Imbolc and the Birthday Moon
Friday gratefuls: Big Snow. Shadow, the good Dog. Murdoch. My son. Seoah. Vince and Snow plowing. Feeling well rested. Pain doc. Chocolate. Hawai’ian dark chocolate with Macadamia Nuts. Chocolate coffee beans. Mary in Oz. Diane, healing. The rise of autocracies. King Donald. A third term. Prostate cancer.
BTW: If you are new to Ancientrails or have forgotten, we Jews are grateful for everything that happens since it is all part of the One. Doesn’t mean we like all of it or don’t want/need to change it. But even King Donald is part of our wonderful, amazing, grace filled World.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: My sacred community of family and friends
Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.
One brief shining: I looked up and noticed Shadow returning to her food bowl, first licking up crumbs, then trying to eat the yellow and purple Crocuses off the Portmerion pattern, digging her puppy teeth into the porcelain with a grinding sound, going after those flowers, puzzled by their intransigence. I will get her a raised set of stainless bowls, but not right now, so she’ll have to deal.
Dream last night: I had moved to a new city and decided to follow a long dirt road that wound far away from town, visible for a long way until it turned right around a low hill. Didn’t get very far because I hadn’t checked the gas gauge. E. I pulled to the side, got out and walked over to a rocky cliff.
Began to climb. I got the top after some effort and found a place that looked like it would have a gas can. When I went in, grandson Gabe was with me. Together we looked through a lot of different shelves, finally locating a gas can which I bought.
We walked back outside to fill it up and where I thought there would be gas pumps, there were none. Oh, well. We began walking, asking people if they knew where we could get gas. That’s all I remember.
Saw the pain doc on Wednesday. Rode up in the elevator with a guy saying he was heading in for the pain and torture spot. Turned out we were both going to Mountain View Pain Medicine. He to p.t., me to an initial consult.
When I explained my lower back pain, how it drastically limited my mobility and gave me excruciating pain after my drives to Boulder and back, the P.A. went into a dialogue that confused me at first.
I’m a rule follower, she said. If we’re going to work with you, you’ll have to do conservative therapy and come in here once a month. Then, I tumbled to it. Can my primary care doc manage my tramadol? Oh, yes. All the hesitation dropped away. This was a continuing, and welcome, echo of the oxycodone addiction crisis. No pain doc will risk their practice by giving away narcotics.
She suggested an MRI which I agreed to. Sometime in the next two weeks. Get to the root cause of my pain. Yes. What I’ve wanted for a while now. Admit to a little anxiety about incidental findings with this so careful an imaging tool since the source of my pain and the areas of my metastases coexist. Might find more cancer. Hope not.
Just a moment: Got into a funk yesterday. Ached. Pain less well controlled after no more Celebrex. Maybe a little tired. Fatigued by whatever: uncontrolled hyperthyroidism, very low testosterone, the effects of my cancer drugs. Wondering if the shortness of breath, weakness meant (against current evidence) my cancer was advancing. Thought about not going to mussar, too tired. Too much effort.
Nope. My kavannah, netzach, said, get up and go anyhow. What a good choice. I’d only missed two sessions, but I got some glad you’re backs. Geez. Also, my funk disappeared in the solvent of friendship, study, seeing and being seen.
Had a time afterward with Rabbi Jamie looking for a text to use for MVP in two weeks. We laughed a lot together. A good friend.
On the way home I remembered, as I sometimes have to do, that I am alive and loved today, in this February 21st life, no matter what the future holds. Be gone, funky thoughts!