Last week I started a concerted. Effort to change the whole Black Friday mindset and berlieve me last week was just the beginning. However, in doing this it was impossible to fully recognize some things that really deserve recognition in my book.
On the same day...all on the same day the poet Milton Mark Twain, and Winston Churchill were all born. If you are not a Milton fan that’s okay, but if you are a sarcasm or satire fan you owe it to yourself to read a little gem known as “the modest proposal. You aren’t likely to find a more pointed. Political comment in all of western history. Everyone knows. Mark Twain and his gang Tom, Becky, and Huck and any number of their adventures. He takes his shots at politicians well...and several social conceptionsa about things like slavery etc. Finally there is Winston Churchill the famous. British k leader who guided the country under attack through the Second World War.
All these. Writers/speakers had a a lot of wisdom and said it so much clearer that I have learned or have the patience to emulate of duplicate.
However stepping on the shoulders of giants my favorite mantra was born on their Birthday week. I believe t]hat in a facebook post, I first urged each of you to seek out or have some “Peace and Joy.”
During the previous week I had experienced a significant back reconstruction surgery. In the simplest terms the lower part of my spinal vertebra collection looked more like semi-finals challenge at the skeletal Chenga tournament. Almost any movement could cause a random shift where the bones. Pinched my spinal column or any one of their related bundle of nerves creating either a temporary paralysis or indescribable pain—well actually it’s describable but a string of four-lettered words is not called for here. So after analyzing this mess, the surgical team. Offered me two options. One was the pleasant notion of having seven separate procedures over the next nine years or so depending how long the recovery time was for each. Sounds great right/. Or I could have a relatively new, but fairly promising procedure where they would basically cut a hole in my back and remove most of the bone. Then replace it with a “small titanium cage or bracket . Now why would screw the old bone chips plus some more bone that they would take from. A couple places in my hips. They would reroute by spinal column through the cage structure, surround it with the bone, mix in some stem cells and grow a “spinal fused bone tube that protects. The spinal and provides stability. Now they informed me that this thing didn’t work fully in about 30 percent of people and about 3 in 100 ended up with some paralysis. Oh and about 1 in 1000 came. In alive and left well not so alive. So. I would need to be out of work for three months and it should be at least two years before the bone structure.had completely formed...but I couldn’t see doing thing for nine years so I picked the week of Thanksgiving 2016 to do this thing. I don’t remember being very nervous going into the surgery—well of course I was. Stoned silly and then once they cranked in the knock-out drugs I was gone in two or three breaths. Well things went pretty well except it took 8 hours instead of six to complete. In the meantime the staff shift. Had changed on the recovery floor and because hospital policy prohibits hanging IV pain meds unattended my waiting meds were. No more than salt water. They flop me into my bed and according to protocol they bring me around sometime after a half hour of wiring me up with monitors etc.
Now my surgeon had said I would feel like hell especially on the second day...”it will be a little rough,” he’d said.
Well a little rough? Was. The Little Big Horn a little setback for the calvary? I woke up to a pain that I’ll never forget. I could barely breathe and any slight movement including breathing was remarkably torturous. I started screaming but wasn’t really aware of it. One of the medical team. Started checking everything as my blood pressure was in a mad race with my heart rate to see which could break the North American record first. Then one nurse checked the IV lines to see if they were blocked. Then she let out a curse word and said...he’s not getting any pain meds this is water.. Two people went running out into the hall while one clipped a short tube into one of my IV lines and in a moment. One of the staff members came in and held the newly attached tube and said “in a second you are going to feel a little warm sensation. All I remember was thinking “what the hell difference would one more sensation make?” A couple new people came hustling in with ice packs and explained this would numb the pain for a couple minutes while the meds took effect. They loaded them on my back gently. Then the other nurse who had dashed out. A couple minutes before came in with two IV bags and switched the saline water. Out for these bags and then she shot a load of drugs in each and turned. On the flow.
So apparently. I had lain there for some 90 minutes letting the Annastehia wear of with no pain meds post surgery whatsoever allowing me to wake up as if they had not done anything for the pain which they had not.
Well in about 20 minutes things were calming down inside my body considerably. They had given me a little self serve pain med button that I could use about 20 minutes apart . They started to position me until I “was comfortable (what the hell they define as comfortable wasn’t in the same area code as where I would be for the rest fo the next couple days...but let’s. Move forward. At any rate I was settling in sort of when most of the people were leaving. The room and then the second most horrendous. Pain in my life. Decided to show up. You see in the mass confusion someone had tucked. The catheter tube and bag down on one side of the. Bed and it had made it’s way to the floor. Yes..Yes .. you guessed it one of the most cheery and helpful. Nurses I was to have. During my. Visit turned to.skip merrily out of the room and inadvertently or more accurate bloody unfortunately caught the catheter line ripping it unceremoniously nearly all the way out of a very “let’s say” sensitive body part. Well I bit my tongue and I got another shot. Of some pain meds for that .
So I told you that. Whole story to tell you this...
I woke up about 4 the next morning and felt fairly okay for someone who had been hit by a bus, but just a small shuttle bus you understand. I was able to form some thoughts about what had actually happened the day before and what would be happening over the next months. I listened as a man down. The hall yelled out in pain and frustration because the nurse wouldn’t;t just stay sitting in the room with him. He was obviously not in so much physical pain as. He was alone and afraid that his legs weren’t going to work as they had before. He was throwing. His bed pan around the. Room every few minutes and whatever else he could reach from his bed. In short, he could find no peace and he could not imagine any time when he would experience joy again.
I suspect that’s the moment when I realized that so many people in that hospital experienced physical pain, but far more difficult for them was the fact that hospitals did not specialize in helping people seek peace or joy. They knew how to fix body parts, but had. Very little time or expertise in helping people seek peace and joy.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying I’m an expert at it, but I recognize the need for it...I know we have to seek it and experience it when possible. I know that if people share peaceful, funny, serious, joyful, and genuine experiences they live fuller lives for all the moments they are given. I know it’s worth paying attention in order to grasp and create those moments and I know they are everywhere if you can be peaceful enough to let your heart and soul generate them out of the everyday world that floats in front of us in an unending stream... so that insight came about three years ago for me and I hope this little post explains my obsession with peace and joy as opposed to success and happiness or achievement and status.
After all when your catheter is being ripped from your groin I guarantee you that status pour looking cool is pretty far from your mind...but my life would be a poorer thing for not having that experience. Will I go. As far as saying thank you to all medical people for letting me have that experience? Hell no...every lesson has it’s limits right?
More tomorrow ...Peace —out
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