Mid Winter Hibernation & Healing

monarch butterfly

Varicose Veins are another of the delightful things I inherited from my Father – together with his nose, long, gaunt face, hair trigger temper and belief that I know best about all things.  There isn’t much I can do about my nose or the shape of my face, I have worked very hard on my arrogance, unasked for offering of advice and my anger and temper.  My personality has changed, but the physical attributes remained.  When I first saw myself in profile aged 15 I was devastated and begged my Mother for a nose job when I turned 18.  It never eventuated.

And after years of aching, itchy, legs and never being able to bare my legs in public in the summer, I decided to put myself in the hands of a vascular surgeon.  Luckily she was a lady and a nice one at that.  She listened to my horror of anaesthetics, scalpels and hospitals, and made me feel safe.

I went on a waiting list that was anticipated to be at least 6 months, and forgot about it.  Then came a phone call – could I commit to a slot in 10 days time as Wauchope Hospital had had a cancellation.  Ged agreed to be home and I grabbed it.  Better to be sick and wearing support stockings mid winter!  Then there was a huge debate about my refusal to have an epidural.  Some people are scared of flying, some of horses, some of heights – for me it is epidurals.  There’s no way anyone is going to stick a huge needle down into my spinal cord.  Ugh!

Finally the anaesthetist agreed to a General Anaesthetic for me and I was booked in.  Rather like childbirth, it is a good thing I had no idea what I was in for beforehand!

Up really early on the Friday morning and drove myself and JP to Wauchope, for him to drive the car back home.  Nil by mouth and all that, but clutching my thermos of tea for after the op.  The hospital was extremely efficient and everything happened very quickly.  I was first up so straight into the hospital gown, the anaesthetist came to meet me and I made him PROMISE not to do an epidural (!) and then the surgeon came to mark up my legs.  Quick as a flash I was in pre-theatre and needled and the next thing I knew I was out, freezing cold, teeth chattering and nurses flitting around me asking about pain and temperature and trying to stabilise me.  Then I was out in the day surgery warmth and drinking my tepid tea before staggering into the loo to get dressed.  In and out must be their motto because they rang Ged to come and take me away before lunch and he decided to take me straight home.

Of course I was flying from the anaesthetic for days.  We had our big mid-winter party on at the weekend so were surrounded by friends, and I mainly sat with my feet up in our newly configured sitting room, knitting. I even went for a walk on Saturday although that was pushing it!  I supped champagne and enjoyed being Queen for a few days.

When the drugs started wearing off my legs really ached and I wondered what on earth I had been thinking.  Then I really crashed with a temperature, throwing up and diarrhoea.  Not sure whether it was flu or opiate withdrawal.  Whatever, I was a groaning, shivering, blob under the duvet for 2 days.  Thank God Ged was there to keep the wheels turning while I hibernated.

It was great to be able to give in to my body’s demand for rest and recuperation, rather than forcing myself up to look after Ben, pushing myself beyond my limits as I have done so often over the last 5 years.

I knew when I decided to have my varicose veins ‘stripped’ that it was an outward, physical, manifestation of the inner work I have done over the last few years – letting go, forgiving, changing.  And in succumbing to the surgeon’s knife I was ripping out the old, outdated, gnarled and twisted that I no longer wanted or needed in my life.  Prescribing myself a new beginning.

Under the duvet I let go . . . I meditated on my last foray into a world of opiates and the heroin withdrawal I masterminded and oversaw for my friend.  I repeated silently to myself ‘I lovingly forgive and release the past’ as I slipped in and out of deep and dreamless sleep.

And I healed.  On all sorts of levels.  I rested.  I stopped cranking the handle and the world still turned . . . I gave myself permission to retreat, recuperate, be vulnerable and weak.  I let those who love me care for me and see the control freak felled to her knees – vulnerable and pathetic. It’s only me who has a problem with that!

And when I arose after my exile of travelling dark recesses of my soul and psyche and passaging in places of pain, I was different.  MUCH more relaxed, with my sense of humour returned to me (how I have missed you!), a sense of balance and proportion about work and play and a real readiness and willingness to listen to others, to learn at the feet of masters, and to give myself pleasure and nurture myself with the things and people I love.

And as I recognised that I needed to grow and change more, to journey along more challenging healing paths to the heart centre, I began to look for places and people to help me.  I found a book I have had since 2004 and have put off and off and off embarking on.  Sequel to the life changing ‘The Artist’s Way’ it is Julia Cameron’s ‘Vein of Gold’ which demands daily walks, morning pages and a voyage of self discovery through the trivialities, tedium and trauma of one’s past.

I pounced on the book like an old friend and readily committed to the journey.  Perfect winter work.  As we hibernate, heal, connect deeply with our most immediate family and friends and ourselves.   Mining ourselves for our riches, dreams and inspirations.  Plotting our futures and pathways to our goals as the winter winds howl and the cold scratches at the doors and windows with its icy fingers.

Winter is time for inner work and introspection, just as summer speaks of reaching out to friends and the world, partying and celebrating the warmth and fertility.  Just as the land sleeps and rests so must we.  It is good for me to finally learn to rest and not to be constantly questing, working, doing.  The seeds of deep change are being planted this wintertide, and despite my averse reaction to drugs, hospitals and surgery, I can see that science can complement metaphysics to effect deep change and transformation.

Will I submit for the other leg too . . .. ???!!!

How Life can change in a Heartbeat

We have been happy and relaxed and really enjoying being a family again after Ged finally finished stage one of the solar inspections (30,000 kms in 3 months).  I have been revelling in unbroken night’s sleep as he gets up for Ben in the night and I have to do a lot less chop wood and carry water when he is around.  Plus I get to go for a run every day (yay!) so everything was looking rosy.

Then I woke up in th emiddle of the night when Ben woke up and called out as usual.  I felt the other side of the bed for Ged but he wasn’t there so I presumed he was already up for him.  I must have gone back to sleep for a minute or two and then Ben called again and I listened for Ged, thinking ‘where is he?’  And I heard a truly horrible noise.  It sounded like the Thermomix we had borrowed the weekend before kneading dough.  Sort of harsh, grating and groaning.  So I got up and went to investigate.

Ged was unconscious in a pool of blood, sprawled over the bathroom floor in a pool of urine, with his head resting on the side of the bath which had burst his cheek, just under his eye, as he made contact.  His eyes were wide and staring with pupils like pinpricks and I tried to lift him, to communicate with him, to shake him, wake him, to no avail.  Meanwhile I was trying to keep Ben out of the bathroom and calm him down.  Finally (it seemed like forever!) Ged came too and was able to lie down on a towel I put on the floor.  Of course the recovery position didn’t even cross my mind.  I realised immediately that his cheek would need stitching so told Ben we would have to go to the hospital for the doctor to sew up Daddy’s cheek, just like he had to go and get his chin glued up when he fell on the slippery slide.  I set him to packing a bag with toys and books while I tried to sort Ged out.  He was groaning and swearing by this time so I had to try and shut him up!  He managed to sit up and then threw up. I ran a lukewarm bath and he managed to sit in it.  Needless to say I was dosing everyone up with Emergency Essence and, as usual, at my best in a crisis!

Got us all dressed and organised and in the car by about 3.30 and to the hospital by 5.  No one there so he was straight into triage.  They had him on a bed and an ECG within 5 minutes and then discovered that while he hadn’t had a heart attack, his heart was in extreme distress with arrhythmia.  Watching the numbers on the ECG was like watching some sort of random numbers game, 138, 32, 114 etc.  Ben was terrified and refused to stay near the Daddy who was hooked up to all these machines and insisted on returning to the waiting room to read stories with me.  He came in again for a brief moment or two while the young and lovely Doctor (I am definitely getting old – they are all little more than teenagers!) told us that Ged’s heart was all over the place and he would be staying put for the time being.  Ben and I went home.  I was ever hopeful that Ben would sleep and so he did for almost 20 minutes until we pulled up outside the door and then he was awake and adamant that he was not going back to bed, despite being up since 2.30am.

And thus began a surreal day.  Ben got to watch the Gruffalo three times while I did the washing up and ‘thunk’ – that we don’t have insurance for Ged, that we can’t afford to lose him, that we lose everything if anything happens to him, that I want him to get fit and slim and spend a long and healthy life with him . . .

And every few hours I would ring the hospital where Ged was being wheeled from test to test and seeing specialists etc.  He passed out again when they stitched his face – lucky he was lying down.  Finally at the end of the day they moved him into a private room and out of the Emergency ward so he could sleep.  Ben and I somehow got through an extraordinary day.  The poor child was as much in shock that his mother let him watch TV all morning, than that his father, so recently returned to us, was in hospital.

Suffice it to say we all slept extremely well that night.  And thankfully Ged’s heart was beating better in the morning.  Ben and I decided to visit him after lunch (so hopefully Ben would sleep in the car – ha, ha, this eternal hope of mine is laughable!) By the time we were on our way the hospital had decided to release Ged and he was, according to the nurse, in the ‘transit’ room.  Air side or land side I was tempted to ask . . .

But Ged told me he was being sent home with no monitoring equipment or any guarantee that this wouldn’t happen again so of course I went ballistic.  The nurse knew nothing about his case.  So I called in reinforcements.  I rang Macca and she agreed that he couldn’t come home to the farm without some sort of halter monitor.  She knows only too well what the hospital is like (she used to work there) so she put on her battle armour and said she’d meet me there.  She got there before me and woke Ged up from snoozing in his armchair.  He wasn’t surprised, he knows me well, he just raised his eyes to heaven and said ‘Hi Macca, she called in the artillery, did she?’

Ben and I couldn’t find a car parking space in the same postcode as the Hospital so we took advantage of our 4WD and parked on the grass.  And then walked long, featureless, corridors to find the transit lounge.  Not much of a lounge and not much transiting taking place as its inhabitants looked to have been sitting there long enough to have melded with the furniture.  Apparently waiting for a doc to sign a piece of paper can be an all day affair.  When the very young trainee doc came to sign Ged out with her red stethoscope and matching high heels (I last saw style like that in a B&D Brothel where a friend used to work!) I stated my case for a halter monitor.  She looked shocked to be challenged in her role as benevolent authority and disappeared to find the specialist.  Another well heeled blonde appeared in a pencil skirt and sashayed in front of us to find a meeting room.  Any red blooded man would get better just looking at her!  She was about half my age . . .

I stated my case and she proceeded to bamboozle me with science and medicine which somehow soothed and calmed me even though I cannot recollect a word she said and I didn’t understand most of it.  I think they must learn some sort of hypnotherapy mind control at med school . . . ‘I’m a doctor, TRUST me . . . ‘

At least Macca had some fun reading and talking to Ben, even though she didn’t weigh in to my medical stoush, and we got to take our stitched up, banged up, much loved husband and father home.

We all had our safe and ordered world rocked.  Ben then came down with a five day fever and has been a pale and listless caricature of his former self and we are all trying to get a handle on how, why and will this ever happen again.

Ged and I went to the specialist yesterday who at least gave him permission to drive, hooked him up to the ECG again and ultra sounded his heart.  It all looks normal and sounds steady so now they have to work out if he is stress sensitive, so they treadmill him next week and then book him in for a night in the sleep clinic to monitor whether he has sleep apnoea.  He has to lose weight (hurrah, someone else singing from my song sheet!) but then so do I – at least we can help each other there . . .

And we need to make more time for each other, for holidays, for fun as well as the farm, for play as well as work.  I need to learn to relax and enjoy.  Both Ben and Ged can teach me that.  I have to let them.  And we have to savour every moment, treasure each other, stop taking life and each other for granted.  We none of us know how long we’ve got.

A Musing on the Meaning of Life

We almost lost my niece, Isabel, a week or so ago.  She was very ill with what everyone thought was a tummy bug, but Millie was worried and took her to hospital after two days of throwing up and tummy pains.  By the time the specialist decided to operate and got in there, her appendix had burst and it was all apparently a horrible mess.  After the op she just kept on throwing up and she seemed to be fading.  Ged and I got our hands to work sending Reiki and we both got that she was going to die.  I can’t begin to express how precious Issy is in the family – the only grandchild for my parents before Ben came along  but she has held the honoured, and probably onerous, position of only grandchild for over 10 years now.  Of course she is spoilt, and like all kids she can be a proper little madam, but for Millie and Phil she was the first and as it turned out, the one and only, of the family they had dreamed of (and there’s a helluva lot of heartbreak there), for my Mother she has been the longed for grandchild and I am sure a chance to be a better grandmother than she was mother, and for Melissa the closest it seems she will ever get to having a child, and for me, the hope of a happy child in our family.

Anyway, she almost left us and I could see, in my mind’s eye, the horror and the shattering grief and the hole in all our lives which would be left if she departed and I remember being frantic that she must stay and saying over and over again ‘You’re not going to die, Issy, you’re going to be fine’ but with this cold hand of dread clutching at my heart.

She was, is, fine.  she turned the corner and now she is home and well.  But we are changed.  All of a sudden death came knocking at the door of our lives and a shiver ran through our family.

We all take everyone and everything around us for granted yet nothing is guaranteed.  We moan about the facets of our lives which are too much like hard work but we don’t excise them.  We think life is meant to be hard or a struggle or about acquisition but it’s NOT.  It’s about the heart, about love, about joy, about sharing.  About the miracles that abound every day that we are too busy to see . . .and yet, even having had this revelation, I have slipped back into my own man-made monotony and material world.  WHY?  Why are we so shallow, so caught up in our own emotional ebbs and flows and not centred on joy and happiness and concentrating on that, allowing that in.

I feel like I don’t KNOW how to be happy, that I am always looking for what is WRONG, not what is RIGHT, and GOOD and LOVING.  That’s my family background of constant criticism and nit-picking STILL running the program of my life.  How do I let it go.  Just let it go . . . just hand it over to God and he/she tosses them into the brazier behind and they are gone . . . ashes to ashes, dust to dust, embers sparking against the celestial sky.  Phew, I feel lighter already . . . now can I embrace my life, open my heart to those who love me and be free, happy, joyful . . . we shall see . . .

Ante natal or anti natal?

It’s all pretty quiet on the western front here at Avalon this week.  No Willing Workers, husband gone from dawn til dusk, and just the sound of silence and my ligaments and muscles stretching to encompass the growing boy.  He literally grows overnight!  I had another visit to Antenatal (where they do seem to be very Anti-Natal!!) to go through the registration process.  Actually, I had a very nice midwife who checked us out (all fine) and had a good chat to.  My blood pressure raises 20 points every time I go near that place – you have never seen so many scary people in your life.  It’s like one of those 1980 horror movies – the day of the living dead.  Ugh!

We went to the dentist as we both had a feeling that fillings were required and it had been a long time between inspections.  Just picked one out of the phone book.  Oh my God – what a mistake!  The registrar, when taking my medical history asked if I had any medical issues.  ‘No’ I said, ‘but I am pregnant’.  ‘When are you due?’ he asked.  ‘September the 20th,’ I replied.  ‘This year or next year’ he asked????
Do I look like an elephant????
Then the dentist was a sort of modern day Frankenstein, more concerned with yelling at his assistant that the CD cover wasn’t showing on the computer screen to indicate which song was playing.  Eventually he asked me why I was there and I explained that because I was pregnant my gums were receding rather more than normal and I had a couple of sore spots so just wanted to check they weren’t cavities.  ‘What rubbish’ he exclaimed.  I should have walked out there and then, after all every pregnancy book on the market verifies the scientific research that pregnancy softens gums as well as everything else.  Good thing it has slightly softened my idiot tolerance ratio or he would be in the dentist’s chair and I would have been the one with the drill!  Needless to say, we won’t be going back, and the hunt is still on for a nice, friendly, normal, preferably human, family dentist for the three of us . . . .
We have been asking everyone we know who they use and each time get a grimace and a graphic horror story of that person’s last Port Macquarie dental experience.  Apparently there AREN’T any nice dentists up here.  Maybe it is the place that bad dentists come when they’ve been thrown out of every capital city in Australia . . . .
Good thing there are such nice Complementary Therapists up here.  We have been having some Bowen treatments which have been lovely.  Incredibly relaxing and long-lasting.  Both Ged’s and mine posture has definitely improved since we started and what with the acupuncture and the Bowen, I have been pretty good through the pregnancy.  My varicose veins have been fine, the reflux is annoying but it’s not critical, and I have kept very well and active throughout.  I am very lucky to have access to these wonderful resources and to have the emotional and physical support through this amazing time of transition from single and selfish to married, sharing and Mum!
The potential painter came today with his wife and kids to assess the work needed on the windows and eaves and the kids had a ball catching the chooks, chasing the ducks and petting Daisy and Paddy (still no sign – phantom pregnancy, maybe?).  He seems nice so he starts next week and hopefully we can get all those annoying little finishing touches jobs done so that the house is really a family home at last . . . . (is this the longest renovation in living history, I wonder?!)