Outflanking pain with flowers - Pinks & Pink Columbine in 3d & stills

Pinks & Pink Columbine

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Outflanking pain with flowers

On suffering and art (Letters from the other side of the looking glass)

Its a widely held belief that great suffering creates great art. I had a friend in high school who was brilliant and creative, had every advantage. But this friend wanted to be an artist, and thought that suffering was necessary for it. So this friend's life became the sort of soap opera that you'd see portrayed on a Lifetime movie, or featured in an episode of The Shift.

I thought that was bunk then, and I even more so now that not only have I dedicated most of my adult life to helping those who are suffering, but have spent several months feeling like I had plasma burning paths through large parts of my body.

Here is what I have observed however: While I've lost a great deal of my cognitive abilities and faculties, my creativity has stayed with me, and often provides the only real relief from the onslaught.

I can't speak for any other creative person who is similarly suffering, but for my part, pain has not made me more creative, it has merely taken away my ability to do much else.

Every day I go for a nature walk with Tess (which is a wonderful thing, no small miracle, and the answer to years of prayers) and take pictures or video. The only extent to which pain impairs this is that since I'm often dizzy from it, I can't bend or lie down easily or safely, nor go scrambling around creek banks or rocky outcroppings to get just the right point of view for my photo.

I have taken GIGABYTES of photos and hours of video while this has been going on. The photo in this blog is just one of over a dozen I took this morning of chestnut buds along one of our creeks, and I've been documenting the bud's progress since they first appeared. The place is a very special one for me and Tess... its where a little creek joins a larger one. We spend a lot of time together there.

I rarely have the presence of mind to organize these pix & vid , much less post them... that's more analytical than creative... that has been significantly compromised.

For me, pain has been like an acid bath... its burned away anything not vital or essential. A group I don't necessarily endorse has collected a wide array of sacred texts which speak to this.

For myself, this text from the first chapter of my namesake's first epistle often comes to mind:

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

⁴to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,

⁵who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

⁶In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials,

⁷so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

⁸and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,

⁹obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. (NASB)

I think of this passage so much because most of the ways I experience the pain is that of some sort of fire... be it plasma, lava, matter and antimatter combining, etc.

Among my close circle of dear hearts who have been such tireless supporters, constantly being the mirrors by which I am bathed in the light of God's love, we more often remark on these texts:

1Co 10: 13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.(ESV)

2Co 12:7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.(ESV)

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The wry remark made being "Would that God did not esteem me so highly as to count me worthy and able to bear the blessings of such hardship"

One other remark which bears repeating is one I made the other day in a text message.

"When medicines fail, God does not... the house finch still come to feed outside our window."

You'd be astounded how long it took me to compose this post dear friends... but I've had so much on my heart I wanted to speak about, and since at the moment my dizziness is preventing me from doing much else...

I hope I can issue forth a few more dispatches from the other side of the looking glass, and even more, come around online and see and hear how you all are doing. I so wish my ability to type and read were not so severely attenuated!

Living life on the other side of the looking-glass ... With immense pain, catastrophic osteoporosis, and abnormally high testosterone

Nothing is clear in my life these days... not my thoughts, not the cause of my conditions, nor the future course of it.

After...

Four months

Hours spent in every known scanning device

Litres of blood and urine drawn and tested

Here is what we know: Diddly/squat.

OK, we know a little more than that. As my first x-rays at the walk-in clinic back in early November suggested, I do indeed have osteoporosis. VERY severe osteoporosis. So severe that the doctor wrote for the best and most expensive osteoP drug on the market- Forteo- and insurance approved it right away.

We know one other thing: My testosterone levels are significantly higher than normal... so much so that the doctor asked if I'd been shooting up 'roids and testosterone like an MLB home-run king.

Yeh... right... were I taking additional testosterone, I'd look like sasquatch, and sound like a foghorn.

We don't know what caused the osteoporosis.

Nor do we know why I am still in such inexplicable unbelievable pain on a daily basis.

My surgeon has determined that my gamma nail has set properly tho, so he's signed off on my care... we're looking under all stones to find a doctor who will either treat my pain or help find its cause.

So far that's been difficult, which is why you don't see much of me online, and won't until this is addressed.

The pain- more than the pain meds- leaves me in a fog/haze most of the time. I'm often disoriented in regards to space and time... I trip over things not there, run into things... and remember, before all this, my reflexes were so acute that I did all sorts of crazy things balancing on the bongo board.

Along with the pain is usually very severe muscle spasms. They are primarily in the areas of the body most affected by the osteoporosis but not exclusively.

The pain and spasms started before my femur fractured... so either they and the osteoporosis share a common cause, or they're just comorbid.

I just can't words for the pain... but perhaps this will suffice to convey how severe it is... I often find myself wondering if phantom pain could possibly be worse than what I'm experiencing on a daily basis... I wonder if I'd not have done better to have the leg amputated? Consider that... consider what a lover of the outdoors I am, how vigorous and vital I am, that the pain is such that amputation seems like the greener grass.

There are lots of good things happening in life... most especially that Tess and I have spent more time outside together in the last 5 weeks than in the previous 5 years... its an answer to many prayers.

Thanks for the comments and caring and praying... I so wish I were able to be online interacting with you, but interacting with this maelstrom which is working its way through my body takes all I've got... and then some...

The photo is one I took of my reflection in the creek which runs along one side of our property... seemed like a more apropos image than the wheel chair one. I did some FX to it... maybe I'll do a post about them someday...

Health (or lack thereof) update / Butterfly (dog) Kisses video

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I'm starting to think that if I wait to talk about what's going on until I understand it... it might be 2020.

I have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, but why it happened and what to do about it are still pending.

The sad situation which led to my first "Word Picture" reached its conclusion... I have more such pictures to post, but I owe someone else one first.

Pain continues to run amok... I'm still taking great pictures, delighting in the company of friends, family, the pups, but... Every time I have a thought worth posting, the pain and exhaustion have washed it away by the time the computer boots up.

So I'm afraid I'm still AWOL. As before, if you're in the area or have other means to contact me, that's fine... I can interact with people and take visitors, I just can't hold or express a coherent thought.

AVN/osteonecrosis- NEVERMIND

NOT avascular necrosis of the shoulder. So next stop... endocrinologist next Weds!

When first heard avn from oncologist, knew I needed to get a ruling from my orthopedic surgeon.

Perhaps there is some such going on, but if so, its not shown by the MRI of my humerus, and my orthoP took flat film x-rays to confirm.

Talked about general situation... he's pretty confident that if there's anything to be found, the endocrinologist will find it, and that's what I've suspected from the start, so... .

In the mean time, pain has "plateaued-down" at pre-Nov 17th level. Mind you, that pain were still the worst I've had in my life to date, but it means I have some time each day where the fog of pain recedes enough to think.

I've been outside doing the sort of exercise and productive puttering allowed by my state of healing for three days in a row. It feels very good. Will doubtless do so again today.

First though, I need to go back through my back-posts here and make sure I spelled my doctor's name right, etc. I took a general thank-you in to the doctor's office yesterday, and I was in a bit of a fog when I wrote it & MASSIVELY mangled his name. Fortunately Tess was clear headed then, so between the two of us... *grin*

Exhaustion dims the mirror and increases the pain

I continue to be on the mend, but after I resurfaced onto the web, life around here went nutZ.

Tess' chicken pox became so severe that she was almost ready to imitate Cartman and take a bath in calamine lotion. (See "Chicken Herpes")

My mother woke up to the New Year with a high fever and vomiting.

So my brother and I went shopping for them. That was really pretty cool- I wanted to have more sense of family and community than I'd had in Chicago, and it has VERY much born out here, especially during this preposterous what-ever-the-Krishna-is-going-on-with-my-bones period of life.

I did the entire shopping trip on crutches, with my brother pushing the cart. Not surprisingly given my mad bongo skills, it went great.

However, the net effect of all of this was increased exhaustion and pain.

There is a very strong link... can't tell if its a 1:1 scale, or if at some point you get so tired that your body becomes hyper aware of pain.

Either way, today I'm at about 2/3 of where I was when I resurfaced, so I'm going to take reengaging the world via the web slowly. Taking time and rest and healing has to be my focus...

My mother is doing better, her fever broke yesterday and hasn't had any more GI problems. As for Tess... I'm going through the house looking for every zinc containing skin product we have.

The ground is frozen here, such that I can roll my wheel chair across the yard, so I'm planning on going round the house and across the yard and being upstairs a bit today for the first time since I came home from the hospital. Its great that I am so adept at using the crutches, I'm sure the doctor will give me a gold-star-smiley-face for that Tuesday, but they're quite unsuitable for traversing a frozen slightly snowy yard.