The physical therapist arrived today. She will be here two more visits. Then it is a matter of waiting awhile for my muscles to build and the very slow healing of the surgery itself, continues on to a new level. I'm thinking 12 weeks out from the surgery might be the next major milestone--perhaps able to start sitting, and then on a lower seat. I hope in God for driving, but 12 weeks out might be premature.
The PT discussed acute pain and chronic pain. It was "old hat" for me, other than I always learn something no matter how old is the "hat." However, I did interject that the chronic pain is not a syndrome, per say; the PT was explaining what I've also researched in the past, that sometimes in chronic pain patients, the pain is more in the mind and feeds off itself than physiological.
I've been over that type of pain projection for years. It is not my situation, and thanks be to God for the current surgeon, his partner (my second opinion surgeon), and the pain MD for identifying after all these 32 years since the 1987 surgery, that the pain I have is physiological, caused by the rare Arachnoiditis--caused when the surgeon in '87 accidentally cut the spinal cord sheathing. To me, having knowledge and a reason for all these years of suffering helps me cope with it.
However, the current higher levels of pain, the PT and I figure for now, are due to the extensive surgery and the length of time for that to heal. While I might not like to be reminded, the muscles, tendons, and ligaments had to be cut on each side of the spine for the 10" or so from sacrum through lumbar. Nerves were involved, drilling and scraping and cutting of bone also contribute to the pain, since bone and nerves take far longer to heal than soft tissue surgeries.
The PT added on a couple more exercises--really, movements for me to start practicing. All these would seem ridiculously simple; my body finds them difficult but delightful. I love to feel the leg and especially the "core" being strengthened even if very slight, incrementally.
My 96-year-old aunt called this morning. I'd left her a message regarding some bullying going on in her assisted living facility, a couple thousand miles away from my hermitage, Solus Deus. It was difficult to repeat what she could not hear on her answering machine for she did not have her hearing aids in. (I can relate with the hassle of putting "aids" into or on our bodies; my back brace is a hassle that I've had to remind myself how silly of me to resent the small, added effort to put it on and get it adjusted! These aids are praiseworthy helps to lighten our physical crosses!
The aunt shared about her great-granddaughter who survived serious septic shock and sepsis poisoning a year and a half ago. The young woman has gained much weight, is depressed, and has been cut off from friends. Her mother, my aunt's granddaughter, has become psychologically unhealthy over the recent years; her daughter's crisis illness only made the mother's issues worsen. It seems no one in the family feels comfortable in doing an intervention or confronting the girl's mother who is exhibiting some aspects of an altered-type Manchausens-by-Proxy syndrome.
The girls mother is not outright trying to make the girl ill; rather, she is keeping her ill in emotional and psychological ways. When the girl had a boyfriend, for example, the mother applied pressure to cut off that friendship; with girlfriends, the mother restricted the girls' social encounters to the point that they ended. One cannot keep friendships if the friends are discouraged from visiting or the girl is reminded of how ill she has been and not to go out socially.
I inserted myself several months ago when I was given an opening and asked something. I put forth the importance of the girls' mother being essentially forced back to work (single mom) since the girl is healed physically, other than the untrue and exaggerated problems that the girl's mother reports after the daughter's routine doctor appointments. The mother cannot get out of her extreme control over the daughter's life and feels she must stay home all the time to be there in case the daughter needs her; the daughter attends high school for three class periods a day and eats her lunch alone in the nurse's office.
My message to the girl's grandmother and great-grandmother has been to not enable the girl's mother; stop paying all her bills, don't buy her a a new (used) car (they did), cut out the checks each month. I encouraged them to try to get the girl and her mother to each get psychotherapeutic counseling, with an experienced clinical psychologist. They are doing that, but with very young counselor with MS in counseling. For the girl, the alliance seems positive in that she likes the young man. Then mostly, I encouraged them to try a full-family intervention.
But my major campaign was to exhort them to turn all the more to God, return to going to church, read the Scriptures, especially the new Testament--the Gospels and Letters--and the Psalms. I've explained that the Lord does not allow such trials on a young person without a reason that is good, that will cause purposeful change in the one afflicted and those around the one with the tremendous cross to bear. The girl, I am sure, has a mission God desires her to fulfill.
From the other times I was able to insert thoughts--when the grandmother or my aunt (the girl's great-grandmother) would give an opening in conversation or ask of me something that allowed for my input--I've said all I can say. Other than this morning, when my aunt mentioned how she now wonders about all her praying when the young woman was so critically ill--between life and death and a miracle that she lived. She said maybe she should not have prayed for the girl to live because she is now living a life cut off from people other than her mother, for the most part, and she is quite heavy and depressed.
I reminded my aunt that it's not over yet. We keep praying. Given that my aunt had such difficulty hearing my words, that was all I could get through to her. I'm praying if I should write a note yet again, encouraging my aunt to not enable her granddaughter by sending her monthly checks. My aunt had mentioned that if only the granddaughter, the girl's mother, would return to teaching, she'd have some friends herself. But her granddaughter always has excuses why she does not return to work--always centered around needing to be home all the time in case her daughter would become ill. So we see, there is really nothing more I can say, not even in a letter, that I've not already said.
Pain management involves handling emotional, mental--psychological--pain as much as physical pain. The only reminder I could perhaps write to the aunt, or tell her via the phone if she has in her hearing aids--is to pray the Psalms. Pray them on behalf of her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter. She can encourage them to pray the Psalms, but they are not in a mode of taking suggestions at this time. Perhaps she could send a Psalm now and then, in a note to her granddaughter, though. Worth a try.
As for my own pain and current difficult situation (a hermit ought expect and accept having a bit more difficulty in times of illness and post surgery simply due to the hermit vocation being one of stricter separation from the world in the silence of solitude, and that of being "hidden from the eyes of men." These aspects alone, of the hermit life, in addition to simple life and frugality due to usually modest to low income, create more of a challenge in a consecrated hermit's life than what lay persons would have or what consecrated religious or those ordained to holy orders would experience.
The closest situation to a hermit would be found in those consecrated religious whose religious orders are cloistered; even then, though, the monks and nuns have others living in the monastery or adjoining cells (Carthusian Charterhouse), or have as I've written in previous posts, an "extern"--someone who runs the errands, brings food to the cells, interfaces with the world on behalf of the cloistered, consecrated religious or the consecrated hermit alone with God in his or her hermitage.
As a consecrated Catholic hermit, I've learned over the years that the reliance upon God is primary, pivotal, pre-eminent. I was thrilled the other day when reading in the Introduction of St. Bernard of Clairvaux's The Song of Songs I, how the saint found the Psalms to be always and ever a positive uplift and a constant reminder, daily, of the providence of God. Also, the Psalms remind us that all is from God and is of God, and that the praise of God lifts the heart, mind, and soul--and a lifted heart, mind, and soul affects our very lives.
We now have research studies that tell us the good of positive aspects in mind and emotions in direct correlation to healing. Even in terminal illness or when healing of body does not come, going out from ourselves in love of God and into God our Creator Who loves us first, will unite us in the Holy Trinity: God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Praying, reading, the Psalms is a simple act of which others centuries before us sang praises to God that at some point were written onto parchment, and to this day we have in easy access to essentially do the praising for us. Once we read the Psalms as a regular practice, the act of praising God evolves into praise of God and becomes our own praising God at other times than when we read the Psalms. Our praising God then becomes a praise of God that evolves into love of God in Himself.
Love of God heals. Jesus heals; love of Jesus Christ heals. The Holy Spirit heals.... Calling upon God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in love and praise, in thanksgiving brings untold good. From the practical, temporal effects to the spiritual, mystical effects. turning to God with all our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls--with all our desire and strength--God delights in our love of Him and responds as He has been waiting all along. He loved us first; He is always loving and patiently waiting.
I did not get into the spiritual aspects much with the physical therapist today. I have delved into the spiritual in past visits, enough to point out the reality and the importance of God in my own life. The reality is, that God is the all in my existence, my being, my life on earth and my life when I pass from this earth.
As I mentioned to my aunt regarding her praying for her great-granddaughter: It is not over yet. However, I know that God's ways are not our ways. We can pray for someone to live, to survive through a critical ordeal. God will do His will in our lives, for what He knows and sees and ordains as best. God is all good. Yet when we ponder God's ways and His view of suffering and apply that to circumstances and situations of which we know involving people, we find that some have major life changes for the positive, all for God, and others remain in depression or seemingly stagnation.
Seemingly stagnant is not stagnant. We are never stagnant. Every step and every breath is toward good or not good, toward God or not God. Prayers are vital for ourselves; and our prayers are vital for others, especially those who do not know or have the energy or mind or heart to pray for themselves, who do not communicate with God for Him to use them to help them, for them to do His will.
Perhaps the young woman of whom I've mentioned above, is going to be a reminder to others who know of her situation and who see her in depression and now overweight, as well, and who see the girl's mother in her on-going anorexia and years of extreme skin-tanning--to all the more turn to God in their own lives when trials and crises come. It is sad, yes, but people who do not pull out of terrible situations in heroic or even in average or natural manner can help others to see and determine not to react likewise.
I was reminded of this fact, this option, this morning after speaking with my aunt and feeling her anguish. I was reminded of my own concern and having taken the opportunity when it seemed ripe, to try to help with suggestions of an intervention, of stopping the enabling, as well as exhortations to turn all the more to God, return to their worship services, to pray, to read the Living Word.
I was reminded of the great effect of the Psalms in pain management. My late mother is proof. I watched the evolving of her attitude and mind and emotions, the incredible growth of her soul, over the last 11 months of her life. It started with my silently reading my breviary when she'd doze or read something of her own, as I'd go visit her and stay hours to keep her company. She became curious as to what was in that breviary; I explained. She one day asked me to read some of the Psalms to her. From then onward, the praising of God became within her praise of God and then an increase of her love of God in a way that changed many of her attitudes to glorious outcome.
After this morning's brief phone conversation, I am being helped by the currently tragic plight of the girl and her mother. I have now increased desire for God, and to persevere in my own slow recovery, to keep focused on healthy and holy pain management. I will pray the Psalms, also, for the girl and her mother and extend that praise of God for the salvation of all souls in the world.
We keep praying; we keep striving; we keep praising God not only for ourselves but including others. We praise God when others are unable for whatever reasons, to praise Him. We continue to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
As we pray and praise, as we love God above all things, even above and beyond our pain, we know it is not over yet. The results of our prayers, the reading of the Living Word, the praise of God, the love of God in Himself are yet to come whether or not we see them or are aware of the outcomes.
God bless His Real Presence in us! That blessing in itself is an acknowledgement and praise of God: God bless His Real Presence in us!
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