Category: illness

What I’m Still Learning…

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I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as making a ‘life.’

I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.

I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~Maya Angelou

…think of all the things you’ve learned over the years—
the hard and the holy,
the mysteries that will always remain mysterious,
the clean edges of truth,
the soft edges of every kindness given or received,
the way trouble and wonder will continue to show up, sometimes leaving us beached and breathless with uncontainable joy or unutterable sorrow.
I think of all the times I was knocked to my knees by a beautiful and brilliant flash of the completely obvious.
~Carrie Newcomer from A Gathering of Spirits

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
~Julie Kasdorf– “What I Learned from my Mother”

Five years ago today, I wrapped up 45 years of uninterrupted medical training and doctoring.

Even while bearing three children and going through a few surgeries myself, I was not away from patient care for more than twenty consecutive days at any one time. This was primarily out of my concern that, even after a few weeks, I would forget all that I’d ever known.

Indeed, half of what I learned in medical school and residency nearly fifty years ago has evolved, thanks to new discoveries and clarifying research. I worried if I actually stepped away from doctoring for an extended time, then return to see patients again, I would be masquerading as a physician rather than be the real thing.

I couldn’t fathom a day when I could actually investigate a medical dilemma by typing a few words in a search engine on a computer screen. Instead, I researched through opening my encyclopedic collection of reference textbooks along with huge notebooks of “Scientific American Updates,” a monthly process of throwing out old articles to be replaced by newly discovered data. That is how I kept learning before the computer replaced books and pen and paper…

If being truly honest, even now, those who spend their professional lives providing medical care to others always share this concern: if a patient only knew how much we don’t know and will never know, despite everything we DO know, there would really be no trust left for us at all.

With so much rapidly changing medical information at everyone’s fingertips and computer screens, who needs a trained physician when there are so many other resources – many sketchy and opportunistic – for seeking health care advice?

Yet, I am convinced most patients really do want doctors to share the best information they have available at any point in time rather than rely on the latest internet algorithm and so-called “experts.”

I know over forty years of clinical experience gave me an eye and an ear for the subtle signs and symptoms that no googled website or AI app or virtual doc-in-the-box can discern: the avoidance of eye contact, the tremble of the lip as they spoke, the barely palpable rash, the hardly discernible extra heart sound, the fullness over an ovary, the slight squeak in a lung base. These are things I was privileged to see and hear, about which I made decisions together with my patients. 

The work I did over four decades was a reflection of a continual learning process; out of my natural caution, I was honest when I didn’t know what the diagnosis was, nor the best treatment, but committed to doing my best to find out.

Continual learning – what I was trained to do for thousands of days and many more thousands of patients during my professional life, while passing a comprehensive certification examination every few years to prove my study and changing fund of knowledge.

Since retiring, the help I offer no longer means writing a prescription for a medication, or performing a minor surgery. I have to simply offer up me for what it’s worth, without a stethoscope.

Now I aim to be the best mom and grandma and friend I can be.
I can press my hand into another’s, hug when needed, smile and listen and nod and sometimes weep when someone has something they need to say. No advanced degree or certification required.

Someday, hopefully not too soon, I will die happy knowing I chose this with my life: still learning and still caring.

Cut and Tumble, Sickness and Weeping

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God keep my jewel this day from danger;
From tinker and pooka and bad-hearted stranger.
From harm of the water, from hurt of the fire.
From the horns of the cows going home to the byre.
From the sight of the fairies that maybe might change her.
From teasing the ass when he’s tied to the manger.
From stones that would bruise her, from thorns of the briar.
From evil red berries that wake her desire.
From hunting the gander and vexing the goat.
From the depths o’ sea water by Danny’s old boat.
From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping;
May God have my jewel this day in his keeping.
~Winifred Lett (1882-1973) “Prayer for a Child“

photo by Nate Gibson

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.
~C.S. Lewis

I want to make a case for the Lighthouse Parent, a term that the pediatrician Kenneth Ginsburg and others have used. A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide, providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey. 

Like a lighthouse that helps sailors avoid crashing into rocks, Lighthouse Parents provide firm boundaries and emotional support while allowing their children the freedom to navigate their own challenges. They demonstrate that they trust their kids to handle difficult situations independently. The key is learning when to step back and let them find their own way.
~Russell Shaw from “Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids”

celebrating a long-awaited pregnancy – 1985

This “prayer for a child” has hung on the wall in our home for four decades, purchased when I was pregnant with our first of three children.

The drawing of the praying mother watching her toddler leave the safety of the home to explore the wide world addressed my worries as a new mama. I would glance at it daily, knowing the world is full of peril; it would remind me of God’s care for our family through every scary thing, real or imagined.

It helped me smile at a few of my irrational fears. Tinkers and pookas and fairies were unlikely to find our children in our rural landscape but at times the world seems full of “black-hearted strangers” and other threats, known and unknown.

Decades later, I continue to pray for our grown children and their God-given spouses, and for six adventuresome grandchildren.

I pray because I can’t not pray, and because I’m helpless without the care and compassion of our sovereign God for each of us, especially when we are brand new, completely dependent and helpless. He is a true “lighthouse” in our lives,

May I be changed by my prayers, molded into a “grand” mother and a light for our half dozen cherished grandchildren, each a jewel in His keeping.

A Farmgirl from the Palouse

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…I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
~Ada Limón from “The Raincoat”

My mother, Elna Schmitz Polis, was born 106 years ago today in the lonely isolation of a Palouse wheat and lentil farm in eastern Washington. She drew her first breath in a two story white house located down a long poplar-lined lane and nestled in a draw between the undulating hills.

She attended a one room school house until 8th grade, located a mile away in the rural countryside, then moved in with her grandmother “in town” in Rosalia to attend high school, seeing her parents only a couple times a month.

It was a childhood which accustomed her to solitude and creative play inside her mind and heart – her only sibling, an older brother, was busy helping their father on the farm. All her life and especially in her later years, she would prefer the quiet of her own thoughts over the bustle of a room full of activities and conversation.

Her childhood was filled with exploration of the rolling hills, the barns and buildings where her father built and repaired farm equipment, and the chilly cellar where the fresh eggs were stored after she reached under cranky hens to gather them. She sat in the cool breeze of the picketed yard, watching the huge windmill turn and creak next to the house. She helped her weary mother feed farm crews who came for harvest time and then settled in the screened porch listening to the adults talk about lentil prices and bushel production. She woke to the mourning dove call in the mornings and heard the coyote yips and howls at night.

She nearly died at the age of 13 from a ruptured appendix, before antibiotics were an option. That near-miss haunted her life-long, filling her with worry that it was a mistake that she survived that episode at all. Yet she thrived despite the anxiety, and ended up, much to her surprise, living a long life full of family and faith, letting go at age 88 after fracturing a femur, which also broke her will to live.

As a young woman, she was ready to leave the wheat farm behind for college, devoting herself to the skills of speech, and the creativity of acting and directing in drama, later teaching rural high school students, including a future Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Carolyn Kizer. She loved words and the power and beauty they wielded.

Marrying my father was a brave and impulsive act, traveling by train to the east coast only a week before he shipped out for almost 3 years to the South Pacific to fight as a Marine in WWII. She must have wondered about the man who returned from war changed and undoubtedly scarred in ways she could not see or touch. They worked it out mostly in silence, as rocky as it must have been at times.

Her episode of Graves’ disease, before I was born, must have been agonizing for both of them and my older sister, as her storm of thyroid overactivity resulted in months of sleepless full time panic. Only thyroid removal saved her, but radical surgeries take their toll.
Their marriage never fully recovered.

In their reconciliation after a painful divorce decades later, I finally could see the devotion and mutual respect between life companions who had finally found shared purpose and love.

As a wife and mother, she rediscovered her calling as a steward of the land and a tireless steward of her family, gardening and harvesting fruits, vegetables and us children. When I think of my mother, I most often think of her tending us children in the middle of the night whenever we were ill; her over-vigilance was undoubtedly due to her worry we might die in childhood, as she almost did.

She never did stop worrying until the last few months. As she became more dependent on others in her physical decline, she gave up the control she thought she had to maintain through her “worry energy” and became much more accepting about the control the Lord maintains over all we are and will become.

I know from where my shyness comes, my preference for birdsongs rather than radio music, my love of naps, and my tendency to be serious and straight-laced with a twinkle in my eye. This is my German-Palouse side–immersing in the quietness of solitude, thrilling to the sight of the spring wheat flowing like a green ocean wave in the breeze and appreciating the warmth of rich soil held in my hands.

My mother came from that heritage and it is the legacy she left with me. I am forever grateful for her unconditional love to the end of her life; her willingness to share the sunshine and warmth of her nest whenever we felt the need to fly back home and shelter, overprotected but safe nonetheless, under her wings.

Taking a Few More Steps to the Light

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And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?”  

And he looked around to see who had done it. 

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 

And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Mark 5: 30, 32-34

…the whole experience of compline is in some way a touching of the hem of Christ’s garment: something has been given, something disclosed. And the person holding a candle at compline may hear a call, and make a journey, as another stressed woman once did, from touching the hem of Christ’s garment to meeting him face to face.

… just occasionally, it opens into deeper things, on to more ultimate questions. Just occasionally, there is an opening of heart and soul, which in some sense the liturgy itself has made possible; and then it is that, just sometimes, someone takes a few more steps on that journey from the hem of his garment to the light of his countenance.
~Malcolm Guite from Poet’s Corner

Most of us are like that desperate woman
hoping for healing by reaching out
to touch the hem of His robe –
ashamed to be so needy,
hoping to go unnoticed,
not actually wanting to bother anyone,
but still helpless –
so very helpless, but not without hope.

He knows when we reach out in desperation;
He feels it.

So He lifts us up as we begin our journey to His light –
from a touch of His hem to seeing His face.

It starts with reaching out.
It starts with taking a few more steps.
It starts with hope in the Light.

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That with Thy wonted favour Thou
Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.

From all ill dreams defend our eyes,
From nightly fears and fantasies;
Tread under foot our ghostly foe
That no pollution we may know.

O Father, that we ask be done
Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son,
Who with the Holy Ghost and Thee
Dost live and reign eternally.

Ordinary as Unmown Grass

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I will seek a letter at the mailbox’s red flag, how many more times?
Walk this puddled gravel drive with the dog and cat, how many more times?

Dislike the sight, row of brown molehills risen like my own petty complaints?
Be here to hear the just-before-spring birds tune up, how many more times?

My life, ordinary as unmown grass, tattered and dormant in fencerows….
Sons asleep upstairs under quilts pieced of castoff jeans, how many more times?

Witness sunrise over the barn, frost on the grass, deer by the pines? Think of “Jesus asking that man, Do you want to be made well? How many more times?

Think of Him asking me. Of walking back to the mailbox in late afternoon,
of pulling it open, reaching in again, how many more times?
~Daye Phillippo “Ordinary Ghazal” from Thunderhead

…it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again. Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
God, grant me the grace of a normal day.
~Billy Coffey

I tend to get complacent in my daily routines, confident in the knowledge that tomorrow will be very much like yesterday.

I look out on plenty of unmown grass.

The reality is there is nothing ordinary about the events of this day or any other – it might have been otherwise and some day it will be otherwise.

I am reminded to stop rushing, take a look around and actually revel in the quiet moments of daily work, chats, walks, meals, and sleep, and yes, lawn mowing. As both of us suffered, one after the other, through a spring cold which interrupted our plans and schedules, we still knew how remarkable it is to just be here living life together.

We are granted peace even, maybe especially, when not feeling well.

Christ came to earth to remind us to dwell richly in the experience of these moments, to live, wanting to be well, despite our limitations.

God knows, such is a foretaste of the heaven which is to come.

Come and See: Do You Want to Get Well?

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Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”  The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

John 5: 1-18

I am overcome by ordinary contentment.
What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.
~Jane Kenyon from “Having it out with Melancholy”

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend 
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. 
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must 
Disappointment all I endeavour end? 

…birds build—but not I build; no, but strain, 
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. 
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Thou art indeed just, Lord”

It seems so obvious: someone lying on a mat near a healing pool for 38 years – an Old Testament reference to Israel’s wilderness journey and inability to enter the promised land – wants to get well.

Jesus knows this man’s heart is troubled.

Yet Jesus asks this paralyzed man whether he wants to be healed. Not if he is ready to be healed, but whether he wants to be well. It doesn’t seem like a hard question to answer, but at times in our own lives, we too may not feel ready for a transformation to wholeness?

Maybe we really aren’t sure what “well” and being healed will mean to our lives. We wander in the wilderness of weak, struggling bodies and minds, hoping and praying to be led into a promised land of no illness or limitations. But often we aren’t sure. We only know there are many compelling reasons – no help, no hope, isolation from family and friends – to explain why we are stuck where we are.

We can’t imagine it being any other way.

Some are born with disabilities determining what they can and can’t do, knowing no other existence than to be dependent on others for help and care. Others develop illness or experience injury that changes everything for them, creating overwhelming needs leading to profound discouragement.

Some try anything and everything, proven or unproven, to find relief from their symptoms, to find their way out of their wilderness — sometimes with lasting results, often with no improvement.

Jesus is asking this man and asking us: are you ready to live a full life that takes you beyond your current limits? If so, we are transformed from who we have been, to someone we and others may no longer recognize.

It is a scary prospect to pick up our mat, carry our own baggage and walk. But when Jesus enters our life and asks us, point blank, if we want to get well, to become whole, to leave our wilderness behind and join Him – we should not hesitate – wasting precious time explaining all the reasons it hasn’t worked so far.

Jesus is ready, willing and able. And we will be transformed.

…our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Romans 8:18

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…



Bring to Light the Mystery: It Could Be Otherwise

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I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced
a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong
its appetite for the luxury of the sun!
~Jane Kenyon from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems

This is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.

Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.

…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. 

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.

The spring comes slowly down the way, but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.

We can. 

We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on…to which He is calling us.

It remains with us whether to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C. S. Lewis from “God in the Dock”

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
~Jane Kenyon from “Otherwise”

A year ago today, I was shocked (thankfully, not literally!)
to learn my coronary arteries were significantly occluded with plaque,
despite years of daily barn chores, and blood pressure/lipid level management.

Stents were placed emergently to open the two critical blockages.
I began more powerful medications with a new awareness
as I go about the mundane routines of my day –
someday – maybe soon, perhaps a decade or more –
it would be otherwise.

I celebrate my year of opening my heart each day to the Son.

My appetite is strong for light and warmth,
to leave discouragement behind.
My desire is to delay death,
piercing through the decay
to flourish among the living,
to open wide my face
to the luxury of a luminous grace freely given.

A year ago today I turned a corner out of darkness,
being given more time to choose Light.
Grateful, I still follow the pathway of the Son.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Come and See: Take Him At His Word

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After the two days he left for Galilee.  (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

 “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

 “Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.

This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.
John 4: 43-54

Faith is to believe what you do not see;
the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
Hebrews 11:1

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
~Christina Rossetti “Up-Hill”

This life of ours can be an arduous and often troubled journey.

We might feel like we are never able to reach a point of rest in our uphill climb through obstacles and hazards. It can be so dark we’re not sure we can see the road, much less where we’re headed.

When a royal official makes the 20 hour journey uphill to find Jesus to ask him to heal and save his son, he surely was at a point of desperate need. He is so convinced by the stories of Jesus’ power to heal, he would go wherever needed to make that happen for his dying son.

Yet he discovers Jesus’ power is not just in His hands, but in His words.

Our faith is not just based on what we see with our eyes,
but in our trust and belief in Jesus, who is the Word.

When we are faced with that up-hill journey through troubled times, we will not be left stranded, lost and waiting by the roadside. Many have gone on before us, and those faithful are ready and waiting to help walk alongside us and give us encouragement to keep going.

There is a place waiting for wayfarers like us.

Jesus speaks the healing of the son
and the royal official takes Him at His Word.

No longer is that official merely politically powerful; he descends back down the road to his home spreading the word to all around him about the far greater power of Jesus.

There is salvation through the Word to those who believe. We all are weary travelers welcomed with open arms as the uphill road points us to the best home of all.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

Lyrics by Lori McKenna:

When the road under your feet is dark and feels wrong
And you find yourself lost and all your confidence gone
And the stars over your head through the clouds won’t be revealed
I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill

When the weight of your troubles send your knees into the dirt
And all your loyal distractions only magnify the hurt
When lonesome doesn’t quite define how so alone you feel
I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill

Hard times and landslides are part of life I know
Like they say, none of us get out alive
Whatever ocean you’re swimming across
However valley low
Whatever mountains you climb
I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill

Blessed are the times filled with sun, surrounded by your friends
Those days when all the new roads wait right where the old roads end
And should you wake up to Everest right outside your windowsill
I’ll walk with you even if it’s uphill

Hard times and landslides are part of life God knows
We all got some mountains to climb
Whatever ocean you’re swimming across
However valley low
I’m right here, I’ve been right here all this time
And I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill

We Have a Shelf Life

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If you read the fine print it clearly states
that everything is grace.
Under figure 3A the description reads
This breath, in fact, is a gift. 
And further down:
This body, you’ve no doubt observed, will go away.
This flesh has a shelf-life.
One footnote says,
As a best case, the body will last a century. 
Though it more commonly fails between
seven and eight decades into use.*

There is a haunted asterisk on that fact.

*Sometimes, for no reason found in this book,
the body fails sooner. After only days or months
or too few orbits around the sun, 
through sudden impact or subtle violence of disease, 
a lifespan is condensed dramatically. 
We cannot find an explanation, as noted above.

At the end of the chapter is a summary
with discussion questions
for further examination:

We don’t get forever. 
We are not entitled to years. 
We may get one hundred.
We may not. 
There is no reason for this. 
There is nothing to fear. 

What does this have to do with the reality
of a sunrise peeking through the blinds? 
How does this impact the crisp sweetness
of a crimson apple in autumn?
Which is greater: poetry or success? 
What is heavier: despair or the tiny hairs
on the surface of a raspberry?
What is enough: this moment or the sound of the dog
breathing deeply in the chair across the room?
~Connor Gwin “The Fine Print”

The main thing is this– 
when you get up in the morning 
you must take your heart in your two hands. 
You must do this every morning. 
Then talk softly to your heart, don’t yell. 
Say anything but be respectful. 
Say–maybe say, Heart, little heart, 
beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. 
You can whisper also, Remember, remember. 
~Grace Paley from “The Art of Growing Older” in  Just As I Thought

A year ago this week, I was recovering from a prolonged bout of bronchitis and felt my chest was sore when I went out to do my barn chores in the cold winter air. Only it wasn’t because of my persistent cough that my chest hurt.

It was my heart, but I was not listening to it.
I was not holding it gently enough and it let me know.

After a year of living with the knowledge that I have a limited shelf life, extended by the emergency placement of two coronary artery stents, I’m much more respectful with my heart. I’m treating it more kindly now that I know it was showing some wear and tear.

Cardiac rehab followed by medically-monitored exercise continues to help. Blood pressure meds, statins, blood thinners help. Weight loss always helps. I can do my barn chores in cold winter air without my chest hurting.

I’ve gained a new awareness of how everything I took for granted is no longer a given. Every breath is a gift. Every sunrise and sunset is a gift. Encouragement and prayer from my family, friends, church and readers around the world especially helps.

I’ve had an extension on my warranty for now after a stunning repair. My heart won’t forget, and never again will I.

God, in fine print, reminds me regularly: everything is grace – there is nothing to fear.

Surviving Worry

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With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don’t speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do not hold with that –
~T.S. Eliot from “The Ad-Dressing of Cats”

A true story I wrote 15 years ago…

Considering myself a Dr. Doolittle of sorts, always talking to the animals, I reach out to pet a stray cat sitting quietly outside our barn one evening while doing barn chores. This is a grayish fluffy cat I see around the barns every few months or so–he doesn’t put in frequent appearances and reminds me of a kitten we raised on this farm a few years back, though his markings are a bit different, so I know it is not our cat.

We have 6 cats to pet here who claim “us” as their home and family, so there is no lack of fur balls to love. There are probably that many more who hang out,  now and then, considering our farm fair game and looking for an occasional free meal. This cat just seemed to need a reassuring pat at that moment – or maybe I needed the reassurance. 

Wrong.

I found myself with a cat attached to my wrist by teeth and claws. It took a bit of an effort to shake him off and he escaped into the night. I then surveyed the damage he inflicted and immediately went to wash my wounds. They were deep punctures near my wrist joint–not good.  Lucky for me I was up to date on my tetanus booster.

By the next day the wounds were getting inflamed and quite sore. I know all too well the propensity of cat bites to get badly infected with Pasteurella multocida, a “bad actor” bacteria that can penetrate deep tissues and bone if not treated with aggressive antibiotics. After getting 6 opinions from my colleagues at clinic, all of whom stood solemnly shaking their heads at my 12 hour delay in getting medical attention,  I surrendered and called my doctor’s office. I pleaded for a “no visit” prescription as I was up to my eyeballs in my own patients, and he obliged me. I picked up the antibiotic prescription during a break, sat in the car ready to swallow the first one and then decided to wait a little longer before starting them, knowing they wallop the gut bacteria and cause pretty nasty side effects. I wanted to see if my own immune system might just be sufficient.

So the bacterial infection risk was significant and real but I was prepared to deal with it. For some reason I didn’t really think about the risk of rabies until the middle of the night when all dark and depressing thoughts seem to come real to me.

I don’t know this cat. I doubt he has an owner and it is highly unlikely he is rabies vaccinated. My own cats aren’t rabies vaccinated (and neither am I) though if I was a conscientious owner, they would be.  Yes, we have bats in our barns and woods and no, there has not been a rabid bat reported in our area in some time.

But what if this cat were potentially infected with the rabies virus but not yet showing symptoms? Now my mind started to work overtime as any good neurotic will do. Last summer a rabid kitten in North Carolina potentially exposed 10 people when it was passed around a softball tournament, no one aware it was ill until it died and was tested. Lots of people had to have rabies shots as a result.

This cat who had bitten me was long gone–there was no finding him in the vast woods and farmland surrounding us. He couldn’t be kept in observation for 10 days and watched for symptoms, nor could he be sacrificed to examine his neural tissue for signs of the virus.

I called the health department to ask what their recommendation was in a case like this. Do they recommend rabies immune globulin injection which should have been done as soon as possible after the bite? I talked with a nurse who read from a prepared script for worried people like me. 

Feral cats in our area have not been reported to have rabies nor have skunks or raccoons. Only local bats have been reported to have rabies but not recently. This cat would have had to have been bitten by a rabid bat to be rabid. This was considered a “provoked” attack as I had reached out to pet the cat. This was not a cat acting unusually other than having wrapped itself around my arm.  No, the Health Dept would not recommend rabies immune globulin in this situation but I was free to contact my own doctor to have it done at my own expense if I wished to have the series of 5 vaccination shots over the next month at a cost of about $3000. Yes, there would be a degree of uncertainty about this and I’d have to live with that uncertainty but she reassured me this was considered a very low risk incident.

I knew this was exactly what I would be told and I would have counseled any patient with the same words. Somehow it is always more personal when the risk of being wrong has such dire consequences. 

I could see the headlines “Local Doctor Dies From Rabid Cat Bite”.

This is not how I want to be remembered.

Rabies is one of the worst possible ways to die. The cases I’ve read about are among the most frightening I’ve ever seen in the medical literature. Not only is it painful and horrific but it puts family and care providers at risk as well. It also has an unpredictable incubation period of a up to a month or two, even being reported as long as a year after an exposure. What a long time to wait in uncertainty. It also has a prodrome of several days of very nonspecific symptoms of headache, fever and general malaise, like any other viral infection before the encephalitis and other bad stuff hits. I was going to think about it any time I had a little headache or chill.  This was assuredly going to be a real test of my dubious ability to stifle my tendency for 4-dimensional worries.

I decided to live with the low risk uncertainty and forego the vaccination series. It was a pragmatic decision based on the odds. My wounds slowly healed without needing antibiotics. For ten days I watched for my attacker cat whenever I went to the barn, but he didn’t put in an appearance. I put out extra food and hoped to lure him in. It would have been just be so nice to see his healthy face and not have to think about this gray cloud hanging over me for the next few months, as I wondered about every stray symptom. 

No gray kitty to be seen.

Almost a month has gone by now and he finally showed up last night.  I could have grabbed him and hugged him but I know better now. No more Dr. Doolittle.

He is perfectly fine and now so am I, cured of a terminal case of worry and hypochondria which is not nearly as deadly as rabies but can be debilitating and life shortening none the less.

From now on, I’ll be contented to just “talk to the animals” like any good Dr. Doolittle.  I don’t need to cuddle them.