Thoughts on Hurt and Healing

Geesh, where to start? 

Sometimes try as we might to live a good life, think good thoughts, to love, and to be positive forces in the world, things in our lives become difficult and it seems like our path in life is stagnating or straying from the way we would like it to proceed.  I know this happens to everyone on occasion, but those of who live with depression or ongoing situations of illness or injury often have to work more diligently to stay on the track or path down which we would like our lives to proceed. 

Hubby was out of town last week which usually gives me time to catch up on things.  But this time I was grumbly because Hubby got to see the grand babies via a slight detour on the trip route, and I didn't.  It was sort of scary as a tree fell during a storm and broke through the roof of their cottage.   I was busy putting together a new website for a friend but the close call made me want to see the babies all the more. I was watching the grand puppy a lot as Zilla was prepping to take the GRE.  But the pup isn't allowed in the part of the house where my kitties reside and my office is in that part of the house.  The pup chewed up the top of an antique rocker of mine.   Grrrr.   I'm a bit obsessive about my "things."  Then my trainer wasn't at the gym when I went for my personal training session. Double Grrrr.  And to top it all off I was having a really difficult time posting every day to my political blog which is the blog I was trying the Nablopomo challenge to post everyday.  I missed a day last week. Then my dear Zilla had our truck and got a $175 parking ticket which because she is a student and not making much money, I had to pay.    I'm just not a happy camper. Bitch. Gripe. Whine. Moan.  A couple little things I can handle.  Many I start to feel overwhelmed.  When I'm overwhelmed I tend toward inaction.

I know I'm fortunate, but at times I lose track of that.  Then yesterday, I, along with all of my famil,y got a wake up call.  My beautiful step daughter and her talented husband and the remarkably gifted twin babies were still at the lake cottage in Michigan that Hubby had just visited.    Son-in-law was out on the lake in a kayak getting a few moments of quiet alone time in the late afternoon calm before sunset.  His kayak was run over by a motor boat piloted by a 17 year old boy.  His right leg and foot were severely injured.  Mangled would be a better word. I think there are parts of his leg and foot missing.  He was in surgery for hours and hours at a level one trauma center in Kalamazoo.  They were not very optimistic about being able to save the foot.  Today though, they are getting good pulses in the foot.  He can feel most of it and I guess some movement.  No toe wiggling yet.   They will be doing more surgeries to remove bone fragments and unhealthy tissue.   He is a University Lecturer and a poet of some notariety, and a wonderful addition to our family (after Hubby got over calling him Poet Boy which is how scientist Hubby referred to the father of his grandbabies until the wedding) but it isn't clear that he will be able to teach in just a few weeks, he will probably be undergoing reconstructive surgeries for a while.  He is alive and the babies have their daddy even though they can't come in to the ICU to see him now.

I have felt so damn fortunate all year, and am still trying to be positive... and I feel like an absolute whiner when I zip over to The Burrow and read the daily ups and downs of a Tucson blogger who has had more challenges and adversity this year than anyone should ever have to experience.   Last week she mentioned me and a phrase I'd posted on her blog in a comment and apparently I had grasped, somehow, how she was feeling after the 6 month anniversary of the Tucson shootings, in which she was injured and in which she lost a dear young friend.  All of Tucson aches, but no one can know how she feels.  I take it as a good sign that she is saying, "No" to some invitations to events.  Sometimes it is okay to just pull the covers over your head, sleep in, then sit in your garden and drink tea all afternoon; or to work in your backyard garden rather than to greet the world.  I have denied obvious things in my life, and I've wallowed in self pity, but as always, knee jerk reactionary responses were not healthy ones.  After experiencing a wound, emotional or physical, it takes time to get rid of the adrenaline and respond to life as a whole human being again without responding to the wound. Sometimes you have to heal physically before you can begin to heal your heart and soul.  It is different for everyone and varies through time for the same individual. 

Healing never ends.  Each day we wake we are slightly different than the way we were when we awakened the previous day.  That different person might approach healing from a different perspective and need to act or react in a different way than the person we were yesterday did. 

Not all wounds are the same.  I won't ever say they are.  I have experienced wounds to my heart and soul, and senseless injuries to my body, some of which were orchestrated by those closest to me who were supposed to love me and protect me. I've been thinking and writing a lot about this topic as I'm working on a book about healing from medical child abuse and healing the series of misfortunes that followed further down the path the abuse readied for me.

I wish I could make people feel better, but only people themselves can make adjustments that change feelings and perceptions. If I can somehow help someone by letting him or her know that they are not the first person to walk the lonely path of healing, and that there are others who, even though they have never met, are with them in spirit.  I believe that we can make a difference, and that we make differences to people all the time, most of which we won't ever know about. Holding on to that belief is difficult, but essential for those of us who have been wounded.  There is no reason for the injury happening, but there can be reason created from our reaction to the injury.  

TV and Smoothies Help with Recovery from Outpatient Surgery.

Friday was a unique day.  Woke up at 5 AM and was at the surgery reception desk at the University Med Center signing in at 6 AM for out patient septoplasmy, which is surgery on the septum.  Yawn.  I know, boarrrr-ring (Does anyone remember Jo Anne Worley on Laugh-In, or is my age showing?)  Check-in paperwork, wrist bands, possession stuffed into a plastic bag and given to my husband,  open air "gowns," intravenous catheter in hand,    I was wheeled into surgery exactly at 7:30AM where the last thing I remember is being asked to scoot over on to the narrow operating table.  I remember starting to brace myself with my hands and elbows so I could lift and scoot.... and then nothing until I regained consciousness in the recovery area. 

I'm still amazed by how different my perception of surgery is each time when I prepare to go under the knife.  This time I was thinking things like how much more trust I have in the facility after seeing how amazing UMC was as they treated the January 8th mass shooting victims.  The surgeon came in pre-op, glanced at my blood pressure, looked up a bit surprised, and said that I was the most relaxed person (this was pre-drugs) out of everyone in the pre-op area.  It is amazing how calming deep breathing a la yoga can be, that and far greater levels of trust.  The only thought I had that was negative was the thought that drug with which they put me under was probably the same thing that killed Michael Jackson.

Anyway, I'm surprised at how well I'm doing.   I basically just have plastic tubes in each nostril's airway to keep the airway open (sort of open, everything is sort of swollen  now) and there isn't a bunch of cotton shoved up each nostril.  I'm not bruised that I can see.  I was not nauseous after surgery and was home by 10:30 AM.

I'm so glad the recovery is going to be far less terrible than I had thought it would be.  Cuddling with my cats and drinking smoothies is not so bad.  My husband and daughter are taking great care of me and I love having my great aunt's antique brass school bell with which to summon them.  And there was great junk TV on to watch and chuckle over on the History Channel.   Some of the stuff that is said about Nostradamus and the Winter Solstice of 2012  is a hoot even without the perspective provided by oxycodone.

I cannot wait until I can breathe again without obstruction!

Unfolding Another Level of the Onion

Unfolding Another Level of the Onion

Once I conceptualized healing as the closing of a wound.   Then I was told to visualize healing as the opening of a bud to expose new layers of petals on a blossom.   I now use the peeling away of layers of an onion as my visual model for conceptualizing the process of healing. 

I find the model self-explanatory, but then I am using the schema.  So a bit of an examination of this model follows. 

Others have used the onion analogy for problem solving.    Even narrative text parsings have used the onion example.

Aroma
Onion models at first might seem to be framed as a negative experience.  They stink.  They make you cry.   No, no, no, no, no. 

They do not stink.  Walk into a house where onions are softening and browning in olive oil.  Ten to one someone will say, "Something smells good."   They are powerful, they are aromatic.

Aromas carry particles that perfuse the air and land on and travel with things that pass through the air carrying the aroma. 

Oils
The little beads of oil that transfer to and bond with the skin of anyone coming in direct contact with the raw, injured, onion are impossible to ignore and difficult to remove unless you interact with lemons. 
 
Layers
Aren't as simple as they seem.  There are membranes and layers of layers.  Some of these are very closely paired to the point where they seem to be one or at least inseparable.

You peel one away and another even more densely compressed layer is underneath. 

I may be referring to this analogy in posts throughout the next few weeks as I embark on a journey into a new phase of my life that I have been trying to enter for the past year.   I think I have found the door. 

Useful?  Let me know.