Imbolc Valentine Moon
The viral merry-go-round goes round and round, round and round. Here some phlegm. There some chills. Here some fever. There some sore throat. Here a cough, there a cough. And, overall…yuck. I told Kate I didn’t remember ever being this sick. “Austria,” she said, “You were pretty sick in Austria.” True. In that case I had my new physician wife with me who had, in what I would come to know as her way, packed for this. Antibiotics, thermometer. Bed side manner. Don’t remember much of Vienna and I was sick to some extent when we hit Paris. OK. I’ll take Austria, but that was 1990. So, not for a long time.
Misery. Discomfort. Dis-ease. Feelin’ rotten. Down the rabbit hole. Indisposed. Feeble. Ill. All. Ready for them to go back, hide in somebody’s closet.
The second time in two days when I wrote this blog later in the day. I couldn’t brave the cold to go up to the loft.
Back from Edwin Smith, surgeon:
A Matched Pair
Imbolc Valentine Moon
We’re a matched pair. Hair uncombed, vacant looks, wan smiles, in and out of bed during the day and the night. My bout with this virus, probably an adenovirus, is a week old today. 1 to 2 weeks according to the home medical advisor: Kate. Let it be less than 2 weeks. Please.
Last night the sore throat kept the good things coming. Coughing, clearing my throat. Going back to sleep. Waking up. You know how it goes. Any thought of swallowing? X.
Which meant I got awful thirsty. Not a good fit with the sore throat. Ice chips! I’d seen Kate in post-op recovery often enough to remember these. Got some. My entire menu for the day so far, one cereal bowl filled with ice chips. Brings up something else. After months of nudging Kate to eat, all of a sudden I don’t want to. Hurts to swallow. Not hungry. What’s the point?
As you can tell the glass is less than half full, at least I think so, the glass itself being opaque for the most part.
Really shouldn’t do this, look up adenovirus on the net. I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die! Well, yes. But most likely not right now. When I did, I found that, as with most viruses, the treatment is supportive. In other words, wait.
Nothing we can do. No choice, I know that, but god, what a word, wait. In common use it often means do nothing while something awful continues until it stops. Like this damned adenovirus (or, whatever) rummaging around in the closets, storage areas, kitchen, living room. Hey, you there! Stop what you’re doing and go. That would be supportive, too.
These diseases are like the old Lords of Misrule from medieval times. They come in, take over, put things wrong way round, upset life. When the illness or the festival is done, matters return to normal. The King or the Duke or the Baron in charge once again, but this time with a renewed sense of the value they bring. Order, equilibrium, homeostasis. Oh. Yeah. This is what it is to feel well. So I suppose they do play a role, reminding us of our mortality and our frailty, reminding us of what it means to be healthy. But. I’ve had my reminder for this biennium. And I’ve paid attention. So, quit already.
Illness here, Illness there…
Imbolc Waxing Moon
Frayed end of a hawser. That would be me this morning. I thought this virus was done on Saturday. Nope, just getting warmed up. More fever. Then congestion, chest and sinus. So, coughing. A lot of clearing of the throat. “Yes, Curt,” Kate says, referencing my father’s frequent clearing of his throat. When that subsided, nope, not over. Now let’s try throat-on-fire. Last night. Full on righteous 7 or 8 pain. Made sleeping difficult, coughing an exercise in self-torture. Not to mention fatigue. Where it began last Wednesday. It will end sometime, apparently very much on its timeline. Not today. Go away little virion’s, go away.
Which, if you recall yesterday’s post, creates in us an expectation that this too will pass. We get sick. We’re miserable. We get better. We go on. Fully what I anticipate. We’ve had the same anticipation with Kate’s 18 months of malady after malady. Not happening. Could not happen at all. Therefore it seems out of the way of things. An anomaly.
She woke up miserable yesterday, more miserable than usual. She called Gidday and we got an appointment with Tabita Lane, Lisa’s P.A., since her schedule was full.
Here’s a bit about Tabitha from my Caring Bridge post: Tabitha, a former oncology nurse and military corpperson, came in. “I was reading your file. It’s long.”
Yep. Tabitha carried herself much like Dr. Gidday, an athlete confined for the moment to a stool. Her left leg splayed out behind as she began asking questions.
Her empathy was obvious. She leaned in, nodded, frowned. “What do you want to do, Kate? A feeding tube? I think you’re there.” She was seeing Kate for the first time, at the tail end of an awful four months and she’s clearly malnourished, thin and weak. “And, your brain may be effected. Not enough fat. You’re probably not thinking straight.”
The next branch on this ancientrail began. Kate will see a general surgeon this week about placement of a feeding tube. After that procedure she will probably go into a rehab center, Brookdale most likely. There she will gain weight, have p.t., gradually regain her strength. I have no idea how long any of this will take. It does mean that my life will change dramatically once again. Less fraught this time because the initiating event here will be therapeutic, not management of a mysterious emergency.
Not done yet.
This ancientrail. Right now. Hard.
Imbolc Waxing Moon Wanes
Chronic illnesses must have some similarity in their psychological impact. Maybe related to grieving. In the first days of a diagnosis there is confusion, distress, yet also relief that this thing has a name. Searching for a cure becomes a family enterprise, the internet glows red hot with old medical journal articles, new experimental this or that, group therapy by fellow sufferers. This serves to educate everyone, yet it also embeds the illness more and more firmly in daily life. There are no days or nights when the illness isn’t there. It hovers, even on good days or weeks, a known guest, but not a welcome one.
Small victories: a good day, a promising new drug, another imaging study, a procedure, surgery. Yet the illness remains. Perhaps attenuated for a bit. Perhaps not. Often there are cycles to the disease in which it extracts maximum discomfort only to relent and calm down for a bit.
An unspoken conclusion may arise. This is forever. He’s never going to get better. Will this uninvited guest kill him? Stratagems come and go. Certain foods. Nap schedules. Walks. Getting out. Staying in. The internet goes cold, having coughed up what it could and added little, showing the vast abyss between knowledge and useful information.
Perhaps a detente occurs. Everybody does their part. No big improvements, but no big backward steps either. The illness sits down to breakfast with everybody, goes to the grocery store, snores at night.
This is not the end. The armistice finally crumbles under a sudden resurgence of symptoms. Or, new ones. Or, the failure of a remedy. Despair. Perhaps depression. Maybe it is forever. I just thought that in a moment of exhaustion, but what if it’s true?
Each iteration of this cycle increases the psychological pressure on the afflicted and their caregivers, their loved ones.
You see, we expect problems to have solutions. Sure, there can be some unpleasantness, we know that. For sure. But somewhere in the world of helpers is the one who can fix this. Make it go away. Let us go back to life as it was before. If we can recall what that was like.
Hollywood happy endings may have been imprinted on our neurons, at least here in the U.S., but life knows better. Sure, there is my friend with ovarian cancer, stage 4b, who responded so well to chemo and successful surgery that her doctor is now talking cure. Yes, these instances do occur. When we hear about them, they raise our hope. Maybe. Just maybe.
Better to suspend hope for results. Better to stay with the day-to-day. Better to focus on spirituality, on matters of the soul. Why this latter in the time of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, flat earth atheists? Because the one thing illness does not touch is our soul, that part of us that links us to the eternal, to the cosmos, to the ongoingness of things.
In our inner world we are not ill, the illness rages in the blood stream, the brain, the heart, the gut, the muscles, but we have our sanctuary where our soul lives on. If we allow the illness to corrupt our soul, to plummet us into despair, then we will be finished. If the illness itself is intractable, and even if it’s not, the souls journey goes on, traveling the ancientrail you have been on since birth. The illness is part of the journey. But only part of the journey.
We are the end of a cycle on Shadow Mountain. Some symptoms have been vanquished, others not. Kate’s continuing misery has taken a brutal toll on her and has been tough for me, too. As I’ve written numerous times over the last couple of weeks, I don’t know where we are. I don’t know what’s next.
I’m finding practices designed to undergird my gratefulness, my joy, my equanimity have their limits. When I’m sick, as I have been since last Wednesday, they seem to slip away, leaving with me only the emotional fragments of my life, many of them painful. I refuse to stay in this place. What I do now is my choice. What do I need to choose?
A seed
Imbolc Waxing Moon
The waxing moon has not brought the weight gain I’d hoped. Maybe next month. We talked yesterday about eating disorders and their relevance to Kate’s situation. Through a combination of aversive conditioning, nausea and cramping triggered by eating, the dry mouth issues of Sjogren’s that can make food unpalatable, a generally depleted musculature that makes it difficult to work up an appetite, and a feeling of malaise we’ve not been able to shake, eating has become problematic. Sounds like an eating disorder. If it quacks…
One sobering reality driven home by my illness (on the way out, but not gone) is how much the two of us depend on me to live in this house. If I got to Kate’s level of dysfunction, we’d have to move. When I was sick, especially Wednesday and Thursday, my body tingled. Arthritis in my left hand, thumb, knuckles, finger joints and the thumb of my right hand got bad enough that I couldn’t unlock the front door or open a package of sliced turkey. My stamina was almost nonexistent and I had no hunger. This lead me to the conclusion that my workouts are now a matter of marital necessity. They keep me strong, agile, healthy. We need to protect my schedule so I can always get them in. I’m sure this moment comes for many couples as they age, where one partner’s fragility makes their mutual independence more at risk.
Much as I like the dark, the cold, the snow, I also love the growing season. Imbolc, Feb. 1st, (or, as for all Celtic holidays, a full week of markets and dances), marks the turn from winter, the season just past, toward spring, or Ostara, which we celebrate on the spring equinox. That’s what Groundhog Day celebrates, Imbolc, and a European belief that if a furry rodent saw it’s shadow, there would be six more weeks of winter. In Germany it’s the badger that is the predictor. The Pennsylvania Dutch apparently shifted to the groundhog.
Whichever, shadow or not, and usually not accurate, the attention to mother earth while snow’s still on the ground, occurs because the Great Wheel has turned past the Winter Solstice, allowing light to begin it’s slow increase, culminating in the heart of mid-Summer on the Summer Solstice.
Imbolc then, is the first season of a new agricultural year. Imbolc, in the belly, referred to the freshening of ewes whose pregnancies would finally bring some long awaited milk into the family larder. The lambs also add to the flocks. It was a signal that the fallow time that began back in October of the previous year at Samain, summer’s end, would again be followed by a fertile season. The growing season itself doesn’t begin, on the Great Wheel, until Mayday, Beltane. But Imbolc assures us that there will be food produced this year, even if the days are still dreary and cold.
What is freshening my soul these days? What seed has been fertilized and begun to grow? Imbolc is important; even when the world seems to have gone fallow for us, we find the Great Wheel still turning, still pushing us toward the next growing season.
Kate’s bleed happened on September 28th, the day before Michaelmas, Steiner’s “springtime of the soul.” The sequelae has lasted through the last of Fall (Mabon), through Samain, through Winter, and now into Imbolc. Imbolc suggests that somewhere buried in the detritus of ten units of blood, bowl resection, rehab, multiple imaging studies, the stent placement, and continuing insults from Sjogren’s and weight loss lies a lamb, or at least a ewe’s egg. Finding it will not be, hasn’t been easy; but, I believe it’s there, that the Spring Equinox will find us moving forward into a new growing season for Kate’s soul and her body. May it be so.
Ugh
Imbolc Waxing Moon
Being sick. Ugh. Spent more time in bed than I wanted to. Felt like, as Kate used to say of herself, a sluggard. Nausea, bit of dizziness, general feeling of crummy. Low energy. Ack.
This is day 4. Actually felt better yesterday than I do right now. Since I have Jewish Studies on Sunday, an adult education event on Tuesday, and religious school on Wednesday, I’m hoping I get that, oh my god, I don’t feel sick anymore bump up in energy, today. Latest, tomorrow am. In cosmic terms not a big deal. Nothing serious on the line here except bodily discomfort.
Here’s something a little weird. On Sunday this former Presbyterian Vikings fan will lead a class on Wisdom Literature and the Rise and Fall of Jerusalem. Why weird? Well, somebody told on Wednesday that this Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday. Oh? Really? Huh.
Gertie was up in the loft while Sandy, our housecleaner, worked. She tends to bite them. Because I was in bed most of the day, she was up here alone. She took the opportunity to eat all the extra dog treat pretzels, half of the kangaroo treats for Rigel, all of my Red Rocks Toffee, and to shred the paper plates and plastic wear I bought for Jewish Studies Sunday. A bit miffed, I’d say.
Kate got out again yesterday. This time to the post office and King Sooper’s, frequent stops for us. She missed escaping the house on Thursday. Glad to hear it. Today Kate, Gabe, and I will probably go to a movie. The biggest outing yet.
This is a slow, so slow process with Kate. Good things, not so good things. The big wins over the last year were her shoulder replacement and the stent insertion. Both stopped long term aggravation. The rest is muddy. Weight. Food. Appetite. Stamina. Breath. Sometimes better, sometimes not.
Meanwhile my life has narrowed in focus, attending to her, the house, the dogs, trying to keep up with previous commitments at CBE.
Virions. Damn them.
Imbolc Waxing Moon
This morning the waning crescent moon had its horns turned up toward Venus and Jupiter, Saturn hovered beneath it. Antares and Scorpio glittered beside them. We have much less light pollution than the Denver metro.
My no good, very bad, terrible horrible day on Wednesday gave way to a morning spent in bed with a substantial fever, chills, generally icky feelings. I was sick on Wednesday. No wonder the end of the day felt like I was swimming through jello. Today, not so bad, but I’m going to rest today, too. Illness didn’t occur to me on Wednesday because it’s been such a long time since my last one, maybe a year and a half, maybe more. That streak’s over.
At this age I felt relieved when the sickness declared itself. There are other possibilities. Blocked arteries around the heart, in particular. One passing the threshold into active blockage could reduce blood flow to the heart, make me tired.
Instead, a virus. The zombies of the pathology world. Bits of DNA or RNA floating around as virions, ready to pierce host cells and use their internal machinery to create more virus. Wish they’d skipped evolving, been an evolutionary dead end. But, no. As a current host, I can say that these are not organisms you want to invite to the party. They’re gate crashers and they leave a mess behind.
What would have been an inconvenience in my 30’s or 40’s raises issues of mortality in my 70’s. What if I get pneumonia? What if I can’t shake it? Is it really an illness or are the symptoms coming from something more systemic? Am I gonna die? A good run while it lasted. Goodbye.
Or not. I feel better, though not well, this morning. I’m glad because the degree of fatigue I felt on Wednesday could have been the harbinger for a much more serious issue. When the fever came yesterday, I felt the relief I described above, but I also felt a mild level of fear. Will this escalate? I’m not frail, in fact I’m in excellent health for a man of my age; so, I should still be able to ride out even a moderate to serious illness, but I’d sure rather not.
What a pair, we said to each other more than once yesterday.