Wednesday, February 6, 2019

This is really from the evening of the 6th.  I was too busy wrestling with the Airbnb stuff to get it out. OK

Good news: He is sleeping soundly.

Bad News: Judy and Shivani found Airbnb reservations for me.  Unfortunately, I need something called a BANK CONFIRMATION of my card to make the reservation. I tried two different cards from two different banks. Got the same result on both. So I can't make the reservation. 

Good news:  A friend who works for HomeAway who is checking to see if she can find something for me.              I have a place to stay until Sunday night.  John Coughlin says I can stay at St. Stephen's for the weekend.

            I am sitting by Mike's bedside.  He is not a man who likes even to overhear conversations on how the body works.  Nonetheless, in his helpless state, he is adjusting.  I can't begin to tell you how proud I am of him.  When I pointed out how well he was doing, he said, "I have no choice." I reminded him, we always have a choice.  As he remembers it, his mother spent a good deal of time lying on a sofa moaning about her backache. Mike has faced one of the most painful organ attacks or failures.  Yes, he's cried out for help.  I have little tolerance for the overly stoic.  But neither is he complaining nonstop about his plight, which right now is really lousy.  At this point, he is fully conscious and aware of his situation.  I have told him repeatedly that he is in for a long haul.  I have not told him that it might how long that haul is, but he seems to be accepting that this will not be over quickly.

            Among other sufferings, he hasn't eaten since the 24th. No food can pass his lips for fear it will trigger another attack by the pancreas against itself.  However, he has been sleeping much better, but I know that he sleeps better when he is with me.  To that end, I brought a nightgown doused in the essential oils I always wear.  While Jean, the mother of his son, was here in Hawaii because of Mike, we shared a room.  She had left her nightgown and borrowed mine.  How many men can say they take comfort from a nightgown both his wives have worn?

            While we were staying at one hotel, I needed to get a new card.  I was standing by the front desk as Damon ordered the card.  I heard him say, "My mother and my step-mother are in that room." And then, "I know." I asked him later what the clerk had done.  He said she made this face.  At any rate, we got the room key.  Jean is one of my dearest friends. It took time for this to develop, but it is one of the great joys in my life, one of the many benefits I've gotten by being married to Mike.

            Deacons have been visiting. Clarence and John come regularly.  God bless them. I've also seen Will, Derick, and Marlowe and another lovely man who came in early in this adventure whose name I can't remember, something like Ephraim.  I would like to encourage deacons, anyone who has had contact with Mike through the diaconate program, to visit him.  So that you not all come at once and then none come at some other time (except for off-island deacons here on Oahu for the weekend), could you assign a coordinator to be Mike's social secretary.  Thank God he is sometimes asleep now.   Maybe all you can do at those times is hold his hand and pray with him.  When he is awake, he understands what is being said, even though he is a little difficult to understand.  It just takes too much energy at this point to speak. There is nothing wrong with his brain.

            Earlier today, the aide asked his roommate if I wouldn't like his dessert, which he had left untouched.  Mike called out, "I'll take it." This was a joke.  He is fully aware that he can't eat.  He has told me repeatedly that he can't eat.  He is getting liquids and nutrition intravenously.

            Around 2 pm, he started complaining about severe stomach pain.  When I asked him to evaluate it on a rate from 1-10, he said a 20 or30.  Now I'm as sure as I can be that it wasn't that bad. He may have had that order of pain in the emergency room on the 24th when the enzymes in his pancreas were if full blast destroying itself.  I told the nurse that I was concerned that something like that was going on.  She said he has an infection.  I said, NO!" his pancreas is in attack mode again.  It took me a moment to get through to her that I thought there was a possibility that more enzymes were being released and doing more damage.  He hasn't complained about stomach pain at all of late, only back pain. She called for the doctor.   They did give him more Tylenol intravenously. It's more potent than what we take orally but not as strong as the narcotics. When I left, he was feeling somewhat better.

            The doctor came in too.  He said it was to be expected that these pains would come and go. Whatever the chemical that is released when you get pancreatitis has been decreasing, so they are reasonably sure that it is not active right now.  However, they don't dare give him anything orally for fear of triggering it again. Anything in the mouth gets the GI system into active gear.  Until everything has quieted down, they won't take the risk.  The doctor told him he probably won't eat anything for at least another week. Jez Louise.

            Then he started talking nonsense.  Something about being in West Texas testifying against someone.  He didn't know who.  Then he started talking about feeling like people were persecuting him, wanting him to say bad things about the Catholic church, but he refused. He sometimes has nightmares of being chased.  I made a connection to his youth and the fear of persecution he and his family lived with during the McCarthy era. What an agony. He was scared to death that he would betray his parents. His parents were card-carrying Communists, as many of you know.  Mike was a red diaper baby. 

            Sadly Mike hated his parents.  He was in a double bind.  He had the power to do something to hurt them.  I don't think his feelings of antagonism toward one's parents is that unusual.  I think the circumstances were.

            When I was sixteen, I was given the opportunity to contemplate the possibility of betraying one's parents.  My uncle told me how children in Nazi Germany would betray their parents.  I was appalled that a child would do that to his parents.  My uncle brought me up short; he reminded me of what it was like in Nazi Germany.  The children were taught at every turn on the importance of monitoring those around them, including their parents.  To boot, there was an army of policemen standing on every corner ready to arrest anyone who they thought might challenge those in power.  I quickly realized that it would be all too easy to slam the front door on my way out to report my parents for things they said within the house instead of my bedroom door.  This was the type of double-bind that little eight-year-old boy had to live with. OMG! How sad.  I know from my work with psychology that those binds are not just resolved by having the circumstances come to an end. It's a form of PTSD.  The urgency, the feeling that a difficult situation persists, remains well after it is over. 

            I was fortunate.  I didn't live in circumstances where I could report my parents for anything and get rid of those annoying people.  For many of you, perhaps all of you remember the events at that time of McCarthy hearings.  But for those involved, there was the Rosenberg trial, conviction, and execution. Some people have betrayed our county more recently, and they have not suffered execution. The McCarthy period was an electric era full of persecution of a set of people that Mike and his family were part of. To boot, Mike's father worked as a naval architect in the Brooklyn Navy yard.  He designed the hull of the Missouri now docked right here in Honolulu.  He ran a Communist cell right in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Their fear was totally appropriate.

            Mike has to learn that his occasion impulse to kill his parents was totally normal.  I think every child has moments like that. It's just unbridled rage.  For most of us, it passes because we have no way to execute our plans; that rage, those thoughts are meaningless, harmless vapors.  But there are those for whom that is not the case. What a burden for a young child to carry!! What a weight for an adult to carry. I can only hope he can resolve this conflict, know that he never did betray them, and put down his burden.