Monday, May 21, 2007
Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni!
The last few weeks have been amazingly stressful. I am ready to leave the planet on the next warp-capable space ship. Or simply welcome the end of time when skies roll back and Jesus gathers His sheep. Either will do.
My father is in the hospital recovering from quadruple heart bypass surgery. Additionally, they replaced a heart valve, fixed another valve, corrected arrhythmia, did a flush and fill, changed the spark plugs and oil, and tuned the carburetor. And after all this, there is still an overhaul of the air breather to come.
Ok, well, maybe they did not do all that last part. But they DID do the heart stuff. And the fact remains that he is still in ICU a week after the surgery. He has had trouble with lungs and oxygen intake and even had a close call with congestive heart failure at least once (that I know of). Yes, it has really been a stressful week.
So I sit here about 300 miles away with only sparse phone contact to keep me updated. Honestly speaking, I don't know that I would really want to hear all the scary details of each day. Sometimes its best to just hear the summaries. But I wish I could be there with my mother. But still, I have to work. I MUST keep my job to feed my family of seven. I am thankful my brother has been there and has been exceedingly helpful.
Still, these things bother me.
And how do you deal with these kinds of stress? Well, people have different ways of dealing with stress, but when I don't do something, my ADD brain kicks into overdrive and refuses to slow down. The result is near panic attacks with intense stress. These things are not really good on the body and so I have found a few ways to relieve stress.
You know I would like to say the first thing I do is pray. I would like to say that. But it seems I often forget to pray for stress release. But when I do, God is faithful. Sometimes He just calms me directly. Other times He points me to something else that calms me.
The next thing is to just sit with my wife and be with her. That calms me so much. We have been married nearly a year and a half now and truly if feels like we have known each other for much longer - in a good way. She knows me well. She pays attention and seems to know what to do to help me. Likewise, I do all I can to really know her and be there for her when she needs me. It truly is a God-given partnership. It is unlike anything either of us have experienced in the past in our former marriages.
The problem is that I am about 225 miles away from my wife most days because of my job. That makes being with her a logistical nightmare most week days.
And another thing I do is to listen to music. Not just any music, but music that is positive, upbeat, and does not bear anger, angst, or sorrow. Mostly I am speaking of Christian music in this category. Just today I was listening to some country music, some rock music, and some pop music. But none of those really helped. So that was when I cranked up the Newsboys. I could literally feel the stress and tension begin to evaporate as my mind turned closer toward God.
And finally, I use outright escapism. I play video games and get lost in their virtual worlds. Is this the best thing to do? Arguably no. But if nothing else brings about stress reduction, I see it as a reasonable alternative to doing nothing and a much superior alternative to medication.
And when I am not playing video games and running around with my virtual self, I am often found working on a fantasy novel. In my head I run off to a world of elves, dwarves, orcs, and other things that most people don't normally think about. In that world, problems are difficult but solvable. And the problems that cannot be solved are merely part of the ecosystem of the story environment.
But for now, as I write this, the Newsboys are playing in my Amarok music player through my headphones and I am quite calm and the stress is drastically reduced. But after work, I will be cruising around a virtual world destroying monsters and leveling up my virtual persona.
Yes, life is better with electronics. Or at least a pen and paper.
Copyright 2007, Kevin Farley (a.k.a. sixdrift, a.k.a. neuronstatic)
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Waiting
Waiting is not something that is easy for most people to do, or at least do it well. Waiting implies some degree of patience and humans have never been considered the most patient of creatures. And when it comes to waiting, humans have a vast array of different ways of dealing with waiting.
I was forced to dwell on this topic this past week as I had to experience waiting firsthand. And not just any waiting, but the "real serious kind of waiting" that many people wished they never had to experience. I spent an entire day this week waiting in the open heart surgery waiting room while my own father underwent open heart surgery.
Sitting there with my mother, my brother, my aunt and uncle, a cousin, and various others throughout the day, each one of them displayed very different ways of dealing with waiting. Specifically, this was waiting with nervousness, and part of their response to waiting is infused with anxiety to various levels.
The first example to note was my mother. As it was her husband of 49 years in surgery, her anxiety meter was pegged and so her waiting was a weird mixture of nervousness, frustration, stress, sleep deprivation, and her own sustained attempt to hold to her faith that God would deliver her through this. She mostly sat in one place. She was distracted and listened intently anytime the staff called out a family name. Her waiting was deliberate yet obviously difficult to maintain patience.
The next example that struck me was my uncle (my mother's only living brother). He could not sit still and often he had to stand and walk. He did not pace, he just walked from area to area and back, then sit down for a while. He was also quiet and did not talk as much as the rest of us. He normally is not one to be very talkative, but in his waiting, it seemed to me that he talked less than what I remembered of him. His waiting was a suspenseful meandering kind of waiting.
Similar to my uncle was my brother. He also could not sit as long as the others and walked often. But he differed in that he combined his walking with some supposed task as to make it seem natural for him to walk around. I believe that he did not want our mother to know just how nervous he was, so he was using some attempt at subterfuge to mask his nervousness. His was a denied waiting to some extent.
Then there was my father's first cousin. She sat, mostly in one place, with almost a stoic reality. She was calm on the outside, but as she spoke, you could see the emotions swirling just behind the surface. She spoke a lot of old times. She recalled past events and situations that brought some humor and good feelings to all of us. Her waiting was one that maintained hope, both to convince herself and others I believe.
My aunt's version of waiting was quite similar to my own in that we talk to distract. It seemed to me that in her waiting, she talked to my mother at length to keep her distracted so that she did not dwell on the negatives. She also sought to reassure her own husband in the process. Her waiting was both helpful and hopeful.
And that leaves me. My waiting was a non-stop barrage of words as I sought to distract myself and others from the current seriousness of the situation. I sincerely wanted to exude confidence and hope for everyone else while at the same time keeping myself distracted from the negative possibilities. I have no idea if I achieved anything close to that. Being ADD myself (seriously), it was easy for me to distract myself. I may have just annoyed others.
In the end, we all waited there for most of that day. There were shared and private prayers. There were stories shared and recalled at length.
This was one of those experiences that a family goes through that stretches them in many different ways. And in the end, our family, at least the part represented there that day, were lifting each other up and showing that family is a powerful thing.
This is not said to slight those that could not be there. We knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that other members of family were praying for my father and my mother in this time. Yes family is a good and powerful thing. It is a shame that in 2007 family is not held as high in importance as it once was, even just a generation ago.
After we all exercised our waiting skills all day, we finally heard from the surgeon about my father. A quadruple bypass was completed, one heart valve replaced, another heart valve was fixed, and the heart rhythm was restored. The surgery was a success and as I write this, my father is in ICU recovering from his open heart surgery.
Today we visited him for short durations (as long as the staff would allow) and he was doing very well. He even had his wits about him and joked bit with us.
There is still more waiting to be done. The doctors also found a cancerous mass in his right lung and biopsied it. We are still waiting on the lab results to determine more about this mass. We also must wait for his body to heal and watch his strength and stamina return to him.
And what is my father doing right now in ICU? He is waiting of course.
Copyright 2007, Kevin Farley (a.k.a. sixdrift, a.k.a. neuronstatic)
I was forced to dwell on this topic this past week as I had to experience waiting firsthand. And not just any waiting, but the "real serious kind of waiting" that many people wished they never had to experience. I spent an entire day this week waiting in the open heart surgery waiting room while my own father underwent open heart surgery.
Sitting there with my mother, my brother, my aunt and uncle, a cousin, and various others throughout the day, each one of them displayed very different ways of dealing with waiting. Specifically, this was waiting with nervousness, and part of their response to waiting is infused with anxiety to various levels.
The first example to note was my mother. As it was her husband of 49 years in surgery, her anxiety meter was pegged and so her waiting was a weird mixture of nervousness, frustration, stress, sleep deprivation, and her own sustained attempt to hold to her faith that God would deliver her through this. She mostly sat in one place. She was distracted and listened intently anytime the staff called out a family name. Her waiting was deliberate yet obviously difficult to maintain patience.
The next example that struck me was my uncle (my mother's only living brother). He could not sit still and often he had to stand and walk. He did not pace, he just walked from area to area and back, then sit down for a while. He was also quiet and did not talk as much as the rest of us. He normally is not one to be very talkative, but in his waiting, it seemed to me that he talked less than what I remembered of him. His waiting was a suspenseful meandering kind of waiting.
Similar to my uncle was my brother. He also could not sit as long as the others and walked often. But he differed in that he combined his walking with some supposed task as to make it seem natural for him to walk around. I believe that he did not want our mother to know just how nervous he was, so he was using some attempt at subterfuge to mask his nervousness. His was a denied waiting to some extent.
Then there was my father's first cousin. She sat, mostly in one place, with almost a stoic reality. She was calm on the outside, but as she spoke, you could see the emotions swirling just behind the surface. She spoke a lot of old times. She recalled past events and situations that brought some humor and good feelings to all of us. Her waiting was one that maintained hope, both to convince herself and others I believe.
My aunt's version of waiting was quite similar to my own in that we talk to distract. It seemed to me that in her waiting, she talked to my mother at length to keep her distracted so that she did not dwell on the negatives. She also sought to reassure her own husband in the process. Her waiting was both helpful and hopeful.
And that leaves me. My waiting was a non-stop barrage of words as I sought to distract myself and others from the current seriousness of the situation. I sincerely wanted to exude confidence and hope for everyone else while at the same time keeping myself distracted from the negative possibilities. I have no idea if I achieved anything close to that. Being ADD myself (seriously), it was easy for me to distract myself. I may have just annoyed others.
In the end, we all waited there for most of that day. There were shared and private prayers. There were stories shared and recalled at length.
This was one of those experiences that a family goes through that stretches them in many different ways. And in the end, our family, at least the part represented there that day, were lifting each other up and showing that family is a powerful thing.
This is not said to slight those that could not be there. We knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that other members of family were praying for my father and my mother in this time. Yes family is a good and powerful thing. It is a shame that in 2007 family is not held as high in importance as it once was, even just a generation ago.
After we all exercised our waiting skills all day, we finally heard from the surgeon about my father. A quadruple bypass was completed, one heart valve replaced, another heart valve was fixed, and the heart rhythm was restored. The surgery was a success and as I write this, my father is in ICU recovering from his open heart surgery.
Today we visited him for short durations (as long as the staff would allow) and he was doing very well. He even had his wits about him and joked bit with us.
There is still more waiting to be done. The doctors also found a cancerous mass in his right lung and biopsied it. We are still waiting on the lab results to determine more about this mass. We also must wait for his body to heal and watch his strength and stamina return to him.
And what is my father doing right now in ICU? He is waiting of course.
Copyright 2007, Kevin Farley (a.k.a. sixdrift, a.k.a. neuronstatic)
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