Chronic Pain

Lyrics: First you say you do and then you don’t/ Then you say you will and then you won’t/ You’re undecided now so what are you going to do?

When you get right down to it, most people aren’t afraid of their death; they’re afraid of a painful death.  When we hear about someone who died in their sleep we’re likely to say that’s the way we want to go.  Many people in chronic, unmanageable pain don’t fear death; they view it as a release from their pain.  In recognizing an opioid addiction crisis in this country and because of government restrictions, doctors are now reluctant to prescribe opioid medications even where it had been used responsibly and effectively.  Washington State passed a law in 2010 regulating prescribing of narcotics for chronic pain patients in response to an increase in deaths from opioids.  This resulted in many doctors and clinics dropping cases of pain management.  Story #1: I once was floated from the cardiac intensive care unit back in the ’70’s to a medical floor and assigned to a young woman in excruciating pain.  Her medications were insufficient to control her pain and I put in a call to her physician stating the problem.  I waited the entire shift and he never returned the call nor came in to see the patient.  My frustration boiled over and I complained to one of the floor nurses.  She explained that the patient was dying and should there be an autopsy, the M.D. didn’t want her found loaded with narcotics with a possible charge of death by overdose.  Her pain was ignored.

Today most Primary Care Physicians rarely see their patients if they’re hospitalized.  Instead, their patients are cared for by Hospitalists, specialists in acute care.  Acute pain is typically treated more aggressively for a shorter period of time than chronic pain.  Acute pain tends to respond rapidly and often dramatically to other modes of relief as well.  Story #2: Upon returning to my room after surgery, the nurses asked about my pain level on a scale of 1-10.  I subjectively gave it an “8.”  She went to adjust the IV control to give me access to more pain medication when I pressed the magic button.  Right then a friend arrived and began to do Healing Touch, a biofield therapy.  Result: I never pushed the button and I never took any pain meds by mouth.  I was pain free.

Chronic pain estimated in one article to affect over 116 million American adults, is a different story.  Not long ago studies came out showing that patients were undertreated for pain.  Perhaps medicine overcompensated.  Today with the law looking over their shoulders, doctors have severely cut back on opioid prescriptions or, as already stated, dropped those demanding chronic pain patients.  Story #3: a dear friend in her mid-’70’s, suffering chronic pain secondary to arthritis, was successfully treated with an opioid before the law went into effect.  Her doctor immediately began to cut back on her pain medication.  Where she previously lived a fully functional life, she now lives in constant pain on the reduced dosage.  The pain has taken away any quality of life she’d had, her world made small by pain.  She shared with me that there are many days when she entertains suicidal thoughts or hopes she’ll die just “to get it over with.”

I’d certainly rather see her pain effectively treated but her doctor has acknowledged limits imposed by the law.  Shouldn’t the law discriminate between drug abuse and patient-care abuse?

Lyrics: If you’ve got a heart and if you’re kind/ Then don’t keep us apart, make up your mind/ You’re undecided now, so what are you going to do?    Songwriters: Sydney Robin and Charles Shavers.

2016 History Revisited

Oh beautiful for spacious skies/ For amber waves of grain/ For purple mountains majesties/ Above the fruited plains!

Hard to believe that one month ago I was having a Starbucks latte outside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.  Because of the opportunity to travel to Germany in 2014 and again this year, and because I’ve been doing my Life Review journaling that covered my childhood during WWII, my interest in that time was rekindled and I’ve read many books on the subject, both fiction and nonfiction.  I was three years old when my parents moved from Fairbanks, Alaska to Seattle because, according to my mother, they were worried about rationing and obtaining the necessities to care for their young daughter.  The military was in Fairbanks and mom described a degree of pandemonium when those in service were called back to the base, pronto; possibly related to the Japanese arriving in the Aleutian Islands.  An early memory is of sirens and blackouts when black window shades were pulled down and dad brought out the 8 mm movie projector and our one reel of a Mickey Mouse cartoon in addition to the family movies.

I see many parallels in today’s election process.  I see a mogul masquerading as our country’s savior, ranting and raving much like his predecessor in the 1930’s-40’s, promising everything and saying nothing.  Whereas Hitler was a brilliant speaker, Trump speaks, according to one study, at a fourth grade level.  He scapegoats whole categories of people; Hispanics, Muslims, Women, and who knows, intellectuals?  Hitler focused on the Jews, however no group was exempt from his terrorist regime.  I learned during a visit to Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich that the first group imprisoned there were those who opposed Hitler and Nazism; the second group were the theologians, and then came the Jews.  The citizens of Dachau township denied any knowledge of what was happening inside the walls even as the ash of burned bodies floated down on their homes.

Joseph McCarthy was holding court in the Senate during my high school years.  Everyone then was suspected of being a communist.  Because of the progressive leadership of the faculty, the student body held a mock McCarthy trial.  I was a news reporter covering the trial for the school newspaper and it is that experience that most likely accounts for my vivid memories of the era.  The movie, Trumbo, is an excellent portrayal of the fallout from McCarthy and his minions.  David Brooks, syndicated columnist for the New York Times and a conservative speaking out about Republicans, writes that “this is a Joe McCarthy moment.  People will be judged by where they stood at this time.  Those who walked with Trump will be tainted forever after for the degradation of standards and the general election slaughter.”

Who are these citizens who turn out to vote for Trump?  Are they the equivalent of the bitter and economically depressed Germans who were hypnotized by Hitler’s racist rants?  Are they ready to follow anyone who promises to assuage their pain in whatever way “necessary?”  In Germany today it’s illegal to display any memorabilia of WWII or symbol of Nazism.  They are ridding their country of both Nazism and, with the downfall of the Berlin Wall, Communism.  They are socialists still in the best sense.

People I know are shocked and even worried by Trump’s success.  I wonder, as a group, how the country’s elders feel about this presumptive candidate for President of the USA.  He hasn’t slandered us — yet.  Still, I want to sic the AARP on him.

America!  America!/ God shed is grace on thee/ And crown they good with brotherhood/ From sea to shining sea.

THE INTERN

Lyrics:  Don’t you know it’s worth every treasure on earth/ To be young at heart. . .

In The Intern, Robert De Niro plays a spiritual elder.  He is 70 years old, widowed, retired, and bored.  He sees a flyer for an internship at a women’s clothing business; an internship for seniors.  He is hired and assigned to the owner of the company played by Anne Hathaway.  She has no enthusiasm for this senior intern program and ignores him.  Meanwhile, he observes her and the pressures she’s under, and he cultivates relationships with other new employees.  The dress code is casual but he dresses in a suit and tie and always carries a clean white handkerchief.  He insists on keeping the hours of his boss which often run late into the evening.  When he observes her driver drinking from a flask, he replaces him at the wheel and this brings him into contact with her husband and little girl.  He eventually becomes her right hand man at work and at home.  It’s a warm fuzzy movie.

It’s doubtful that when they gave De Niro the script they told him it was about spiritual eldering; it’s doubtful that the producers/director or even the screenwriter knew the term.  And who would go to a film titled, The Spiritual Elder?  Instead, we have a man in his “Third Age,” with a desire to be of use, of service to others, to be in relationship, who is observant of the people around him, someone who listens, someone who cares.  Religion and spirituality are never voiced yet De Niro’s character exemplifies a spiritual elder.

Culturally and sociologically we are experiencing a paradigm shift from geriatrics to gerotranscendence, a developmental stage that occurs when an individual who is living into old age shifts their perspective ffrom a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one  This is usually accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction.  (From the book, Age-ing to Sage-ing by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalome.)  Spiritual Eldering is a process of transmitting years of acquired experience to younger people which is eactly what De Niro’s character so delightfully conveys in a strong yet subtle performance.

I recently shared a room with two delightful tween/teen for a week.  They drove me crazy and they made me laugh.  It was a bonding experience for me.  I hope that I was as effective as a Spiritual Elder to them as De Niro was to the young people in the film.

Lyrics: And if you should survive to 105/ Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive/ And here is the best part, you have a head start/ If you are among the very young at heart.  (Young at Heart,  written by Johnny Mercer and Robert E. Dolan.)

 

UP UP and AWAY

Lyrics: Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon? / We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky.

Picture this: the ten and a-half-hour flight from Germany/Amsterdam arrived SeaTac airport and an older woman walked over the Jet Way, past waiting wheel chairs, glad to be mobile again.  She knew this airport in contrast to Schiphol in Amsterdam and busy Frankfurt International where she had gratefully accepted wheel chair assistance around those long concourses.  She checked herself into the USA at a computer kiosk down at Customs where she had to claim her two suitcases.  She hadn’t thought of that.  The lines were long, back and forth in roped off lines, pushing and pulling her luggage until she got to the security officer waiting to get her entrance ticket.  “Bye bye,” he said.  Cocky guy.  Up in the elevator and over and down the escalator where she lost control of her luggage and down she went flat on her back.  Many hands of help were there immediately and she was pulled upright in seconds, no damage done other than to her pride.

Why did I walk past the help that was waiting at the plane?  In my eagerness to get off the plane and stretch my legs, I didn’t think ahead nor was I thinking as an elder needing assistance.  Pride?  If so, it comes before the fall and it landed me on my backside.

Pride.  I believe we elders need to think on that.  There’s two types of pride, e.g., the Rose Man took pride in his roses.  I take pride in my family.  Then there’s false pride, e.g., failing to admit when you need help and refusing to accept help when it’s offered because it might show weakness.  My mistake in the airport was failing to recognize that I needed help, that I’m not forty, fifty, or sixty anymore.  I need to learn to think like one in their late seventies.  And how does one think that way?  Proudly.  No pretending that you’re anything more or less than you are.  It’s a lesson in authenticity.

Lyrics: My beautiful, my beautiful balloon (or airplane)/ Suspended under a twilight canopy/ We’ll search the clouds for a star to guide us.  (5th Dimension)

Down Sizing

Lyrics: There’s a long, long trail a-winding/ Into the land of my dreams/ Where the nightingales are singing/ And a white moon beams . . .

The roses are pruned, a truck bed of cuttings along with a yard of weeds has been removed, the soil turned over, and a big decision made.  I received a cosmic message that I needed to let go of the roses.  I can’t care for them by myself and I can’t depend on others to come to my rescue.  Oh, I will keep the border of red shrub roses (Knock Outs) out front and a few of my favorites.  No easy task as they’re all my favorites but it’s time to down size.  After days of even interrupted pruning, my wrists and back were screaming at me to stop; enough already.  In their place, I might see about putting in a raised bed to grow a small garden of herbs. lettuce, and cucumbers to go with the bounty of tomatoes I had last summer.  Oh, and some nasturtiums.  Plants that basically take care of themselves.

It feels as though I’m entering a new passage with this decision to let go of the Rose Man’s roses.  In our younger years, each new passage was usually about acquisition; a new home, a new baby, a new job, new friends.  In our elder years it’s more about letting go.  One of the tenants of Buddhism is to not become too attached to — well, anything.  Even our babies grow up and leave home.

In this time of climate change it will be necessary for all of us to cut back on our conditioning to buy and accumulate.  I think of my two grandchildren, one in the university and the other getting ready to graduate from high school and go on to university.  I would advise them to prepare for the time to come, not this time.  Life as we know it today can’t sustain itself unless people change; change from a material focus to an inner spiritual focus to fill those empty places.  “. . . modern climate change will be marked as a phase in geological evolution, but also, as a turning point in human consciousness.”  (Alastair McIntosh, Hell and High Water, 2008.)

The yard looks bare now but come June it will erupt into a Technicolor vision worthy of the Master Gardener.  I will take photos of each rose and map the yard so that in the Spring when the roses are dormant and ready to be transplanted, there will be a record of how they look in full bloom and where they are located in the yard.  And I will give them away.

Lyrics: Old remembrances are thronging/ Thro’ my memory/ Till it seems the world is full of dreams/ Just to call you back to me.  (Written in 1915 by Stoddard King and Alonzo Elliott and popular with the Doughboys during WWI.)

 

 

 

Spiritual Stories

Lyrics: I see trees of green, red roses too/ I see them bloom for me and you/ And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The speaker asked the audience to raise their hands if they had had an experience that took them into an encounter with God or by whatever name you call the Big Mystery, and all but one raised their hand.  With few exceptions, this was a group of elders who had come to hear a series of lectures that weekend by a Scottish activist on social, environmental and spiritual issues.  How about you?  Have you had an “other worldly” encounter and I’m not talking here about a Close Encounter of a Third Kind.  If you have you know exactly what I’m talking about.  The next question is, how many people in your life have you shared your story?  Most people, at least in the past, kept those kind of stories to themselves for fear that others would questions their sanity.

Loren McIntyre was one such person.  A highly respected photographer/journalist and explorer for the National Geographic, he came upon a tribe, the “cat people” in the Amazon thought to be extinct.  He was captured and as he was being taken into their village he heard or sensed a voice telling him he wouldn’t be hurt.  The voice belonged to the tribe’s headman and for the next three weeks they communicated telepathically, without words.  He was released unharmed and never shared the experience for fear it would damage his credibility and reputation.  (Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu.)

Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, wasn’t in this world when he had his out-of-the-world experience.  Approaching earth as he journeyed back from space, he was filled with an inner conviction, as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved,” that earth was part of a living system and that we all participate in “a  universe of consciousness.”  Unlike others, he was willing to risk his scientific credibility and reputation and why not?  He’d already walked on the moon and how many can top that?  Mitchell shared his experience and founded IONS, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, devoting his life to the exploration of the mind, physics and paranormal mysteries.  Dr. Mitchell passed away last week at age 85.

The point our speaker, Alastair McIntosh, made so convincingly this weekend, is that the solution to climate change is to be found on a spiritual level using the core light within each one of us to guide the science and economical decisions and adaptations necessary for survival of this planet.  One has to wonder if political conservatives, those deniers of climate change, haven’t turned off their inner lights because of heavy financial investments in oil.

It’s been an unseasonably warm winter so far (climate change?) calling for an early pruning of the Rose Man’s roses.  There are still a few old rose buds hanging on but lots
of new growth as well.  And isn’t that just the perfect metaphor for age-ing!

Lyrics: I see skies of blue and clouds of white/ The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night/ And I think to myself what a wonderful world.  Louis Armstrong.  Songwriters: George David Weiss, George Douglas, Bob Thiele.

 

Spiritual Autobiography

Lyrics: Deep peace of the running wave to you/ Deep peace of the flowing air to you/ Deep peace of the quiet earth to you . . .

I was raised in a secular environment.  As a young girl my mother went protesting to her baptismal emersion in the frigid waters of the Spokane River and perhaps that was all it took to account for her avoidance of religion the rest of her life.  My father was heavily influenced by his mother’s core belief in the healing teachings of Christian Science.  I recently came upon documents revealing that my ancestral maternal roots were mired in Mormon polygamy.

I’ve never considered myself religious and today there is a category for ones like me: Spiritual.  Even before The Word, before I knew it or even cared to know about it, I was a spiritual seeker and a skeptic at the same time.  I was curious about the Big Mystery, not rejecting of it.  Like so many, what I rejected was institutional church dogma.  My spiritual curiosity went through stages: believing what adults said was the Truth and then as an adult rejecting what authorities said was the Truth.  I went from knowing everything to realizing that there are many layers of Truth, confusing layers, and no one has a corner on the TRUTH, including me.

While I’ ve learned a great deal from many theologians of various faiths and persuasions, without a doubt my greatest spiritual evolution has come through the practice of Healing Touch, a form of energy medicine.  Before I could actually feel another’s energy field I could sense something powerful and it was way outside my box of reality and my comfort zone.  I learned to feel the presence of that great Force, to be a conduit of His/Her Love because, as we were taught, the healing energy doesn’t come from us but through us.  The more acute the need, the more dramatic the healing.  I have witnessed miracles, enough to know from experience that “there’s more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, that are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  (Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

Are you religious?  Are you spiritual?  Can you be both at the same time?  Does it matter?  Who or what has been your greatest spiritual teacher?  Have your beliefs changed over the years?  What happens when we die?  What Truth will sustain you through your final passage?

Dan Wakefield’s book, The Story of Your Life; Writing a Spiritual Autobiography, challenges me to write my spiritual story, a memoir of the spirit.  I look forward to discovering and re-discovering the Truth.

Lyrics: Deep peace of the shining stars to you/ Deep peace of the son of peace to you.  (Ancient Scottish prayer recorded by Simon de Voil and available on YouTube.)

Creepy or Cozy?

Lyrics: Cuddle up a little closer lovey mine/ Cuddle up and be my little clinging vine.

Years ago I attended a conference of the American Holistic Medical Association and sat down next to a woman I didn’t know.  While waiting for the presentation to begin, this unknown woman picked up my hand and began a gentle massage.  I acted as though it was the most natural occurrence for a stranger to silently massage my hand and delighted in the feel of it, the nurturing comfort.  I mouthed a silent thank you when the presentation began and she released my hand, learning later that she was an OB  physician.

That’s one scenario.  Here’s another.  You’re in a room with a bed and lots of pillows being cuddled by a total stranger.  Cuddling has been identified as a new trend with people paying “certified” cuddlers for their services; $45 for 30 minutes.  Cuddle Clubs are opening up across the country and some are holding (pun intended) cuddle parties.  I was sharing this bit of trivia with a friend over the holidays and her reaction said it all, “That’s so sad.”  There is something sad about paying a stranger to hold you, a cuddle prostitute of sorts.  In one poll, people were asked if they’d use the services of a Cuddle Club.  33% said they would and 67% said “no way.”  As you might suspect this is a youthful trend; the millennials coming up with an innovative way to meet their needs for connection with others.  Is this sad or does the idea just take some getting used to?

Tactile stimulation is essential to good health; touch is therapeutic and touch is healing.  In his book, Touching, Dr. Ashley Montagu writes about touch and age.  “Tactile needs,” he writes, “do not seem to change with aging — if anything they seem to increase.”   Elders often live alone, even when surrounded by people in a retirement home, because of divorce or widowhood and living a distance from family members.  Is there an alternative to paying for strangers arms to hold us.  Certainly dogs fill that need for many or cats purring in their laps.  The Eden Alternative recognized that need and introduced dogs and parakeets to the retirement/nursing home setting.  (See the May 2015 posting, Quality of Life.)

Elders probably aren’t the best candidates for Cuddle Club membership and yet so much of their touch often comes from professional caregivers.  Maybe the millennials have something to teach us about the importance of getting needs met even if the means are unusual.  The question is, can we elders come up with an alternative to Cuddle Clubs to get our touch needs met?

Lyrics:  Like to feel your cheeks so rosy/ Like to make you comfy cozy . . .                              (Songwriters: Karl Hoschna and Otto A. Harbach.)

 

The 60 Second Year

Lyrics: Well, hello there/ My it’s been a long, long time/ How am I doing?/ Oh, I guess that I’m doing fine.

There’s still 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day.  That’s the way it’s always been — when I was five years old, when I was in my twenties, and it’s the same now that I’m in my seventies.  So, why does it seem that the days are shorter now and the years go by at warp speed?

It seems that change has accelerated and perhaps this accounts for our perception of accelerated time.  During a recent wind and rain storm, the power went out.  In an instant this house was reduced to primitive conditions, i.e., pre-technology, pre-electricity.  I floundered.  I felt old and alone until power was restored a mere two hours later.  Change, however, was instantaneous — from confident independence to uncertain, what-should-I-do anxiety.  Still, my mind automatically went into survival mode, circulating around the house for flashlights, candles, and reminding myself that the computer was charged as was my cell phone.  Technology lives!

So does terrorism.  Perhaps nothing will change the future in our country, the world, more than these random terrorist attacks.  What will survival mode look like?  A student at one of Washington’s universities did a stupid thing online and is threatened with ouster from the school and even jail time.  The Donald does the very same stupid thing in his run for President of the United States and crowds of angry, fear-driven citizens cheer him on.

Soon it will be a new year and my high school class will celebrate 60 years of change and survival.  Like others in my class, I was so busy growing a family, pursuing education, working, adapting to several geographical moves and financial challenges that the multitude of changes in the past 60 years just blended in with life in general.  Somewhere along the way we moved from Elvis to the Beatles to Kurt Cobain to Adele; from the Cuban Revolution to 9/11 to San Bernadino.

Change changes us.  Aging brings change.  Connie Schultz, journalist and columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, writes about her response to needing cataract surgery at the young age of 57.  From resistance to diagnosis to seeing better without glasses since age nine, she learned an important lesson.  “My fear of aging had encroached on my willingness to embrace change.  I had vowed that I would celebrate the experience and wisdom that come with age, but I was starting to act like someone with an expiration date.”

Let’s resolve to celebrate survival and laugh at change in 2016.  Laugh in the face of anxiety and fear.  We don’t need someone making funny faces or telling jokes to make us laugh.  Fake it!  Start to practice now because change is on its way and time is its carrier.

Lyrics: It’s been so long now but it seems now/ That it was only yesterday/ Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away.  (Willie Nelson)

 

Gloria

Lyrics: I don’t tell you what to say/ I don’t tell you what to do/ So just let me be myself/ That’s all I ask of you.

She’s in her 81st year and she sold out the 2500 seat concert hall.  Elders, middle-aged, and an impressive number of young people including articulate teenagers cheered almost every utterance.  There was a sprinkling of progressive men in the audience but this was a women’s event and a celebration of a female icon, Gloria Steinem.

Gloria, as she asked to be called, was masterfully interviewed for an hour by Cheryl Strayed, author of the autobiographical Wild.  It was then opened up to the audience and one by one women of all ages took to the microphone to express their gratitude for the life and work of this former Playboy bunny and founder of Ms. Magazine.  Was that when I took to prefacing my name with Ms. instead of Mrs.?

Back in the 80’s I participated in a Toastmaster’s group and worked my way through the speaker’s book that provided themes and outlines for speeches.  I don’t remember the particular theme when I gave a talk based on a chapter in one of Steinem’s books titled, If Men Menstruated.  I’ll never forget the shocked looks on my audience’s faces when I announced the title.  It was a pretty good talk, if I say so myself, and afterwards one of the men, a true Southern gentleman, came up to me and said in his soft southern accent, “Why Barbara, are you a feminist?”  He could have been asking if I was a prostitute or a Nazi.  I replied that indeed I was a feminist.  “But, you’re a mother,” he replied.

Steinem talked about campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 70’s and its failure to amend the constitution.  Again, I remembered writing to my legislator and expressing my dismay that we (women) even needed an amendment to establish our equality.  Weren’t we citizens of the USA?  Oh yes, the Constitution says, “All men are created equal.”  Whether deliberately intending to omit women, that was the belief of the times.

Is this an issue for elders?  Of course.  We have daughters, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, and we’re mentors to generations of females and their male counterparts.  It’s about more than equal pay.  It’s about honor, dignity, recognition, achievement, empowerment and opportunities.  Some young women feel they have equality already and don’t recognize the need for an ERA.  Recently Meryl Streep sent a letter to all 535 members of Congress calling on them to revive the ERA.  She was ignored by all but five.  Maybe her new movie, Suffragette, will stir things up again.

Those who have a stereotypical image of feminists as vocally strident bra burners should have an hour or two with Gloria Steinem.  Her compassion for women and feminine causes, human causes, global causes, is inspirational and a testimony to a life well lived.  Her book is, My Life on the Road.

Lyrics: You don’t own me/ Don’t try to change me in any way/ You don’t own me/ Don’t tie me down ’cause I’d never stay.  (Lesley Gore’s feminist anthem, You Don’t Own Me.)