Aging Hypochondriac

The Aging Hypochondriac

If you have followed my blog at all, you know I am a hypochondriac.

It has been the bane of my life and I am not that way on purpose.

It is just a bucket I have carried that is at present completely breaking apart with real stuff.

I can tell you, real stuff is not much worse than imagined stuff. 

 It all hurts joy.

And it all teaches you stuff.

Real? Imagined? What diff.   Eventually it is over.

So what's the point?

The point is to learn & experience and help put other people to their test.

Help put other people to their test. 
I can't stress that enough.

It's the very least we can do for one another!

So.....the imagined and the unreal happen to be …..real?  

Yes.  
Real and Powerful.

I wish my mom could have lived to “see” cyberspace! Maybe she would have had more understanding of my keen imagination and  been sorry for saying to me with contempt when I was about 20, “Oh for god's sake. You have been dying since the day you were born! Think about something else!”





  "I'm sick. I think I might die."

The reason people, like my mother, cannot bear to listen to the whine of a hypochondriac is because they have buried their own fears and emotions and they do not want reminded that they are mortal.
    
Shut up!!

But I have learned much by being a hypochondriac.

I have learned compassion. 

I was one of the most understanding nurses who ever walked the halls of any hospital. 

“It's ok to scream, honey. My own position in life is I can suffer but not in silence.Go ahead and scream. Swear if you want to. 
Here, let me wash your feet.

 
                                               

Let me hold your hand.  





 I will listen to you.

 I will listen to you.

Would you like me to say a prayer right now for you?”

My mother's voice comes back to me in my mind, (cyberspace?).
”You are making sissies of your kids and everybody else! You better be teaching people to BUCK UP!”

She wasn't a nurse.   But she bore resemblance to some nurses I have known!

Hey, Mom!  Can you hear me? I finally figured out why I am a hypochondriac. 

It is because I am “in touch” with my physical innards in some sort of cyberspace. 
I say this because when I attended my first autopsy as a student nurse, I was simply not learning anything I didn't already know. 
Seriously.
But then the surgeon doing the autopsy comes to the spleen. What a surprise! He shows us how friable it is, a tender organ, if you will. I am stunned. And I instantly know my own spleen is abnormal in some way. My spleen is not like that spleen!  My spleen is smaller and much less friable.  Maybe even tough.  By the way, I was the only student who fainted during that first autopsy. 

 


As the surgeon said as they helped me up, "Well, some people just aren't strong enough."  HELLO!  Why don't you try ventilating this room!?  A little piped in oxygen wouldn't hurt!  
Even people in antiquity knew to string popouri around dead bodies!!

If ever they do an autopsy on me I am sure they will find an abnormal spleen.

And speaking of autopsies, you do know. don't you, that I intend to have my body be cremated after I die. 

Or I did intend to do so. 
But yesterday I stumbled upon a cremation in progress in a movie!  
I would never watch something like that on purpose, but seeing it, I was mesmerized.

Now I don't want cremated!

I don't want buried!

I am all in a pickle.

Hey I don't want pickled either!

Maybe float my body down the river Nile.  That sounds ok.

Well, as my mortician.......yes, you need to know a mortician......my mortician “candidate” told me that after I die, others can change my, you know, funeral plans.  He said at the moment I die all my legal rights stop instantly.       Instantly!

I have been around a lot of death, and I have been able to discern that the dead are not really dead. Gone, yes. Dead-dead , no.

But when that mortician told me at the moment of death all my legal rights are gone, I finally understood what death is! 

I now get it!

Death is the absence of legal rights!

Dear God. No legal rights.

And I finally understood why everybody wants to come to American (even though they hate us). America is the land of legal rights.

We have tons and tons of legal rights.

We are so alive in America!

No wonder Jesus told us he was paying our ransom for us. 
I think we are going where there are no legal rights for us.  
Thank goodness we have an Advocate for us on the other side.  
Someone who wants us no matter what we are like.

Hypochondriac?   "I want that one."

Stupid?   "I want that one."

Soiled with sin.  "I paid for that one."

Cantankerous.  "I want that one."

Unbeliever.  "I paid for that one."

Drunk.  "I want that one."

Homosexual.  "I want that one."

Homophobe.  "I want that one."

I think His list includes us all.  
We are covered by His legal rights.  Rumor has it He loves us. 

Thanks for sharing your moments with me because getting old is a time when you need friends,
Bunches of love,

Riverwatch

My All Time Favorite Psych Patient

My Favorite Psych Patient

My favorite psych patient was Candice (name changed to protect the innocent).

One reason she was my favorite was because she said she wasn't crazy and I believed her.

Nobody else believed her.

It is odd that I did, since I think half the world is crazy.

But Candice was not crazy.

Definitely not crazy.
Trapped, maybe. Crazy, no.

I met Candice at Central State Hospital in Kentucky while I was on my Psychiatric Affiliation as a student nurse back in 1964.

Arriving at Central State Hospital, I had NO idea what lay behind the picturesque grand entrance.

It was a gorgeous early autumn afternoon in Appalachia, and the grounds of Central State were akin to the grounds surrounding the Tower of London.

Beautiful.

So misleading.

Our contingent of five students stepped out of our respective cars into the early afternoon golden sunshine, birds wafting about, paved walkways surrounding the old buildings, benches placed strategically here and there among fine old trees and shrubs.
dreamstime.com


Peace and happiness, even a hint of old wealth, surrounded us.

Beautiful.

So misleading.

The grounds, 350 acres of woodland and meadows (and buildings enough to house 1800 resident lunatics and a prison for the criminally insane, plus a dormitory for students of the insane) were impressive.

Before you judge me harshly for speaking of “lunatics” please be advised that Central State had only recently changed its name from the Kentucky Asylum for the Insane, having previously given up the name of Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum.

Nobody at Central State was afraid of the word lunatic.
Lunatic is an easy enough word to understand, and we students all knew that a lunatic is somebody who is insane (a much harder word to define).
Lunatic was a word we slung at friends and family from time to time.

Going through the wide old doors to Administration, the asylum seemed to have a proper hospital atmosphere.
 Clean.
 Quiet.
 Decorous.

Even before settling into our dormitory we had our first class right there in the Administration area! It was a class on politics and finances, to prepare us for what we would see that the public had not deemed worthy of shelling out money to change.

It was a class on assigning blame for what we would witness during the following three months of study.

After settling in at the dorm, and learning that Central State was totally unlocked except for the criminally insane (a prison facility so far away we couldn't even see it), we were told it was our responsibility to lock our doors to our rooms and never go to the bathroom alone at night because even the dorm building was unlocked! In short, we were told and taught by example that you are safer on the grounds of a lunatic asylum than on the street.


clipartpanda.com

But be sensible and take a friend with you everywhere you go.

There were rumors of a cemetery there on the grounds, but I never came across it.

Dinner would be served later.....and we discovered accidentally that all menus and meals were prepared by recovering lunatics.
Ghastly, ghastly meals.

On our first full day there we had our second class, in the Administration building again.
 Bright and early.

This class was a movie, “Shades of Gray”, and was used to help us understand that while we would be looking at deeper shades of gray, we were not unshaded ourselves.

“Don't judge. You are not 100% mentally healthy either.”

This is the time when the word “insane” began to become a little uncomfortable for us, like the word “old” becomes uncomfortable when you hit 60.

“Lunatic” became a word that closed in on us also.

Crazy makes crazy, and before long some students were seeking secret professional counseling to see “Just how crazy am I?!!? Am I ok?”

After our class on crappy finances and uncaring public, and our class on how we are “ mostly probably light gray most of the time”, we were given the thin educational structure of: take yourself on a tour, observe & take notes.

The doors to the patient areas swung open for us.

I was looking at a Wonderland of Lunacy.

*

Eventually I found Candice, who turned out to be my favorite patient.
We heard about her in a lecture because her psychiatric case was discussed as “our most baffling case”.
Candice had been committed because she spoke of voices she heard, and she would not deny that she heard them.

She was committed for treatment six years before, she had been evaluated and evaluated and counseled....and she just would NOT give up her story!  Committed in her late 30's, she was now middle aged.

The baffling thing was that she showed no other signs of mental illness, and test as they could, no expert could find one other inkling of anything wrong.
Still and all, if you are going to hear voices, you are NOT going to be discharged.

I was on the look-out for Candice. She didn't hang around her sleeping cot, but trolled the grounds which were, as previously mentioned, 350 acres of woodlands, paths, meadows, and some fenced off areas marked unaccessible.

Eventually our paths crossed and I, being extremely curious, struck up a conversation, “May I walk with you?"

She told me all. How sane she is. How they want her to lie to get out. How she can't do that. She hears voices. Not disturbing voices, but she doesn't know where they come from and she thinks they should help her find out where the voices are coming from.

Candice took me up to the top of a considerable knoll overlooking the paths. “I hear the voices better up here”, she said. “It's like I am an antenna.”

Candice proved to be gracious, mannerly, intelligent and very well dressed and groomed. She knew she did not belong in an asylum, but when you hear voices......well...

I knew Candice wasn't crazy. But I also didn't know how anybody could escape from Central State.  (It was easy to "escape", but the local police were handy at returning any escapee!)

There was rumored to be a cemetery there on the grounds, but I never discovered it.

Candice didn't seem unhappy, strolling through nature, so maybe an asylum can be an ok place if your mental health is good and you spend more time in nature than listening to psychiatrists and staff.

Candice taught me one of the greatest lessons in life: NEVER CLAIM YOU ARE SANE.

It just does not work.
 Always say, “Well....I know I'm not completely sane......but no, I don't hear voices.”

Lie if you must.

Honesty is never the path out of a lunatic asylum!
That being because we are all lunatics!

Do not tell anybody you are sane!  There is nobody sane to hear you!

To get out of the asylum, pretend to be a lighter shade of gray, a little less insane than you are. That might work.

Some time ago I read that some people pick up radio transmissions through their teeth fillings!
I immediately thought of Candice.

Nobody was talking about that possibility at Central State when Candice needed help finding out where the voices came from and why she was an antenna.

Of all the sick people on earth, I think I feel sorriest for the people with significant mental illness.

Not only do they suffer, but it IS true that society pretty much mistreats or abandons them.

*************

'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be

a spirit, melodious, lucid, poised and whole.

Second in order of felicity,

to walk with such a soul.   

                                                                           Sir William Watson

THE FLIP SIDE OF THAT:

The only thing worse on earth than being a lunatic,

is being married to one.

Shades of gray, people.
 Shades of gray.

Perhaps your nurse,
perhaps your patient,
I remain grateful for your visit.
Riverwatch

Where are our marbles???

I was all prepared to whine about my painful unbendable elbow, but how could I?

Three of them, all three of them, fell this week and got hurt!

Reminded me of a couple of years ago, when Emma Jean and Maizy and I were out to lunch and discovered that all three of us had received speeding tickets in the past six months!  

All three of us!  

It had been decades since I received a ticket in the past, 

Emma Jean never was a speeder.

Maizy couldn't remember if she had ever had a ticket for speeding before but she had a rich hubby who paid for everything, so the fine would not have impacted her brain and memory like it did mine and Emma Jean's!!   

But there we sat, three old gals, wondering why ever were we speeding!?!

But today there were no tickets to report, only carnage.  

I was looking at the carnage of three pedestrian-wrecks.  

Truly all three looked bad, but they shared a comaraderie that shut me out. 

Slipping & sliding on an incline, using a cane as a tool to clear tumble weeds instead of to steady its owner, or battling the wind & stinging rain, all three had lost a round with gravity.

dailymail.co.uk

http://www.sublimemercies.com/2014/05/cane-for-pain-vs-stick-for-style.html

Susan turned to Genevieve  and asked, "So, did you look around after you fell?"

"Sure did," she replied.  "And I didn't see any fat on the sidewalk, or any marbles.  But I sure did feel like something shifted!"

We all laughed.  

Like falling is funny.

Where are our marbles? ! ? !

Glad you could make it today.
Watch out.  

Riverwatch

Quicksilver and the Tower of Babel

Quicksilver and the Tower



Ahh, we vain writers.
We long for permanence in the written word.
We assume permanence in the written word.
Our message will last forever and be well understood!

What a joke.

Language is as fluid as the nearest river!
Word meanings are always changing.  Languages are always intermingling.

Quicksilver.

Now add the aging brain of me to the quicksilver of language and you know I'm on a slippery slope!

And that is not the half of it.

We live in a day and age that is tongue-tying and mind-boggling!  You know.

We are building the tower to heaven again that got those ancient ones so tripped up in language that they babbled!'

I was fascinated with the Tower of Babel story as a child.
It didn't make sense to me even as a child that God would abolish a skyscraper  tower because it might actually pierce heaven !

Pictures of "the tower" show our version of their  tower.

The ancient story is that "the tower" was being constructed to reach heaven!
And before they reached their goal, the language of all people was confounded.


To truly understand the scriptures we must think the unthinkable.

Yes.  Like God is going to tremble at any manmade   skyscraper  because it might ascend the stratosphere and ....what?  Bump into some hidden dimension?  Are you serious?

Think the unthinkable starts with un-think the thinkable.

Why do we think antiquity had no nuclears, no world class CDC, no globalists running around  trying to grap all power?

Why do we think if there is  no record, it "didn't happen"?

Why do we think we are the modern advanced age, building upon the shoulders of others who came before us, those poor unfortunate darlings?

Why does it not occur to us we are merely repeating something that was even more advanced than our scene before it was wiped to the ground?

We aren't arrogant are we?  Nah.  Not us.


Piercing the heavens.  That's what those ancient arrogant brilliant rebel people were up to!

Piercing the heavens.  That's what we are up to!
The secrets of the universe.....the "god particle".....creation of life.....eternal life......power unlimited...that is the tower the ancient arrogant brilliant rebel people were constructing.

I think we have a lot in common with them.

Historians of the ancient world have tried to come up with a picture of the "tower of Babel" and they have such a low opinion of our ancestors, they think those ancients were building a skyscraper!!!


 Look how our ancient ancestors are depicted.  Lowly workers with few machines.


biblestudytools.com


Bricks.  They did use bricks.


We used bricks.  Lots of bricks.

Check out CERN's Hadron Collider where they search for the secrets to being all powerful.





A sideways tower built to pierce the heavens.

I cannot help but wonder if this looks anything like the ancient Tower of Babel?

I don't know how many bricks the ancients used, but some of the ancients got tired of carrying bricks!
Refused to work on the project.

Yeh.  We moderns have also experienced social opposition to the building of this brick edifice that is meant to pierce the heavens.

We moderns have already run into a few strange problems  with our collider  (sideways tower).


We explain away the unexplainable and we forge on, undaunted.

This tower is where the World Wide Web was born,


The World Wide Web which has become so important to me I think I might go insane from withdrawal should it ever be taken away!

Maybe even die from eating too many M&M's as I try to cope!






But, seriously, let's think about how that World Wide Web is affecting us.
Is it possible the natural consequence of our tower is to affect our ability to speak coherently?

Think the unthinkable.

Listen to the newscasters.  Listen to the teachers.  Listen to yourself!

Are we beginning to babble?

Just yesterday during a conversation a woman said,"What bothers me is the conscientousality of it."
We all paused and looked at her.  Finally somebody said, "You mean constitutionality?"
"Yes", she said. "What did I say?"

Just recently I heard an elementary school teacher say, "Please!  Tone it down!  You are being too quiet and I won't tolerate this!"  (She was angry.)

A newscaster said the other day, "Well, that created a tempest in a tea cup!"  (errr isn't that tempest in a teapot?)

"Karen, you're on!  I mean Sharon.  Did I just call you Karen?"

We expect this from the oldies.  But from people in their prime?   I don't think this is normal.

Listen to the babble around you.  Hear the struggle to express oneself verbally.
You will hear  things like the following examples of what I have recently heard from people in their prime:

long picture ….........instead of big picture

up stairs....................instead of up front

"Thanks for your contributes...ahh, ahh, your contributings......ahh, your CONTRIBUTION!"

It's becoming a struggle folks!  This struggle is new.   It is worsening.

Have fun listening.
Or be alarmed.

Quicksilver.

Language is quicksilver and fragile.


Your visits mean a lot.  Thanks.
Grateful for language,
Riverwatch

Keep to work.

"Keep to work; if cut off from one thing, take the next."

                                                        Cyrus Hamlin, Christian missionary to Turkey in the 1800's  

I think the above advice is good advice for us as people dealing with the "cut off" of old age.
Work.  If we are no longer able to do something, we could do something else.

Flexibility is some of the best stuff of being human.

Or as we used to say cruelly as teenagers to the limping and tired, "Tired of walking?  Run awhile!"

Oh, don't the comedians of the world need grace!

Still and all, laughing helps.

In the face of horror, laughing is a coping mechanism.  

Or so I was taught  in my "Responding to Disasters" training.  Seriously.

As the speaker, tested and tried as he was in the field, said, "Put your sweaty palm in your dry mouth."   "Tell a joke."  "Look for the guys out there who are laughing inappropriately.  You want them on your team because they are going to weather this better than the average and they are going to uplift you.  You want them on your team!"

Just saying,

Riverwatch, RN    

   

                                                                                (No!  RN does not stand for "Really Nothing".)                                                  

Big Red Carpet Nursing

The High Hill of Age....& Peace

The High Hill of Old Age

Black Elk: (1863–1950); medicine man, Oglala Lakota

"I did not know then how much was ended. 

When I look back now from this high hill of my old age,

 I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes young. 

And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. 

A people's dream died there.

 It was a beautiful dream ... the nation's hope is broken and scattered. 

There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

Thank you for your visit,

Riverwatch

Drink Coffee

pinterest.com

Drink coffee.

Do stupid things faster and with more energy.

Sign posted in a shop:

Unattended children will be given Expresso
 and a free 5 Hour Energy (Berry flavored, of course).

But then again, coffee may be more than a boost.

According to researchers at the University of Scranton, coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the U.S.

I say, OF COURSE!   A million-trillion people drink coffee and only a few of us take our Vitamin C and Vitamin D and eat broccoli and grapefruit and blueberries and strawberries.  After all, a cup of joe is cheaper, easier, and warmer.  

Coffee wins!  Number one source of antioxidants.

Like Success

Here are some other health benefits of coffee:

coffee may protect against type 2 diabetes   (unless consumed with donuts)

coffee may lower the risk of liver cancer by as much as 50 %  (unless consumed with alcohol)

coffee may lower the risk of liver disease  (unless consumed with donuts and alcohol)

coffee may decrease risk of Parkinson's disease

coffee may or may not be good for your heart

InColors.club

Ahh....research. 

Have a good day drinking your coffee.

Thanks for dropping by and thanks for the cup of coffee,

Riverwatch

stitch.net

Prejudice and Diversity

 Here is the sad thing:



"A larger acquaintance with mankind extended their knowledge without correcting their prejudices..."

                                           by Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of Rome      page 386

*

So, diversity is the rule of the day where I am visiting.
It begins with him being Presbyterian in a loose kind of way, and her being Jewish, more or less.

Children drinking briefly from every and any great or small fountain of knowledge they can find.
Eric Gaillard/Reuters

  It continues with his being a playwright and all the theater crowd with its diversity and her being a professor of government and politics with a focus on minorities and all those unending issues.  Building bridges to and from the near-by  Northwest Detention Center housing a thousand undocumented people.

Me, deep in thought: How can you have a thousand books on emigration/immigration gracing your myriad bookshelves and miss having "The Decline and Fall of Rome"?
I keep my thoughts to myself, but loud they are!

It continues with me sporting my Cross and trying to hide that I cut my conspiracy theory teeth on Cleon Skousen and Gary Kah.
Shh.  Don't even mention their names!

Having read Skousen is certainly part of my contaminated past.  Oh, well.
We do have to acknowledge Mormonism since there are many ex-Mormons lounging about here with stories to tell.  
Yes, a friend says, my Mormon brother married a Muslim from Bangladesh.  All the parents were freaking.  
I  just couldn't help but wonder:  man or woman?  So I asked, "How did your parents feel about the hijab?"
"Oh.  She wasn't wearing one except for the ceremony."
Ahh.  Woman.

It continues with "Intelligence Squared" recorded debates:   Islam, a Religion of Peace or Not?
Not.  Gyration, gyration.  The debate verdict is WRONG.   It is so a religion of peace!   Damn!

Still and all, I walk in peace in the misty Pacific Northwest, cooled off from the sand dunes from which I come.
Blood pressure down to normal, untreated.
Face happy and relaxed.


It occurs to me that the more diversity there is, the easier it is to transcend it.
If there is only a little diversity, one can get tangled up in the fatigue of diversity.
But if diversity is thick enough to be woven with all different weaves, it becomes  tight enough to create a wind to carry you aloft.

Do you suppose that is a path to peace on earth?  So much diversity woven tightly together creating  that nice little breeze to carry each person aloft?

prodrinkingfountains.com

The trick to being in a sea of diversity is to skim buoyantly, reacting to nothing.whlcommunity.com

Nothing except the Seahawks!   It is Seahawks Day in the misty rain.
We all agree.
Seahawks rule! Even when they lose....again!



Still and all, the sand dunes.
Ahh.  The sand dunes.



Thanks for the wave,
Riverwatch

"1984" Revisited

This book, "1984" was written in 1961 and I tried to read it in college later, and dismissed it as garbage back then.

So.  Let's read it truly, Riverwatch.  You are old.  How do you think about "1984" now, since Big Brother really is watching!
Read this book!

1.  Plot:  shallow with Proles irrationally plotted in.
2.  Characters poorly developed (two dimensional).
3.  Plot exist only as a vehicle to carry agenda, world view and political pseudo-intellectualism.
4.  Lacks vision, true vision.  Three Superpowers, no new weapons, no internet.  GIVE ME A BREAK.
5.  It is a Godless book.  It makes man the measure of all things.
6.  Terror is the only fully detailed aspect.  Even the political ideas are far underdeveloped compared to terror detail.
7.  It supposedly arises out of mans' hopelessness.    Say what??
8.  It is about power, ie, evil.  Feast your mind on crap.
9.  It takes no account of other worlds, other dimensions, or the fact that the human mind is lighted from a source beyond our understanding.  
saleoilpaintings.com

10.  Did I mention I think Orwell sucks as an author and lacks understanding of reality and the complexity and hope of human beings?


Time is running out.  Yet here I am, wasting time, I guess.
But I appreciate your visit and hope you don't feel about "I've Landed" (and me) like I feel about "1984" and Orwell.
It was a waste of my time!
No, not totally because I went looking for images and I found this lovely picture.
Even trolling a wasteland can bring surprising moments of joy.

Riverwatch