Category: health

The Caterpillar’s Cocoon

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It’s been over a week since I posted last. Where does the time go? Time is operating on a different speed since we went into quarantine and I still don’t quite understand it. Yet, it feels good. My days have adopted a new rhythm.

Pretty much as soon as I started working from home I turned off my alarm clock. Now my alarm is the four leggeds that live with me. It’s a nice way way to be, to wake up slowly, spend a little time just cuddling before the dog needs to go outside or the cats start getting territorial.

I work my day with the creatures telling me when I need breaks by crawling up in my lap or starting to nose at me, encouraging me to step away from the computer for a little while to fill a toy with snacks or open the door to let someone out or to just pause and pet.

When work is over there’s time for long walks, guitar practice, crocheting, getting in touch with friends and family, writing, maybe some Ojibwe language practice, or some time to read or watch a movie. Night comes and sometimes I turn on a meditation video to fall asleep with. It’s a simple life, this time quarantine, but it feels good.

I know many are struggling a great deal and I feel empathy for them. For me, however, in many ways this has been a time of healing and renewal. I find myself continuing to hope that when the quarantine ends that it may find me like the caterpillar coming out of the cocoon, ready to spread my wings and fly into a new phase of life.

Stories of a Lifetime

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My father was a storyteller.  His head held memories of a lifetime.  So much joy and some sorrow too, it seemed he never forgot anything.  He loved to laugh and share the tales of his mischievous youth and didn’t mind sometimes letting out some of the deeper stories too, those painful memories that made him.  

I used to love hearing how he and some of the other boys rigged up the firecrackers in Uncle Jake’s old farm truck, thinking that their cousin was going to be the one using the truck that day.  His eyes would just sparkle as he laughed talking about how fast they ran and hid when Uncle Jake jumped out of that truck swearing mad and ready to get whoever had played that trick.  

Sometimes there were other stories too.  I remember once Dad told me about working on the neighbor’s farm as a young man.  He’d skipped one day. I don’t remember why, if he was sick or just in a teenage moment of not wanting to work, but he skipped that day and it changed his world.  His co-worker was driving the farm truck. If Dad had been there he would have been in the truck too. The young man backed up the truck not seeing the farmer’s young child behind him.  The little one, maybe three or four years old, was killed. Dad never forgave himself for missing work that day. He always wondered if he had been there, would he have seen the child? 

Stories, stories, so many stories, they tell us who we are.  Dad is still with us, but the stories are gone or at least they are jumbled and confused.  Having a parent with dementia is hard. Having a parent with dementia during the times of COVID-19 is even harder.  

My father lives in a memory care unit and, like most facilities now, is not allowed visitors.  His recognition of people over the phone is non-existent and video calling doesn’t make sense to him, so it is as if he is both here and not here at the same time.  It is almost a preparation for his passing to have him in this world and yet not be able to reach him in any way.  

I called him for Easter.  I knew the phone might be a challenge, but I had to try.  I couldn’t leave him alone for the holiday. The staff person told me he was sleepy, but she’d take the phone to him in the dining area.  I could hear her explaining to him that he had a phone call, then explaining to him that the thing she was sharing with him was a phone. She told him to hold it to his ear and to say hello.  I said “Hi Dad, it’s Amy. I just wanted to call you to say Happy Easter and to tell you that I love you.” I hoped that hearing my voice would help him understand and that he would say something.  He said nothing.  

The staff person came back on the phone and apologized to me saying that it seemed he just didn’t understand what the phone was.  I told her it was okay and asked that she just let him know that I called and just to tell him Happy Easter and the family loves him.  

I wish I could be there just to hold his hand.  I got to hold his hand at Christmas time when he cried because he wanted to go see his mother.  It broke my heart to hold the hand of my 91 year old father and tell him that grandma wasn’t with us anymore, but now all I have is the hope that he can join her soon and leave his confusion and sorrow behind, that hope and the stories of a lifetime. 

The Emotional Winter

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This may just be a short post, but it is a thought that I wanted to share before it gets lost somewhere in the cobwebs of my mind.

I was talking with one of my students earlier today. We were just chatting a bit about school and life and just how things were going for them these days. They were feeling rather down. It seems right now that’s how a lot my students are feeling and how a lot of other people I know are feeling too.

The student told me something that I had heard before from several others. They said that they were just trying to keep things going, keep everything normal, and just push on through. I said to them that I respected that approach, but things aren’t normal right now, why would doing the same thing as we do in a normal situation work?

Then I suggested that it’s like the seasons. Right now we’re in a sort of midwestern winter of reality. We can’t walk out in it in only our summer of self-care and expect not to be frozen and in deep pain. We need to wrap ourselves up in caring and gentleness right now if we are to do our work and face our reality. Our reality is there and needs to be faced. There is work to be done. We just have to prepare ourselves for the weather and sometimes just sit by the fire to keep our beings warm.

Using Time Wisely

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Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked the US as the most obese country in the world in 2019. The World Health Organization tells us that we are one of the most depressed countries in the world.

The US is among the highest CO2 producers in the world. We continually are dumping poisons everywhere. We are continually putting poisoning our own food and the water we drink. Why?

We have a fascinating opportunity right now. At other times people might pay thousands of dollars to go on retreats to step away from their regular day to day lives and step into something new. We’ve all been given the opportunity for free. Sure, maybe it doesn’t come with an exotic vacation spot or maybe we’re still doing a lot of our work from before and some new jobs too, but we’ve got something here. How can we use it?

I keep thinking of something a friend use to say. He’d be presenting to groups, talking about all sorts of important environmental issues of the day and he’d tell people. “Don’t worry about protecting the earth. The earth, she’ll be fine. It’s us that we need to that we need to be concerned about. We’re the ones who will no longer be able to drink the water. We’re the ones who will no longer be able to breathe the air. We’re the ones who will no longer have food to eat.”

He was right. I suspect that this virus is simply another warning. The warnings are getting bigger and more intense each one after the other. We need to figure this out. What can we do?

You are there in your personal retreat. How can you take this time to care for yourself body, mind, spirit, soul? How does your relationship to this place where we live, this earth change? How do we show her respect? How do we stop poisoning her and poisoning ourselves in the process? When we walk together again who will you be? Who will we all be?

Dreams

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This morning my thoughts are of dreams. I’ve always been a dreamer. I believe our sleeping lives tell us a great deal about our waking time sometimes it’s just difficult to figure out what it all means and what to do with it. As we settle into this time of isolation and slowing of our society, I wonder how our dreams will be? I wonder if the spirits might be heard more clearly as we allow our brains to quiet from the daily noise? I wonder if we’ll understand and listen?

I don’t always remember my dreams, but there are few from these past two weeks that are still floating in my head. In the first I was pregnant. My belly was large and round. I felt its warmth and cradled my about to be born child with love. I woke as the child was being born. The child was a new world. It was a beautiful moment for a forty-eight year old post-menopausal woman who’s never had a biological child. It feels like some directions to me, that I am to give birth to something. I don’t know what but I trust in the beauty and the good.

The second dream made me thankful for being able to awaken. I was in an old house, but it was new to me. I was there with an old friend. We were just moving in. I’d laid on a bed when I felt a weight down on me and couldn’t move. I could hear that Queen song, Under Pressure playing and forcing me down into the mattress. Then I awoke and for just a moment I was stuck there unable to move until I realized again where I was. It wasn’t quite a nightmare. I was able to wake up before it became one. I was somewhere between the old and the new and stuck there.

How are we all now in this place between the old and the new? Are we ready to give birth to a new beginning? What is it that we seek of ourselves and what is it that we seek in the world when this time of isolation is done? How are we preparing?

Dreams well my friends. Our dreams hold a lot of questions and a lot of answers.

Learning When School Is Closed

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So, the schools are closed. For some this is a challenge and it might even mean that learning is lost. For others I suspect it could the best thing that’s happened in 500 years.

I was just thinking this morning about some of my Native friends whose kids and grandkids aren’t in school right now, thinking about where those kids are instead. I realized they’re out at the sugarbush. They’re helping cook food for the family. They’re listening to their grandpa tell stories. Heck, some are even talking with their moms in their Native languages. It made me wonder what will happen to these children?

For over a hundred years Native children were stolen from their families and placed in boarding schools where their language, culture, and traditions were forcibly taken from them. When the boarding school era was winding down the federal government tried another tactic, taking funding from tribes and, in some cases, revoking the recognition of tribes making it impossible to maintain schools equal to that of predominately white areas. Yet, somehow the people survived. A great deal was lost, but much was retained.

If cultures can survive when children are torn away for generations and kept by their captors, what might happen if children can be held close and held with love and told the stories by their families? I can only hope that this illness that has struck the world might help us find the medicine we need.

I suspect the same is true regardless of who we are, Native or non-Native. Our children grow strong when they know their history, when they know who they are. Tell them the stories. Show them the way. The time out of school may be the best time to learn.

Another New Year and Greetings From the Mayo Clinic

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Well, a year has gone by and here I sit at the St. Mary’s Hospital campus of the Mayo Clinic reflecting on my goals of the past year and redefining my goals for next year. Here are last year’s goals.

  1. Writing at least 50 blog posts (here’s the 1st one!)
  2. Reading/ listening to 50 books ( I’m starting with “The Education of Will” by Patricia McConnell and “38 Nooses” by Scott W. Berg)
  3. Getting back on track with my healthy eating habits
  4. Running a 10k or 1/2 marathon (I haven’t decided yet, but I know more than 5k and probably not a full)
  5. learn to play guitar
  6. finish at least 3 or 4 knitting projects
  7. Get Buddy started with his therapy dog training
  8. Cutting my screen time significantly, especially facebook time

I met a few of them. I wrote more than 50 blog posts. I did okay with eating healthy most of the year. I went quite a while without lousy pizza and I did some time increasing my fruits and veggies too. I still need some work there, but I count that goal as met. I did finish a few small knitting and crochet projects, baby hats and blankets. I still need to send them off to charities though.

I learned some and had a few setbacks too. I’ve learned that sometimes seizures make it hard to focus on reading and I’ve been reminded that I like returning to the same old books over and over again. I forget stuff or maybe find new things in a second reading and some books are just simply comforting. I didn’t come close on that goal. I wasn’t on track, quite literally, for my running goal and then I blew it completely breaking my ankle in September. I’d like to return though, maybe just to a short race. Buddy still needs to get his good canine before he can do therapy dog training. Both are tough to find in Morris and right now I can’t drive to get training elsewhere. Screen time is still an issue that needs work. I set down the guitar in probably February again, apparently I need inspiration or maybe just a guide.

For this year, I think I want to simplify things just a little and name a few less goals. Maybe some of the others that didn’t happen last year will happen this year, but this is what I want to focus on.

  1. Getting my seizures to stop
  2. Getting to my goal weight
  3. Reading at least 12 books
  4. Cutting my screen time

That’s it. Let’s keep it simple and see where it goes. I wish all those reading this the best in the new year and good luck with your resolutions.

The Mayo Experience

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It’s been two days now at Mayo. Yesterday, I was at the clinic where I met with doctors, had an MRI, and got blood tests. I have decided I am not a fan of MRI machines, though I did make it through. I am happy to say that I didn’t sneeze while in it too. It was definitely a possibility as I have been hit with a head cold for this visit. I could just imagine sneezing and getting snot all over the inside of the machine and spraying into my face.

It was a tiring day. I was supposed to have a sleep deprived EEG in the afternoon so I’d only slept four hours the night before and those weren’t the most restful. So, I wasn’t at my best. But, it may have helped get me to today. Instead of the EEG yesterday the doctors scheduled me to have a multi-day EEG and video monitoring at the St. Mary’s Hospital.

I walked here early this morning. I tried to get the shuttle, but I wasn’t sure I had called it correctly, so it seemed better to just walk the couple blocks from Neuro Hospitality House. I am glad that I did. It’s good for me to walk and be outside, healthy for the spirit. I got signed in at 7:30 and by about 9 or 9:30 I was all hooked up. Within an hour or two I had a seizure just under a minute. It left me pretty confused. The techs came in immediately and were asking me questions. I couldn’t remember the name of the state where I live, Minnesota. I knew it was near Wisconsin and that it started with an M, but it took a while for me to say it. I couldn’t remember Rochester at all.

I’ve been twitching more throughout the day and pretty tired, but I don’t think I’ve had any more seizures yet. It’s been a relaxing day, just sitting and watching movies and napping. I tried reading right around the time of my seizure, but I couldn’t do it.

Staying in the hospital is weird. It brings back memories. I spent a lot of time in hospitals when I was a kid. My mom had cancer. She was diagnosed when I was six and died when I was twelve. She did a pretty amazing job being a mom from her bed. I celebrated my birthday by her bedside. I think it was my 12th. I still feel her with me as I am taking my turn laying in bed. It still feels like she’s here in my heart and taking care of me, assuring me that it will be okay.

We’ll see where things go from here. I am hoping for more of an update tomorrow.

Coming to the Mayo Clinic

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I have officially begun the new adventure. I am in Rochester, Minnesota at the Neuro Hospitality House. My first appointment at the Mayo Clinic will begin in just three and a half hours. I am really excited about this.

I’d say this step of the adventure really began yesterday morning. I’d spent the night in Sheboygan, Wisconsin finishing out my week with family with my last night sleeping on the couch at my sister Jean’s house. A bit after 6am, she and her husband Bob took me to the bus stop for my ride to Rochester. The bus never showed up. Thank goodness for caring family with flexible schedules! They changed up their day and drove me to Rochester, over four hours away. Arriving here I met the crew of patients currently staying at the House, a man with a fused spine and his wife and a woman who came here expecting spinal surgery and instead got a diagnosis of ALS. Later in the evening another gentleman with ALS who is hoping to be a part of some stem cell research happening at Mayo joined our crew. We now represent four states and include the east and west coasts as well as the Midwest.

Just in my short experience thus far I would recommend staying at places like the Neuro Hospitality House to anyone facing these types of medical experiences. Not only are they cheaper than staying at a hotel, but they are kind of homey and it is a really helpful thing to talk about stuff like perspectives on life with others who’ve had theirs changed by what they’ve been dealt.

This morning I am both excited for my appointment, wondering what this experience might bring, and simply tired. I have a sleep deprived EEG this afternoon so I was only allowed four hours of sleep last night. This is in hopes of generating seizures that they can catch and record. I am hoping that I don’t have one until this afternoon when I am hooked to that machine. Before then I have evaluations and other tests, and most fun, I will likely get a chance to have lunch with my old college housemate Julie who I haven’t seen in over twenty years. It should be a good day. Stay tuned for more updates!