During this trying time of global crises, I’m
intuitively guided to follow this plan—
1. Employ a
conscious attitude of relaxation during quarantine—Ohhhm ...
2. Remind myself upon awakening to
consciously live life one day at a time in
full appreciation of our family’s precautionary measures to
maintain their good health
3. Focus
attentively upon my good fortune to openly absorb Will’s protectional love
and his professional expertise as well as the abundance of love stoking
my spirit’s heartfelt inner strengths, via cyberspace
Since achieving the trifecta above must be bolstered by heightening degrees of
self awareness, this proactive, three step plan had been my mindset’s go-to way
before the current C-19 pandemic arose.
In fact, this plan had begun to filter out of subconscious storage, intuitively, ever since Sept. 2019 when life threatening symptoms of my illness were finally correctly diagnosed after a year’s span of time had been bungled by doctors whose practices kept brilliant minds too busy to think out of the box, and thus each time my chest pain and fatigue were duly noted, my chart was refiled and placed out of sight and out of mind until I’d reappear to see another of my internist’s associates or her PA, being that my doc (having been on extended maternity leave after birthing her third child) was unavailable for several months during which time my lack of diagnosis had expanded towards a year’s time in which I’d left their offices feeling confusion and frustration suppressed (not repressed) behind my too patient smile, which kept forgetting that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and thus have I learned that in addition to absorbing the trio of attitudes listed above—all based in positively focused realism weaving peaceably together to buoy my strength of spirit during times that try my mind—my smarts have need to up their game even when my mental and physical energy, upon which I depend, prove to be a no show, meaning that I must remain aware of the fact that a deficit in energy does not work in my favor.
Sometimes ya gotta
see yourself squeaking like an insignificant little mouse caught in a mental fog that feels like a cage when in truth there are no bars stopping me from discovering the key to unlocking the closed mindset, which diminishes the capacity of my intellect so as to see myself through my doctors’ narrowed scope. I’ve gained insight into freeing my intelligence to drive home so as to clearly re-costume myself in muscles made of self respect bulging respectfully through spandex tights, a long sleeved tee and cape so as to fly like a bolt of condensed lightening into this office of mega medical knowledge and make better use of my three step trifecta than ever before by dialing up my expectations of this brain trust to listen more attentively so as to, suddenly, congregate before me with interest concerning my case peaking as if my voice has been self-empowered to raise each doctor’s antenna so naturally that my plight is heard with a greater sense of detailed clarity than ever before. Whew!
Whomsoever thinks that trying times are easy for strong spirits to maintain a patient hold onto common sense while watching authority figures spinning on a gerbil’s wheel, getting no place but worse—please think again! Remaining level headed while your health spins off its axis in the midst of a distinguished medical brain trust proves to be a Herculean feat! Don’t even get me started on what happens when my specialists at Mayo and my surgical team in Houston have need to communicate clearly with each other via my medical portal concerning my ongoing medical care while chemo preps me for heart/lung surgery. If Will did not choose to be their super attentive go-between, the most brilliant of minds, being based inside of human heads, would continue to complicate matters beyond our belief.
On a sound stage in Hollywood every cyber conversation between both medical teams would have been well scripted and directed. In real life, my transformation from Gidget mouse to green-eyed Maureen O’Hara Mighty Mouse might not have changed for the better until after my correct diagnosis was duly noted within my chart once my internist, returning from a lengthy maternity leave in Sept. of 2019, saw my annual physical on her schedule, and so a chest X-ray was scheduled as usual, suggesting that none of us thought out of the box until a simple X-ray result popped the lid off my pain and fatigue, exposing a 7cm mass of unknown origin, which had been offered a year’s time to devour two lobes of my right lung, thus solving the mystery of my pain and fatigue—or so we’d thought, because
three different radiologists, one in a hospital ER, misdiagnosed my X-Ray result as pneumonia —BTW—I’m sitting in the chemo chair, right now.
Had my chest pain been on the left, medical minds would have surmised a test as being necessary to check out my heart. However, once pneumonia was misdiagnosed as the mystery malady of my right lung, it seems as if the absence of wheezing, coughing or fever would have highlighted the diminished attentiveness of these bright medical minds in whom I’d entrusted my continued good health as my age continues to advance.
Seriously, upon reflection, hindsight suggests that not one doc considered the fact that pain and fatigue, being my only symptoms, should have raised a red flag to further check into my lungs once the shocking results of a routine X-ray offered medics and patient reason to remain firmly boxed into the hum drum confines of the ‘ordinary’ once my annual physical, blood test, chest X-ray and a slight onset of wheezing was seen as a matched set, as in a game of Go Fish. This mass, being 7cm in size should have compromised my ability to breath, big time. Any yet, it had not at that earlier time.
My internist. A brilliant, busy young woman with two small children and an infant surmises—Annie, I detect a slight wheeze. Your blood test indicates infection. A large mass is covering 2/3 of your right lung! My shocked reply—You mean where the pain has radiated for a year? Yes, it is clearly seen. OMG! You mean my pain is not imagined? And excessive fatigue is not based in my advanced age? My reaction indicates self awareness readjusting. Holy cow! Thank goodness. Finally I am hearing something that makes sense! Or so I believe. At that moment, I felt as if an authority figure had just declared me sane. Suggesting that I was not
yet the supreme authority figure concerning my level of awareness when my sanity was in question within
my own mind!
As to the docs who made up the practice, well, suddenly they had sound reason to feel alarmed, so the brilliance (that’s not sarcasm, brilliance is not infallible to mistakes in professional judgment) of the medical partnership arose as one—Annie has a serious— pneumonia! After several weeks of treatment with no change for the better (still no fever or coughing. Just a
hint of wheezing, newly detected only by stethoscope as well as on-going pain and fatigue). Hmmm. Perhaps it’s Valley Fever. VF
Following several weeks of treatment for VF with no change for the better (still no fever or coughing. Just thatbhint of wheezing, pain and fatigue) my sons strongly suggested a consult with a pulmonologist (who saw me STAT at my internet’s request). One look at the X-ray saw her face turn grim. She arranged for a CT, STAT, the surprising results of which verified the rarity of a sarcoma attacking my right lung. Rarity because these tumors are known, far and wide, to most commonly manifest in the uterus, and my uterus has been absent from my 76 year year old body since I was 34 years old, based in the fact that I’d undergone three emergency abdominal surgeries, during the two year period of time, which had followed and related back to a life threatening, head on collision that came close to putting out my lights, one rainy night in the month of March, 1978. Whew!
As you come to know my history, little by little, you can choose to ride sidekick through many serious surgeries, each of which my hearty spirit rode like a bronc rider whose hide did not feel need to toughen no matter how many times my inner strengths were taxed by having been bucked into the dust, and though I did end up dusting off my spirit in intensive care, four times thus far—my smile and intuitive, three step recovery plan experienced sound reason to become ever more deeply ingrained within the well balanced, sound health of my brain—thanks to my upbringing neath the loving tutelage of my parents and both grammas, all of whom had instilled my hearty spirit with developing along the lines of a well mannered, deeply loving, fearless, straight shooting, high achieving, cow girl, whose natural vulnerabilities, wobbling shakily, subconsciously, remained so well hidden behind my defense system’s wall of denial that I believed only in my super strengths, as did everyone who’d thought to know me well—until such time as the pain bared was not mine to bear with a smile made of solid grit, but rather my mother’s emotional pain and that of my youngest son’s physical pain, both of which, occurring simultaneously, blew Joshua’s horn directly into my hidden vulnerabilities for more than a year before my self protective defensive system’s wall of denial crashed, crushing my host of super strengths like a bunch of broken bones neath a mountain of reality that saw a river of deeply troubled tears swirl my balled up self into the safe haven of my bed, where, with my magic cape pulled up over my head, the super duper, three step plan, above, which had actually begun to intuitively develop while my sons’ young imaginative minds were naturally challenging my think tank to step up my creative game plays, which saw need to heighten patience so that during a sound night of sleep, an insight driven game plan, enhanced by common sense, would write itself on the blackboard of my mind by morning time when my spirit would awaken re-energized, stoked with hope to meet the challenge of coaching my trio of sons through yet another brand new day—knowing we each live one day at a time.
BTW, if that last paragraph left your head spinning, just think of what living through that confounding time and then condensing every day of that year of mental agony into one paragraph must have demanded of my writing prowess ...
And though my patience, creativity and research worked its magic with my having consciously modeled the calm thinking patterns that I’d
conscientiously hoped to mold within the absorptive, intelligent minds of three loving young boys, over eighteen years time,
before irrational power plays got out of hand on both sides, there was no plan that could remold the mindsets of a woman of more than ninety, who, though she’d been one of my best friends, over my entire lifetime, could not get past her defense system’s wall of denial, which refused to offer my mother access to tap into her anger over the death of her her life’s partner, my father, and being that I was the safest person in her life, unbeknownst to us both, guess who played the scape goat upon whom her subconsciously repressed angst dropped for several years until the day before her death—and I’ve thanked God for that merciful reprieve, every day, since.
Oh dear—my memory bank is opening too many doors and windows into classic examples of life events that sorely tax everyone’s host of personal strengths, so details of those harrowing sad stories, each of which ends happily when patience, love, mutual respect and self respect hold hands with professional expertise until The End writes its intuitive self, nourishing the blendship of true lasting friendship to arise, like the Phoenix, from yesteryear’s cooled ashes in full bloom, just as is true of my peaceful desert garden retreat, each spring.
You see, in addition to my strength of spirit handling invasive infusions of chemo while quarantining during this very real C-19 global crises, my organ systems continue to do battle with an unlikely sarcoma that stymied my doctors for a year after the little bugger had silently invaded my lung, uninvited, and over time, here is what has happened as trying times, over my lifetime blend, together: Now that everyone I know has been quarantining for many weeks, just like me, I often forget to attribute my need for quarantine and infusions of chemo to the fact that my body has been and still is wrestling with a highly rare cancerous tumor for more than a year and a half ... and my spirit is still smiling, feeling fully stoked, daily, with and an abundance of love buoyed by my life long addiction to hope ...
On the other hand—while it’s been my choice to protect my life by staying home for many months, I realize that
most of those who began to quarantine, more recently, are aware of the life or death nature of C-19, which, being mandated by well informed governmental officials to quarantine, is
not yet a matter of personal choice. Like every virus, this one cares not about our personal lives or who lives or dies. However, unlike most viruses that run their course until our immune systems get the best of them, this one is not only highly contagious but is also a cold hearted enemy, which if not contained, will continue to suck the very life out of its global host. Whew! Guess the lid, covering sensations of repressed frustration brewing deep inside my head, just popped.🤯
I miss my family,
i miss my friends!
I miss my freedom!
I miss my good health!
Ahhh! That feels better! Having identified
my disconnect from the depths of
my discontent,
my defense system has sound reason to relax while my think tank rebalances inner need to readjust frustration, secreted from my conscious mind, with patience necessary to accept the bald truth that everyone must face, that’s especially true of those whose home state is the same as mine, being that numbers of cases of C-19 are continuing to climb rather than leveling off and declining—and who knows when that change for the better will take place? Not me. Not you. Not my neighbor. Not the mayor. Chief of Police. Not the governor. Not trump. Nor gun toting folk in Michigan—for Pete sake! ...
As is true whenever my think tank is conversing, heart to heart, with a true friend, I am experiencing feelings of relief though nothing has changed except for the fact that I’m being true to myself, straight through to my core ... so please make no mistake—tis not Pollyanna’s voice you hear when a straight shot of reality implores you to consider the maturity levels of your decisions concerning..
Staying home
Staying safe.
Staying well.
Staying balanced and sane just as I plan to do the same during
This is crazy, surreal quarantining time when
Angry folks, fearing poverty, are out and about toting guns—
Please unload your weapons before today’s pain is exacerbated to
The point of no return concerning civilized life ...
🙋🏻♀️❤️🌈🌻
