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Gazing into the Abyss – a Deux

The title of this  posting is my latest attempt at using a double entendre (a word or phrase with  two meanings). It is also an attempt to get back to my former self. As I  conceived the idea for this posting, I was well aware of the concept of a word with two meanings. I used to have a reputation as a great punster. A punster likes to play with words, and is usually considered a master of the double entendre. However, this past week I had to Google “word with two meanings” to find the phrase “double entendre.” That particular phrase was not coming to me his week.

Due to my battle with aphasia, I lost some of my ease with words. Many times when I am searching for a word, I feel like I am in a cold, dank and dark coal mine, bent over on my hands and knees crawling into the small crevices of my mind. When I get to the back of a crevice, I have to painstakingly claw through the mother lode of words that I find with a small pick and shovel for words to express my ideas. Although the images of what I want to say are very clear in my minds, the words I need to use to express those ideas are compressed into the hardened walls of my mind.

At other times,almost the opposite occurs. I find words or ideas jumping into my mind like Asian carp jumping out of a stream into boats when the stream is disturbed However, just like the Asian carp, once the words or ideas are in my mind, Idon’t know what to do with them. That’s why I carry a small notebook with me at all times, so I can write down these words and ideas, so that I can return to them when I am in a better position to do something with them.

The double entendre that I was trying to use in this posting is the phrase a deux. The first meaning of a deux comes from a French idiom for the phrase pas a deux, which means a dance for two. I believe the relationship between a patient and caregiver very closely resembles a dance for two. I will follow-up on this idea in another  posting.

The second meaning of a deux comes from the cinematic scene. Ever since the movies “Hot Shots” and “Hot Shots—Part Deux” became box office hits, Deux has come to be associated with the idea of a sequel. Thus, at this level, I mean for this posting and any other follow-ups to be sequels to my earlier posting “Gazing into the Abyss.”

In movie parlance, the word sequel can itself be a double entendre. A sequel can be a continuation of the first movie, picking up the story where the first move left it, or it can be an amplification of the first story. I intend my sequels to be an amplification of the original posting. Oops, I let the cat out of the bag–there will be more than one sequel.

As a result of the posting Gazing into the Abyss, several individuals have commented that I led them to the brink of personal abysses and left them looking into the black hole of themselves. That is definitely not what I intended. What I was trying to say in the last paragraph of the posting, was that one of the most important things I can do is stand on the edge of the abyss waving a yellow caution flag and yell: “Stop gazing into that abyss, or else it might start gazing back into you and begin to draw you into it.”

I am not alone in this task. Fortunately, through the close-knit communities of patients with aphasia and epilepsy and their caregivers, I have encountered a number of other individuals or groups that are working diligently to wave yellow flags and warn others. In several follow-up postings I will highlight two such individuals, with  blogs “Bendedspoon” and “Findingstrengthtostandagain.”

I will also do follow-up postings about two organizational or group blogs or websites. In case you can’t wait to get a head start on these last two categories, they are Aphasia Corner at <www.aphasiacorner.com> and the Epilepsy Foundation of America at <www.epilepsyfoundation.org.> (If you check out aphasicorner.com I invite you to read my essay that is featured in the lower right hand corner of the front page of one their issues and also available at <http://aphasiacorner.com/blog/living-with-aphasia-2/aphasia-friendly-words-are-more-like-cats-than-dogs-274>)

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Experience Is the Best Teacher of Patience and Wisdom

Two of the greatest virtues that humans can possess are patience and wisdom. The following photograph illustrates how the two virtues can be reluctantly brought together. Given the expression of utter frustration on the dog’s face, I am confident that the dog did not learn the patience and wisdom needed in this situation from a stint in obedience school. He knew that he had to give that skunk a wide berth and access to the food bowl. Most likely, he learned the lesson in the experiential school of hard knocks.

 Skunk eating dog's dog food

What’s the relationship among experience, wisdom and patience? Three quotes may help us.

1. By three methods, we may learn wisdom: fIrst by reflection, which is noblest; second by imitation; which is easiest; and third by experience which is the bitterest.” (Confucius)

The expression on the dog’s face reflects a very bitter experience. It certainly helped the dog learn the wisdom of not crossing a skunk.

2.“All human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.” (Alexandre Dumas).

Although the word patience is not present in the Dumas quote, the close synonym “wait” is front and center. Obviously in the picture, the dog is waiting for the skunk to finish its meal, and hoping that there will be some food left.

3. “Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.” (Aldous Huxley)

Your experiences are not the events that swirl around you. They are the lessons that you learn and appropriate.

To summarize the importance of wisdom, let us go to one of the wisest individuals to ever live. Listen to King Solomon:

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. (Proverbs 4:7 KJV)

I was drawn to the above picture for two reasons. The first reason is my recent experiences with skunks. Since my TBI’s in 2009, I have only smelled the telltale aroma of a skunk once. I no longer “smell” skunks. I see skunks. This is one of my dysesthesia (cross-sensory perceptions). When the aroma of a skunk is in the air, it causes me to see the vision of a dead skunk on an unidentified road. This particular dysesthesia has its own advantage. It protects me from a very unpleasant odor.

The only time I smelled a skunk is another story. One day as my wife and I were riding in our car. I “really” saw a dead skunk along the side of the road. Suddenly, I smelled the pungent aroma. I exclaimed to my wife, “Well, what do you know, I smelled that skunk!” She hesitantly replied, “Honey, I’m sorry but there’s no skunk odor.” She continued by saying that she saw the dead skunk and was very surprised that there was no aroma emanating from it. So instead of ridding myself of this particular cross-sensory perception, I had picked up another hallucination. My memory of skunks had kicked in. The sight of the dead skunk triggered the repressed memory of a non-existent odor.

The second reason this picture fascinated me was the fact that it reminded me of the pet dog I had for 17 years, as I grew up. All he needed was one encounter with a skunk that he had when he was still a puppy. He never messed with one again. Experience was a great teacher, and my dog learned well. Although he was a small fox and rat terrier mix-breed, he was feisty and very jealous of his domain. He was accustomed to chasing any four-legged creature no matter how big or fierce that dared to venture into our yard, except skunks. It was funny watching him trying to herd the cows from our neighbor’s farm back into their own pasture. I often wish I had the foresight to capture the looks of shame and resignation on the faces of the cows as they slowly meandered back into their pasture, and the look of joyful victory on the face of my dog as he barked a couple of taunting “Goodbye and good riddance”  from his side of the fence. He had proudly defended his territory again. He had no fear of huge cows, but he steered clear of skunks.

All of this reminded me of a quote about learning that is usually attributed to Mark Twain: “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” Please believe, I am not advocating carrying a polecat by the tail unless you want to learn something you and anyone else who comes in contact with you with never forget. I may not be able to “really” smell a skunk now. However, I do remember what their odor smells like, and I do not wish to tempt my sensory perceptions that far.

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Facing My Mortality

This recent post http://findingstrengthtostandagain.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/the-evolution-of-normal/
on Finding Stength to Stand Again was most timely for me. I have had a bumpy six weeks. During this time, I have had to face my own mortality. I don’t mean physical death. I know that until Christ returns, everyone must die physically. I saw my father and mother die. I am not looking forward to death, but I am not afraid of death. Since a decision I made as a child, I know where I will spend eternity.
On a two-week trip to visit the kids and grandkids at the end of July, I developed pneumonia and spent four days in a hospital. Because of the cough associated with the pneumonia I had to sleep sitting up in a chair for five weeks. Last week I was finally able to email the grandkids that Pop Pop was now able to sleep in a ‘big boy bed’ After returning home I spent nine hours one day in tests and interviews with a new doctor. At the conclusion of the day, the new doctor told us that it appears that my brain has been “permanently” damaged by the turmor, surgery and seizures. THe doctor was particularly drawn to my description of how I thought after the tbi’s as opposed to prior to them. Prior to the tbi’s I would immediately concentrate on a sequential, systemic or deductive analysis of a situation. After the tbi’s I found myself thinking metaphorically or drawing word pictures of the situation. The doctor told me that I should not expect to be able to think analytically, sequentially or deductively at the same level that I did before the tbi’s. This hit me hard. I know our bodies decay and deteriorate, but my mind was my life for 40 years in the academy.I found it curious to realize that 5 years ago, I was more accepting of the word that my knees were shot and that I would never run and jump like I did playing basketball 5 to 10 hours a week for for 50 years.
Instead of having a giant pity party for my loss, following the exxample of Finding Strength to Stand Again, I looked for alternative approaches. I went out and found that I could use a stationary recumbent bicycle without pain in my knees. I threw myself at that outlet and in three months racked up over 2,000 miles without physically moving one inch.
With this new loss, the doctor tried to be helpful by suggesting that since he and others thought that I could still tell stories well that I concentrate on story telling rather than trying to produce academic documents that weren’t up to the standards requried in the academy. I am still trying to wrap my arms around this. All of my plans for making a difference in higher education seem to be thwarted. If I can’t communicate with the academy in the language it uses how can I expect to make a difference. I will just write my stories and see what happens.

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The Cat Came Back

     During the past two weeks, I engaged in an all-out war with my blogs, and the blogs won. During part of that time, I suffered from partial writer’s block. I had several decent ideas to start postings. However, as I approached the halfway point in those postings, I would get another idea and the posting would take off in a different direction. When I reviewed the revised posting the opening didn’t quite
fit with the new conclusion, so it was back to the drawing board.

Finally, I thought I had one of the battles won and I attempted to post GAZING INTO THE ABYSS Since I said “I thought,” you probably have guessed that I was wrong. The blog won again. In my first attempt to publish a particular posting, I uploaded a word document to the blog. When I previewed the posting before publishing it, I found several errors. One of the errors was the inclusion of an extra word, which happened to be the word “that.” So I tried to edit the posting on the wordpress.com site. When I thought I had all the corrections made, I published the posting. However, when I checked the blog, I was dismayed to find two identical postings, both of which were incorrect and contained the superfluous “that.”

I deleted one of the incorrect versions and edited the other one before hitting the publish button. I was even more dismayed when I checked the blog and found three identical, but incorrect versions had been published. My next mode of attack was to delete all three of the incorrect versions and upload a correct Word document version. When I checked the blog, I found that only one copy of the posting had been published. However, it was the still the incorrect version. One more attempt and I believe I got it right: GAZING INTO THE ABYSS. 

All the fussing with the different versions and the “that” which kept coming back reminded me of a folk song that I remembered from the mid 60’s. “The Cat Came Back” was sung by the New Christie Minstrels in their 1963 album “Tell Tall Tales!” By the time the New Christie Minstrels recorded their version of the song, it was already 70 years old and had a history of repeated appearances.

 Everyone that sang the song seemed to have their own lyrics. These lyrics illustrate “purrfectly” the lesson of the song:

Stanza 1

Now Old Mr.
Johnson had troubles of his own.

He had a yellow
cat that wouldn’t leave his home.

He tried and he
tried to give the cat away.

He gave to a man
going far, far away.

Chorus

But the cat came
back ’cause he wouldn’t stay away.

He was sitting
on the porch the very next day.

Stanza 2

Now, old Mr.
Johnson had troubles of his own.

He had a yellow
cat that wouldn’t leave his home!

A special plan
with deception was the key.

One little
cat—how hard could it be?

Chorus

But the cat came
back. We thought he was a goner,

But the cat came
back, he just wouldn’t stay away.

 

     I apologize to all of you who remember this tune because now you won’t be able to get it out of your head. It will be back tomorrow. It just won’t stay away.

For those of you too young to remember 1963, or old enough but can’t or don’t want to remember it, here is an award-winning animated short feature based on the song <http://www.nfb.ca/film/the-cat-came-back/>. Once you hear the song, the tune will be there to stay with you. It just won’t go away.

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Gazing into the Abyss

I will admit it. I’m a fan of the TV show Criminal Minds. I know the show illustrates the seamier side of life. I don’t watch the show reveling in those things. The two things that I enjoy most about the show are: 1) the challenge of trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together along with the FBI agents in figuring out who the Unsub is and what is actually going on; and 2) the philosophical quote(s) that are sometimes thrown in during the show, and the ones that always occur at the end of the show as the agents debrief about the case. The following quote is one of the throw-ins. At one point, Agent Reid says “When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.” When I tried to track down this quote I found it was part of a longer quote from Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”

The whole quote is “Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.” Most commentators suggest that Nietzsche was trying to say that if you spend too much time with evil, you will fall into evil.

I would like to suggest another possibility for those of us living with aphasia, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s, or for those who serve as our caregivers. Spending too much time concentrating on what has been taken away, can draw us deeper into the abyss of negativity and depression. I know from personal experience how easy it is to get frustrated when I can’t do things that I could previously do almost without effort. When that happens I have to shift gears and listen to the other voice that says but look at what you can do. You are a person. You are alive. You still have so much to offer others. One of the most important things we can do is to stand on the edge of that abyss and warn others so that they can avoid falling into it.

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Never Give a Person with Parkinson’s a Straight Razor or Even a Safety Razor

The seed of the idea for this post was planted several months ago when I was at a podiatrist’s office. My tremors were really acting up that afternoon, so the doctor noticed them immediately. He asked me what was wrong. I explained that it appeared that I was in the beginning stages of Parkinson’s.

As he was examining my feet, he asked me why there was a small chunk out of the end of one of my toes. I sheepishly explained that I had done that while trying to clip my toenails. He stopped his examination and in a stern voice, with an even sterner expression on his face, he said, “Don’t you ever try to clip your own toenails again.” With a somewhat more friendly voice, he asked me how I trimmed my beard. I told him that I used an electric trimmer. He smiled and almost with a laugh said,”I wouldn’t recommend a straight razor or even a safety razor for you.” I thanked him for his concern. However, the seed was planted.

It didn’t break into bloom until this past week, when I spent two days in a hospital getting a pacemaker implanted into my chest. I am very fortunate to have received one of the new MRI compatible pacemakers, because with my history of brain problems, I will have many MRI’s in the future. In fact, one is scheduled for June. The doctors and nurses went over the big items on how to care for the new type of pacemaker before I was released—like don’t go through the airport security scanners, or even let the TSA workers pass a hand scan over the implant area, or don’t carry my cell phone or pda in my left front shirt or jacket pocket. I am not supposed to lean up against a microwave oven when it is operating and I am not supposed to operate a chainsaw, which I had stopped using before the pacemaker implant. I had also been somewhat uneasy about using my table saw or jigsaw, not knowing when a tremor was going to appear.

The pacemaker instruction booklet said that I am not supposed to be anywhere in the vicinity of a large magnet. I guess that takes away the possibility of me getting a job in an automotive salvage yard, picking up wrecks with the large magnet and dropping them into the crusher.

When my wife and I got home and we started reading the fine print in the instruction booklet, we were taken back at some of the instructions. They said to keep anything that used a base charger (magnets with no direct contacts) at least six inches away from the pacemaker site. It sent my wife scurrying to get a tape measure, because my cell phone, tooth-brush and rechargeable electric beard trimmer are base charged. If I hold my head up, and don’t droop it while I am brushing my teeth, it appears that I’m safe there. I will have to remember to use my cell phone with my right ear, which may complicate matters somewhat when I need to take notes since I am right-handed.

The beard trimmer is another matter. The neck line of my beard is much closer than six inches from the pacemaker site. If I have to give up my current beard trimmer, what am I supposed do? I then remembered the helpful suggestion of the podiatrist. I quickly decided against a straight razor or even a safety razor. It looks like my wife and I are going to have to go shopping for a plug-in razor-trimmer (not the rechargeable kind). In the meantime, the stubble on my neck and cheek has started to re-grow and it itches.