Facing Reality

I may as well admit it. I have a chronic illness. I have been struggling with this health problem for ten years yet I maintain this stubborn notion that it will finally go away. I persist in thinking that I will find the cure. True healing is right around the corner and I’ll get back to normal. But it doesn’t happen. I have given up on doctors as far as this condition goes. There are some things that help and I have found ways to cope. But will it ever completely go away? I don’t know and to be honest it doesn’t seem likely.

Over the years I have followed a pattern of desperately searching for answers, surging with hope when I come across a promising discovery and aching disappointment when the answer fails to be the ultimate solution.

Pride and shame keep me from admitting the obvious. It is painful to admit that I am flawed—that my body is broken. It is particularly painful to tolerate such little physical activity after previously perceiving myself as relatively athletic.

There is a certain comfort in acceptance. I can let go and quit fighting and pretending. Acceptance does not mean giving up but learning to adapt to life in a new way.

It has been a long journey but the following are things that have helped me so far:

• Practicing the relaxation response, meditation, and proper breathing technique
• Careful pacing of activity and rest
• Overcoming insomnia through the Conquering Insomnia program
• Eating low-carbohydrate and gluten-free
• Finding comfort from the myriad personal blogs on living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Fibromyalgia/ME

I am staying with our daughter and family for a few weeks. My main job is helping out with care for 7 month old Julian while she waits for a more permanent child care situation. Sarah and Andrew are very busy with their jobs and parenting highly energized three year old Henry and baby Julian. I wish I could do more to help them but my energy levels get depleted so quickly. I keep hitting the wall of numbing fatigue, headache and sore throat and then I have to back off and rest until my energy reserves are replenished. This is very frustrating.

Learning to Sleep Again

One morning six months ago I rose to another dreary day of sleep deprived exhaustion. I was so tired of feeling tired. I have struggled with insomnia on and off for most of my adult life but recently the problem had plumbed new depths.

For almost twenty years I relied on a medication to help me sleep that my doctor assured me I could take safely for the rest of my life. That stopped abruptly when the pharmaceutical company ceased to manufacture it. However, once off of it I felt healthier and stronger. It seemed that there was a link between the medication and the poorer health that I had been experiencing and I regretted I had taken it for so many years. From then on I wanted to abstain from sleeping pills as I realized that all medications have undesirable side effects. Medications can be helpful in the short term but unless absolutely necessary, taking medications long term may introduce new health problems. And in particular, current medical wisdom advises against taking sleeping pills long term.

Thus on this specific day in December, strangled in the web of brain fog and the malaise of fatigue, I resolved that I would find a drug-free answer. I simply refused to live this way anymore. The nights were miserable and the days were even worse. I cried out to God. If this was ‘the thorn in the flesh’ that God wanted me to live with, so be it, but I wasn’t going to accept it without a fight.

I spent the morning browsing the internet for answers. I came across all kinds of ads, gimmicks and websites designed to appeal to sufferers of insomnia. Intuitively I rejected most of them. Then something caught my eye. It was a website for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. It had a link to a Good Housekeeping article and the author drew me in with her well written humorous style and I could identify with her sleeping difficulties. She explained how the drug-free CBT for Insomnia program had helped her and she gave me hope. I examined it carefully. The five week long program is designed and run by psychologist Dr. Gregg Jacobs. It provides instructional material to be read and studied each week and the participant is required to keep a sleep diary which is examined and returned with directions regarding one’s sleep schedule. The cost was only $25. What was there to lose?

The timing of all of this fell over Christmas week. Normally I would wait until after Christmas to start a program of any kind but I craved immediate relief. Fortunately our Christmas plans were low key and I thought this was as good a time as any to get going on it. However, not only did the course span Christmas and New Year’s but also the time we would spend out east with Sarah and Andrew as she was due to deliver her second baby.

In spite of the holidays and traveling I followed the program faithfully; not because I was dutiful or disciplined but because I was desperate. I didn’t see immediate results. I knew it was a process and it could take some time and practice to achieve success. But toward the end of the program I could tell it was working. I had fewer of those miserable, restless nights and zombie-like days and was generally feeling more rested and energetic than I had in a long time.

The program didn’t help me in the way I expected. I had always believed the hype that one needs eight hours of sleep. I thought for sure that I was one of those people. So I assumed that that was what I would get from the program—eight solid hours of good sleep. Gregg Jacobs says no. Some people need less. My program was structured so that I was advised to get no more than 7 hours. But I found that I did fine on that—even 6 hours some nights is all I need. In fact, Jacobs suggests that the ‘eight hour hype’ is promoted by pharmaceutical companies in an effort to sell more of their sleeping pills.

I decided to let a good amount of time go by before I would tell my story. I wanted to avoid premature claims that I had conquered my insomnia. But generally speaking it worked, and I am very happy to enjoy regular good sleep.

http://www.cbtforinsomnia.com/

My California Trip

Consisted of:

Visiting relatives

Not only Uncle Brennan and Bill and Kathy who are pictured here but Steve and Wendy and Don too (I was mad at myself for forgetting to take their photos)

Visiting Friends

Brad (Sean's old roommate from USC) and Cathy and Noah

Justin (Sean's present roommate)

Seeing two great museums with gardens

The Huntington Library and Gardens

The fabulous Getty Center

Attending Sean's church: experiencing and appreciating Tommie Walker's music

Seeing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo because it hadn't been playing anywhere near Colorado

Enjoying lots of fun eateries:

The Carousel http://www.carouselrestaurant.com/

The Trattoria Amici at The Americana http://www.americanaatbrand.com/glendale/dining/dining.php

Aunty Ems http://www.auntieemskitchen.com/press.html

The Oinkster http://www.theoinkster.com/

Cafe Beaujolais http://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-beaujolais-los-angeles

Ruby's Diner on the pier at Huntington Beach http://www.rubys.com/

Spending time with Sean who graciously allowed his mother to hang out with him and drove her all over the place on those crazy freeways

Owl

I love unusual wildlife sightings. For thousands of years it was probably no big deal  for human beings to observe most any kind of wildlife but in my modern world such occurrences are rare—like precious jewels. My recent gem is a Great Horned Owl who has taken to hanging around our house. For the past month I have heard intermittent hooting and have wondered if it was an owl or a mourning dove.(I am a dumb suburbanite.) And then one evening just before dusk, I was preparing supper when out of the corner of my eye a large pair of wings swooped by our kitchen windows. I followed the flight of those wings as a large bird lit on the branch of a tree 50 feet from our house. Although well camouflaged in the woods, I could discern the outline of an owl. I admired the noble creature through binoculars and marveled at its great puffy feathery body. I thrilled as I realized that it seemed to be watching me too. Then it amused me by turning its head completely around without turning its body, in typical owl like fashion, as it observed something directly behind. Several times it leaned forward and rocked rhythmically as it called hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo.
I longed for another sighting but assumed that I would have to settle for merely listening to its hooting in the night. However, late yesterday a commotion by a couple crows drew me to a window and there was my owl perched in a tree closer to the house than last time. The crows fluttered around it cawing excitedly while it maintained a dignified posture. Finally they left and I observed the owl in peace. Again I used binoculars and saw that it was staring back at me, direct eye contact—eerie but thrilling. It lingered in the golden glow of the setting sun for about an hour and then plunged from its perch and soared out of view. I’m looking forward to my next sighting.

Spring Skiing

This past weekend I enjoyed a rare surge of energy. We were skiing at Keystone on the last day of its 2009/2010 season. White peaks glistening against blue sky, soft mountain breezes, crisp snow, bright sun and the scent of pine made for a time of wonder and joy. I was able to take more runs than usual and I enjoyed a feeling of renewed confidence in my ski legs and ski feet as I negotiated each trail. It was a pleasant change to appreciate the wind on my face rather than brace against it when we rode the chairlift. At lunchtime, Kim and I flopped into Adirondack chairs by Labonte Cabin’s ‘Beach’ and luxuriated in the warmth of the sun. Life is good when you can enjoy a sense of well being and the beauty of God’s creation.

The Cross of Emmanuel

We went to the Good Friday concert at First Pres last night and as usual Jim DeJarnette was wonderful. He not only led the music, directing the choir and musicians, but he led the service as well. In my humble opinion he is one of the few Christian leaders who ‘gets it’ or at least communicates that he ‘gets it’. His faith is real and genuine and he makes Christianity look like something you want to be a part of not only because it would be good for you (a future in heaven rather than hell) but because it is so beautiful and eternally true. He is not exactly a dynamic speaker but he is sincere and authentic and speaks with the kind of quiet authority that I imagine people saw in Jesus.

The theme of the service was ‘The Cross of Emmanuel’ with an emphasis on the meaning of the name, God with us. All of the lovely music, scripture and other parts of the service revolved around this theme.

He started the service by introducing a piece of artwork; “The Crucifixion” painted by Grunewald around 1515. This piece was commissioned for the Antoinite monastery at Isenheim, Germany with the purpose of providing comfort for the patients in the monastic hospital. These patients suffered from hideous, humiliating skin diseases that distorted and disfigured their bodies. When Grunevald painted his crucifixion he painted Jesus, not as some sort of superhero who looked pretty good despite being tortured on a Roman cross, like many other painters of the time, but as one suffering with the outward physical symptoms of some of these diseases in addition to the agonies of the cross. The painting depicts him as having the strange contorted swelling and skin discoloration that the patients of this hospice had. Grunewald was saying to these people, “Look, this Jesus identifies with your suffering. He died for you.”

The service also involved a conversation between Jim DeJarnette and Dan Woolley, a man who works for Compassion International and survived the collapse of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Dan described the horrific physical experience that he endured as well as the rescue that took place sixty hours after the earthquake. Jim’s questions drew out from Dan how he experienced God with him during that ordeal.



Humanly speaking it is easy to focus on Dan as the one who God saved. But Jim also drew our attention to Dan’s companion, Dave Hames, who did not survive the quake. God was with him also, Jim explained. God plucked Dan out of that collapsed building to go back to his country and his family but he plucked Dave out of the earthquake to be with Him. To reinforce that point Jim led the choir in “How Lovely is thy Dwelling Place” by Brahms. He also assured the congregation that God is with each one of us in our unique situations.

Pippi Longstocking II

I recently finished The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second book in the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. The book is full of violence and bad language, things I usually abhor in books and movies but I can’t help it—I’m enthralled with the character of Lisbeth Salander. Her character is loosely based on Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking.

I read the first book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo while traveling in Sweden last summer. It was fun to read it while immersed in Swedish culture and to see some of the countryside and places where the story is set. The book was prominently displayed in all the bookstores and I observed that people were reading it everywhere—airports, bus stations, etc. The Swedish title is Men Who Hate Women. Intriguing. Why did the publishers of the English edition change the name? Did they assume that the book would not sell with the Swedish title?

I love the fantasy of Lisbeth’s extreme intelligence, photographic memory and her remarkable ability to defend herself. It is fascinating to me that the same sense of liberation and delight that I received as a child from reading about the antics of Pippi Longstocking, I now get as an adult from reading about Lisbeth Salander. Although she refuses to see herself as a victim she has a certain underdog status resulting from childhood tragedy with which it is easy to empathize. Then there is the joy and exhilaration when she fights back. I love her sense of justice and moral clarity.

I appreciate how Stieg Larsson’s moral outrage (at racism, sexism and the abuses of power) shines forth in these books. As a journalist he fought neo-Nazi activity in Sweden for many years. I feel sad that he died young and was unable to fulfill his ambition to write ten books in this series. His writing has inspired me to give more support to such organizations as Not For Sale. http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/