The Best Medicine

[This post was published in Facebook and Medium.com in essentially this form on June 12, 2015, but I neglected to include it in my blog at that time. I am adding it here so that it appears in my blog in proper chronological order. This is not a new post, although I added an update at the bottom so that readers will be aware that the outcome has been very positive.]

Ashley, age 7, is Papa's best medicine

On Monday, I had a Minimally Invasive Lumbar Laminectomy. I had always wanted to have one of those until I discovered it wasn’t a dessert served at a chic restaurant on the Plaza. You know what I mean. — the kind of thing they set afire just before bringing it to your table.

But NOOO! It turns out that it’s a surgical procedure on one’s back to address a nasty little situation known as spinal stenosis. For the past several months, I’ve been experiencing an extreme amount of pain in my back and difficulty in walking. After x-rays, MRIs, and consultation with a neurosurgeon, this seemed to be by far the best alternative.

Surgery was scheduled for yesterday morning, and during the prep time I met with the anesthesiologist and she discussed the possible side effects of the procedure. They included short-term pain at the site of the incision, nausea, loss of appetite, and dizziness. Death was also mentioned.

Upon hearing of that potential side effect, I immediately experienced nausea, loss of appetite, and dizziness. But I decided to go ahead with it since I had already been fitted for the gown.

So far, the results are encouraging, although my Decathlon plans have been put on hold. My legs are feeling better than they have for a while, but I am experiencing pain in the lower back around the incision, which is normal and expected. As of this writing, the post-operative pain has become more severe and I am reluctant to walk without assistance. I am told by the medical staff that this is not unusual. Obviously, this is a process that needs to be played out. As to the death thing, I appear to be within the survey’s margin of error.

I am grateful for the support from so many friends and family. My wife Joyce tagged along after me making sure I was properly cared for. I spent one night in the hospital and was released the day after the surgery. I cannot say enough about the physicians and staff of the Saint Luke’s Marion Bloch Neuroscience Institute, located within the St. Luke’s Hospital complex on The Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri.

During the course of that first day, I had many medicines put into me by pill, injection, IVs, and any other mode you can think of. But the best medicine of all was when my son Brian came up to see me at the hospital. I knew he was coming, but what I didn’t know was a surprise he had planned for me.

There was a knock on the door and I looked up and in came my seven-year-old granddaughter Ashley, chocolate milkshake in hand, fearlessly weaving her way through the hospital paraphernalia to give me a big hug.

I cannot find the words to explain the unconditional love that swept over me when that little girl came through the door. When I felt both her arms around my neck holding me tight, it was a transformational moment. Then she handed me a handmade card made by Ayla, her four-year-old sister, making the circle complete.

Modern medicine can do miraculous things, but healing begins with love.

[Update: As of 7/14/15, I can report that the nerve pain that was the occasion for the surgery has completely subsided. I wouldn't have minded if one procedure could have fixed all that ails me, but that would have required a full-court press by physicians representing a variety of specialties. We all have our aches and pains and I cannot adequately express how grateful I am to walk again without the debilitating pain that set me bopping off to the spine center. Thank you, Doc, and you too, Ashley.]

My Granddaughter is 5. Please Help Us Protect Her!

My granddaughter Ashley will be five years old tomorrow. I know that is why I found myself an emotional wreck on Friday, spinning between a crushing sorrow and a seething anger. This is way too personal, way too real.

As I went about my normal activity on Friday morning I didn't pay much attention to the beeps emitting from my iPhone and other gadgets laying here and there around my study. I knew they were signaling that there was "breaking news," but I also knew there was rarely much significance to the notices. Probably Lindsey Lohan violating her parole while shopping at Gucci's, I muttered to myself, or perhaps the fiscal cliff negotiators are reporting no progress.

And then I picked up the phone and saw the words scrolling across its 2" x 3" screen. I could only grasp it in pieces. It was as if the full picture, the truth of it all, was too much to take in at once. I turned on the television and just sat there for most of the day. And I cried a lot, something I don't do much.

Later that morning our daughter-in-law sent us a text recounting a conversation she had with Ashley, explaining why she had been crying all morning. I was so grateful for Lyda who knew she had to find words for Ashley at a time when she didn't have the words for herself.

Usually things like this prompt me to write or pontificate in other ways. I try to piece it together, make some larger point, sometimes generate a little dialogue, and then move on. But this time it seemed different. The news outlets were awash in words as people tried to find context or meaning. Sometimes a slice of understanding emerges but the reality evades any kind of summing up. We will have to settle for glimpses here and there, perhaps depending more on poetry than prose.

If there is a big picture here, a sliver of hope, it may be in what feels to me like disorientation. Roles are changing. People are questioning their own positions, no matter how devoted to them they may have been.

The President is being referred to as the Comforter in Chief. His tears on Friday have been replayed over and over, perhaps too often. He takes pride in his stoic demeanor, especially in difficult times. But this time the tears were what we needed. Somebody had to cry for all of us. It was not planned or rehearsed. It just came, undoubtedly in part because the President's own beloved daughters were in his heart as he walked to that podium in the White House.

Sunday night he became a preacher, matching the need to console the broken-hearted with the need to proclaim justice. Religious language does not come easily to him, but he knew that this was a time when the familiar words of scripture would speak in ways that his words would not, especially when spoken with his voice. It was disorienting, but that is why it was important.

Even the gun issue is being processed in a new way. Oh, the talking heads from the NRA are out in force as they always are. But already they are seeming to be irrelevant. Their mindless defense of the right to bear arms like these assault weapons that spray 30 blood-spattering bullets with the pull of a trigger is being seen for the nonsense that it is. For the first time in my memory politicians and commentators with 100% ratings from the NRA are stating, sometimes with passion, that things MUST change. Again, disorienting, but also promising.

The narrative that began on Friday has lurched and lumbered clumsily across the national landscape. It turns out that the mother of the shooter was not a teacher killed in her classroom, but herself a gun owner and outspoken advocate found dead in her home at the hand of her own son using one of her own weapons. Disorienting, and troubling.

Lisa Belkin writes provocatively that gun control is a parenting issue:

We can't just grieve and hold our children close. We have to demand that our country earn the right to call itself a civilized nation. We need to do this because our central job as parents -- maybe our only job, really -- is to keep our children safe so they can grow up. Easy access to guns keeps us from doing that job.

It sounds like she is saying that the problem is with me. And with you as well. Disorienting, but I'm afraid she may be right.

We don't know where all this goes. We have a history of having to face events like this, expressing our despair or anger or grief, and then allowing them to slip quietly out of our consciousness.

There is one thing that is different. These were children. Twenty of them, aged six and seven. That is the difference, they say.

My granddaughter turns five tomorrow. Please help us protect her.

Please!

"Out of My Heart"

Yesterday Ashley, my three-year old granddaughter, asked me where my mommy and daddy were. She has been working at understanding family relationships and just recently Ashley and her mom had put together a family tree.

I think she was quite surprised to discover that her much beloved "Unca Boo" was actually her daddy's brother. One family meal around the dining room table usually makes that resemblance quite clear.

But now as we were drawing together (okay, one eye was peeking at the Chiefs game) she inquired about my parents. I told her that my mom and dad were no longer with us, that they lived a long and good life and had died a few years ago, even before you were born.

I saw a little ripple of concern cross her forehead. She lifted those beautiful eyes of hers. I looked right at them and saw deep waters stirring in there. Her eyes moved to the living room and I knew she was making sure that her mommy and daddy were in view.

"But they are still here, aren't they?" she asked, now coming back to me.

"Yes, they are," I replied, but not too quickly. "They are always right here in my heart," I said, touching that spot in E.T. fashion.

She was quiet for a few moments, putting the pieces together. Then she said, somewhat softly but with assurance, "My mommy and daddy are out of my heart."

Then she picked up a blue pencil and returned to her drawing.

It took me a little longer.

Blogging Backwards and Forward

I did a little tweaking of this blog yesterday, taking advantage of some new features offered by the blogging application I use.  It is now possible to put links to previous posts in a sidebar, and to do the same with comments placed by visitors to the site.

I liked that because it has the effect of keeping alive some of the posts that seemed worthy of a longer life than that provided by the RSS feed that first launched them into the blogosphere. The same can be said of some of the thoughtful comments made by you who have generously contributed to the kind of dialogue I consider essential in our time.

Most of the changes I have made are cosmetic, but the process gave rise to some reflections on the blogging journey I began in the spring of 2006, now comprising 86 posts (in fits and starts at times) and many excellent comments. From the beginning this effort wasn't a typical blog with timely posts and comments seeking their fifteen minutes of fame before dying a quick and natural death, counting on Google for some form of resurrection in days to come.

Mostly it started as a way of imposing a writing discipline on me, your humble blogger, giving him time and place to reflect on issues that interested him, often at greater length than most blogs. To some extent that modest goal has been achieved. Inevitably, however, those posts slipped quietly to the bottom of the blogger sea, a fate most undoubtedly deserved. A few floated awhile.

I spent 33 years of my life working within a faith community, including primary leadership roles. That work is written into my bone marrow.  Since that had framed so much of what I wrote about over that time I wanted now to see if I could speak with other voices, particularly on issues of social justice.

As I look back I take some satisfaction in the rather wide range of topics I wrote about in those 86 posts spanning four years.

Stylistically, there were pieces that were whimsical, autobiographical, sarcastic, humorous, angry, analytical, persuasive, and hopeful.

Topically, I wrote eight pieces about baseball--in the same way that Moby Dick is about whales, of course.  Over 25 pieces fell into a pretty eclectic category I would describe as social/cultural. It was a political season and I wrote about 20 essays on faith and politics. A lot of those were pretty passionate. There were around ten pieces on blogging and technology, several focusing on its cultural significance. There were others that just need to be tagged "miscellany."

And then comes Ashley, my now two-year-old granddaughter. Have I mentioned her unparalleled beauty and amazing intelligence? She was around only half the time since this blog began, but seven essays deal entirely with her.  Disproportionate, you say?  Deal with it.

But in another respect, all of it is about her, whether looking backwards or looking forward. I haven't tried to do a word count to see how many times her name shows up in other posts not devoted entirely to her, but I suspect many. Her presence in my life has been transforming because it has placed a human face on the future. No longer just something out ahead, the future has become personal. If words mean anything (and I think they do), then I want is to find words that in her name proclaim justice, embrace joy, and embody hope.

In other words, this blog is for you, Ashley.

Ashley, Grandpa, and Baseball

We took our granddaughter Ashley to the Kansas City Royals baseball game the other day. She missed being selected on the giant scoreboard as "Fan of the Game," probably because she wasn't in her seat at the time. She didn't get to meet the team mascot Sluggerrr when he stopped by our section, also because she wasn't in her seat at the time. She didn't get featured on the scoreboard's Kiss Cam--it seems she wasn't in her seat at the time. She did, however, get kissed quite a bit.

Her first game, which I had long been looking forward to, was a lot of fun, but it wasn't quite as I had imagined it would be,

I had thought she would sit on my lap most of the game as I explained to her the nuances of defensive alignments, told her stories from my love of baseball going back almost a half century, and helped her understand that she shouldn't cry when the fans suddenly erupted in a deafening roar that scared her. "This is the Royals, sweetheart. When yelling happens, that's a good thing, believe me."

I needed to give her context here. You see, Ashley, there was the crazy owner Charley Finley and the deified owner Ewing Kauffman. There was small market economics and why we hate the Yankees. There was the World Series in 1985 and virtually no series ever since. There was George Brett and Frank White, hemorrhoids and pine tar, and there was this handsomely remodeled stadium, the K (which goes back to the deified thing).

Ashley seemed to prefer the carousel. Whether there should be carousels in ballparks is a question that should be debated in a by-invitation-only conclave of folks wearing ball caps, badly-faded t-shirts with Dan Quisenberry's name on them, and possibly carrying a tattered baseball glove just in case a foul ball comes their way.

I choose not to take up that issue here. If it takes a carousel to get Ashley to the ballpark that's good enough for me. I know that as time goes by we'll learn from each other the things we love and explore the things we want to share.

In that spirit, please permit me this brief note to my granddaughter:

And so, Ashley, love of my heart. I'm oh so glad you went to the Royals game with us. It was great fun.

Oh, and just one other thing, Sweetheart.

Next time, maybe for an inning or two, you think maybe you could stay in your @#$%&%* seat? I need to explain when it's good to try the suicide squeeze and when it isn't. It's about lefthanders and righthanders, bat control and basepath speed, pitcher velocity and upcoming lineup.

Okay, okay! I know it'll take a while. I'll be patient.

Say, maybe next time you could show me that carousel?

Between innings, of course.

{{{}}} Love, from Grandpa.