2007-01-09

It will be my teacher, Papa/s, birthday soon, so I spent the early morning writing a letter to put in with his card. I sent him a book yesterday, directly from amazon.com – Isabel Allende’s Ines of My Soul. He shares his Earth Day with Martin Luther King, being in good company there. Papa recently sent word that he is preparing a digital copy of his voluminous letter files for me, so that I can search the letters by key words. This is wonderful news, as Papa’s teaching on the cycles of empire on planet Earth throughout history are far more balanced and complete than my own understanding and I am glad to have his views available for quoting and for reference.

I worked in the morning on the Book of Days text, discovering from Ian’s e-mail in the afternoon that I had not written what Ian had wished. He had suggested I beef up my biography, which I did. However, after a careful writing and triumphant sending off of what I thought was a good, expanded biography, I received a request from Ian to shorten the text. It is a matter of wanting the book’s pages to lie right. I shall have to take that up again on Thursday, as tomorrow, I write my UPI article for the week.

Jim and I shared a delightful lunch and stretching before I came back upstairs to work on Chapter Three of The Choice. I had felt that something was “off” and as I reread what I had written so far on the energy body I saw that I really had not gone into the difference between mind and consciousness. So I spent the afternoon working on an added section. I am still not happy with the flow of the chapter, so will persevere tomorrow afternoon with that.

Amazingly enough, upon collecting the mail from our P O Box we found that we had received another $200.00 from donors who wished to help us with matching funds. The letters were postmarked on New Year’s Eve! It will be my happy task to let our benefactor know that he has more funds to match!

Mick and I had our bath and took a nap before going downstairs to greet Romi, who came for a visit this evening. Both he and Mick wished to see a two-hour episode of House, a drama they both enjoy a lot. It is interesting to me to see the treatment of House’s problem by the teleplay writers. Dr. House is a man who lives in pain, not unlike myself. His coping mechanism has been to take pain pills. I know from experience that when there is sufficient pain, the pain pills go to the pain rather than making you dopey. So his coping mechanism, on the face of it, works.

In the show, he insults a patient who happens to be a cop, and the cop decides to bring House to ruin in order to get revenge for being dissed. In the episode last night, the case against the irascible doctor is dismissed because the judge rightly sees that there is a vendetta on the part of the cop, and that House is a good doctor who is doing his job responsibly.

Of course, the issue of “drug seeking” is front and center in this plot. I used to be nailed with this label, when I was taking pain medication for my rheumatoid disease. It was infuriating to have the same doctors who give you the pain pills then suggesting that you are a drug seeker.

In the end, I decided to learn how to manage my discomfort without heavy pain medication, and I have done so for these last 15 years or so. I chose to do that because the pain medication was destroying my stomach and colon. After having half my colon removed and coming close to death in 1992, I proactively aimed towards getting off pain meds.

It was an internally made decision. Doctors are still very happy, to this day, to give me pain medication and I do have an emergency supply for emergencies. When there is a pain crescendo, nothing but heavy medication can stop that.

But I choose not to use the stuff unless I absolutely must because of the egregious side effects. Nowhere in this fairly long plot development on House did the discussion turn to the devastating side effects of chronic pain med use. They lost a good chance there to inform people.

We interrupted our TV watching to have the Gaia Meditation. Jim offered the closing prayer. We had a good supper before saying good night to Romi at 10 PM and to each other at 11 PM.