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No Vomit, Minimal Edema... At Least At This Moment

I am feeling more calm today. I still have the worries in the back of my mind, but they are not pressing so hard today. They are not causing me to have tremors and nausea due to worry like they did yesterday. There has been no vomiting in roughly 36 hours now, and my mother's weight declined slightly (signifying a slight decrease in edema) and has now remained steady roughly 24 hours.

I do not mean to sound like a broken record here (my younger readers may not know what a record is... it is a plastic disk, somewhat like a CD, but with grooves etched into its surface that MECHANICALLY produce sound through the vibrating of a needle that follows the path of these grooves. And, a "broken record" is where one of the grooves in the record is damaged and the same brief phrase plays over and over, and over again) , but it is DAMN hard having such pressure and fear flood your body. The worst part I can identify is how it makes my brain feel as if it has short circuited.

An analogy is to think of the brain as a hard drive. The severe fear and anguish I feel is akin to a very powerful magnet being waved around the hard drive. It disrupts and destroys any files on the drive. It does not erase or reformat the hard drive... instead it corrupts the files... bits and pieces remain intact, but no cohesive pathway remains to open or utilize the file.

In my brain, all the thoughts, plans, ideas, and hopes I had for the next several days have been corrupted and damaged and it is difficult if not impossible for me to recall any of the hope and joy I had for this upcoming holiday. My mind is in "recovery" mode... and like the recovery mode on the computer, my thoughts are devoid of color, beauty, or vividness... instead, replaced by only the essentials for survival.... the dogged determination to complete essential tasks, the continual, never-ending desire to lay down and fall into the oblivion of sleep, the grim, jaw-clenched obstinance to complete all my responsibilities and trudge through another day of battle. Recovery mode is hard, not only because of the responsibilities, but more so through the loss of any awareness of beauty, artistry, grace, and charm in life. My mind struggles to get through the required, and there is no extra energy, no physical, emotional, or mental ability to see beyond that essential list to allow art, beauty or grace in.

When does my ability to perceive art and beauty and grace return? It varies depending upon the severity of the malady upon which my fear and heartache is based. However, a pattern of homogeneity, of balance, of predictability, of normalcy, of CONSISTENCY must be observable and must be felt before my mind can reboot from RECOVERY to living brightly and vividly again. I had only started to feel and see the joy in mid October following my mother's release from the hospital after seven weeks in late September/early October. I am hopeful that this bout through RECOVERY mode will be quicker.

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Because I know that my woes are likely of little to no interest to many of my readers, I think it is my responsibility to give you something of greater value than my own feeble emotions to chew upon. Below is a link to an exceptional story from the BBC News about rare Abyssinian lion cubs that are being poisoned at a zoo in Addis Ababa (the capital city of Ethiopia). It is very sad and foolish. Zoos across the world should be able to absorb these cats easily.

PipeTobacco