There are many "backs" in the past couple of days. This nothing consecrated Catholic hermit's back, as in spine, is back to more functional thanks to a moment of clarity last Monday in which I had the sense to try pain meds at therapeutic dose and regular schedule. The debilitating nausea from radiating low back pain was toned down just enough to be able to rise and even shim and hang a double closet door.
Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!
Then I received a call from the Apple Store in civilization that the laptop is repaired, thankfully under warranty to the last day or would not have had funds to fix it. And also, I was able to manage to drive "back" into civilization not only to retrieve the laptop but also to make the orthopedic hand surgeon appointment.
The surgeon was most impressed with the x-rays showing a "most unhappy hand," as he put it. He shook his head with how I've pushed the body, but when I explained the long-standing back pain, and that I'm no longer a good assessor of pain and thus at times can keep going beyond what is normal, he understood. Thus when he asked if I could feel tingling here or there on various fingers, I could not. He understood when I explained I so much keep my mind distracted and out of my back pain, that I have to actually make my thoughts return and enter the body and focus on feeling various aspects of the pain.
And thus, he talked over the surgery necessary, and the four-month recovery period, and he listened to my explanation of the mess I'm in financially and physically with needing to finish (if possible, of course) this abode I got myself into. He thought perhaps best that I try to finish despite the hand pain and torn ligaments and tendons, to wear a brace, and finish if I can relatively soon. For the length of recovery would take me into spring when I was hoping to list, in order to pay back the personal loan a family member gave last spring. The hand is already a ruination, so it cannot get much worse!
I tried the brace yesterday morning when trim painting a final coat on some boards to finish upstairs closet openings, but the brace presses on some tissue that is most painful. So I'm "back" to going without a brace and letting pain indicate what I can and cannot tolerate. And the hand cannot tolerate much. But more dictatorial is the low back pain which even with sleeping on the floor and dispensing with the mattress, is quite a load-full of suffering. Even with the pain meds now, I was way too nauseous yesterday to continue with additional efforts, upright.
However, praise the Lord that the edge of pain, toned down, has been blessedly adequate to chase all morbid thoughts that were plaguing me and of which I had to battle increasingly--up to finally battling day-and-night. It is no way to live, battling those dark thoughts! Too much pain it was, more than the mind and emotions can bear over extended period of time! God provides, and I'm thankful despite some family and friends making most unkind and ignorant comments regarding needing medication.
I've already started praying for the blind faith necessary to proceed and to hope that I can have that low dose of relief through the storm fronts that are a direct correlation to the high increase of back pain. If not, God knows. Will face whatever when that present moment arrives, one way or another.
I continue to be bolstered by a couple comments by St. Paul. "That God may be all in all" and "I have not suffered yet unto blood."
I have called now two times to request anti-nausea medication and refill of pain medication, to the primary care doctor, with no response thus far. Monday I will try again. It is a shame to have to go "back" to any dose of medication, even low dose, but one must recognize the limits. I have since asked two spiritual friends who keep in touch via email or texting, to remind me to take pain meds if I should get myself so crazed from pain as it has been, that I cannot think clearly as to what will help.
With the hand surgery, it will be a fascinating social experiment, or perhaps a test of the depth of charity in parishioners or anyone here, to see if there will be someone willing to drive me to have the hand surgery and to tote my carcass back to my hermitage! I know God will provide, even if it means I remain at the surgery clinic until I have wits and energy enough to drive myself.
Then, I received a most unusual letter from my spiritual father, and he needs money. Something is amiss for he no longer receives a stipend; and he has a woman there as his power of attorney and who handles his checking account. He should not be hung out like this in his circumstances, now retired after offering of himself for years in service to the Church.
A trusted financial advisor and tremendously faithful Catholic is one whom I turned to with a phone call. He is going to investigate. In the meantime I sent what cash I had remaining from the vegetable stand, of which I had in an envelope in case one of the young men returned for a day to do some heavier yard work, on a non-stormy day...! I am thankful to have it and to be able to send it. as the financial advisor thought that best until he can figure out what is going on. The priest needs protection from whomever or whatever has left him in this financial state.
Bless his heart; he wrote that he evidently had mismanaged. I don't believe that one bit. He is the most prudent of souls, and also, though, generous. There were some transitions going on in his living circumstances, and he did gift out much of his funds for the diocese was going to absorb, in the transition. Yet, why he has no more a stipend is a mystery to be solved.
There is nothing I will not do for this holy soul, this marvelous priest, the only one who knows the innermost parts of my own soul and the souls of many, save of course, God's knowing all souls.
I am back to doing whatever I can--hand, back, nausea, counsel and prayer, meager acts of charity. I am fine if my anam cara and I go down together financially. What I have is also his. That's how I view it, and I pray that the financial advisor can get to the bottom of the situation. We need to establish a trusted means that what I share is going to the priest and none other.
Now to attempt some manual labor, praying the nausea does not take over. Yesterday it did. It is only pain, only nausea, and while this is true--pain is most powerful. Human pain is what caused Jesus to cry out on the cross, what caused Him to cry tears of blood in Gethsemane, what caused Him to be disheartened that his beloved disciples could not wait but one hour with Him. It was human pain that caused Jesus to weep over Jerusalem and to weep at the grieving love when going to raise Lazarus from the dead.
When suffering becomes heightened, pain becomes the constant, autonomic prayer. In suffering, we pray always in an instant of our offering all to God.
And we know that with the Lord, and thus also with those of us who are through, with, and in Him, human suffering is also spiritual and divine suffering. There is tremendous physical power in pain, enough to bring down the most stoic of persons, enough to create ancillary pain issues like debilitating nausea, tears, and wishes to die.
And there is tremendous spiritual power in pain, enough to cause prayers to be highly efficacious; and in the divine aspect of pain, there is power enough to unite us with Christ in the present moments of agonizing suffering.
We are all back when we suffer with the Lord and offer our sufferings for the glory of God and His holy purposes in all matters of earth and heaven.
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