The devil is in the aspiration

Green woman taking photo

This year on New Year's Day an aspiration came to me, a resolve:  
   I want to do what I have to do without resentment. 
I crossed out two words, so it read: 
   I want to do what I need to do without resentment.
I guess there was some important difference to me at the time.  I don't "have to" do anything.  The unspoken idea is that the revised aspiration reads  
   I want to do what I need to do to stay alive without resentment.
As you know if you follow this blog, I had a kidney transplant Oct. 12 of last year.  What I didn't know was how much I would need to do to keep that kidney, piled on top of the things we all need to do to stay alive, like move our lazy asses.  I hoped I would come out of the surgery ready to dance.  Well, I can, in a chair, but basically, that nice, fresh, energetic kidney went into a 68-year-old body debilitated by years of declining energy.  Right now, despite Tylenol, that body is yelling at me for doing on the crosstrainer 16 minutes at 36 watts yesterday.  That isn't much, and turns out to be more than I should have done.

There is a difference, too, between what I need to do to stay alive, and what I believe I ought to do, optimally.  How can I explain it?  When I get up in the morning I am always kind of confused.  Who knows, maybe it's my medications.  I have to weigh myself and record it every morning - this is one way to catch a rejection episode right away - if the kidney is getting confused, you start to retain water, weight jumps up.  The damn scales are unreliable, though.  Weigh yourself twice in a row, you always get two weights.  What I ought to do to do this right is find the other digital scales, I think we have some still in the box, sent to us by Baxter pharm way back in 2006, when I briefly went on dialysis.  Or do I need to do that to make this work?

I know, you wish I would stop right there.  But the next thing I need to do is take my vitals.  Same reason.  Catch a fever, for instance, when it starts.  And the next thing is take my synthroid, which you take before you eat and without taking any other pills.  All this when I haven't yet had my coffee, which would throw my temperature off.

On and on and on it goes, and most of all, take my immunosuppressants 3 times a day on schedule.  This means reviewing periodically whether I need to refill one of those.  The way most transplants fail is that people stop taking these drugs seriously.

There's much more.  But I was going to write about aspiration.  The problem with my New Year's aspiration is that it has involved stifling my natural frustration about spending my days in doctor's offices and working with new habits at home, while I am waking up and want to be doing lots of other things.  Fun things, and the myriad things that have piled up during the last years, when I was too sick to do much of anything. 

What got me going on all this yesterday was a book called Rebel Buddha, by Dzogchen Ponlop, the first dharma (Buddhist wisdom) book I have read all the way through in quite a while (too tired to read anything serious).  Nearing the end, the teacher is encouraging me to seat myself right in the middle of my emotions.  That would include the resentment I thought I could get over.  I was especially not over it Wednesday, where I began with medical stuff at 8:00 a.m., left the house at 9:30 to get a lab draw (which took two sticks, they tell me I'm not drinking enough water, I have to start measuring my water, one more thing); then to over-exercise, then a healthy lunch, which was good, but I wanted White Castle; then the nephrologist; then home at nearly 3:00, dog tired, and stayed tired. 

A whole day of time for nothing but medical.  To top this off, we relaxed that night watching the first episode of Middlemarch on Netflix.  I often like this British stuff, but this foray into people's suppressed feelings and frustrations and unworkable conflicts was the last thing I needed, and the last episode I watch.  However, I was too darn tired to turn it off and actually do something.  Yes, my resentment is real, no matter how much I understand my good luck. (And yes, I will have more energy and feel better in 3-6 more months, and a lot of these things will become habits.)

But right now I am so resistant to some of these simple things, like washing out the elastic stockings at night, that I don't want to do them, I have to.  That's the truth.  So maybe the key is feel whatever you feel, but don't be carried away by it.  Just -
Do what you need to do.
- without too much attention to preferences. And have a White Castle if that's what you really want.

Stream of unconsciousness

Inspirations - thoughts, at least - reading my inbox first thing with my coffee:

After exquisite planning, my friend Gini got into a hellacious mess trying to ship a dog on a plane, repeatedly getting wrong information.  The military saying that covers this is -

"Any well executed battle plan is obsolete once the first shot is fired."

 
Google sent me its daily alert showing internet sites that mention dalaigrandma. It is not very picky, and sent me to an article titled "Grandma next door" poet a Japan bestseller at 99."  Here is a bit of it:

Shibata began her literary journey at 92 when she could no longer continue with her decades-long hobby of classical Japanese dance due to back pain. Her son Kenichi, currently in his mid-60s, recommended she try poetry writing.

I see I am one of many bloggers around the world remarking on this.  Kin to people in Singapore, Malaysia, Maryland . . .

Writer's Almanac tells me it is the birthday of poet Robert Burns. He worked as a farmer and tax collector, a pretty Zen style of being a poet.  My father once wrote to me - I must have sent him a poem - "Keep it up and maybe you'll be famous when you're dead."  Yes, this felt cruel and discouraging, the way unwelcome reality can, but it didn't stop me.  My father is long dead now, and so is Bobby Burns, who I am sure doesn't care whether he is famous now, didn't care during the years he spent wandering around collecting traditional Scottish folk songs.

Following the pathless path

Jizo in the snow, photo by Tom Tucker

This morning I read Open Buddha's review of Footprints in the Snow, an autobiography I also like, and noted that Sheng Yen wrote a book on the Chan form of koan work.  My first response to this news was, I'd like to get that.  Next, I remembered that I have mostly lost interest in formal koan study, which was very good for me when done with Ama Samy, whose method is unique, and good for me in altogether a different way when I worked with Daniel Terragno, whose traditional method was guaranteed to arouse my striving and thus my frustration.  There's a book in that sentence.

Koan work appealed to that in me that longed for mystical, intuitive engagement with the truth.  In fact, the beginning of my work was in a dream after I got home from my first retreat with Ama Samy, one of whose books is titled after the koan, Why did Bodhidharma Come from the West?  I dreamed a deeply felt answer, woke up briefly to write it down that night, and the next day wrote to him about it.  This was in 1999.  He wrote back to me with another koan, "Who is that one?," and I carry that koan to this day, realizing more all the time that this one is compiled of a thousand thousand bits that shift constantly - the truth of no fixed limited self.

During the years that I worked with Ama Samy while on retreats, I also worked with the first book in the Japanese tradition, The Gateless Barrier.  I worked with three copies of it, in fact, by three teachers, studying each koan hard, thinking about nuances.  I embraced this study gladly, finding it much more fulfilling than the graduate studies in literary theory I had recently completed.

It made its way into Zen-flavored humor written by Sherlock, my cat, which I intended to collect as The Sound of One Paw until I got felled by one real-life koan after another.  I also read and reread John Tarrant's marvelous collection, Bring me the Rhinoceros.  In all this, each koan worked its way into my mind.  It's something Tom and I share in that intimate way of the long-married, casual references to something we both did and that we understand.

Well, this is a shorthand description of a few years of journey.  My interest in koans tapered off - I couldn't say when.  At the time, I felt like I was failing.  But now I notice that I carry all those koans, and they often pop up in response to some event.  My practice has become more flexible, is changing all the time.  I'm about to pick back up yin yoga, taking advantage of Lulu Bandha's online site, recommended by the best and most generous yoga teacher I've ever known, Kit Spahr.  I am again interested in poetry, writing my own, reading others'.  On retreat, I was very moved by the visible world, and took photographs, including a sequence of a sunrise and one of a sunset that I'd like to turn into mini-slideshows and publish.  And, well, going to the health club - I have never been attracted to exercise - is a way of recognizing the basic principle of cause and effect we call karma.  Practice is all over the place, if you think about it.

I suspect all serious practitioners think deeply at times of throwing over the householder's life and entering residence, spending more time on formal practices like meditation and calligraphy.  I don't, anymore.  I'm too bonded to Tom, my neighborhood, my home, my church.  Besides, I'd drive them crazy.

Fun-loving Buddha

Well, I signed up for a course on The Artist's Way last weekend, knowing I really need to de-stress more.  It hasn't started yet, but I got out the book, which is graced by my comments and underlining from whoa, 1995, at which time doing the morning pages led me into channeling a novel written by my cat - Sherlock Here: Memoirs of the World's Most Educated Cat.  Flipping through The Artist's Way yesterday I noticed an exercise toward the back on having fun, and this morning I got up with it in my head.

I got warmed up as I answered the six questions.  When I took a break for 8:00 a.m. pills - immunosuppressants, which suppressed my immune system so much that I ended up in the ER twice over Christmas, and have had to take 3 (three) big antibiotics in a row, so you can see I need some fun in my life.

Inspired, I started creamed hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, as I had remembered how much I used to enjoy cooking, and haven't made those for years.  My answers turned up a kind of cute childlike desire to put together a cool spring wardrobe - I got more and more drab as I got too sick to bother.  I thought of compiling a list of my 100 favorite songs from teen years. (Born in 1942, I was just on the cusp of rock 'n roll, a great place to be.)  Maybe doing my version of those songs, harmonizing with myself - there's a spiritual idea.  Learning to take and edit video.

Fun.  Fun-loving Buddha.  It sounds weird, doesn't it?  Maybe it's the fact that I have practiced only in the Zen tradition - I have a sense Tibetans are less restrained - but it seems like people think being spiritual is a very serious matter.  (I am trying to imagine a laughing Kanzeon.)  You're supposed to be calm.  How do you have fun being calm? I wondered.

"What do you do for fun?"  Somewhere in this mess I have a book in which an older Japanese Zen Master writes about not having fun, never, not even knowing WTF fun is.  He seemed annoyed that a student would ask such a dumb question.  I can't find this book, though I don't remember burning it while dancing around the flames, no, I would never burn a book.  But I suppose the idea is that an enlightened person finds all of life delightful and joyous.  They talk a lot about Joy in Buddhism, but the only person I know of who's talking about fun is James Baraz, who advocates laughter and music.  And Lama Surya Das has reminded a student that playing jazz is his practice.  I bought the Baraz book last year, but read it while in the uremic haze of advanced renal failure, so I don't remember much.  It wasn't working for me, though it looks like the in-person classes would.  After all, isn't it amusing to think of studying fun with a book?  Study fun:  an oxymoron.

Time for my 9:30 pills.  I think there are 19 of them now that I added acidopholus to invite some friendly bacteria to my digestive system, after the onslaught of all those antibiotics.  And cranberry supplement to try to make my bladder unfriendly to colonizing e-coli. You can see, can't you, why I need more fun in my life?

Why even diets that work, don't work

An untitled spring painting by Joe Brainard

from Writer's Almanac this morning:
There's a diet named after Nobel laureate economist George Stigler. The Stigler Diet is actually a mathematical model for the cost of subsistence eating — a linear programming problem on how to get the most nutritional bang for your buck. Specifically, Stigler's math problem was this: Say you have a man who weighs 154 pounds. Out of 77 foods commonly available, how much of each one should be eaten daily so that the man gets the right amount of nine essential nutrients — at the cheapest cost? The nutrients Stigler took into consideration: calories, protein, iron, and some vitamins.

The solution to the optimization problem: In one year, that man should consume 370 pounds of wheat flour, 57 cans of evaporated milk, 285 pounds of dried navy beans, 23 pounds of spinach, and 111 pounds of cabbage. In 1939, dollars, this would cost about 11 cents a day. Today, it'd be close to $1.75 per day. Stigler was subjected to a barrage of ridicule for suggesting this dull and bland diet, and he tried to remind people that it was just a mathematical model. He issued a statement: "No one recommends these diets for anyone, let alone everyone."

Last week Tom's sister Diane visited for a couple of days.  One night for dinner we went to a German restaurant/social club for which I had recklessly bought a coupon months ago - a coupon about to run out.  This turned out very well.  We liked the place, one of those last-century phenomena about to disappear, its decor untouched since the fifties.  And we loved the food, starting with sauerkraut balls. I went on have bratwurst, hot German potato salad, and sauerkraut.

Midway through this journey, I realized that before the transplant I could not have eaten a thing on my plate.  Bratwurst and sauerkraut, way too salty.  Potatoes, too high in potassium.  But now I was taking it for granted, eating what I liked, as much as I liked. 

Here's the little insight there:  for years, as I struggled to stay alive and off dialysis, I had to think about everything I ate, including a few cashews (nuts are high in phosphates).  And I had this lingering almost unconscious desire.  Now the desire was being fulfilled, and guess what - it didn't much matter. Not being able to eat what I liked, that gave rise to this craving.  I take it from this that getting what you want is not the answer.

Things to do, and toxic begonia

Here's the gist of my e-mail this morning to Cindy:

Good morning.  Yes, we are nice and warm.
I have labs this morning at exactly 10:00, then stop at Riverside to pick up a CD of my latest CT scan to take to kidney-stone doctor on Friday.  Oh yes, need to order four med refills.  That's today's medical.
And maybe I will get at least some of that Xmas stuff cleared off the dining room table.
And a load of personal laundry done.
Meanwhile, it's possible Tom's sister is coming tomorrow for a couple of days.
And I have to do something about this blind cord Tasha finds so appealing.
Don't you hate it when you wake up with a long to do list circling you like a shark?
Thank you!!! for the shoveling.
lvu,
Jeanne
p.s.  And they are threatening to jail me if I don't return a stupid library book.

No wonder I haven't posted for so long. Or bought my new camera, yet (first I have to balance my checkbook, which I haven't done since the surgery).  So far, I haven't got any good pictures of Tasha-kitty, without flash -

or with flash:

This could be better, if I could learn Photoshop and take out that reflection of the flash.  I should know better.  She looks a little odd because her belly was shaved for her surgery.  And this doesn't show her silvery sheen.  It does show her willingness to walk on a 1-inch windowsill, giving no thought to what might be (or might have been) on that sill. 

And I should have taken a picture of the Wreck of the Begonia, a large, aged Angel-wings Begonia that was a gift, and which I loved.  When we realized she was stripping off the leaves, I looked it up, and begonias are one of many, many plants that are toxic to cats.  I had to kill the Angel-wings, nowhere to put it where she couldn't get to.  The three little ones - which I bought at Cat Welfare, BTW - I have moved to a crowded surface she does not get on.  So far.  We are watching.

I have started the camera research, narrowing it down to a Canon I can afford.  So I promise more pix, of her amazing eyes, green ringed with gold, of her star paws, of her new endeavor to climb up on my shoulder.

All in all, a good day.  I got done all the things I had to do and then some.  That laundry is dry about now.

My post-transplant nurse, Karen, told me that people don't usually feel well ("human," my word) for six to nine months.  I said, "They don't tell us that."

She said, "I know.  But I do.  That's why they don't want me in pre-transplant." 

But I actually do feel good today - my GP's nurse called to say the urine culture was negative, meaning, I am healed from the horrible UTI that manifested December 20.  Maybe I'll stay healed. Wouldn't that be nice?  But I don't count on it.  Believe me, every good day's - a real good day.

When blue days are golden

Today I talked with a friend who suffers from depression, a more pervasive kind than the mood swings I have been experiencing since the steroids used during my transplant surgery in October.  She is a person who works on herself, and she's looking for what you could call coping skills. My doctors and I would rather not add to the medications I have to take, so I've also been working on how to be okay despite not feeling good.

A good color to look at when you're depressed

 Just now something came in my mail that ought to sober anyone up:  a letter from the veterinary clinic explaining why our favorite doctor has not been available for some months:  a neurological disease that began as a virus has attacked his spinal cord and brain stem.  It could have killed him and, the letter says, has left him with a lot of physical therapy to do.  He is young, compared to me, and so caring, so nice.  He always seemed healthy and full of life.

When you feel bad, you just feel bad, regardless of cause.  Depression is complicated.  You perceive the world differently, you think differently, you feel lifeless, you have no enthusiasm.  When I feel like this, it helps me to remember how bad off I could be, to remind myself what other people are going through - people like my doctor, his wife and kids and parents. 

On a bad day, remembering that I am not at all bad off has to take place in my logical left brain, a statement that seems detached from "me."  Nevertheless, it is true, as it is true that a feeling is just a feeling; a mood is just an emotion that is stuck, emotions have no reality, but come and go like the wind.  And there are plenty of things to be grateful for.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine had a heart attack.  I can imagine how frightening that must be, because I've since had two episodes of my heart going out of rhythm.  The second one was so big that I knew - didn't think it, knew - that I could die right then, with no warning, no chance to prevent it.  So I understand when Chris says that every morning now when he wakes up he feels grateful to be alive.  Me too.  Even - if you know what I mean - even when I'm not.

The naming of cats

Well, the nameless kitty got in big trouble yesterday - found her way down to the basement, where there are roughly 100 hiding places for a slender six-month-old cat, and kept running from us fast and low to the ground.  I got very upset, as hiding is what cats do when they're dying, and Sheba is so fresh in my mind.  Tom kept telling me she was just nervous, and in fine health - look how fast she could run.

After a fruitless half-hour of this we left her, left the stair light on and the door to the first floor open, and put out bedtime food in the feeding station near the top of the stairs.

In the morning the food was gone, but no cat.  Before I even had my coffee (!) I was looking all over the house for her.  Finally found her downstairs, but she began running again.  Okay, I said to Tom when he got up, I am ready to take that cat back.  I mean, half an hour of anxiety before I even had my coffee.  And running from her own Mom.

Happily, Tom is a more sanguine person.  And somehow, the kitty eventually came up, and we got that door shut, and by evening she was ready to do major petting and lapcat with us.  Until then she had been squirming a lot while petting, but now she assumed sphinx pose and relaxed.  We all relaxed, getting very warm feelings inside. Then she agreed to stay on my chair for an hour after I got up and put her there.  Just nervous, we agreed.  We can't imagine how this beautiful 6-month-old cat, a dead ringer for a Russian Blue, including mauve footpads, ended up in the shelter.

So this morning I woke up with her name - Natasha Lavender Starpaws.  When we came home mid-day from grocery shopping, we had Ears - that is, she peeked out from her spot on the sill between the den and the living room.  I love to come home to Ears.  I missed that. Now it's almost time for the evening news, and major petting.  I feel healthier too, due no doubt to the antibiotic . . .

A new year, a new cat

Hello, especially to friends whose calls I haven't returned or whose e-mails are languishing in my inbox, along with 900 other items from 2010 I intend to go through. I have excuses, believe me. Illness - generally covered in my last post. In me, illness tends to be accompanied by depression; so do the holidays.

But maybe missing the holidays is worse. We still haven't had our Christmas with Cassie and company, don't even have the gifts wrapped. I missed the Christmas Eve service at church, still sick and on the wrong antibiotic. Missed the post-Christmas service too, busy throwing up with a kidney stone passing. But I wasn't wholly enthusiastic about attending these things, because post-transplant I am afraid of "church food," that wonderful reception that follows the Christmas Eve service, a hundred kinds of treats made in home kitchens and handled by many unsterile hands, and even by people harboring germs of colds, pneumonias, TB . . . it's true, folks.

But on New Year's Eve day, after I posted, desperation overcame my reasonable paranoia about zootropic disease, and went to Cat Welfare just to visit, to scout the kitties (as they are called there, though most of the cats are mature, and people only want kittens). Let them know what I was looking for. I thought I'd wear the mask I keep in my purse, but I tell you, I dropped it in the van and couldn't find it, not that it would be useful after that. And I thought, To hell with it. I'd rather be dead than feel like this.

And sure enough, petting a cat filled my chest with that baby-love feeling. And it seems possible that The Next Cat found me. In any case, I brought her home that afternoon - on warranty. A six-month-old girl, just fixed, looking much like a Russian Blue, maybe with bigger ears, and acting like a nervous Meezer once she was here.  She absolutely loves being petted, once you coax her near, and pick her up.  But inbetween pettings and knocking over plants, she acts like we are strangers, the menacing kind, and tears through the rooms, skidding on the wood floors when she reverses directions.  You have to admit, it's cute.

Nameless Cat is waiting for Laurie D. to come and suggest alternatives to Tami, the name the shelter gave her, and Amanda Starpaws, the name I came up with, which doesn't lend itself to calling and nicknames.  I am waiting and hoping NC will get over this nervous-cat thing.  I see now that years of old cats spoiled me; Sweetheart is still a kitten, very interested in the cords that dangle from the laptop in the den, and clearly exploring my bead table at night, selectively knocking things over.  Ah, yes.  A house is not a home without an animal as the heart.
[photo:  Rubber Duck Nativity.  Why not?  We take ourselves too seriously.  Some day I'll take a picture of my Buddha Cat and post it here.]