To Thee We Raise....

Practicing gratitude for an entire month has been a difficult discipline.  The beginning of the month found us exhausted but hopeful, recovering from Babygirl's first hospital stay in nearly two years.  The horrible headaches that lead up to that stay were finally gone, so it was fairly easy to start, but as the days went on and the headaches returned and worsened, being grateful became one of the most difficult tasks out there.

Writing a 'gratitude' post on mornings when I woke up already crying was actually quite stressful.  Remembering that there were still things to be thankful for despite Babygirl's suffering and the apparent indifference of her doctors created an interesting type of mental tension, one which I believe was good for me in the long run. 

It is all too easy to look down.  The burdens that rest on our shoulders are often heavy ones.  Disciplining our hearts to focus outside of our own struggles and pain is good for us.  A friend of mine has said that she plans, as a Thanksgiving Resolution, to find three things that she is thankful for each morning before she puts her car in gear.  It is a worthy ambition, one that I am all too aware can be a tremendous challenge on some mornings!

My sister-in-law, on one of our last runs to the hospital, gave me a gift.  It's a little plaque that reads, "Life is all about how you handle Plan B." 

So Lord of all, to thee we raise Plan B. Or C. Or F.  Or whatevertheheck plan we are currently on, with gratitude for the strength to carry on.

DeeDee

Peace on Earth and Joy in Heaven.....

Humans are, by nature, not peaceful.  We glorify struggle, and put those who can prove superiority in the limelight.  We spend millions fighting over who gets to host the Olympics and billions hosting them.  World Cup Soccer games are watched worldwide, and the outcome of the competition can generate rioting whether the home team wins OR loses.  And how much does a thirty second ad cost on Super Bowl Sunday?  Around four million dollars in 2013.  This is what we do in our free time, in times of peace.  We dedicate infinitely more time and money to actual war.  The US defense budget in 2011 was about $665 billion.

It has been said that if you want peace, work for justice.  If we were to tithe our military money, use 10 % of it for other causes, we would have enough money for every single thing we need here:  Enough for housing for the homeless, enough to give workers a living wage, enough to fund fully universal healthcare including care for the mentally ill, enough to give paid maternity leave. 

I'm not foolish enough to assume that this will alter human nature.  But imagine the joy in heaven if we all at least tried to treat each human being as if they have worth simply because each and every one of us is equally created in the image of our creator.

Wouldn't that be something to be grateful for?

DeeDee

For That Great, Great Love of Thine......

I woke this morning to the sound of my grandsons chatting over Hubby's extensive pin collection.  He has a corkboard, about three feet tall, nearly covered in commemorative pins of all kinds, going back to his days in the Boy Scouts.  Wherever we go, he looks for more of these little pins, and many of them are recognizably iconic, even to young children.   Squeaker and DoodleBug were especially excited to spot Mickey Mouse.

Thanksgiving is a great family holiday, and I've noted before that it is my favorite.  Hubby and I spent the morning yesterday working together to prepare the feast, and such was our level of organization that we had every single dish prepped and in progress for the 6 PM meal by noon.  Kids and grandkids began arriving at about three, and things stayed hectic until midnight, when I looked at the clock and realized...oh, it's only 7:30.  Lordy, I don't quite have as much stamina as I used to!

Due to a recent job loss, Curlygirl and SqueakersDaddy are on a very tight budget this year, and although I have a theoretical objection to shopping on Thanksgiving Day, I understood their need to make the most of a limited amount of cash (and their need for transport) so I agreed to let them hire Babygirl to watch the boys overnight at our house (she's still headache free, thanks be to God) and drove them out to wherever they needed to go.   (As a side note, I have worked both Thanksgiving and Christmas day in a retail shop back in the early 1980's. I needed the money.  Although shopping and spending time outside of the home on these days is more common now, it is by no means a NEW phenomenon. Of course as a physician working those days is hardly a rarity one way or another.)

There were a lot of people out there.  We missed the first wave of crazy, but there were a LOT of people for all of that.  I'm not a fan of WalMart, but the store was fairly full of people, about like it is on the first Saturday after the local University opens in the fall and all of the students are looking for microwaves and mini-fridges.  But I'd say about one in three of the people there were employees, most with carts full of merchandise needing reshelving.  I ran into one that I knew, and she said that there had hardly been room to move about three hours earlier.  Overhead announcements were instructing employees to go to the produce aisle to pick up toys.  It must have been complete chaos.

We checked out a couple other stores and came home at about 1:30 AM, officially into Black Friday.  So the sound of little voices and the pitter patter of little feet (seriously?  Squeaker sounds like a baby T-rex when he runs)  was perhaps not the joyous wake-up call it might otherwise have been. 

But hearing DoodleBug's excited chatter, and Squeaker's I-worship-my-big-brother echo of everything he had to say was a sweet blessing as Hubby pushed a cup of coffee into my hands with a kiss.  Our Leftover Night Dinner tonight will continue to echo our gratitude for the love that surrounds us here.

DeeDee

To the World So Freely Given....

The things we get for free are the things we most take as granted, don't you think? Until the air around us becomes too dirty to breathe, we accept clean air as a given.  We might pay a small fee for our water but we rarely worry about whether or not we are going to catch something deadly if we drink it.  Sunshine, rain, shady trees - all a part of my normal day-to-day (well, maybe not the sunshine.  I live in one of the least sunny cities in the entire US - Seattle gets more sunshine than we do). 

For most of us growing up, we took our next meal as granted.  Our parents might have known that things were a little dicey but they never let on to US that we were a couple of dollars away from hungry.  We took our safety as given - no helmets, car seats or seatbelts for us!  We never doubted that there'd be a roof over our heads, streetlights on the corner, or a school to attend.  I'm not entirely sure how far I was into adulthood before I made the ultimate connections between wages, property, taxes, firemen and schools, but I think it might have been about the time I first owned a home at age 30. 

We take grace as granted as well. We know those who love us will tolerate us, support us and forgive us.  We know that love is a bond that can't be severed - until it is.  Those of us who have been through divorce or the demise of a deep friendship or the fracture of a family relationship understand that tolerance has boundaries, support can become unsupportable, and love can be shattered beyond repair.  Drugs, alcohol, gambling, domestic violence, infidelity, apathy - these are a few of the things that can take a relationship beyond the point of no return, be it spouse, parent, child, or friend. 

Wait, what?  Child?  Of all of the relationships listed, giving up on a child is the hardest.  What could a kid possible do for you to finally stop loving them?  Certainly I can think of things that might make me choose to keep some distance ("Your cocaine habit means that you steal my computer every time you come to the house, so you can't come there anymore.  Where can I meet you?"), and even some things that might mean separation (violence) but not much, if anything, that would stop me from feeling love for my child.  And separation would be anguish.

For a child, the death of a parent means the loss of that safety net of unconditional love.  It's why, whether seventeen or seventy-five, we take it very badly when a parent dies.
 
For me, the love of God feels like this.  Like a Mother, anguished when I choose to separate myself, and like a Mother rejoicing when I'm home - it's the underlying safety net of my life, for which I am grateful.

DeeDee

For Thyself Best Gift Divine....

Faith is a mystery.  Why some of us have faith and others don't I have no idea. My parents took me to church when I was very small, but stopped going before I started school.  But somehow, my heart felt at home there, and when I was big enough to walk there on my own, I did.  Despite my many, many flaws I became a doctor to work toward my goal to live the ideals taught by Christ:  Heal the sick, feed the poor, work for justice. 

One of my favorite patients is an atheist.  She firmly believes that since there is no afterlife, one must achieve everything possible in THIS lifetime.  She became a legal aide lawyer to achieve her ideals:  Lift up the downtrodden, work for justice, proclaim liberty to the captives - in other words, to live the ideals taught by Christ. 

Of course, she doesn't see it that way, and might even be offended by the comparison, not that it makes it any less true for all of that. 

If she doesn't believe in any afterlife or higher power, why is she so passionate about the need to serve?  Why do I feel so passionate about what I do when I know 'doing' isn't truly necessary to arrive in the afterlife, given my faith? 

Jesus' life was THE roadmap of what we could become.  He gave, and gave and gave over and over.  He healed.  He reconciled.  He fed.  He taught. He freed.  He set a phenomenal, unforgettable example of what God intended us to be, and sent His Spirit to help us become His hands in this world. 

I was raised in a pretty fundamental environment.  By all I was taught, my patient, despite her life choices, will arrive in hell at the moment of her death.  And those who profess faith in Christ but vote to take food away from hungry children will go straight to heaven. 

But there are those verses regarding separating the sheep from the goats on the basis of "When I was hungry you fed me, and when I was thirsty you gave me drink, and when I was in prison you visited me...."  These things happen at the final judgment, after, I assume, we're dead.  Jesus clearly told his disciples that he had sheep in 'other folds.' 

My faith is pretty broad.  I serve the Lord, not (only) because I hope to go to heaven but because it is the right, just, fair thing.  I have long suspected that on the last day we will be surprised, deeply surprised, by which of us get Sheep awards, and which get Goats.  The Bible says that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.  In that eye-opening moment when we see what God has seen - "I was sick, and in prison, and you visited me" - we will see what the Gift Divine has accomplished. 

I am grateful for the opportunities my life has given me to serve.

DeeDee

And Buds of Heaven....

We are surrounded, although we are rarely aware of it, by people who hold in their hearts the "buds of heaven."  October is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.  I know, I know, everybody seems to have their 'day' or their 'month' these days.  But October represents a staggering number of people.

If you go to http://www.october15th.com/, you'll see the statistics:  About one in six pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth.  According to the CDC, the US infant mortality rate is 6.1/1000 live births (it drops to 4.2/1000 if you exclude babies born before 24 weeks gestation).  In either case, think about it:  If your high school had only 100 kids in it, 16 kids were missing long before you started kindergarten.  You didn't notice them.  But their parents did.

I've never experienced a miscarriage or the loss of a child, but I've had good friends who have.  I remember the names of the missing children and pray for their parents.  I feel, like many of us feel, helpless in the face of such tremendous loss. 

"I can't pretend to know what you are feeling.  But I'm here if you need me." 

If you know anyone (and I know you must) who has such a loss on their heart, pray for them.  If you have lost a child, I pray for you. 

My gratitude for this day is, that for all we've lost, we've not lost a child. 

DeeDee

Flowers of Earth...

We are halfway through our visits of the morning.  Babygirl awoke with a slight headache, which has resolved.  She is tired, and very cranky, which I am sincerely hoping is NOT a side effect of the Depakote.  The neurology nurse agrees that generating a flow sheet of all medications that could conceivably ever be used for migraine under any circumstances either for maintenance or rescue, traditional, herbal, supplemental or otherwise.  This would be useful for all patients, and also for teaching purposes.  But in our case it would be useful because we would be able to give the entire list to nephrology for clearance in advance of need.

We discussed Botox again.  Babygirl is a bit reluctant to try it, so it was back-burnered for now.  I asked about the Cephaly device (http://www.cefaly.us/) and got permission to try it ($300, not covered by insurance, but well worth the investment if it works at all for either one of us).  The doctor said, "I have patients who swear BY it, and some who swear AT it."  Good to know, Doc, good to know.  He wants to continue the Depakote at a lower dose than the inpatient neurologist recommended. 

All of these things are preventatives.  We still don't have the best plan available to TREAT the headaches as they occur.  Tylenol and tramadol have been ineffective. Migranol was effective briefly.  Imitrex caused chest pain.  So now we've added Reglan and Maxalt (or restart the Migranol with the Reglan) to try, and we are to see if nephrology will clear us for aspirin use (to be avoided at all costs if she is actually ill). 

Flowers of earth.  Botox, Migranol and the aspirin are ancient, plant-based medications.  There is evidence that they have been being used since the Neanderthals roamed the earth, along with foxglove, belladonna, purple coneflower and many other plants that we still use widely in our pharmacopeia today (although it is only recently that Botox has been used for anything other than poison).   More recent development of drugs like Taxol from the Pacific yew for ovarian cancer make scientists keep looking at plants for more potential treatments for diseases.

Our overall disrespect for our planet is costing us medical treatments.  Every time a plant species goes extinct due to habitat loss before we can study it we lose, potentially, the cure for a disease.  Even (and perhaps especially) those plants that we have previously deemed toxic may prove useful if we look at them from a different perspective.  We have take our directive to 'subdue' the earth a bit too literally.

We need to back up, let the planet recover, and be thankful that God put here what we need for our health and well-being.

DeeDee