Well Worn Paths

Well Worn Paths 

Winters never hold much promise for me. Oftentimes the anticipation of a warm weather vacation is about all that keeps me moving as the long days of summer turn to the short, darkened days of Wisconsin winters.

This year the change of living in a new home in a new city are the twins of confrontation I have been unable to defend. Most mornings I awaken to darkness and crawl out of bed through quicksand and glue, remembering that the first few moments of each new day are the hardest.

It has been many years since I have felt this low as I wait for medications to spin magic and faith to lay footprints. I long to know the reasons and the whys and as I struggle to create an agenda in my mind of sameness and predictability, I remember that it is my own creation of well-worn paths that lead the way to longer days of springtime sun.

The first time I decided to take a hike in the woods with my German shepherd puppy, Aero, I couldn't get my feet in my snowshoes, I could not snap the clasp over the toes of my Danner boots, and when my heel came loose and I dropped my gloves, they were quickly snapped up by puppy teeth. Tears of anger slid down my cheeks as I struggled not to lose my temper, again, only to breed more hatred of the moods I could not control inside the person I do not want to be.

I shuffled forward several hundred feet, not caring if Aero followed or not. When I stopped and looked behind me to see if my forced companion was following, Aero was sitting at the edge of our yard as though he was contemplating his next move.

I called his name and Aero burst forth through fresh snow, following behind in my trail. I rewarded his eager obedience with a handful of treats and we kept moving, plodding, plowing through snow.

Over the bridge that my husband built and up the hill by our large apple tree, we reached the border of our land that leads to more woods to the left or turns to the right into our neighbor's acre upon acre of rows of evergreens. One step, two step, one step, two step. I looked behind me and saw the satisfying path in the freshly fallen layer of snow.

Down one row of trees and up the other, one step, two step, one step, two step. I have been longing for another dog that stays beside me like my last black beauty, Otto, did. Aero does not disappoint. Sometimes he stays so annoyingly close to me that among over 60 acres of forest he finds the most comfort on the backs of my snowshoes, allowing me to make the path so he can follow behind.

The next morning I check the temperature before getting dressed and I already feel the comfort of habit: fill pockets with dog treats, snap on snowshoes, follow path - one step, two step, one step, two step. 

Our second morning out we stand still and watch two deer before us digging through the snow to reach the grass. This is the first time Aero has seen a deer and I wait for him to take chase and leave me. As the deer finally notice us, they turn and bound through the deep snow. Aero stares and I wait. He will leave me, I know he will.  I close my eyes as I start walking forward and I am weighted down by two doggy paws, on top of my snowshoes, behind me.

And the next day is the same, and the next day is the same and the next day is the same: one step, two step, one step, two step.

 It is only by doing the same thing over and over again that you become good at it.  Practice and repeat. Just keep moving, just keep moving, just keep moving. I think that is the way most people get through hardships and pain and suffering. You find what works and you do it again and again.

I will never grow used to feeling low, no one does. But in the midst of my daily repetition I find a pattern and I repeat it until I find contentment and my mind finds wellness again. Sometimes the well-worn paths form channels that lead to pain and we need to find a new route. Here in the woods, in the winter, I have had to find a new route, around the trees, one step, two step, one step, two step.

 

Butterflies Pause....or Not

When my boys were younger we collected monarch caterpillars from milkweed we found in vast quantities in the ditches by our cabin in northern Wisconsin. Well, O.K., more I am the one who began collecting the caterpillars and my oldest son enjoyed watching me care for them.

We ate a lot of Prego that summer as I saved jars from our recycling bin and when that wasn’t enough, I encouraged neighbors and family to quickly consume their extra Concord grape Smuckers and chunky Pace salsa, poked holes in the lids and deposited caterpillars inside.

We never tired of watching the monarch caterpillars, hanging in a “J” from the underside of the lid, transform into a chrysalis. Seven-10 days later when the chrysalis darkened and a crumpled butterfly emerged, my son would let their fragile wings dry while hanging from his sock on his nine-year-old foot, resting on a finger while he read a book or sitting on his arm while eating his morning bowl of Cookie Crisp.

There was always something joyful that bubbled forth within me when my sons eagerly soaked up an experience and joined me, or was it me joining them, in learning. We bought butterfly books and learned about host plants and nectar plants and the names of every butterfly that frequented our area. To this day my oldest son seems to have an uncanny knowledge of butterflies.

My boys are adults now but this summer, our first at our house in the woods, I planted milkweed and butterfly plant. By late July I was finding monarch caterpillars and eggs and I carefully pulled each leaf from the plant and brought them inside to watch them grow and change and emerge as something new.

While my husband and boys were building our new deck, my oldest, the one who still has not lost his love of butterflies, noticed a swallowtail laying eggs on my parsley and dill plants that I put into the earth close to our house early in the summer to hopefully attract the swallowtails. He carefully located the eggs – 12 in all- and brought them in to me. Later we found four more caterpillars already growing on the dill.

We carefully laid the eggs, upon the plant, into a container and waited. After about five days we had 12 tiny caterpillars no bigger than a hangnail. To keep track of them I had to use a magnifying glass. 

We had only raised a few swallowtails before so mostly the experience was new to me. They seemed to grow painfully slow and I struggled for ways to keep track of so many tiny caterpillars. For a part of their lives I put dill and parsley in a vase and set it into a large, clean garbage can and let them crawl around wherever they liked on fresh plants. Eventually they all had their own jar with holes poked in the tops in various shapes artistically created by my husband.

As August lengthened I began to wonder if they would have time to emerge from their chrysalis before colder days set in.

I began to research the swallowtail and learned that oftentimes they enter what is called “diapause.” Here is how Wikipedia describes this:

“Diapause, when referencing animal dormancy, is the delay in development in response to regularly and recurring periods of adverse environmental conditions. Diapause is a mechanism used as a means to survive predictable, unfavorable environmental conditions, such as temperature extremes, drought or reduced food availability.”

Hmmmm……what a wonderful thought to contemplate. What if, as humans, we could enter diapause for a season? This stormy winter, all cold and frosty, windblown and uncertain, oblivious of its’ end. When spring comes with early sunrise and warming noonday and a slowly setting sun at the close of a day, then I arise, a human being again.

Extremes of pain like illness and death, the loss of friends and growing sons that leave the nest. I think these certainly count as “unfavorable environmental conditions.” My means to survive an extreme drought would be to crawl into bed, cocooned around my Company Store blanket and artificial down pillow in queen -sized bed.

This summer, taking care of my caterpillars has been an unexpected calm in the midst of what, at times, seemed like a lot of unknowns. Waking up in the morning I knew I would find hungry caterpillars waiting for parsley or dill or milkweed planted outside my front door. I knew their jars would need cleaning and that I would be checking them again at 10 and noon and 3 and 6 and again before bed, when I would once again, clean their jars. In two to three weeks they would stop eating and spin their silky string and enclose themselves all snug and close inside a chrysalis to decide to come out, or not.

There is differing advice about what I should do with my swallowtails that have entered diapause. Some people put them in their fridge, taking them out when spring arrives. Some people put them on a front porch where they withstand the environment in which they were born as caterpillars. And some people put them in an unheated garage, protected from raging wind and icy rain and blowing snow. It seems no matter what the choice, everyone has success with some method.

Pause or take a longer diapause. It seems either choice involves a pattern, an extreme and then again bursting forth from enclosed shell to engage in a comforting pattern of living life.

Pain Appraisal

Pain, in its many forms is, I have been told, highly subjective. The first time I heard this word – subjective - in a context that I contemplated and applied correctly, was when I was 18. I had been recovering from foot surgery when my left foot began to hurt – first a little, then a lot. But what is a lot?

Stabbing, burning, aching, weighted and pounding pain is, to one person, a minor annoyance and to another a minute by minute journey through a 24-hour day. The pain in my foot was an ache and was treated with an analgesic. When that didn’t help I began to rub the heels of my hands into my brow and think: were my bones healing and I needed to accept that there was going to be pain? Or was this more? How could I know? Eighteen to a child is adult; 18 to an adult is child. I was a child/adult/child. I hadn’t lived long enough to know how much pain a person should take.

When it was finally discovered that the initial surgery left me with an unhealed fusion, another surgery was performed. My pain was not relieved. It was not only not relieved, it became worse.

I remember the culmination late one night. I had been watching T.V. with my mom and dad, my leg in a cast from the knee down. I remember looking at my toes and wondering if some nerve had been bludgeoned or cut or sliced in two. As I began to rock and cry and complain, one of my parents called the doctor. At this time, I still had prescription pain killers. The doctor said I could increase the dosage but that nothing else could be done. The next day in the doctor’s office I pleaded for relief.

More treatment followed for this fusion that stubbornly refused to heal, but even when it did, my pain was still, in my child’s mind, severe. When the doctor treating me sent me to a psychologist for an evaluation, my troubled mind, already thick with depression begun years earlier, wondered if the people around me thought I was crazy, lying, a whiner who didn’t understand what pain was.

When I at last made it to a doctor who had some clue about what the condition of my mottled, shiny, swollen and cold foot was, he sent me to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN for a second opinion. I remember when the doctor confirmed the diagnosis and told me this is one of the most painful of all disorders or diseases. It has been over 30 years and I can still picture this doctor’s face as he gave me what, at the time, amounted to a validation of my being. 

I returned home for a lengthy hospitalization. Many things were tried; some with mild improvement, some more dramatic, all difficult when mired, at the same time, with depression. Because chronic pain exacerbates depression and depression exacerbates chronic pain, I felt like I was existing in an endless cycle where regardless of which one was successfully treated, or not, a web was being knit from the top of my brain to the tips of my toes and all I could do was pick at a loose yarn until it became a knot, only to start to untangle another nearby.

It's difficult to like yourself if you are someone with depression. And if you are someone with depression who was discounted early on, as many are, and you wait for your being to be validated to feel alive, as I did, becoming an advocate for yourself feels impossible.

After months of treatment for my foot pain, my doctor treating me at the time told me that it was impossible that my pain was not gone and refused to treat me any longer. And so in my child/adult/child’s mind I was not only devastated and shocked by his words, but abandoned.

Over the years, many more foot and ankle surgeries have followed because when you alter one thing, everything else takes note and bends and sways in ways they aren’t meant to move.

After my last surgery on my left ankle three or four years ago I started to get cramps in my foot and calf. Annoyances mostly. Though this past year during a biking class I had cramps so severe in my left foot that it became locked into place and I swore and cried and screamed. This happened several more times. I told my doctor, who ordered blood tests and told me my potassium was a little low. Bananas, water, supplements. Nope. I went back to the orthopedic surgeon who performed this last surgery. He didn’t seem to know or maybe he couldn’t think of a surgery to perform that would solve the issue. But after gathering the data I had for him he referred me to a neurology clinic after a minute or two of thought.

This was me, advocating for myself. 

Recently my husband sat by me while my leg locked into place and I began to scream. And so last week he accompanied me to the doctor. Because while I have told my doctor previously about the pain and cramping, and many doctors before her, it continues. 

At this appointment, my husband asked about combining my health history from various doctors into one place. She said we wouldn’t want to do that, particularly not my psychiatric records because that would only complicate things.  Of course it would. Because apparently if you have a mental illness, you are not to be believed. At least, those are the words I heard. It seems I am, once again, back where I began. 

But I am not beginning again, I am continuing on. This is a story about physical pain, but all pain hurts because it is suffering. In my half century of life, I have discovered that when you suffer it is because of loss: lost ability to do something, loss of someone you loved dearly, loss of friendships you counted on, a lost driver’s license in a purse you’ve owned for 16 years, and the loss of freedom and health and memories and more. 

But I have not lost the ability to keep moving forward, and speaking and writing to make a difference: by speaking out for those who can’t or won’t, by telling others I won’t be silenced by mental illness, even when the pain is great in the midst of loss.