I have a sense that no one is reading this anymore.
When I first started people were hanging onto every entry. I suppose the drama of whether or not I would recover was compelling. Then, of course, I signed off, not imagining that I might want to get going again so soon – three days later. How does one tell the departed to return?
Also when I started these writings it was not my intention to write for readers. I was writing to explore pure expression. It didn’t stay – clearly can’t stay – purely expression without some attention to the response of others. The response occurs in my own voice even when no other person is writing or speaking to me about these posts. Then again, if I truly intended no response why use a blog as a vehicle?
Gradually I have come to want to write about some things and not others. A desire for privacy? Feeling complete? Fatigue? Less urgency as my health returns and the pain diminishes? All are factors in my growing self edits.
We have passed the Epiphany and are now in Ordinary Time, according to the church calendar. Mundane concerns dominate my calendar, my day. Groceries, money, laundry, debts, housekeeping, scheduling, business plans, amusements, the neighbours. A shorter horizon indeed.
At the same time miracles are still happening. I caught myself NOT thinking that I might be dying today. This, for me, is a genuine break with the past – a breakthrough in Landmark language.
The past several days have been jammed packed with real and imagined commitments and appointments. This has led to insufficient eating and fluid intake, and yesterday the inevitable constipation set in even though I took care to drink more. Consequently, I awoke in pain three times last night, and I was also cold, requiring an extra blanket.
I have been learning from and through Jen how to shift the pain experience and so I was able to go back to sleep all three times and even slept to 7:45am – an hour and a half longer than usual. But more than that, today I realized that I wasn’t thinking all last night and this morning that I was getting sick AGAIN, that possibly I was dying. I was just thinking that my management strategies had broken down – too much bread and not enough water – and that I had better get on track or use stronger measures.
And then the flax oil, juice and vegetables of late yesterday and this morning kicked in, and all systems are go again.
Apparently I am off and running for a full Cycle 3. 120 birthdays.
Yesterday David Fu gave me amazingly different ideas on how to design an organization and on how to get across the ideas that World Peace is actually available through Inclusion. I am hoping that Mike and I can write it up in the next few days. Of course we are about to get into another crunch writing phase to get my autobiography out by May. I am truly hoping that on Monday I can get a Line of Credit on Dad’s GIC. In this way I can work at preparing a real fundraising effort.
Showing posts with label constipation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label constipation. Show all posts
Friday, January 14, 2011
Sunday, November 28, 2010
November 28, 2010
I had the best dinner tonight!
Over these last two months food and beverage have been a constant concern. My recovery from the infection, my loss of bladder function and the effort to live creatively with pain (and increasingly less pain!) all depended in some way on what I eat.
During the hospital days and immediately thereafter the concern was THAT I eat. My various accommodations to swallowing difficulties, nausea from pain medication and the infection left me dangerously malnourished. By the way malnourishment is a theme that ran through my transition from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. Hmm!
It was truly comforting deep in the hospital days to have Stanley, the nutrition researcher, glow over practically every mouthful I took and to have him rejoice as the quantities of food I ingested increased day by day.
As soon as I got home my friends, especially Gloria, filled my kitchen and freezer with very excellent food – so much that six weeks later I still have some of it!
With Jen’s guidance it soon became apparent that I needed to, and actually wanted to, shift what I consider to be an ordinary day’s way of eating. I literally felt like I was starving for the first few weeks and that certainly helped my motivation to try eating differently. This was boosted by the realization that different habits would let me stop using those foul laxatives!!
The fundamental problem was that any pain medication that works for me also slows my bowels, creating the blockage that interferes with my bladder (and shut it down for a month!) thus increasing the pain and driving up the use of medication, which slows down my…..
The three necessities were to eliminate gluten, increase noncaffeinated fluids and get more fibre into me. As straight forward as this may sound there are tricky conundrums, such as that oatmeal, though high in fibre is also high in gluten, as is chicken – the one meat my friends (not Gloria!) most want to provide. I have never been a big vegetable eater and now my limitations in chewing and swallowing eliminate any chance of salads. Day by day I found better combinations AND experimented with how much of my old habits (cheese anyone) were tolerable (not much!)
I got a slow cooker, discovered congee, started to carry a thermos of herbal tea and made many, many other changes.
It has become clear that it is useless to go to the Food Bank because everything they have is no longer food to me – wheat pastas, hot dogs, milk, etc.
Like everybody else I exist in a cultural pattern and such a drastic change has been confronting along with welcome. I am basically British in heritage and inclination. The first time I went to my ancestral homeland, England, I was amazed and awed that I was offered cream on nearly everything I ate. After a few days I reconnected with memories of my Mother’s cooking – stewed hamburger, cornflakes and tuna fish, boiled cod – and I realized that in the English soul food is fundamentally brown. That is, the colour of British food varies from the white and brown of crusty bread, through the cream to beige of fish and chips, puddings and pasties, to the deep brown of sausages, burnt toast, gravy and blood pudding.
Tonight, in complete agreement with food that works for me, I had roast beef (brown), potatoes and onions baked with a rosemary dressing (lighter brown), sauerkraut (beige), pumpkin pie (orangy brown) and lemon herbal tea (yellowy brown).
I am full and in heaven!
Over these last two months food and beverage have been a constant concern. My recovery from the infection, my loss of bladder function and the effort to live creatively with pain (and increasingly less pain!) all depended in some way on what I eat.
During the hospital days and immediately thereafter the concern was THAT I eat. My various accommodations to swallowing difficulties, nausea from pain medication and the infection left me dangerously malnourished. By the way malnourishment is a theme that ran through my transition from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. Hmm!
It was truly comforting deep in the hospital days to have Stanley, the nutrition researcher, glow over practically every mouthful I took and to have him rejoice as the quantities of food I ingested increased day by day.
As soon as I got home my friends, especially Gloria, filled my kitchen and freezer with very excellent food – so much that six weeks later I still have some of it!
With Jen’s guidance it soon became apparent that I needed to, and actually wanted to, shift what I consider to be an ordinary day’s way of eating. I literally felt like I was starving for the first few weeks and that certainly helped my motivation to try eating differently. This was boosted by the realization that different habits would let me stop using those foul laxatives!!
The fundamental problem was that any pain medication that works for me also slows my bowels, creating the blockage that interferes with my bladder (and shut it down for a month!) thus increasing the pain and driving up the use of medication, which slows down my…..
The three necessities were to eliminate gluten, increase noncaffeinated fluids and get more fibre into me. As straight forward as this may sound there are tricky conundrums, such as that oatmeal, though high in fibre is also high in gluten, as is chicken – the one meat my friends (not Gloria!) most want to provide. I have never been a big vegetable eater and now my limitations in chewing and swallowing eliminate any chance of salads. Day by day I found better combinations AND experimented with how much of my old habits (cheese anyone) were tolerable (not much!)
I got a slow cooker, discovered congee, started to carry a thermos of herbal tea and made many, many other changes.
It has become clear that it is useless to go to the Food Bank because everything they have is no longer food to me – wheat pastas, hot dogs, milk, etc.
Like everybody else I exist in a cultural pattern and such a drastic change has been confronting along with welcome. I am basically British in heritage and inclination. The first time I went to my ancestral homeland, England, I was amazed and awed that I was offered cream on nearly everything I ate. After a few days I reconnected with memories of my Mother’s cooking – stewed hamburger, cornflakes and tuna fish, boiled cod – and I realized that in the English soul food is fundamentally brown. That is, the colour of British food varies from the white and brown of crusty bread, through the cream to beige of fish and chips, puddings and pasties, to the deep brown of sausages, burnt toast, gravy and blood pudding.
Tonight, in complete agreement with food that works for me, I had roast beef (brown), potatoes and onions baked with a rosemary dressing (lighter brown), sauerkraut (beige), pumpkin pie (orangy brown) and lemon herbal tea (yellowy brown).
I am full and in heaven!
Thursday, November 18, 2010
November 18, 2010
Another banner day – poo wise! And that’s enough said about that.
The pain is ridiculous today. Enough said about that too!
I had lunch today in my tiny studio that I set up by my south facing window. I call it “Beach”. I made a room by lining up two stand alone closets and putting storage bins on top to give a wall that permits light and air into the rest of the main space. Beach is where my personal assistants sleep and surf the internet. It is also where I occasionally paint and where guests sometimes stay.
I call this space Beach because the view faces Lake Ontario. One can see easily to the Niagara escarpment and occasionally one of those strange refractions occur that gives the illusion that Rochester, New York, is only a few kilometres away. Rochester is on the southern coast of the lake and certainly is two hundred kilometres or more due south of Toronto.
There are about four by six city blocks of neighbourhood between my eighth floor window and the lake. This neighbourhood includes six other high rise coops and condos, three parks with various amenities such as a basket ball court, swimming pool, toddlers’ play ground, walking and bike lanes and dog exercising facilities. There are two rows of small business establishments on either side of the main route, a street car track and two bus routes, two or three evangelistic style churches, two schools and multitudes of townhouses, duplexes and single houses. Even though we are a twenty minute drive from downtown Toronto or Canada’s biggest international airport (depending on which direction you take) I essentially live in a low key small town – a trick of geography.
My neighbourhood also includes flocks of Canada geese, swans, ducks, gulls, starlings, black and grey squirrels, beavers and at least one muskrat. There are oak, maple, chestnut, walnut, elm, willow and several varieties of evergreen trees in every yard and public area. Homeowners grow roses, coop residents plant marigolds and corn flowers, and an enormous variety of beautiful plants – names unknown to me – flourish in the parks.
At this time of year the deciduous trees have dropped their leaves, which turned from green to a riot of yellow through orange to red, then from pale to golden brown before being blown off their branches in the early winter wind storms of ten days ago.
As a watcher this is my favourite time of year to be looking out my Beach window. The dropping of leaves gives me a clear view of the lake, the neighbourhood between and the rocky shoreline, including the spit at the end of the park that is part of Humber College’s campus. When the weather is friendly I can stroll to the end of this spit (and along three or four other pathways) to be close to the water, birds, weeds, rocks and clouds.
I have travelled on cruise ships and to parts of eleven other countries as well as across Canada. There are many breathtakingly beautiful places in the world. South Etobicoke is one of them.
Today I was struck again by the strangely vertical and linear pattern that is visually embedded in my Beach view. There are mast heads on the sail boats in the marina south of Humber, myriads of lamp posts and hydro poles, hundreds of tall and naked trees, and blocks of tall, skinny townhouses with their steeply peaked roofs, built one against the other like European tenements. This afternoon even the clouds cooperated in the illusion of linearity. A lower bank of dark rain clouds scudded in a diagonal direction to a higher array of white fluffies creating patches of rain and sun light falling on the grey water in those straight piercing lines one sees sometimes on religious greeting cards.
Last winter I attempted to paint this strangely linear pattern of my neighbourhood. I worked on the canvas for months. The trackers who supported me teased me by telling stories to anyone who listened of how I tortured them with rulers and masking tape, trying to reproduce the pattern. I felt my result was inadequate. The painting hangs on my wall but it rarely draws comments from visitors.
This afternoon I felt the urge to try again. It is intimidating to think of both the trackers’ dismay and my inadequacies at replicating what my imagination so simply perceives. This aspect of my physical limitations – that my trackers must struggle on my behalf – leaves me with a wish that I could privately struggle on my own. Then I could have the space to learn what I don’t know now.
Perhaps it’s time to look at a MAC based drawing program again. Previously I couldn’t find anything that I could make work with my Morse Code interface. But who knows!
The pain is ridiculous today. Enough said about that too!
I had lunch today in my tiny studio that I set up by my south facing window. I call it “Beach”. I made a room by lining up two stand alone closets and putting storage bins on top to give a wall that permits light and air into the rest of the main space. Beach is where my personal assistants sleep and surf the internet. It is also where I occasionally paint and where guests sometimes stay.
I call this space Beach because the view faces Lake Ontario. One can see easily to the Niagara escarpment and occasionally one of those strange refractions occur that gives the illusion that Rochester, New York, is only a few kilometres away. Rochester is on the southern coast of the lake and certainly is two hundred kilometres or more due south of Toronto.
There are about four by six city blocks of neighbourhood between my eighth floor window and the lake. This neighbourhood includes six other high rise coops and condos, three parks with various amenities such as a basket ball court, swimming pool, toddlers’ play ground, walking and bike lanes and dog exercising facilities. There are two rows of small business establishments on either side of the main route, a street car track and two bus routes, two or three evangelistic style churches, two schools and multitudes of townhouses, duplexes and single houses. Even though we are a twenty minute drive from downtown Toronto or Canada’s biggest international airport (depending on which direction you take) I essentially live in a low key small town – a trick of geography.
My neighbourhood also includes flocks of Canada geese, swans, ducks, gulls, starlings, black and grey squirrels, beavers and at least one muskrat. There are oak, maple, chestnut, walnut, elm, willow and several varieties of evergreen trees in every yard and public area. Homeowners grow roses, coop residents plant marigolds and corn flowers, and an enormous variety of beautiful plants – names unknown to me – flourish in the parks.
At this time of year the deciduous trees have dropped their leaves, which turned from green to a riot of yellow through orange to red, then from pale to golden brown before being blown off their branches in the early winter wind storms of ten days ago.
As a watcher this is my favourite time of year to be looking out my Beach window. The dropping of leaves gives me a clear view of the lake, the neighbourhood between and the rocky shoreline, including the spit at the end of the park that is part of Humber College’s campus. When the weather is friendly I can stroll to the end of this spit (and along three or four other pathways) to be close to the water, birds, weeds, rocks and clouds.
I have travelled on cruise ships and to parts of eleven other countries as well as across Canada. There are many breathtakingly beautiful places in the world. South Etobicoke is one of them.
Today I was struck again by the strangely vertical and linear pattern that is visually embedded in my Beach view. There are mast heads on the sail boats in the marina south of Humber, myriads of lamp posts and hydro poles, hundreds of tall and naked trees, and blocks of tall, skinny townhouses with their steeply peaked roofs, built one against the other like European tenements. This afternoon even the clouds cooperated in the illusion of linearity. A lower bank of dark rain clouds scudded in a diagonal direction to a higher array of white fluffies creating patches of rain and sun light falling on the grey water in those straight piercing lines one sees sometimes on religious greeting cards.
Last winter I attempted to paint this strangely linear pattern of my neighbourhood. I worked on the canvas for months. The trackers who supported me teased me by telling stories to anyone who listened of how I tortured them with rulers and masking tape, trying to reproduce the pattern. I felt my result was inadequate. The painting hangs on my wall but it rarely draws comments from visitors.
This afternoon I felt the urge to try again. It is intimidating to think of both the trackers’ dismay and my inadequacies at replicating what my imagination so simply perceives. This aspect of my physical limitations – that my trackers must struggle on my behalf – leaves me with a wish that I could privately struggle on my own. Then I could have the space to learn what I don’t know now.
Perhaps it’s time to look at a MAC based drawing program again. Previously I couldn’t find anything that I could make work with my Morse Code interface. But who knows!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
November 17, 2010
Today was a !banner! day. Yes, those are exclamation marks.
We don’t talk much about having a bowel movement – I am reluctant even to write the word used very commonly around here – “poo”.
Having a poo has become the ULTIMATE signal of progress or regression in my physical state since Oct. 4 when I went to the emergency room and was admitted for nine days. Nearly everything tried before or since that event to relieve or manage my pain has had the effect of slowing my bowels. On that day the situation became life threatening due to bowel/bladder interaction and infection. (Read previous posts!) Since then there has been effort on my part, Jen’s, the medical people, my personal assistants and my friends to get IT to come out right each and everyday. Practically a National project! It hasn’t been all that successful. The regular use of Morphine, and I suppose the added factor of my AGE constantly works against my good results and has led to this need to sustain a virtual preoccupation with the frequency, size, colour and consistency of my …. poo.
Today I had one – (a poo) – unaided by laxatives, stool softeners, suppositories, litres of herbal tea or other intervention. I realize that it is TOO SOON to imagine that life has returned to a pattern of elimination that I might consider “normal”. Just the same this is the very day when I was remembering nostalgically how I used to eat and drink a whack of foods now considered “bad” for me because they tend to exaggerate the bowel freezing effects of Morphine – coffee, bread, crackers, oatmeal, cheese, milk and SO many more.
I haven’t been very good at keeping to a mainly vegetables and herbal tea diet. Initially I was better behaved but I basically felt like I was starving. My masseuse recommended, by the way, that if I was “starving” I should drink more water. It felt like some sort of criminal punishment.
I basically cheat about a third of the time – a little bread here, a miniscule bit of cheese there, some pasta on rare occasions. But today I got curious. If it wasn’t for the Morphine it would certainly look to me that the supposedly healthier diet is actually plugging me up. Shortly after that thought – the awaited event happened.
Crazy - I know. But this six weeks of focus on my body is making me a little crazy!
Well enough about that.
Tomorrow Mike, Kimberly and I are going to present the idea to my circle that we go on a short tour of the east coast of North America for World Peace through Inclusion. Basically I miss the pelicans. But the concepts around WPIT are gelling and I am restless and M and K are ENTHUSIASTIC and it’s clearly looking like time to get on with it.
I’m expecting – even hoping for – push back from the circle. When we go I want to do so with some stability – not in the naïve way that Gabor, Erin and I left. More than anything I don’t want this to be more running off to prove myself, or ourselves. I want us to be welcomed, understood and celebrated.
Gabor and I spent time over breakfast today. Bit by bit we are carving out a way to have a future around WPIT and friendship. It is good.
I’m signing off on the short side of 2 pages today. Maybe that’s enough for my first “real poo” day in a LONG time!
We don’t talk much about having a bowel movement – I am reluctant even to write the word used very commonly around here – “poo”.
Having a poo has become the ULTIMATE signal of progress or regression in my physical state since Oct. 4 when I went to the emergency room and was admitted for nine days. Nearly everything tried before or since that event to relieve or manage my pain has had the effect of slowing my bowels. On that day the situation became life threatening due to bowel/bladder interaction and infection. (Read previous posts!) Since then there has been effort on my part, Jen’s, the medical people, my personal assistants and my friends to get IT to come out right each and everyday. Practically a National project! It hasn’t been all that successful. The regular use of Morphine, and I suppose the added factor of my AGE constantly works against my good results and has led to this need to sustain a virtual preoccupation with the frequency, size, colour and consistency of my …. poo.
Today I had one – (a poo) – unaided by laxatives, stool softeners, suppositories, litres of herbal tea or other intervention. I realize that it is TOO SOON to imagine that life has returned to a pattern of elimination that I might consider “normal”. Just the same this is the very day when I was remembering nostalgically how I used to eat and drink a whack of foods now considered “bad” for me because they tend to exaggerate the bowel freezing effects of Morphine – coffee, bread, crackers, oatmeal, cheese, milk and SO many more.
I haven’t been very good at keeping to a mainly vegetables and herbal tea diet. Initially I was better behaved but I basically felt like I was starving. My masseuse recommended, by the way, that if I was “starving” I should drink more water. It felt like some sort of criminal punishment.
I basically cheat about a third of the time – a little bread here, a miniscule bit of cheese there, some pasta on rare occasions. But today I got curious. If it wasn’t for the Morphine it would certainly look to me that the supposedly healthier diet is actually plugging me up. Shortly after that thought – the awaited event happened.
Crazy - I know. But this six weeks of focus on my body is making me a little crazy!
Well enough about that.
Tomorrow Mike, Kimberly and I are going to present the idea to my circle that we go on a short tour of the east coast of North America for World Peace through Inclusion. Basically I miss the pelicans. But the concepts around WPIT are gelling and I am restless and M and K are ENTHUSIASTIC and it’s clearly looking like time to get on with it.
I’m expecting – even hoping for – push back from the circle. When we go I want to do so with some stability – not in the naïve way that Gabor, Erin and I left. More than anything I don’t want this to be more running off to prove myself, or ourselves. I want us to be welcomed, understood and celebrated.
Gabor and I spent time over breakfast today. Bit by bit we are carving out a way to have a future around WPIT and friendship. It is good.
I’m signing off on the short side of 2 pages today. Maybe that’s enough for my first “real poo” day in a LONG time!
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