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Broken Record

I believe it must be getting awfully damn pitiful for you, my readers, to come here day after day and read all the wretchedness that is befallen my family and my loved ones. I wish I knew an answer. This is not how I envision life either. In the last 16 weeks (the summer), I and my family has been involved in almost 9 total weeks where there has been one or another or several different health crises. It frustrates me, makes me depressed, makes me angry, makes me question God and His vision for me.

Am I such a wretched soul, such a bastard of man, a cruel and evil sot that I require all this saddness and heartache being thrust upon me, upon my family? If I am so horrid that it is me who deserves it, why not spare everyone else in my family and instead JUST punish me? In my mind, I keep thinking that is what must be happening. Yet, I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.... but at the same time I never would have wished this much heartach upon a murderer.

It is so hard to put into words, how it feels to lose the sense of control that most of us take for granted in our day-to-day lives. I am not talking about being a dictator and governing each and every little thing down to the last detail. Instead, I am talking about deciding when to arise in the morning, planning what to do on a given day, when to eat dinner, when to end the day. None of those things is actually in my grasp or in the grasp of my family during times such as these. Each and every thing is determined by what the doctors say, what new crisis is befalling my elderly mother, what sudden need arises from out of nowhere.

Today, it is again confirmed that my elderly mother's heart rate is far too high and too arrythmic for them to not do "something". Yet, the "what" they will do is yet to be determined. So again, me, and my family etc are all awaiting word on what next task shall be done so we may figure out how it is going to impact the day and what it means for each of us in turn. I firmly believe my mother needs the ablation surgery to have her heart paced by the pacemaker and not by her own circuitry. I feel this is a far safer treatment than using some sort of nebulous mixture of cordorone and cardizam both of which can be toxic and both of which can exaccerbate toxicity in other medications my mother is taking, and both of which have proven to not bring about any long-term reversal of the arrythmia (atrial fibrilation). I fear the physicians will wait and wait on the ablation therapy and will instead give her some horribly high dosage of the above two medications and it will simply mean 5 or 6 or 7 or 14 days from now she will be brought back to the emergency room, this time with symptoms of toxicity of one or more of her medications.

At mass on Sunday I heard the priest discuss how it is our role to project God from within ourself to others around us. It is a very important and noble role for us to have. I try to stifle my anger, my rage at what is happening in this medical situation, I try with all my might to give myself to my students, to help them to grow in how I can teach them to grow, I try to be a rock, a support for my family. Yet I fail at all of them.

When I go to sleep at night, I must forcibly NOT think about anything that is happening during the last several weeks. If I get thoughts about what is really going on in my mind, I toss and turn and cannot fall asleep. Or worse, if I do fall asleep, I have the most heart-wrenching nightmares that I awaken more tired, more defeated than I started with the evening before. Instead, I have grown over the last several weeks to think one of several very specific thoughts prior to my going to bed. If I can keep any of these thoughts at the forefont of my mind, I stand a reasonable (roughly 50%) chance of sleeping soundly and not having nightmares:

a. remembering times long gone by when I was in graduate school, and life was far simpler

b. remembering times spent with my father, especially those times after he knew I smoked a pipe but when I was still just a kid and we would walk in the woods, and talk and joke and philosophize.

c. remembering the dating period with my wife

d. remembering those first few years when I was a new professor at a new university. The excitement in the air was palpable

e. imagining being gently intoxicated, simply by sitting in a bar, or visiting with my father-in-law.

f. imagining I am any number of literary figures I have admired over the years (such as Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Huxley, or Mellville.

If I can focus my mind on one of the above six while I am in bed trying to fall asleep, the prospects are even money I can get rest.

I have rambled on enough. Be it what may, these have been my thoughts this late evening. I miss my life. I want it back.

PipeTobacco