California Roll

Bleeding in the Night

At one am last night our bedroom light suddenly came on.  My 17 year old was standing there holding a sign.  "My throat is bleeding."

Jenny had her tonsils extracted last Monday.  When we saw the Dr. yesterday, she said, "Everything looks great!"

We found the instructions given us when we left the hospital and they said that if bleeding continue more than 15 minutes to call.

We did that after 12 minutes.  We were scared.  Good thing we started early.  Had to talk to three operators before someone put us through to a doctor and it took her quite a while to fully wake up.

With swishing her mouth with ice water, the bleeding subsided slowly.  She had to stay up another hour to ensure that the bleeding wouldn't start again while she was sleeping.

Pretty exciting - I'm glad my husband was the one staying up with her.  Goes to show, as far as parenting goes, two are definitely better than one! 

I'm thankful that my oldest is a fairly independent 17 year old. After just three days following her tonsillectomy, she no longer needed me to remind her to take her medicines, fix her soft food and soothing drinks.  She like managing by herself.

Last night paints the picture that parenting never really ends.  Just when you're think you've done, that you can call the shots, or sleep when want, another need presents itself.

Receiving Rainbows

    Today, in California, not Hawaii, I saw a rainbow.  A whole one is rare enough here, not like Hawaii.  This one started faint, but with the beginnings of a second rainbow on the right side. As I and my new friend from South Africa hiked, talked and prayed, it changed, changed to fit the mood and content of our talk.  God was speaking. 
    I told my friend of how the surgeon I went to see this week had said I didn't need surgery for gastric reflux. He questioned whether the problems I've been having with sleeping are actually do to reflux; he interpreted data that I'd brought him differently than other doctors I've seen.  I was glad to not have surgery, sad to have no answer to why I often wake up too early, tired.
    The surgeon said that 90% of our nerves are not in our head we might believe but in our stomach.
    I need to take steps to get the trust and peace I have with God from my head down to my stomach because it appears that the disconnect between my head and my heart is leading to stimulation of  my nerves and wakefulness in the early morning. 
    I have some ideas of how to do that, but that's not the topic now.  Those of you reading who are the praying kind - please pray for me about this.  Others, read on.
    So I told my friend about this stomach thing and she said, "Carol, do you realize what this means! That a surgeon told you that you don't need surgery.  That's huge!" 
    I guess so. Now it's up to me to "dabble" as he suggested, to listen to God and figure out what I can do to find my way through this.  I'm trying taking less vitamins and meds this week.
    Anyways, after this discussion my friend ordered me to go off path and take a seat on a log.  "Relax, completely," she ordered.  I did. And soon the tears came.  Busyness, thinking, that's how I keep myself from feeling.  I went back to being a baby, felt my terror, felt unwanted.  God spoke, "I want you, Carol."  I saw Jesus holding baby Carol.  I felt loved and wanted and much of my terror ebbed away. But now back to the rainbow.
    When we walked back to path, the rainbow was full colored.  We were dizzied, ecstatic.
    Later after my friend told me her inner stuff and we prayed.  Then the rainbow became bolder, brighter, with the inner arch of aqua being extended into purple and the beginnings of a double arch on either side, not just one as previous.  God was speaking again through the rainbow,  reassuring that He wants to bring joy and good to us, that he hears us, that he was delighting in what we were confessing and aiming for.

   

A New Work

I wrote this Wednesday morning this week.    Thirty minutes previous, my husband had prayed that I could focus on my tasks and get my work done. After all, the day before had completely interrupted my plans and normal routine.  The words below came as answer to my asking God, "What the heck am I supposed to do today?" 

My work is grieving now.

Not the the clearing of the breakfast dishes for four.
Not the sweeping the piles of dog hair.

My work is grieving now.

Yesterday I held hands, listened, spoke
the words that came as I held my mother's white, cold hand.

My work is grieving now.

Yesterday I told her,  “Jesus waits for you. Louis too.”
I watched numbers on the monitor by her bedside rise up, down, down.

My work is grieving now.

I walked outside with my elder brother to the cafe.
He talked of its pear cider – cold and light.  Returning,
we noticed stripes of red paint on window frames

on a gray refurbished house.  It's hard
for him to talk of interiors.  I wanted
to wash a window for him.

My work is grieving now.

--------------------------------------------

I let my dog run in an open space and did a core dump with a friend who listens without critique and with beautiful insight.   Then I treated myself to a membership at Filoli - a favorite place of my mother's - with beautiful gardens.  I wondered there among roses and dahlias and remembered who my mother was (is?) and what I enjoyed about her and what she enjoyed about life.  I was happy there. I bought a mosaic talbe in the garden shop to commemorate her.   A butterfly symbolizes how she's been set free. 

In the car on the way to and from tears rippled and roared.   When I arrived home, my girl asked with eyebrows as well as their words, "How was your day?"   I didn't feel lonely or empty or disconsolate.  I had done my work and I felt good.

Today tasks kept my focus.  No feelings came.  Another day the new work, the good work, the necessary work of grieving, will call me inwards again.

Don't let the doctor send you there!

    My kind gastroentrologist casualy mentioned I would need a "manomerry" before we scheduled surgery to relieve this daily reflux I've been experiencing for seven months now (and, yes, I've taken the meds. advertised on TV and much more potent ones too).

    I'm so eager to be done with sitting up in bed in order to get sleep, I said, "Okay" without any seocnd thoughts.

    He did tell me it would involve a plastic tube going down my nose, throat and into my esophagus.  That much was clear.

    I didn't know it would take four stabs, each one penetrating further, of a Q-tip with anaesthesia up my nose to start to numb me.

    I didn't know that even with that anaesthesia I would the hard edges of that tube being inserted, that it would bang up against my sensitive sinues causing an explostion of pain.

    I didn't know that the nurse would have to withdraw that catheter it would take a second round of stabs with a Q tip and anaestheisa and then we'd start again.

    I didn't know I'd have to endure feelikng the rough, coarse tube in my throat every time I swallowed, or that I want to swallow so frequently. (More than the every 20 seconds which my nurse wante dme to do)

    And I certainly didn't know that I'd have to deal with this putting the tube in and taking it out gradually for a whole 45 minutes.

    And I definitely would not have said yes so quickly if i'd known that this whole ordeal would bring on frightening feels of being invaded, penetrated, and violated.

    It's done now and I hope I never have to do it again.  While I wflat on my back with this plastic worm with black rings on it crawling down my nose, throat and esophagus, I remembered a time some ten years ago when my then unidentified reflux was causing significant sleeps issues.  My very same doctor as now said, "We could do this procedure of putting a tube down your nose and throat to verify that you do have reflux, or we could just treat this syptomatically."

    I caught the warning in his eyes.  "Is that procedure uncomfortable?"

    Yes, it is.  That's why I'm fine with  just giving you these pills and seeing if you can then sleep better."

    Yes, he didn't warn me two weeks ago -- there was no help for it (i.e. no way to forestall doing this loathsome procedure).  The insurance co. demands it as justification for the surgery on my spincter muscle we're contemplating.

    But he did warn me earlier.  And he didn't rush me into this.  And maybe my ignorance was bliss.  Better not to know before it started what I was getting into.   

    I sure started calling out to God after the gentle, sympathetic nurse withdrew the catheter after her first unsuccesful attempt at insertion.  And He answered by helping her figure out soon that the problem was not swollen sinuses as she first guessed, but that there is an unsual acute angle in the consturction of those interior passages. Not knowing that, she was jamming the tube up against my highly sensitive sinuses in her first pass. But the second time, for no apparent reason, she just figured it out right away.

    This is God's grace.

    He's not giving me what I want -- instant healing. But he's giving me a means to get through the discomfort, tiredness and pain.