I went to Portland to meet my daughter, when she was up visiting friends. I stayed with one friend for two nights and then picked up my daughter and took her to another friends’ house. They currently have an empty garage apartment.
My daughter was supposed to fly out Thursday, but the 10.8 inch snow dump happened on Wednesday night. My friends are on this road that is mostly gravel and steeper than it looks in this picture.
The tracks that you see are driveway. The line in the trees is the road.
My friend has a pickup and chains and left for work at 6:30. My daughter and I put my chains on my Scion, and tried the hill. We blew the left chain off twice and the right one was mostly off as well.
That was probably a good thing because her plane was cancelled and there were accidents all over town.
We spent 2 hours and 30 minutes on hold with the airline and got her rescheduled for Saturday at 11:30.
She left the next morning with my friend in his truck. He dropped her at the metro and she stayed with friends who live close to the airport and are on the metro line.
My friends and I tried my chains again on Saturday morning. B blew one chain off too and we figured that a link had to be locked in a certain way. He drove up the driveway and we followed in the truck. He drove along the road until we were down to where chains were not needed. I thanked them all and headed out. Down the road a little there were three more abandoned vehicles: a truck with chains on and two cars. There were still patches of ridged ice on the 405 bridge. It took from 10 am to 12:22 to get back to Washington State! So hooray for chains and friends!
I am watching a four part video from the UK about illness and trauma.
The first part is about how trauma memories are stored differently from regular memories. Regular memories are stored in files, like stories in a book or a library.
Trauma memories are stored in the amygdala and often are disjointed and broken up and have all of the sensory input from the worst parts, including the emotions.
The therapist is talking about healing: that our tendency is to turn away from the trauma, smooth it over and try to ignore it.
However, the amygdala will not allow this. It will keep bringing the trauma up. And that is actually its’ job, to try to warn and protect us from danger!
The therapist counsels finding a safe time and place and safe person (if you have one) and then making space for the trauma to come back up. One approach is to write out the story, going through that most traumatic part, but not stopping there. What happened next? Writing the story and then putting it aside. Writing it again the next day and doing this for four days. As the story is rewritten and has an ending, even if it is not a happy ending, the story is eventually moved from the amygdala to the regular files. People can and do heal. They may need a lot of time and help, but they can heal.
I am not saying that four days of writing stories is enough. That is one approach, but nothing works for everyone and people need different sorts of help. There are all sorts of paths to healing.
In my Family Practice clinic I would see people in distress. With some gentle prompting and offering space, they would tell me about trauma and things happening in their personal life or work life. Things that were feeling so overwhelming that they could not tell their families or friends and they just could not seem to process the feelings about it. I would keep asking what was happening and give them the space to tell the story. Many times when they reached the present they would stop. There would be a silence. Then I would say, “It seems perfectly reasonable that you feel terrible, frightened, horrified, grieved, whatever they were feeling, with that going on.” And there was often a moment where the person looked inwards, at the arc of the story, and they too felt that their feelings were reasonable.
I would offer a referral to a counselor. “Or you can come back. Do you want to come back and talk about it if you need to?”
Sometimes they would take the referral. Sometimes they would schedule to come back. But nearly half the time they would say, “Let me wait and see. I think I am ok. I will call if I need to. Let me see what happens.”
When a person goes through trauma, many people cut them off. They don’t want to hear about it. They say let it go. They may avoid you. You will find out who your true friends are, who can stand by you when you are suffering. I have trouble when someone tries to show up in my life and wants to just pretend that nothing happened. “Let’s just start from now and go forward.” A family member said that to me recently. Um, no. You do not get to pretend nothing happened or say, “I wanted to stay out of it.” and now show back up. No. No. You are not my friend and will not be. And I am completely unwilling to trade silence about my trauma for your false friendship.
Yet rather than anger, I feel grief and pity. Because this family member can’t process his own trauma and therefore can’t be present for mine. Stunted growth.
People can heal but they need help and they need to choose to do the work of healing.
This song is a darkly funny illustration: she may be trying to process past trauma, but the narrator doesn’t want anything to do with it. And he may not have the capacity to handle it. He may have his own issues that he has not dealt with. And maybe they both need professionals.
My feelings are not that complicated now I feel sorry for your need to be quite cruel Sorry and occasionally wonder how You justify acting like a stubborn mule a distillation of your treatment is quite clear you choose to keep the people you control promises mean nothing when you feel fear Telling yourself we’re evil takes a toll You feel free and safe when you axe another friend You feel that all your problems are at bay A new need immediately builds again Who will be the next victim of the day? Your world shrinks every day you live A stone cold heart forgetting how to give.
Sonnet 14
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Isn’t it an amazing tree? Complicated and yet forming an overall beautiful shape.
I wrote this in 2009.I don’t know why this gentleman comes to mind today. Partly because I have a friend in the hospital. She is in her 80s. When the doctors ask how she is, she says, “Fine.” I want to yell “Liar! She is NOT fine!” Luckily she has her daughter-in-law and me and her sons saying “She is NOT fine!”Sometimes people are very stoic and will not tell you that they are not fine.
When I was in residency we rotated through the Veterans Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Most of our patients were either very elderly or they were alcoholics or addicts in their 50s, starting to really go downhill medically.
One elderly patient is particular vivid in my memory. He was in his 80s and black. He was weak and had various problems. I was not doing a very good job of sorting him out.
He wouldn’t answer questions. Or rather, he would give a reply, but it was not yes or no and I couldn’t figure out how the answer related to the question.
On the third day he gave a long reply to a question and I recognized it.
“That’s Longfellow,” I said. He nearly smiled. “We did a bike trip around Nova Scotia and read Evangeline aloud in the tents at night. The mosquitos tried to eat us alive. That’s Longfellow, isn’t it?”
He wouldn’t answer but the twinkle in his eye indicated yes.
So our visits were cryptic but fun. I would try to guess the author. He knew acres of poetry, all stored in his brain, no effort. I tried to relate the poems to my questions to see if he was answering indirectly. I wondered if he had schizophrenia and these were answers, but I didn’t think so. I thought he was just stubborn and refusing to answer.
I challenged him. “Ok, you are the right age. Come up with a song with my first name that is from early in the century. My father used to sing it to me when I was little. Can you?”
The next day he sang to me: “K-k-k-katy, beautiful Katy, you’re the only beautiful girl that I adore. When the m-moon shines, over the cow shed, I’ll be waiting by the k-k-k-kitchen door.”
We sat and grinned at each other. Soon afterward I moved on to the next rotation. I don’t remember his medical problems. But I remember him and remember wondering what he had done in his life to have a memory and a store of poetry in his head. A teacher? A professor? A man who loved poetry? I started matching him with my own store of poems, the Walrus and the Carpenter, songs, bits and pieces. I felt blessed and approved of when his eyes twinkled at me, when I recognized an author or even recognized the poem itself. I looked forward to seeing him daily on rounds. And he seemed to look forward to my visits. I was sad when I had to say goodbye and the next rotation was out of town. And since he had never told us his name, no way to stay in touch. Farewell, poetry man, fare thee well.
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We were not doing nothing. He would not tell us his name, so we were awaiting an opinion from neurology. Waiting.
The photograph is not as old as the song. The young man holding the ball is my father, in the 1950s. My Aunt and I think this was at Williston in around 1956.
Friends drove me to the airport when I wasn’t really strong enough on my own. It is two hours away at least. I am very very grateful. They kept my car. I drove them to the ferry and picked one of them up last Friday. My friend L said my brakes were suspect. Two days ago I drove to his house and he took a look. I mostly held a flashlight. The front brakes are fine but the back shoes were down to very thin. I got a crash course in brakes (2006 Scion, a very useful black box of a car) and we took the drums to be ground. We ordered brake shoes and the kit of annoying springs and things.
Everything was ready yesterday so he picked me up. I held the flashlight and then held the back of the pin for one particularly annoying and difficult set of springs. He is a very good mechanic, though not primarily cars. A cell phone picture of the brake before taking it apart and studying the intact one: useful tips. He also pointed out the blue paint. Someone added that in order to keep it all straight. We got it all back together and then tested them. It did need some tweaking to tighten the emergency brake to working order again. I got home at about 4:30pm. Whew!
So today I am tired again and rather achy, but not too bad. I may attempt a quiet day, though we never know what will happen. The best laid plans can be altered at any moment. I hope to recharge my energy today!
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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: recharge. And speaking of recharging, here are two experts:
What old deep wound causes you to hurt me and other friends you’ve had in past. What terrors hidden in that brew make you glory in making others sad? You boast to me of throwing people out of your life forever, never friend again. You don’t explain what crimes reroute your heart to where you never speak again to him or me. How many people discarded from your heart and at what interval? How many “friendships” have you departed? And yet you boast that others call you spiritual. “Friends forever,” you said. I wonder why you tell yourself and me that petty lie.
This two too to I want to remember.
Licking? Touch for certain, together.
Warmth and safety and rest and trust.
The trust eroded as you run away
over and over. You say always but
you say other things that I can’t believe.
And yet my heart is stubborn still.
This two too to I want to remember.
This too two I want to remember. Disagreeing. Respectful nearly always. You say, “You argue with everything.” “I think about both sides.” I say. “And if I am alone I discuss both with myself.” You roll your eyes and I grin and continue. Thistoo two I want to remember.
I am reinventing myself now. After my fourth pneumonia, oxygen continuously for a year and now my fifth pulmonologist since 2012. He did not have much to offer. An inhaler but “We can’t be sure that it will keep you from getting pneumonia.”
Well. So with ME-CFS, myalgic encephalopathy chronic fatigue syndrome, now what?
I am at a fork in the path. At least three forks.
Try to do a micropractice, working with Long Covid people. Who either wear masks or I do not see them. I would have to convince the hospital district that it needs me.
Write. I am doing that, but really focus on it and work on publishing. I have so much art from my mother. She did not really enjoy selling it though she loved having shows and would dress up.
I could focus on publicizing and selling my mother’s art.
There is a trunk from my grandfather. I could focus on that. He states that he wants it published. Grandfather, you were a piece of work.
I could just lie around and travel and play with the cats and make music.
Focus on music. I have written a number of songs. Apparently being hypoxic makes me write songs. I think they are peculiar and wonderful too. Flute, voice, guitar, piano, bass. Hmmmm.
Something else. Who knows what will appear? I am doing art too, the two large sculptural pieces in my yard. A fellow doctor scolded me about one. It’s the one with a logging chain and an oxygen tank, attached to a tree. The title is “Tethered”. Now, why would a local doctor object to that? I have some small pieces too that involve found objects and especially feathers and small stemmed glassware.
Many forks! Now I just need more spoons of energy!
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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