Tag: recovery

If only I had listened…

April 21, 2020 / Tom

Here’s what I can say to those who are protesting public health measures put in place to protect our economy, our people and our community. I say it in love since that is, right now, all I have to offer. No data will convince you. No science will sway you. Perhaps love is the way to your salvation.

Right now, you feel fine. It’s easy to protest things that oppose your ideas of freedom, of capitalism, and of ideology. It’s always easy to adhere to a principle when it’s not being challenged. It’s easy to be strong when you don’t really need to be.

Perhaps soon, your recklessness will catch up with you. You may feel a tickle in your throat or an ache in your body. “It’s no big deal,” you will say to yourself. You may, if you are one who can admit making a mistake, put yourself in quarantine to protect those you love or you may continue your recklessness and ensure those around you that “it’s no big deal.”

Perhaps that cough and ache get worse, and maybe your fever starts to spike. You’ve felt this before, it’s no big deal. You’ve always recovered in the past with some antibiotics and rest. You call your doctor, who says you are showing signs of coronavirus. He says quarantine at home. He tells you that there is no treatment, that antibiotics don’t work with this virus. You’ll just have to ride it out and hope it doesn’t get worse.

And no, there is no test that they can give you. You aren’t sick enough to warrant a test.

That angers you. You have the right to know what you have. Ah, they remind you, this is a serious pandemic, and everything has changed. There are just not nearly enough tests to go around. Sorry, but you aren’t rich enough, famous enough, or athletic enough to warrant being bumped to the front of the line. Athletes, CEOs and celebrities are being tested. You? You’re just an average American who must be near death to be given a test.

Still, you’re the brave one. Invincible, you might believe. It’s all going to be OK.

Then, perhaps, it gets hard to breathe as your fever spikes. You can’t seem to catch your breath. Few things scare people like not being able to breathe, and here you are, the bravery beginning to falter, the invincibility beginning to wane. The feverish chills course through your body as your panic increases. If only you had been smarter…

You miss your family. They are not able to come see you. If you die, you will die alone. There will be no memorial, no chance at good-byes, no final moments you share. Your final moments were spent convincing others of your bravery while convincing yourself of your invincibility. Now, the illusion is gone as you face your own mortality.

If only I had listened…

Have I infected my children? My spouse? My friends? Time will tell if you are the one they point to as a reason for their suffering, their loss, their pain. Perhaps you all will learn a lesson. If it is not too late.

You wonder how you are going to pay for all this care you are receiving. Will your family be bankrupt as a result of your illness? How will they survive if you do not? How will they survive even if you do?

It’s gotten so hard to breathe. The doctors, all bundled up in their protective gear, come to tell you the bad news. You will need a ventilator to live. They will sedate you, put you in a drug-induced coma, so that you don’t gag on the tube they are about to put down your throat. You want to be strong and brave again, but all you can do is look around you. Is this the last thing you will ever see?

I want to touch my children, tell them how much I love them. I want one last kiss with my spouse…

Those things will have to wait, and as you quickly fade asleep you wonder if they’ll ever come.

If only I had listened….

Action Breeds Confidence (Warrior Prose)

March 13, 2020 / Tom

We are, my friends, in scary times.

In my life I’ve noticed that there are two types of occurrences in each and every experience. One is what we can control and the other is what we can’t. In challenging time I’ve learned to focus intently on what is within my control and much less on what I can’t. I’ve learned that action breeds the confidence to relegate fear. Inaction allows the fear to fester and can render us useless. I’ve also found that fear is often nothing more than a lack of confidence.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

Boxer’s Dread

I used to box in my younger years and I feared losing and getting “beat up”. Rather than be hamstrung by fear, I would train harder and push my body and training beyond what I thought I could handle. I wanted to be better conditioned, better trained and better prepared than my opponent could ever be or, at a minimum, believe I was. That confidence not only rid me of fear, but had me actually stir crazy while waiting for the fight to happen.

I could see my opponent in my mind and see him working his ass off to beat me. That vision would cause me to increase my intensity. I could not imagine losing to anyone because I was not prepared. If they were better than me it was going to be a contest of skill, will and preparation. They were going to have to bring their “A” game.

Fear in the Fire

In my time as a firefighter, fear was an ever-present companion. Firefighters die and get severely injured doing their thing and it happens quite frequently. I’ve lost four friends in the line of duty and have never met a more courageous person than a firefighter. We all know what we’ve signed up for, so fear would be there as a constant companion. Our trick is we learn to use fear as another tool we carry and not as something that prevents us from action.

Fear drove me to constantly be educated on the methods, technology, and science of fire/rescue work. I would train, study, train, and respond. Those efforts bred great confidence. While I could not control everything on a fire/rescue scene, my end would not be due to a lack of preparation.

The fear was still there, but I was able to use it to hyper focus on the skill set I had developed. At no time was I limited by my fearful companion. Action had bred confidence and confidence put fear in its place.

A Stroke of Action

Fast forward a couple of decades when I found myself in an emergency room having an ischemic stroke. I believed I was going to die or, at the very least, be incapacitated. I had lost control and strength in my limbs and was blind. Swallowing was a challenge and I felt that nothing was ever going to be a same if I was able to survive.

While lying there on my gurney waiting for a CAT scan, I decided on settle down. I began to meditate. In that state I could feel the dizziness, the weakness, and the fear. I also could feel something else; a calm and it spoke to me. Not in English, but in a language that spoke directly to my inner intelligence.

“You are on this ride, and there is no getting off. Enjoy it, learn from it, and use it. You know what you need to do, so do it. The outcome is not guaranteed, but you can be an active participant in getting there.”

I did know what to do, and I decided to do it. I needed to trust my inner self and disregard what others told me. In the process of healing, whatever that meant, I had to become an active participant and not just an observer.

So I employed everything I had always employed. I approached even the most menial work with joy and intensity.

The first mission was get my sight back. I would visualize my eyes working again and the neural pathways being rerouted. The pain was intense as I would open my eyes to check my progress but I even approached that with joy. Soon, I was able to see again and although I still have some trouble with my eyes, I am nearly fully recovered.

Learning to Walk Again

When it was time for me to learn to walk again, I would actually laugh at myself. This amazed my physical therapists and they would often ask me how I kept so positive.

“The last time I learned to walk I was too young to remember. I think its fun to act like a two-year old again. Besides, if I learned once I can learn again.”

I would visualize walking and work at it. Within a few weeks I went to walking with a walker, having two therapists holding onto a gait belt, to walking (then jogging) in the hallways. I would challenge myself in every way I could (I would walk endless laps in a pool, the waves challenging my balance). My balance took a while to recover, and I still have some issues, but I’ve learned to deal with them well.

In dealing with any issue I face I find that improvement always follows. If I approached them in fear, I could expect to do nothing but sit in my own swill.

The actions I took in this challenge kept me positive and out of the muck that fear would have created. Each time I would hear the voice of fear nibbling in my mind, I would do something to counter it. Action always was the antidote and it still is.

The question to ask yourself when in the presence of fear is “What can I do?” and never let the answer be “nothing”. Then do it and see what happens.

The Ghost Beside Me

December 18, 2019 / Tom

A ghost sat beside me, rocking slowly on the small, wooden chair. In the steely silence I could hear only two things; the rhythmic beating of my heart and the creaking of that chair. I hear no breaths, no gusts of wind howling just outside my room nor sounds of discarded leaves being thrown about by autumn’s fury. I can only here Death sitting in that chair, slowly waiting for it to be my time.

My eyes had been blinded by the rage of life, my brain injured by the loss of blood. I needed to see, to stand, to walk among my loved ones again. In my blindness I could hear so many things once forgotten. I could hear the smile of my children. I could hear the laughter that came from deep within them. I could hear the sight of a flower blooming in the sunlight, and I could hear the sounds of winter thawing. I could hear the sound of a smile, of a loving glance, and the rising tide of an ocean a thousand miles away.

My body could no longer steady itself against the invisible strings of gravity. The sense of touch I had taken for granted had now changed and, with it a truth I had always depended. The security of all I had known vanished in a breath, replaced by something I was told was “a new reality”. It was a reality I had never requested but had no choice in accepting.

On an opposite side of the room sat another ghost rocking slowly on another chair. There was a warm light pulsing rhythmically with each movement, and a sweet melody vibrating in a heavenly tempo. I could feel the bliss of Life caressing those parts of me left darkened by the stroke, the want of life pulling me out of the numbness. There was, in this moment, a choice to be made and a path to be taken.

I felt no fear in this choice, only a surrender to the reality, swimming in the knowledge that had no control over my circumstance. In that surrender, though, rose a feeling in the numbness, a truth that shouted to me that while control had been lost, I could regain it. I could control my choices from that moment on. I could choose Death, or I could choose Life, and I could ride the wave toward either end. Death offered me a final surrender. Life offered me the challenge I was born to accept. Death seemed easy. Life seemed all-too-difficult.

I chose life, and in the shadows of that night I found my vision. In that unsteadiness I found true balance. In that challenge I found a love of Life, of living, and asked Death to wait his turn. He seemed to smile in return having played his part in the dance of Life.

Death knows, though, that my choice is a temporary one, and that one day he will extend his hand and I will have no option but to take it. Life, however, knows something too. She knows that circumstances arrive, and within them comes a litany of choices. Life knows that she exists in the choices we make within the experience, and she knows that those choices determine to which degree we can enjoy her company. We can either make choices that have us dancing with Life, of we can make choices that have us existing until the hand of Death grabs us in a grip from which we cannot break free.

I have discovered in my own time that Life offers us liberation in the choices we make. Liberation is born in the struggles of our time, and Life is realized in the sweat and blood of our liberation. True living is liberation, and liberation exposes us to the glory of true living. They go together like yin and yang, important ingredients that cannot be separated and are as necessary for one other as the beating heart is to breath and breath is to the beating heart. Fear is but a shackle we have placed upon ourselves, and love is the key that can set us upon a gratitude spawned from great Living. There is great liberation in appreciating the Sunrise whose memory may be all I have one day. Loss shows us the way to gratitude, and gratitude shows us a way from loss. We can be so liberated in sharing gratitude not just in what we have, but for what we have lost.

So whether it is struggling to keep upright when your brain is unable to keep control, or hiking a trail among the beasts of wild and untamed nature, or just getting out of bed to face another day, the challenge itself offers great opportunity for liberation. We can liberate ourselves from the confines of a bed in our dizziness. We can liberate our bodies from the delusion of safety within our unnatural box. We can liberate ourselves from the dread created in the lack of fulfillment. We are the choosers of our own path.

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