Saturday, February 9, 2019.

Good news: Mike is miserable. To me, this means he feels well enough to be assessing his physical state.

Bad news: Mike is miserable. Oh, God, his situation is challenging. It breaks my heart to see him have to struggle this way - and we have a long haul ahead of us. 

 I'm waiting for my laundry to dry before I go to bed. Tomorrow I move to the ashram.

Mike kept expressing concern about the dialysis. What can I say, he really hates the process. Mike's idea of meditation is to read a book and distract himself. He's gotten away with that so far; his body hasn't demanded his attention.  Now it does.  He says it is so distracting.  Being aware of feeling can be.  I started to tell him to think about something pleasant.  Of course, he couldn't maintain that. I'm an experienced meditator, and I couldn't easily maintain it. I reminded him that the goal is not to entirely block out all unpleasant sensation but to observe it with calmness, equanimity is the term the Buddhists use.  I sat there reminded him to return to his pleasant thought. 

            Then I had to go.  The kind of concentration needed here is what a mother gives a newborn. It intense; it's constant; it's exhausting.  But he needs this attention because he has nothing else.  I feel I am his lifeline to another world in which he used to live. But when I feel myself burning out, I have to leave. 

            He was in the middle of dialysis when I left.  I had made sure he was moved right before I left since he was facing four hours without being able to change position.  I also made sure that his inflatable mattress would be inflated regularly.  Now that was somewhat of a challenge.  The nurse had no problems with it.  The dialysis nurse said I had to ask her.  I went out and confirmed it with her, came back in, and reported her response, and the dialysis nurse repeated I had to ask the nurse.  Oh, boy.  The aide wasn't too happy with this deal, either.  Not because she was going to have to do the inflating.  It means operating a blowing machine, not blowing it up with her own mouth. I think her problem was that the mattress was being used in ways she wasn't used to.

            The mattress inflates from the foot of the bed on up, so it acts as a massage as well as shifting his whole body slightly. I asked how often he wanted the mattress blown up; every 15 minutes, every half an hour or every hour.  He selected every half an hour. 

            I also talked to Mike about Elsa, our Havanese. I showed him pictures of her curled up with him while he slept. Then I asked him if he wanted me to buy him an Elsa. He said yes, so I went off to locate a good-sized stuffed animal.  Target was my destination.  Lady Gaga, as Mike calls the GPS system, led me on a wild goose chase. A 2 miles drive turned into a ten-mile drive.  I wasn't sure when she was warning me of an upcoming turn and when she was telling me to turn -NOW! So, there were a few turns I made when I shouldn't have and a few I missed. 

            I finally made it to Target.  I found a moderately sized stuff white bear.  I called Mike to make sure he understood I wasn't going to be buying another dog dog but a stuffed animal.  He did get that and said the bear was fine.  I saw Valentine's Day cards and picked one up. 

            When I got back to the room, he was complaining he was freezing cold.  That can happen with dialysis.  The machine warms the returning blood, but it passes through a loop of tubing that is not warmed. Therefore, the blood comes back into the body, slightly chilled. 

            The aide said she had gotten him extra blankets. I told her to get hot packs.  She said they're small.  She brought two back.  I laid them on the hara line across the stomach; something I learned from the Tiloves . That helped a little.  Then I reached under the blanket and rubbed his leg. This is learned from my mom.  She showed me that when you're cold if you rub your skin, it warms up your whole body.  Best is the back, but the upper arms, and in this case, the upper legs works too.  Then I thought of rubbing his feet only to discover that the aide had never thought to cover his feet.  Yikes! I asked her where I could get warm blankets.  On the first floor, they are in a cabinet in the middle of the floor. Anyone can get to it.  She said she would get it.  I waited, and waited, and waited.  Then I went out in the hall, saw the nurse and asked her if she could get it.  I also told her that the aide was out getting it.  The nurse made it to the closet before the aide.  This aide is only in this one room; she has two people to watch. What took her so long!  The doctor handed her the warm blankets, I took them from her and went in the room to put them both on his feet.  He said that was much better.  Someone, please explain to me how someone who is a hospital aide does not know that the feet are part of the body, and they must be covered.  This man had to suffer needlessly.  I don't think I said anything specifically nasty, but she didn't leave any doubt about what she thought about me. I hope I was more subtle about my thoughts about her.

            It was then that Mike started talking about how miserable he was.  I told him this is the situation he is stuck with; he is in an Existential prison, as a philosopher, he understands that term.  He is going to have to find a way to cope.  The only solution in a situation like this is to find a way to make it interesting.  I showed him how to use the meditation technique I had learned. I asked him if he was colder in one place than another.  His first reaction was that he was cold all over.  Then I point to an area that was an inch square and then another inch square section and asked him which was colder.  He was surprised that there was a difference, and he had an answer.  I left him practicing this meditation discipline. Mike has been able to ignore his body all his life.  He has lived in his mind.  Now he is being forced to pay acute attention to his body.  It hurts, and it's not providing him with the service it always has, which has been as an instrument of food intake, sex, affection, and locomotion.  Sometime in the past, he asked how he wound up marrying someone with the acute sense of body that I have.

            The Buddhist meditation I practice says that we have to develop two complementary skills: awareness and equanimity.   If one is more developed than the other, it creates an imbalance.  Some people develop awareness at the price of equanimity and others at the price of awareness.  I had developed awareness to an extreme degree without equanimity.  (It drove me nuts.) Mike develop equanimity at the price of awareness. There are those who all but leave their bodies to avoid awareness.  It is my observation that those who pursue equanimity at the price of awareness often function better in the world, but it requires denial of feeling. Feeling is always physical.  However, I have seen exceptions to that too.  I recently worked with a 3rd grader whose whole life was Fortnite. That's all he wanted to do.  I discovered that he had escaped entirely from his own body. The only time he felt alive was when he was playing that damn game.  Can you imagine? We're talking about a 9-year-old.

            I told him to feel the back of his legs against the chair. Then to feel his arms against the side of his body.  That simple exercise changed everything for him. I don't know to what degree, but I can tell you that the teacher noticed a change in his attitude and behavior. Point being, that equanimity can be taken to such extremes that it becomes totaling dysfunctional, too.

            For those of you who have known me forever and a day, you know that I erred on the side of awareness.  Fortunately, Vipassana, the type of Buddhist meditation I learned, guided me to safety and vastly improved functionality. Mike is going to have to learn a whole new order of spirituality. I've encouraged him to rest in Christ. While he believes it is possible, he doesn't' really know how to do it.  He will have lots of time to learn now. The only way I know how to make an unchangeable situation tenable is to find it interesting and learn from it. 

            Whatever else happens, Mike is going to come out of this a more amazing person than he was before – and he was pretty amazing already, in my book.  I assure him every day that I love him, adore him, and I'm booked for this journey with him. (Frankly, I'd rather do this kind of journey any day than go sightseeing. Go figure!)