Catholic Hermit: By Your Perseverance....

"By your perseverance, you will preserve your lives."

This, from Luke 21: 19.  

At times, it comes down to shear perseverance.

Monday was a day of severe vertigo.  The Lord helped me manage.  Solus Deus:  God alone.  I had the pain meds, plus a muscle relaxant (also a scheduled medication), plus a sedative anti-nausea medication.  I thankfully had them on nightstand, and could reach with left hand without turning head, feeling for the bottles plus still had some water left in water bottle.

I tried putting my head in the positions a neurologist in a hospital a year ago last August, when had vertigo and wondered if from the head injury, had told me could help get the spinning to stop.  One is to place the head in the various positions in which the spinning is worst, remaining on a sofa or bed.  Then hold in that position even if terribly uncomfortable.  So I tried that on Monday, upon waking with the vertigo.  But the spinning became too much, causing nausea.

So I lay there swallowing the vomit, repeatedly, waiting for the nausea meds to help, the muscle relaxant to help. I dare not move the head or body.  I'd be in worse predicament if vomited in bed and would lose the benefit of the medication if it came up, and was out of water.  I dare not get up with such spinning as did not want to fall; and with the back fusion still in process, could not get down on the floor to crawl.

I had phone with me and texted, asking if family member coming to place usually goes daily, but not that day, was not going.  Had not yet put phone numbers of neighbors offering to help, in the phone; the papers with their numbers were in the kitchen.  I considered calling the next door neighbor, but held off due to knowing had the newborn and toddler at home; the other children off to school.  Really, these situations are for God alone.  I know it.

Just waited it out, not moving.  Eventually the nausea subsided enough that I got up and held onto bed to get to walker, and made it to the bathroom.  Then back to bed.  Thankfully, I'd just researched more over the weekend, this Adhesive Arachonoiditis situation, and had read vertigo is one of the symptoms that can arise.  Yes, it had, over the years.  Off and on I'd have vertigo, the first coming about 20 years ago.  

There is a gratitude in knowing what is the cause.  One does not think about needing further medical answers.  I had spent money on an MRI way back then, when I did not have insurance, and other people drove me to some appointments where I lived then, with attempts to figure out why the vertigo.  The paramedics took me to the hospital a year ago late August, to make sure it was not connected with the head injury.  I'd been having vertigo more often in the past few years--spinning and falling sometimes, but onto earth, such as in the garden.

I was able to be up yesterday.  I did not go for a walk outside, but I did drive the 1.5 miles and back to a store.  I bought large, plastic trash bags to put over the plastic planter containers to keep rain and snow from getting the soil wet, then freezing, then cracking the containers.  I put the bags over these pots late yesterday, having to squat some, push the back situation a bit, in order to do it.  But it felt wonderful in the doing--just to be able to "do" something.

I had called the surgeon's office on Monday, late.  I know the surgeon said to call any time if any questions.  I am wondering if the higher level of pain, on-going, is still due to post-operative healing yet occurring, or if this is a progression of the arachoniditis.  I even said that they probably have no way of knowing.  They really do not.  I've not heard back; for pity's sake, they do not have such answers!

It is a grandson's birthday, I called.  No answer, so left a message asking for him to return the call.  We shall await call back.  Last night I texted a family member as had offered that I could watch some programs on a Netflix account.  I needed access, but I also added I "maybe should figure out something productive to do."  The response was simple, direct:  "Maybe?"

Yes, it should be more than "maybe I do something productive."  Not maybe, but should.

Yet I am worn out with suffering.

The weather has shifted yet again, and I must brace and face with God's courage (for my human courage seems absent, even daft) the winter months which bring more barometric pressure shifts, and thus more pain.  It will mean more pain upon this higher level of pain, and I have struggled with this other, as it is.

I emailed love and encouragement to a cousin whose birthday is also today.  I can force out the positive and the encouragement; that is a good sign!  I have been up once--bathroom then kitchen for coffee and oatmeal to bring back to bed.  While oatmeal simmered on stove, I switched out the thawed water bottles for frozen ones for the ice pump.  All set--the icy pad--for this new day!

On some scant news article comment sections, I left my two-bits-worth of opinion, always including reminders of prayerfulness for various persons and situations that plague our world and human conditions.

I sent a text to the lovely neighbor next door who had texted yesterday, asking if I had no Thanksgiving plans, they'd like me to join them.  They are a lovely and loving Mormon family of 7 children and mom and dad.  How kind!  She mentioned they'd not seen me out walking for awhile.  So true, other than the two days I got the gumption to make myself walk rather than remain in bed day and night, where it seems I am most comfortable, on the icy pad.  However, that is not going to build muscle or stamina.  

But thus far, today, remaining in bed seems best option.  Nausea from radiating pain: another symptom of Arachnoiditis.  I've wasted money in past having tests, scans, and an ER visit due to that symptom alone.  Yes, there is definitely an advantage to knowing the AA symptoms.  Thanks be to God!

At some point, I do need to try what seems beyond human capability, to better manage and hope-in-God function with physical mobility, with more pain than ever before.  And while I'm so grateful for the neighbor's invitation, I am having a time of it with the pain, such as my neck a mass of pain with the weather shift, on top of the rest of spine; but I hope in God to stop by, to greet them tomorrow and smile and spread the joy that is somewhere in me, I know, despite being rather buried for now by this "thing" called pain.  

And just now the surgeon's office called.  They wanted me to come in for a separate appointment on Monday, when I have a 4-month post-op appointment on Wednesday.  I explained to the young caller how I had asked, really, an impossible to answer question of them on this past Monday, and I realized it even before I asked it.  

No one but God knows if this higher pain is still the healing going on from surgery or if it is the progression of Adhesive Arachnoiditis.  And that if I have to get  Lyft car to bring me in on Monday, I will be worse off with pain from the sitting and joggling, and will be ill on Tuesday, and then have to repeat it all over again on Wednesday.  

I assured that I have not fallen, not done damage to the surgery area [other than I did try to squat too much yesterday attempting to get garden hoses off spigots--but did not mention that for it did not do damage, just increased pain, to be expected].  I expressed my appreciation their concern, but I need patience in waiting out the year of recovery time, and simply to persevere with the pain.  Yet how kind of them to call, and to create a space for me to come in and be seen.  Yes, very thoughtful, despite my ridiculous question which of course no one on earth can answer. I am relieved that I do not have to go in on Monday!

It is as it is, and God alone knows; God alone can help me suffer this.

Having read today's Mass Scriptures, and of texting a thank-you to a sibling, suffering various trials, who sent a couple verses from Psalm 9, I latched onto the words of Jesus in Luke 21, today's Mass Gospel reading:  By your perseverance, you will secure your lives.

It seems that love and pain all the more are entwined one with the other.  Self-pity wants to enter in, as my mind goes over how difficult it is without much of a support network of my choosing.  I would choose my adult children and grandchildren, of course, as ones I'd love to hear from, to call, to encourage, laugh, offer from them to visit without hearing in voices a forced tone--only a reminder that they are busy, tired, stressed from their own living out life's responsibilities and trials which also includes all aspects of the world from which they are not able to be as removed as is my privilege, but of which they must endure.  

Or then, such as the sardonic response last night to my text.  (And be grateful for a response at all, I remind self.) "Maybe?"  But then I consider:  Do I want reality, or do I want coddling?  Do I want God's will, or do I want what I want?

I'm so nauseated currently, with the radiating pain. (Nausea and digestive tract pain is all part of Adhesive Arachnoiditis--of which one adult child suggested I not read about it; to which I responded it helps me to know what is rather than wonder or think perhaps can be fixed or helped, thus wasting more time, energy, and money--and silly questions such as the one I asked the surgeon's staff already!)

So perhaps the productivity I mentioned last night in the text to a different adult child--the productivity that maybe I should be engaging in--is simply to be productive as in to suffer in the silence of solitude.  That I can be grateful that my family members are living their lives, and that I have come to recognize and understand how much they've had to live with my chronic pain, themselves, and its seeming infinity of frustration and limitation--which can be a form of selfishness, as pain can suck a person in on oneself.

Suffering is my maybe of productivity.  And I mentioned I'd like to write something of perhaps more substance than blog posts.  Yet, for now, this is the best I can seemingly do--just to write about what is reality of little tidbits of everyday life, of suffering of various types and aspects, and of how I all the more turn to God for sustenance, and to Him for the perseverance necessary to secure my life.

And as I have come to this certain point of pain, I add that pain, also, is a form, at least, of love.  And there is no love without forgiveness.  For whatever reasons, God in His wisdom allows the pain in our lives, and the more I grasp the love in the pain, the closer I am to suffering productively...if that makes any sense to any of you reading this!

Definitely, this is the most difficult of life, thus far, to traverse: to persevere to the end, to persevere to preserve my life to the end--and in some type of productive manner even though those closest or not even close may think totally otherwise.

Perhaps suffering does not even need to have a purpose or be productive?  That's another question only God can answer, if it even needs an answer.

I'm going to try to bake a pumpkin pie, perhaps.  Maybe!  I had offered to bake ice-cream cake cupcakes for the grandson but did not hear back.  It was, also, a foolish question to ask, to offer that.  Lord, have mercy on my silly, foolish soul!  

Lord, preserve me!  I need to take the anti-nausea medication or else continue to suffer this pain-radiating nausea; yet I don't want to be sedated. How blessed to have such a pitifully inconsequential decision to make!  The pumpkin pie is losing it's place of productivity options.  One must laugh!

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another, for God Is Love!  

Catholic Hermit: Blessed Christ the King!

It's taken the usual morning and into afternoon to get a grip on pain, but the time has been spent as well as I hope in God possible--a phone call from an elderly friend whose son not much younger than I, had a golf ball-size tumor removed a week ago tomorrow.  Benign is the word from test results just in!  Praise God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and all creatures therein!

Then a greeting from an eldest sister who is on a cruise with her husband, wishing me well in recovery and Happy Thanksgiving.  Very kind; they were in port for a couple hours with internet service.  I returned a greeting and thanks, and also that this morning I thought of  her and our other sister, next elder one, and that 46 years ago today we were all together, as they were in my late morning wedding at the Methodist Church in which we were brought up those many years ago.

This morning I had prayed another forgiveness of the ex-spouse, and thought briefly--enforced briefly--of the ten years of marriage and of the infidelity and other life the spouse was living for all of it.  Forgiveness was given immediately all those years ago, yet I did factor that had the spouse not left after the accident, or had I heeded reality checks along the way, there'd not have been an accident had I heeded some situations, or had I not had to exert so much after the spouse left and divorced, I'd likely not needed the back surgery in which the mistakes were made, causing this Adhesive Arachnoiditis and life of suffering and increasingly so.

However, of course I stopped those realities and replaced with the realities of the greatest treasures of my earthly existence in the form of three beautiful, accomplished, and beloved children--now all adults with significant others and two with families of their own.  They each are past age 33, the age in which my life was drastically altered, painfully so, and for that I am extra grateful to God.  They had various other sufferings to endure from early ages, their childhoods hindered and difficult in contending with a single parent with chronic pain and limited resources.  

I do hope in God that they will realize, perhaps after we are all passed from this temporal earth, just how much I love and treasure them and thank God for them; they were the precious jewels God gave me for the best portions of the temporal.

But not to dwell on all that past, other than in my current effort in acceptance of this highest level of pain consistently, to date, and of a thankfully greater understanding, on my part, as to what these three beloved persons, now adults, experienced.  To their credit and the glory of God, they succeeded in trooping through those years, through college, through their adult lives thus far.  None of it is easy for anyone--simply living in the temporal world, everyone with their own sufferings of various types, their challenges, and much hard work.

Thus this day commemorating Christ the King is extra meaningful to me as a human, a parent, a child of God, a victim soul of Jesus, a consecrated Catholic hermit, a friend to those who can cope with the effects of what I can somewhat explain of Adhesive Arachnoiditis, and also to express their prayer needs, for I do sometimes think that the Lord answers my prayers in an added blessing of ways unknown and unseen.

Some others, mostly the handful of Catholic friends who remain in contact over the years, think so, also.  Somehow the Lord is very linked to those of us who suffer and who offer ourselves fully to Christ our King.  We remain more on the cross with Him than anywhere other.  We scan the daily news for bits of details and persons and entire situations for which we pray.  Our lives become a prayer of pain, the pain praying as much or more than words or thoughts in our minds or feelings in our hearts.

And the more I consider what I wrote last evening of the intrinsic qualities of love and pain being bound as if one, or at least interchangeable in some aspects and references, we embrace the cross as love, and we suffer pain as love.  We come to love to suffer and suffer to love.  We find Christ the King in our pain.

We do not glorify pain, of course; we glorify Christ the King, our Savior, our Lord of Lords!  Yet He is to Whom we cling in our suffering, constantly in some of our cases, and we accept that others may not possibly be able to understand that need, that essential aspect of our lives--to cling to Jesus on the cross, for we cannot manage without Him, without what others might find extreme clasping, extreme focus, extreme love of Christ, the Son of God to Whom we go, and the Holy Spirit, likewise, to Whom we grasp in the desperation of such suffering, of pain that has become love, and love that is pain.

There is glory in such love, glory in Christ our King, victory through and of and from His salvific suffering and redeeming all of us humans--those who seek Him in whatever degrees of seeking and even clutching, clinging--and those who have gotten busy in other things, who have minds elsewhere, who have grown distant or not ever really been that close.  Those of us who suffer enough to love so much and need Him in every breath to hold us tight--we include in our pain and love, all others.

That is the least we can do and be and pray.  And to be praise of His glory, to be living, suffering praise of God through sickness and health, through good times and bad; and in Christ, not even death will we part.

God bless Christ the King present within us!