for pre-op. I’m finally going to get this very painful expander out and replaced by an implant. I went to see my surgeon to discuss what I wanted. We decided on a silicone implant, which is what most people who have had the procedure recommend. Earlier we had discussed the fact that I could have the procedure done with a local anesthetic so I didn’t discuss that with her again. However, when I went to pre-op, the anesthesiologist thought that I was crazy not to have general anesthesia. Now I don’t know what to think. I do so poorly with general anesthesia. It scrambles my brains for weeks afterwards. I’m just not ready to be that impaired.

I have been applying for more jobs lately and if I actually get one, I don’t want to be cognitively impaired from general anesthetic. It has felt so nice to have my memory working again and to have increased energy lately that I’m loathe to compromise that.
I went to Fred Meyer’s the other day with Stephen so he could lay in some clothing supplies before surgery. I happened to remember that I had a coupon for three free cloth grocery bags. I got the bags and brought them home. David, Howard, and Andrine were so impressed at my cognitive abilities to remember to get the bags and use the coupon that it gave me a reality check about how spacey I have been lately.

Today was the first day of Rosh Hashanah. We went to services last night and today. It was great to be back with the congregation and see so many familiar faces. I rode my electric bicycle there and back. It was pretty cold. That’s one of the drawbacks to electric bicycles. One doesn’t work up a sweat. This afternoon as I rode the temperature kept dropping, from 68 to 64 degrees. I guess our hot spell was short-lived.

I would post some photos from my trip but I can’t locate my camera cord. Hopefully it will turn up soon.