Rebirthday

Monday was my rebirthday. It was also my 61st birthday. I'd decided in advance to designate it my rebirthday—it seemed like a good idea since I'm still returning from a flirtation with death. I'd establish a milestone add structure to my recovery. I didn't restrain myself from telling friends and family who came by yesterday that it was my rebirthday. At the same time, I tried not to have preconceptions of what a rebirthday might be like, just to stay open to possibilities.

The day came and went and it was wonderful.

Yet while reflecting on how what I might present it here the following day, I almost missed the point, the wonder of it all. I didn't feel as good as I would have liked. I guess I imagined that after my rebirthday, my regular energy, or better yet, some wonderful new energy, would return - and it didn't. In fact, I was tired all day - which, of course, colored my perception of the previous day.

My plan for this reflection was immersed in stories of what didn't happen on my rebirthday: if only the dinner guests at dinner had gathered in the garden first, if only this or that, I can't even remember what now, had happened, the day would have perfect. I even spent some time trying to figure out how I could share some very personal details in an impersonal way.

Fortunately, by the time I sat down to write, I realized what I'd lost sight of.

Here's what my rebirthday was really like.

I woke up early and went to see how the compass garden the boys made and planted the previous afternoon was doing.

It was flourishing!

Liam came out with me and picked the first ripe tomato. (Well, it wasn't quite that magical. The tomato plants had already been in the garden for a month or so.) The tomato joined some others as part of the huevos rancheros Tom made for breakfast.

I spent most of the day in the garden. Friends came to visit. The new flowers, lobelia, echinacea, yarrow, coreopsis, autumn sage, gazania, gloriosa daisies and petunias, free of their constricting pots, opened outward in the perfect sunshine. The breeze played the wind chimes. The dog worked on her bone in the shade of the redwood.

At lunch my daughter and son-in-law and the three boys joined Tom and me for lunch at the Wild Donkey Cafe. It lived up to its excellent reputation.

I spent the early afternoon back in the garden, reading my new book, napping a little, and watching the boys rehearse for their show at dinnertime.

At about four, Elisa and the boys and I went for a delicious walk through Leaning Pine Arboretum.

And when we came home, more family joined us for the boys' show and the extraordinary meal Tom had prepared: puff pastry filled with seafood in a cream sauce, cucumber salad, and a peach mousse cake.

How could I ever imagine anything was lacking in a day like that? I could I ever imagine anything is lacking at all?

"Want or poverty is not in the system of the universe or the normal elements of nature. It is a deviation from the natural norm." - Ganesh Baba

Nowhere to go but the heart

Healing

Nowhere to go but the heart.  - Sufi saying

 Every day I'm better. Every day I feel fully myself for a little longer. I'm sleeping less—though  I still took two short naps and one long one yesterday, felt depleted much of the day regardless, and then slept soundly through the night. On the other hand, friends were here from 9 in the morning till 1:30 in the afternoon, helping in the house, bringing delightful food, and sharing their healing energy with me.

My hand is close to completely mobile now. The areas around the scabs are tender, so I avoid using those parts of my hand - the finger easy, the palm not so easy - but I haven't been in real pain since the third day following the surgery, a gift I attribute entirely to Dr. Woods's extraordinary craftsmanship. 

At the heart of the matter is caring: channeling the light of consciousness through the heart.

I'm very fortunate. My heart is overflowing with gratitude for the extraordinary care I received through this experience: from the folks at MedStop who recognized the danger and sent me right to the ER; to the ER staff who called Dr. Woods so quickly; to the nurses and hospital staff who managed the regimen of IV antibiotics pumped into the wound and my veins over the days following; to Dr. Holland who recognized the C. diff so quickly, and the ER staff the second time around who re-hydrated me and set me on the course to overcoming it; to Tom's round-the-clock compassion, to Josephine who showed up at my house the day after I came home bearing baskets of probiotics, burdock root, sauerkraut and yogurt, washed my hair, and fed both Tom and me and healing meal; and to the long list of friends who've sent loving thoughts, reiki, prayers and other forms of distance healing, to others who've visited, cleaned the house and brought meals. No wonder I'm healing as quickly as I am.

Nonetheless, this is a dualistic world, one in which heaven and hell co-exist. The loving care of all these individuals is balanced by the descent I experienced during the first few days of the ordeal.

The first instance of the opposite of caring came in the form of that sunny Californian optimism that makes San Luis Obispo the second happiest place in the world. We all assumed the dog bite would be fine; the dog's owner didn't even give me her name. A quick apology was enough.

Then two images from the depth of the experience:

On the Fourth of July, the Monday after the dog bit me, I woke nauseous from the huge doses of painkillers I was taking. Using my left hand because my right was engaged in being drained, I buzzed the nurse, something I had to do every time a trip to the toilet was necessary— and many were—with liters of antibiotics rushing through me day and night. After the third buzz she came, pert and breezily apologetic, and unplugged the pumps from the wall so I could get up and lumber across the room to the toilet. I mentioned to her I felt sick and she promised to order an an anti-emetic. I crawled back into bed, positioned my hand so it would drain onto the absorbent pad instead of the sheets and none of the tubes were kinked, and went back to sleep.  

Perhaps a couple hours passed when I woke to an orderly dropping off my lunch. I used the up button to raise the back of the bed so I could sit up to eat and as I rose, I discovered I was very nauseous indeed. I buzzed the nurse and waited, sitting very still and breathing slow and deep. About ten minutes passed. I was about to buzz again when I knew it was too late. I grabbed the lid that was keeping my lunch warm and vomited into it.

Then I sat there, holding the lid with my left hand, my lunch waiting, the absorbent pad doing double duty, for about forty minutes.

"Surrender is the rare and necessary gift of cooperation with God," Ganesh Baba says. How fortunate I was at that moment to have done the work, breathing in abundance, breathing out surrender, for months in advance of finding myself in a position where there was nothing to do but surrender.

I examined my breakfast curiously and checked out what had and hadn't been digested. I waited. I breathed.

And eventually, the nurse came, profusely apologetic this time.  But, too often, apology is cheap currency. 

Nonetheless, the dog, her owner and the nurse, despite their lack of caring attention, are only messengers. My karma is my karma; their karma is theirs.

The second incident came later the same night.  I woke up soaking wet: bed, blankets, hospital gown. Apparently my hand had moved off the absorbent pad while I was sleeping and all those antibiotics had rushed through my hand and into the bed. I buzzed and the night nurse was on it. The nights are better than the days for getting service of Hotel French. Less squeaky wheels.

When I was washing up, I realized that it was the left IV that was leaking, not the right. It would have to be removed and reinserted, but first my hospital gown, which I'd been wearing since I came to the ER Saturday morning, would need to be changed. Unfortunately, it was not the IV kind of gown that snaps at the shoulders. 

So, at 1:30 in the morning, I stood naked in the middle of the hospital room as my wet gown was cut off me. It took another hour and a half to find a good vein and get a new IV hooked up. Finally reconnected to tubes in both hand, pumps plugged into the wall, I fell asleep.

When she entered the seventh gate,
From her body the royal robe was removed.

Inanna asked:What is this?

She was told:
Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect,
They may not be questioned.

Naked and bowed low, Inanna entered the throne room.

Ereshkigal rose from her throne.
Inanna started from her throne.

The Anunna, the judges of the underworld, surrounded her.
They passed judgment against her.

Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.

She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.
She struck her.

Inanna was turned into a corpse,
A piece of rotting meat,
And was hung from a hook on the wall.

"Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer" by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. Harper & Rowe, Publishers.

  

We can choose what we care about. I delight in seeing this whole experience mythologically. I could choose to be angry. Then, I would probably still be fighting some infection instead of drawing a picture of a heart on my healing hand.

connecting the life line to the heart and head lines

 

In January of 1998, some months before we moved to San Luis Obispo so unexpectedly, I found myself, equally unexpectedly, in New Orleans where, naturally, I had my palm read.

For $5, the palm reader began her reading by sharing a number of things about me that she couldn't possibly have known. A good intuitive, I thought. Then she said I would travel a lot that year, sometimes unexpectedly (already true), that I would change jobs, no, that I would have the same job but in another location (which turned out to be true as well), and that I would live into my 80's (very reasonable) but that I come very close to death once before that. 

In the years since her reading, the palm reader became an integral part of my how-we-came-to-San-Luis story, but I never included the last part. Superstitious. Anyway, if every part of every prediction came true, we would live in a very different world. It's startling enough that so much of the rest of the story came true.

But now that part has manifest, too. On the day of the Grand Opening of Sweet Earth's new store (at Chorro and Palm), my palm was having its own grand opening, my hand, and quite possibly my arm and my life, saved. 

A few days later it happened again. Back in the ER for 7 hours of blood tests, stool cultures and saline solution dripping into my vein, I was so severely dehydrated from an intestinal infection that my blood pressure was 77/48. Some nasty bacteria (C. diff.) had taken up residence in my intestines, so beautifully clean from four days of intravenous antibiotics rushing through them.

Now I am recovering. It's taking quite a long time. I'm still so tired that I sleep for hours every day. My hand is recovering beautifully, though, thanks to Dr. Daniel Woods' excellent work. It's just taking a while for all those complex internal communities to be rebuilt.

Yesterday the sutures were removed from the wound at the center of my palm. What remains is a horizontal line with four tiny stars above it.  A good palm reader would have more to say but it seems pretty obvious that the major lines on my right palm - are now connected: head to heart to life.

What can I be but eternally grateful?

Open hand surgery

On Friday, July 1, the day of the new moon, partial solar eclipse and other assorted influences described here by Rick Levine and Jeff Jawer, I was sitting at the vet's waiting for my dog, Lily Bear, to be brought out after a night's stay at the kennel. A woman sitting about four feet down the bench received her dachshund, Annie, before Lily Bear arrived. A few moments later, Annie got off her owner's lap and crossed the bench to where I was sitting. Her tail was up and wagging, so I began to raise my hand from the bench to offer the back of it for a sniff. Very abruptly, Annie bit me.

Annie's owner grabbed her and said, "I'm so sorry! I should have told you she can be nippy!" She hurried off to pay her bill and was gone.

The bite was on the middle finger of my right hand. On the left side of my finger the skin wasn't broken, but on the right there was a deep puncture wound. The vet cleaned it up and put a band-aid on it, muttering something about how it might have hit a vein and how it might hurt like hell. "But it should be okay."

Lily Bear was brought out and, as I paid for her stay, the receptionist mentioned that she'd been bitten many times and it never came to anything.

But two hours into my shift at the chocolate shop, which began about an hour later, I was in such severe pain that I closed the shop and called the local urgent care center, which was, unfortunately, closed. So I figured I would ice the wound and go in the morning.

Events moved quickly the next day. The urgent care center sent me right to the ER. An infection had already followed the tendon in my finger into the palm of my hand. At the hospital, I was attached to a machine that began pumping antibiotics into a vein in my arm, an orthopedic surgeon showed up, and x-rays, an EKG, and volumes of blood were taken. Since I had eaten breakfast, surgery couldn't be scheduled until 4 that afternoon. It was my first surgery, and, for the first time in my life, I was given general anesthesia.

The surgeon made two incisions, one along the inside of the long finger next to the puncture, and one across the palm. The tendons were debrided and a drain placed in my palm. The surgery took about an  hour, they tell me.

I woke up a while later and was wheeled into the hospital room where I would stay for the next four days.

The story isn't over yet, though I've been home another four days now, but what strikes me about the sequence of events is how strongly aligned they are with current astrology. How much more aligned can they be than this?

I'm not ready to speculate on the meaning of such a blatant manifestation of the current astrological geometry, but as Levine and Jawer point out, we're certainly not in Kansas anymore.