Tag Archives: health

HEART OF WINTER

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We are in the heart of winter.  It is dark, dark outside.  My little Buddha is shivering in the snow.  Sunrise is not till 8:59, another hour yet.  Yesterday, the sun did not come out at all.

It would be so easy to hibernate like the bears, but duty and nature calls.  Sheba is quite insistent.  She KNOWS she is hungry and she’s not letting anyone sleep in.  You try to quiet your bladder, but after awhile you know you have to get up.  So you throw those covers back and step onto the cold floor.  And another day starts.

I’m not feeling up to snuff.  My eyes are gummed up and my mouth feels grainy and dry, like the Sahara Desert.  I am achy, throaty and tired.  Welcome back, SINUSITIS, my old friend.  Your ways are familiar to me now.  I can function quite well with you on my back even though you try your hardest to drag me down.

So, I’m not so speedy or quite as organized as usual.  Is there a race on and are we in a hurry?  Or is there an emergency?  It is good that there are seasons and times for everything….times to work and times to rest, times to speed and times to slow.  We all know how that song goes, but do we listen and hear it?

I’m feeling like hell now.  So I sit back, take my glasses off and rub my eyes.  I breathe and sip my tea.  Sheba is on her mat besides me.  Animals do absorb and ease our distress and discomfort by being with you and being just themselves.  Often we take them for granted  but they are always so happy to see us when we come back, even if we’ve gone for a few minutes.They accept us as we are.  There is no judgement.

I would do well if I could learn from Sheba’s ways….let people know I appreciate them, live in the moment, letting go of minutes, hours, days, years past, of things of little consequence.  Perhaps that’s her purpose…to keep reminding me of the excitement of life, to keep wagging my tail.  The sun will come again.   Ahh, there it is now, shining over my shoulder, lighting my world!   And I have done well in this heart of the winter.

Sometimes when there is no feeling good in your body or mind, you have to go back in your memories for those feelings and live as if.  That is what I did this morning, remembering the pleasure of the cup of hot chocolate, making soup, baking bread.  I remember my body opened up, seeing  Sheba running out to greet me when I came home from work Monday evening, tired and stressed.  Her wagging tail, smile and nuzzling work miracles in easing the tension in my being.

Everything does turn, turn, turn.  Nothing stays the same.  This, too, shall pass.  And for everything, there is a purpose under heaven.  Breakfast is done, dishes cleared and the dishwasher is turning and turning.

 

STARTING OVER, SEEING ANEW

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Yesterday I had my one year post cataract surgery checkup.  All is well and I am still seeing better than I have ever, with or without glasses.  What a miracle!

I had trouble throwing out my contact lenses for awhile, not quite trusting that my vision would last.  Those tiny plastic orbs were my lifeline.  Since my 20’s I lived in fear that there will come the day when my optometrist would no longer be able to fit me and I will have to make do with the thick heavy ugly glasses.  Even the high indexed ones were thick and heavy, causing discomfort if I wear them all the time.

The checkup is a reminder of what a gift I’ve received.  It’s a reminder to take care of myself.  There’s so much of life yet to be lived and enjoyed.  So today I am taking time to consciously take care of myself again.  I’m trying to find the balance that I had lost the last while.  I am resuming my exercise program.  I am taking up the challenge of living an engaged life.

I was sorely disappointed to hear from the City of Saskatoon that there is no bylaw in regards to disposing snow on adjoining properties.  Situations like that were left to neighbours to deal with between themselves.  The news deflated me until I remembered that I wasn’t having the City deal with the situation anyways.  I just wanted some ammunition to help me.

My anger and disappointment have dissipated.  It is really not good karma to harbour such negative feelings.  It is true what they say about what goes around comes around.  Life will take care of things if you live in a correct way.  Do unto other as you would want them do unto you.  And so, I am at ease again.  I am at peace.

THE SHORT OF IT…OR LETTING GO

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So I tend to hang on to things, like clutter…of all kinds.  I have a difficult time of letting go.  I’m like Sheba with a bone.  It is said that it is really not about the stuff, but something else.  So what is it, then?  Do I know?

I find everything hard, even breathing nowadays.  I have gained back the whole nine yards and probably more that I have lost when I first got Sheba.  It is hard to maintain that pace, or so I like to tell myself.  I guess you might say I’m a bit down in the dump with winter rearing its ugly head.  The morning is dark, dark till 8 am.  It is hard to drag my butt out of bed in a cheerful manner.  But being an adult, I still TRY to do my best even though I do feel like crying.

My phone is ringing and I answer.  I am hoping that someone is calling just to chat….you know…how it used to be, when people call up each other for a visit?  But no, it is from someone who is doing research of some sort.  I am honest.  I don’t want to answer a bunch of questions for someone’s research project.  You might say I am somewhat melancholy, but what the heck?  Who needs to be brave and wear a cheerful front all the time?  It is still October and there is snow on the ground and everything is messy!

But I am brave!  I can still get out of bed in the morning, though not cheerfully.  I am not hopping up and down with joy but I am still interested.  I am still interested enough to get with the program, to get out of the house and face the world, to take care of business and to get my hair cut.  It is such a relief to be shorn.  It is symbolic action of some sort…. to rid myself of the excess, of the weight of unnecessary cargo.  I am letting go.

I am letting go of many things…excess hair, the need to fix everything for everyone, the need of doing the proper thing all the time, the need to live up to my own expectations.  I am letting go.  I am free falling.  I am creating my own serotonin.  I am creating joy.  I am also having a glass or two of wine.

 

SIGNS, SIGNS, EVERYWHERE SIGNS

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Do you realize that no matter where we are, we are surrounded by signs….man-made or in nature.  Quite often, we are oblivious to them, walking right by, paying no attention.  That’s how we are, always in a hurry to the next event, even though we have a million and one ways of saying we should stop and smell the coffee.

We rush on by  not wanting to be left behind, not wanting to miss something important.  But we miss the sign to paradise.

And it is so for myself, too.  I am also guilty of being blind to the many signs around me.  It is difficult sometimes to finally see and admit that a change is necessary.  And so we delay and delay and justify and justify….afraid to let go.

I am seeing so clearly now.  There are so many signs to show me the way…. that    work is not fulfilling me, that it is not healthy for me to continue at the present mode.  I see that in the patients that we have been getting in the last few weeks.  They are truck drivers even younger than myself.  They all present the similar symptoms – overweight, diabetic, poor circulatory systems…in short – heart attacks on wheels.  And there are good reasons for their conditions…long hours behind the wheel, eating to keep awake, eating at truck stops, etc., etc. They have to make a living.

All those things are applicable to my profession, too.  I am often too tired from 12 hour shifts, from night shifts.  I am often too stressed to do even necessary things or things for enjoyment.  At other times, I’m so used to be stressed and tired, I’m uncomfortable being rested and not stressed.  Try to understand that!  And lately, I’m coming home angry.  Sometimes I need a big fat example of what I could become to get the message.  There’s a life outside hospital corridors.  There’s a whole wide world out there.  There’s other ways of serving.  Thirty plus years are enough.

LIFE WITHOUT STRESS

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I have now come to the conclusion that life without stress is like asking for jello without gelatin.  It is not possible!  It is now day one post three 12-hour shifts of work on your not so typical hospital ward.  I am not complaining that the work is not satisfying.  I am just saying that it is very challenging to be in a caring profession where you are immersed in peoples.  You are in a cesspool of human interactions as well as being up to your elbows in human feces sometimes.  It is very well to start the day with good intentions and noble goals, but soon those fall with the patients or your first confrontations with your coworkers.  I’ve been told that I have high standards and though I try not to hold others to them, I do.  But…here I am, intact after three days of headache and gut burning angst.

I felt quite badly about myself during those three days.  I’m thinking I am such a terrible person to have all these negative feelings burning and churning inside.  But then this 92 year old patient told me that I’m very pleasant and so happy.  She enjoyed me very much.  She told me that every day of those three days.  I did thank her but I will have to learn not to discount myself by telling her that it was a facade.

Then her nephew came to visit her.  He recognized me as soon as I walked into the room.  He greeted me exuberantly.  I was very puzzled as I did not recognize him at all.  I told him he must have me mixed up with someone else.  No, he knew me.  He held up his finger and ask me how many do I see.  He was quite enjoying himself.  It didn’t work.  I still did not know him.  So he pointed straight ahead and ask me which is better, this or that.  Well, that failed too and I was starting to feel that one of us must be crazy!

He told me his name.  I said: No!  You don’t look like you.  You don’t sound like you!  We had such a good laugh and a good visit.  It was as if God knew that I needed something to lighten my day and sent him.  The nephew was my first ever optometrist when I came to live in the city.  I was his patient from age 19 to 42! And I left him because he could not fit me with contact lens anymore.  I had to show my appreciation by telling him that he always had good bedside manners.  That produced some good laughs from his relatives.  Well, he did!  He was very patient.  When he moved to a new office, I had a hard time finding it.  He gave me directions and told me he would wait outside so I could see where he was.  Well, I took too long and he had to go inside, but I did eventually find his new office.

I did not remind him of my last appointments when nothing went right!  I became frustrated and found tears trickling down my face after many fittings for my contact lenses. I have a high prescription and Asian eyes so my lids are tight making it difficult.  He was very kind, saying that we cannot continue our session with tears.  He would cancel his other appointments the next day and give me the whole afternoon.  How many optometrists would do that?

I did have to part company eventually but I could obviously see that I had left a good impression with him.  And I’m thinking that I am not a bad person…..not as bad as I have been thinking and feeling about myself anyways.  I am all talked out now.  The burning in my stomach is gone.  I am rested and at ease.  Sometimes you need a little stress so you can appreciate the jello.  Raindrops are falling gently on the roof of  this special private space.  Life is good.