Kidney Stones and Sepsis A Rocky Road to Healthy Living

"You could die from this."
The only response I could think of  was, "Okay."
What else could I say?
After the third time a doctor said, "You could die from this," I finally came up with another response. "But I won't die because I'm here."
Here was in the ER. The doctor rolled his low stool up closer to me and with great earnestness as if trying to impress upon me the seriousness of the situation,  he said, "You have a blood infection. What this means is you are sicker than the average bear."
"Okay," I again responded.
"You have an infection from the top of your head to the tip of your toes running through your body. It's really ugly bacteria."
"Okay," I said.
"We're going to admit you."
"Well I expect so!" I responded.

Was I in denial?
Yes.
Did I fully grasp the danger?
No.

I'd had kidney stones at least twenty times in my life.   Only one had led to a kidney infection in the past. But this time, that little ball of calcium oxalate had done a number on me. Kidney infection. Violent chills. Fever. Body ache. It was bad. I'd called my urologist who told me to go immediately to ER.
"Any time you have a fever with kidney stone that indicates an infection" he said.
 My husband drove me immediately to the ER.
After the normal protocol,  pain meds, fluids and a CT Scan, they told me I'd passed the stone but that my kidney was very inflamed and infected. They sent me home with a prescription for antibiotics, 600 mg of ibuprofen and instructions to drink lots of water.

I had no idea until the hospital called me the next morning to tell me that my blood culture showed that the kidney infection had led to Sepsis.

I wasn't scared.
Five days in the hospital. Round the clock antibiotics. Lots of attention from the staff.

A bout with bi-lateral atelectasis - collapsed lungs and pleurisy - concerned me more than the infection. I couldn't take a deep breath.  "I could die from this," I thought.  Not being able to breathe was scary.

I was released with doctor's orders to stay home for two weeks. No strenuous activity. No driving.  Oral antibiotics. A breathing mechanism for my lungs.

 My legs stopped working right. They felt like lead.  My gait was odd. My joints stiffened. My fatigue level was off the charts.  I had absolutely no energy.   I suffered from insomnia. I was teary and depressed. The post-Sepsis recovery did scare me. The possibility of relapse was real. That scared me.

As I began to research Sepsis recovery, I began to realize how serious my illness was. People have since told me all kinds of stories about people they knew who had died from Sepsis.

It has taken me over a month to start feeling somewhat normal.  My energy level and stamina are not at full throttle.  I don't feel like the same person. There is a distinct sense of the before Sepsis me and the after Sepsis me. It is a demarkation. A re-set. A wake up call.

I've never been in denial about mortality or so I'd thought. But the truth is, I don't think I had ever seriously thought about dying.  My body had done something surprising to me and I still can't quite grasp that. I've had so many kidney stones that I'd come to accept it as just a chronic condition. But never had I thought that a kidney stone could kill me.

This was a wake up call. But it was not about appreciating life more or living each day to the fullest. No bucket lists. This wake up call was about my health.

I began researching kidney stone prevention. I found that my condition is considered kidney stone disease. After taking a twenty-four hour urine test, I found that I have high levels of calcium oxalate and uric acid and low levels of citrate.

Diet and life style changes are required. It's never easy to restrict one's diet - but this time, it feels like life or death. I never want to get another stone and I never, ever want to risk a kidney infection or Sepsis.  

I didn't fully grasp while I was in the hospital what was happening to my body.  But I do now.  I'm taking kidney stone prevention seriously. Low oxalate diet. 2 liters of water a day. Lower sodium. Lemon in my water.  24 hour urine test every few months.

I found an online course called the kidney stone prevention course https://jillharriscoaching.com
When I went in to my doctor for a follow up, I took a list of questions I'd gleaned from this course and everything panned out. He took my questions seriously and responded to each one. I feel like I am both well informed and in control of health care.

So to anyone reading this who may have a similar condition, take it seriously. Do your homework. Listen to your body. If you have a fever with kidney stone pain, go to the ER immediately because you could die from this.

Okay?  Okay.

One Hundred and Two

You were born 102 years ago.
 Elsie Vera Reid.
September 21, 1916
The Last Rose of Summer.
Panama Canal Zone.

Ga Ga
Big Stuff
 Tomato Face
Els 
The Little White Haired Lady
You had a lot of nick names...
but to me you were
 Mom
Mama 
Mother
in that order.

Mama, I've spent a lot of time thinking about you today.
How is it possible that I could miss you so much when you've been gone for eleven years?
Maybe because I had you for forty-eight.
That's a long time in our family.
I only had Daddy for twenty-two years.
 My brother for thirty-five.
 You outlived them both.

I see you.
In your station wagon.
At the bank.
At your desk at 608.
On the couch at 509.
On the lounge chair by the pool.
At the bar in the den.
On the floor when you heard Daddy had died.
By Bob's hospital bed as he lay dying.
Next to me when I was a little girl, stroking my arm.
Holding my children in the kitchen at 408.
Sitting in your car waiting to pick them up from school.

With each passing year I realize your strength.
I admire your courage.
I respect your honesty.
I see your point.
I'm sorry I never told you that, Mama.

Sure you were tough.
Fierce.
Protective.
Exacting.
Difficult.
True.

You were a survivor because you had to be.
And that DNA, thankfully, you passed on to me.

Do we ever really know our mothers?
I don't think so.
Mothers are unknowable.
 They always fall short in our eyes.
They don't understand us.
They don't know how to listen.
They don't know what to say .
They fail us.
 Inevitably in some way
they fail us.
And we are too selfish to understand that it doesn't matter.

So in turn
we hurt our mothers.
We reject
avoid
ignore
punish
blame.


We waist precious time being angry with our mothers and forget we won't always have them.

But mothers are
Resilient
Patient
Forgiving
Unconditional.

That is their true strength.

On this, your 102nd birthday,
Mom
Mama
Mother
I honor you.
I salute you.
I thank you.
I love you.
I miss you.
I remember you.

A bouquet of gratitude -
one hundred and two roses for Elsie Vera.
Mama.

The Art of Remembering Memoir Workshop

Join me on March 3rd for a one day "Art of Remembering" Workshop at Cuesta College.  The central coast is an inspiring location for writers. Isn't it time to tell your story? Let's get started! Go to this link to enroll.  Your life is your journey. Your journey is your story. Your story is your legacy.

http://cuesta.edu/communityprograms/community-education/writing_publishing/art-of-remembering.html

Directorial Musings....Fun Home

"And yet...."
Two words that say there is something else. Something unsaid. Something unknown. I marvel at the power of a well conceived lyric.
In listening to the musical  FUN HOME I am even more impressed with the writing and the score by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori. Fragments of memory are effectively woven and expressed through a musical motif that evokes yearning and remembering. Phrasing, unfinished sentences, thoughts only partially spoken out loud. A void, a space, a pause, an emptiness as deep as a cavern.  But we know what is unsayable and we wait and watch until the characters can finally say it.
This show continues to resonate with me. In listening to it I hear a stress, a tension, a self-consciousness that is palpable in the character of Bruce. He sounds like someone always on the brink of exploding. It is wrenching. This is material that the author Alison Bechdel knows so well. That may seem obvious, but plenty of families choose to pretend, ignore, and deny. It takes guts to look at the truth of one's family and Bechdel does it with honesty and humor.
Each character in FUN HOME is well developed and achingly restrained. A perfect blend of book, score, direction and writing.  I haven't been this captivated by a musical since I saw NEXT TO NORMAL. I am drawn to complex texts with layers of subtext and characters with complicated relationships. Denial, secrecy, choice, discovery, and revelation are powerful storylines. The skill with which the creators of FUN HOME tell the story is truly admirable. The narrative structure is clever without being contrived.  Clearly, this is a musical that will stand the test of time.  It instantly imprinted on my psyche the way Sondheim's INTO THE WOODS did.  Audience members will focus on different aspects of the storyline and be moved by each in their own way based on their own context.   There is plenty to mine in this story. The fact that I'm still thinking about it days after seeing it and am analyzing its structure, relationships, and characters, I know it has made a significant impact on me. For that, I am grateful and inspired.

The Witness

The musical Fun Home is not my story. But fragments of it are so familiar, so recognizable and so achingly painful that I sat in the theatre alone, spellbound and speechless. People next to me, in front of me, sighing, subtly, audibly reacting to the utterly precise lines and lyrics - I felt conspicuous in my otherness, perhaps even a bit resentful that my story is hidden between the lines as is so often the case with bystanders. I am glad I went by myself because it gave me a chance to sit with my own memories, questions, grief, anger, revelation without needing to talk to anyone.  Fun Home helped me see how our lives are revealed to us over time by piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of experiences that fit in to place only with time and truth.  It also reminded me that it is impossible for children to know who their parents are and even when they think they do,  they don't.  No one can know without understanding the context of the times and the circumstances that motivated their choices, behaviors, and mistakes.

Weaving my way through the complexity of my family's story has left me story-less. It is as if my story is the story of piecing together their story like a reporter or a witness. Watching Fun Home made me ask myself, "What is my story?"

I am tired of being the narrator. I want to be the protagonist. But I've been overshadowed by the drama of stories much weightier than my own.  I've spent years unpacking my family's mythology.  I've seen first hand the ravages of repression and the tragedy of denial, silence, secrets, lies, loyalty and love. There is very little I've not thought about, journaled about, analyzed, and processed. Since I was twenty-two, I've been sifting through the rubble, looking for meaning and seeking understanding. My story is not my mother's. It is not my father's. It is not my brother's. My story is not about sexual identity. It is not about AIDS. It is not about running away at fifty. My story so far has been a reaction to those stories.  As the author, Deena Metzger says, "We must come to know our own story." For years,  I've been telling everyone else's. Fun Home made me see that I must find my own story, and tell it unflinchingly.

"I want to know what's true 

Dig deep into who 

And what and why and when 

Until now gives way to then."

(From Fun Home)

11/9/16 Nightmare

Beware

the map
oozes blood red
on the night of broken glass

 a harbinger of hatred
history repeating itself

lessons forgotten
                disregarded
 ignorance
blindness
        or worse

children fear going to sleep
a monster is loose

grotesque

he is followed by a parade
of men in white robes and hoods
                   ripping away the head scarfs
                                             in the land of the free

a license to
assault
grope
bully
spew

           in the name of nationalism

families torn apart
deported

a great white wall divides us

a different kind of star

as the world stands by
watching
waiting
wondering
where this will all lead

haunting voices from history cry out
remember
remember
remember .....

You Can Take the City Out of the Girl

I always thought I was a  big city girl until now. Maybe it's my age. Maybe it's that my soul has simply withered under the frenetic pace of commutes and congestion. Whatever the reason, I am learning a new way of being. Here are just a few observations I've made while living in a small town for the first time in my life.

1. People are friendly.
I am learning to look people in the eye - at the hardware store, in the market, walking along the beach. People greet one another with a smile, a wave, or a nod.

2.  People still drop by for a visit.
There is an old adage, "back door guests are best." It is not unusual to find that door open and welcoming a neighbor with a batch of vegetables to share from the garden. What does it say about a community where respect and trust are so implicit that the stranger is a neighbor not the other way around?

3. The window of time one waits for a service call is an hour or less not half a day.  
When my dryer didn't work, I called the local appliance repair. They were closed for lunch between noon and one o'clock. I called back at one o'clock. A woman answered. I explained my dilemma. She assured me that it was a common problem and that Roger would be over to fix it between two and three. At two sharp, Roger drove up.  The same thing happened with the cable guy. Imagine that!

4. Business deals are still done on a handshake and a good word.
They say contracts are really designed for protection - rooted in suspicion and anticipation of somebody doing something bad to somebody else. Not in this small town. The local realtor rented us our home based on the good word of my friend.  And she gave us the garage door opener so we could store some stuff before we took possession of the house.
That kind of good will engenders responsible action,  character, and old fashioned values of honesty and integrity based on relationships.

5. There is no traffic. 
This fact is slowly making an impact on me. A drive on a rural country road is actually calming not stress inducing.

6. You can see the stars at night.
My evening walk transports me into a dark vast cosmos of silence, stillness, and peace. I sleep better.

7. There really is a main street.
One street.  One straight shot to the market, the pharmacy, the tavern, the surf shop, the restaurants.
No GPS needed.

8.  No Street Sweeping Day.
Having lived the urban nightmare of dashing to move my car as the roar of the street sweeper gets closer and closer,  I only just came to realize the the lack of no parking signs along the curb!

9. The beaches are not crowded in the summer.
Now grant you, I have lived in Southern California my entire life where the beaches are packed with visitors on a hot, sunny afternoon. But here, where the temperature reaches a high of 68 most days, the unspoiled stretch of sandy beach and surf are wide open.  Given that my sun bathing days are long gone, I have found that I enjoy a stroll in my sweatshirt, along the shore dotted with sand dollars and sea glass.

10. There is plenty to do. 
My biggest fear moving to a small town was that I would be bored but quite the opposite has been true. The arts and culture scene admittedly has a local yokel feel but I find it comforting, reassuring, and inspiring that wherever human beings live, artistic expression exists. Festivals, concerts, theatre, and galleries are in abundance. I look forward to delving into the local writing scene.  The food and wine are superb and the landscape is reminiscent of Tuscany.

In this turbulent time of divisiveness, hatred, and fear, I am grateful to have landed in a place where  life is simpler and where basic goodness still exists. I think I've found heaven.