2007-02-21

I was awakened at 6 AM in the hospital by a nurse who wished me to know that in an hour I would be starting my tests. This gave me the time to deal with the “morning rush” of IC symptoms, so I was glad of the warning.

The day was triumphant in getting every hospital procedure done for which Dr. A had written orders. One test, a non-treadmill stress test which made me extremely ill, lasted a little over three hours away from my bed, lying on an uncomfortable gurney and stashed against the side of a hallway for most of the time – the procedure took only twenty minutes, then six minutes and then twenty minutes more. However the hospital stacks the patients in like cordwood. Two other tests took over an hour apiece, not counting time in the hallways, waiting for transport.

The tests came out indeterminate. Yes, I have an abnormal heart, but it is not bad enough to fix. The same goes for the heart murmur, for which they did an echo-cardiogram. They MRI’d my right shoulder, since it is experiencing nerve pain. However I do not know the results of that. With an appetite worthy of Dracula, seven separate lab tubes were drawn of my blood. So, no joy on diagnosing something they can fix.

Lying in those hallways, I pondered how our society treats illness. I came in with discomfort and left with the same discomfort. The staff at the hospital was not nearly as interested in my perceived comfort as they were in heart-trouble-like symptoms which they felt could be threatening my life. They needed to know the things these tests would tell them about my heart.

Had I been close to a heart attack or stroke, five hours of tests in one day and all the discomfort of them might well have provoked a heart attack. Definitely, a review of how the patient feels might slow down the pace of their testing if they were just thinking about the comfort of the patient and not seeing themselves as valiantly saving lives by doing these tests. They were focusing completely on what was life-threatening. I am sure that if I called them on their choices, they would say, “She may have been uncomfortable but we were protecting her life, not her comfort.”

I suppose that is a good thing!! However, it was a miserable day in terms of how I felt. And in hospital, there is no contact with the outside. I asked one nurse what the day was like, since from nowhere could I see outside. It’s very dislocating to be sunk in the indoors to the extent that there is no outside contact. Whew! Prison!

It was such a blessing to see Mick, who came to get me after my last test was done. His sweet face, often rather ascetic and stern in natural demeanor, was wreathed in smiles when he saw me all ready to go, and in a jiffy we were packed up and outta there. We stopped on the way home for the first decent food I had eaten since day before yesterday and then I was blissfully, blessedly HOME!

I had not been able to write my weekly article for UPI today, being a tad busy elsewhere, so my first thought when I was settled into my Mama chair was to contact Larry M, my editor there, and ask him if he would prefer that I write a Thursday article or wait until next Wednesday. I can go either way, but it would be great if he said to hold off till next Wednesday. We’ll have to see on that one.

Steve M had written to say that his Dad had passed into larger life. His was a beautiful note, written by a loving son who saw that his Dad was a definite STO graduate, serving tirelessly throughout his life, in a self-effacing and very quiet way. I offered my sympathies. In the midst of his grief and what I can well imagine were busy times as well as sad ones for his family, Steve also had finished his comments on Chapter Three of The Choice. So I am rich in work to do tomorrow morning!

Ian and Jim and I had been having a round-robin discussion about an Italian fan of the LOO who had prepared a version of our channelings by year. He then put up a fan-site to display them in Italy. This sounds good on the surface, but unfortunately he was not at all sophisticated in his work, and our material had lost all formatting – paragraphing, footnotes, like that – as well as the copyright notice which is printed out at the bottom of any page you print from our site, protecting our material.

Today, I found that Jim had chimed in, agreeing with Ian, that we should ask Federico to take that site down. We all agreed that Ian should write Federico, suggesting that he put his love of our material to work by joining the translators who are translating our sessions into Italian on the site whose address is http://www.stazioneceleste.it/. I hope Federico does not feel disrespected! We truly appreciate his great energy and love for the material. Hopefully this solution will make sense to him.

Dale C wrote in suggesting I write a column on Peace Pilgrim, since I am talking about dignity and human worth in my latest series of articles. I wrote to tell him it was a good idea. What he does not know is that I chose Peace Pilgrim as one of my examples of STO in Chapter Two of The Choice, so I am already writing about her currently!

And lastly, I responded to Wendy Jane C, whose loving thoughts reached out to me from California.

Needless to say, Gary, Jim and I had a very quiet evening. Jim, as usual, was active around the house, running loads of laundry and doing some housecleaning because he will not be here this weekend, as we are headed to Nebraska Friday. I caught up with Gary and we watched Amy Goodman and World Music on TV before I fell asleep in my chair. Jim woke me at nine for the Gaia Meditation, with Gary offering the ending prayer, and then Mick and I had a sweet snuggle with the kitties before saying good night around 11 PM.