Soft Touches

If you can learn from hard knocks, you can also learn from soft touches. 

                                      ~ Carolyn Kenmore, Mannequin: My Life As a Model

Mass removal did not come easy for me. From start to finish, I was not a model patient, to say the least.  I felt more like a obstinate heifer cow being led to the slaughter ~ poked, pricked and prodded along the way.  I hate needles, especially when they are headed in my direction.  I don't like disrobing in front of total strangers, filling out medical history or drinking a gallon of nasty salt water before surgery (a requirement that has an exorcist-like effect on your intestinal tract). However, the most conflicting aspect of the entire process was the continual rise of my blood pressure. My blood pressure has always been perfect ~ absolutely textbook. And yet, every single time someone took my blood pressure, the rate was higher than the previous reading.

That's when I found out about white coat syndrome and cuff anxiety.  I read about this very real condition that affects millions of people.  I told my nurse daughter about my online research, and she threatened to take away my computer.  So, instead of prescribing a medication to lower my blood pressure, my nurse practitioner wrote me a prescription for Xanax to treat my anxiety and panic disorder.  I took one pill and slept away an entire Saturday...which really made me crazy!  I had only one alternative ~ to face the difficult days ahead and learn from my hard knocks. 

What I did not anticipate were soft touches...

One of the first soft touches I remember happened right before I went into surgery.  My daughter, Aimee, had accompanied me to the holding room and was sitting by my side.  I had forgotten to take off my wedding ring, which I had to remove before they wheeled me into the operating room.  I took off the ring and handed it to my daughter. She placed it in her pocket for safe-keeping, then she softly held my hand.  She sensed that removing my wedding ring had somehow discomforted me, and she said, "Everything is going to be fine."  I just remember looking at her and being completely calmed by the soft touch of her delicate hand.

I think she also felt the strong connection of those soft touches.  One week after I returned home, I received a package in the mail.

Even the mailer was so pretty and soft...how I love real mail, real packages and real books!  A real greeting card was tucked inside the book with a message that read:  I know at times like this taking one day at a time can be a pretty tall order...maybe it will help to know I am thinking of you. A soft touch from a loving child can make all the difference on a difficult day.

Then there were Sandy's soft touches...

I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of a compact mirror, a perfect shade of pink lipstick, firming face creme and a touch of mascara.  Who can go wrong with a combination of Lilly Pulitzer and Estee Lauder?

Despite all the pain I was experiencing after the surgery, I established a daily ritual. Every morning I combed my hair, brushed my teeth, opened my cute compact mirror and applied all my new products. I haven't fully comprehended the lesson of why this soft touch was so important to someone who could not even eat solid food, but I am sure it is both profound and simple.  Maybe when we are surrounded by the hard on every side, a soft touch is the tiny miracle we need.

Sandy, who is like a sister to me, presented me with another soft touch before I left the hospital...a small box with a notepad, a pair of earrings, and soft peppermint candy inside.

All my favorite things...blue hydrangeas, a U.S. mail box full of goodies, and town birds!  The most endearing feature on the box was the quote which read:  Go home to Thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord has done for thee.  Mark 5:19.  The box is sitting on my breakfast table where I can think about those words afresh every morning.

The next soft touch came from someone I have never even met.  My daughter purchased the April 2013 issue of the Oprah magazine, and she shared a special article with me.

The columnist Martha Beck writes the following:  And it is such an effective cure for so many ailments that I've come to believe it deserves its own acronym.  Personally, I like the term SALVE:  self-acceptance, love, value, esteem.  No matter what problem you're facing...a little SALVE never hurts, and it almost always helps.

Wow!  My daughter shared Ms. Beck's uplifting words with everyone who walked into the hospital room.  She finally ripped out the pages, so that visitors could read the article! I am so grateful for the SALVE that I received during my hospital stay...another soft touch from a total stranger and yet, a kindred spirit.

Finally, one abiding soft touch has watched over me for the past two weeks.  My other daughter, Katie, had to work during the process. Even so, she called me everyday before she went to work and came to see me every evening after work...usually bearing some kind of offering from a bouquet of daisies to a famous Brent's Drugs milk shake.  She also brought me a very special helium balloon.

The fresh daisies have wilted and the milk shake has been consumed, but that little helium balloon has stood the course of time! I took a picture of it this morning...still floating after sixteen days! Every morning when I walk to the breakfast table, the message remains!

My daughter still calls me morning, noon and night, but I feel a soft touch from the helium balloon that sits with me for breakfast, lunch and supper.  The balloon says to me each day, "I am doing my best to keep your spirits up.  I'm hanging in there. I am here to remind you of one simple message: GET WELL SOON!"

We just take today, tuck the best of it away, and keep it for tomorrow...soft touches included.

Dianne ; )

Mass Removal

When someone searches Google for mass removal, random results appear ~ such as a demolition company that specializes in the mass removal of junk, trash and debris, the mass removal of Facebook friends, even the mass removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast which took place over an eight month period during World War II.  Then there is the mass removal of another kind ~ my kind.

On Tuesday, April 9th, I experienced my own mass removal ~ a 25 cm, 20-pound mass was surgically removed from my left ovary. For months, I had experienced digestive issues, mild irregularity, weight gain and stomach bloating; however, I never dreamed that I had ovarian cancer.  I first found out about the mass on Wednesday, March 20th, a little over a month ago and four days after my last post.  I went to see a wonderful nurse practitioner, Sharon Scruggs, who suspected an enlarged hiatal hernia, but who also suggested an x-ray to rule out any GI blockage.  When she viewed the x-ray, her visage changed almost immediately.  Because I had eaten breakfast before the appointment, she suggested that I have a CT scan the following morning.  Then she showed me the x-ray image of the mass ~ a large balloon-like form that was located in my left abdomen.

I felt completely steamrolled by the morning's events.  How does something that big just show up on someone's x-ray...especially someone who hasn't been in a hospital since her twenty-four-year-old son was born?  As bizarre and unsettling as the morning had been, I knew one thing for sure...the mass had to be removed.  Even though I felt totally vulnerable and shaken, I bravely anticipated no other alternative.

Once the CT scan confirmed a large mass on my left ovary, the round of appointments began with Dr. Graham Weaver, an area OB-GYN who performed the ultra-sound.  He commented on the scale and size of the mass; however, he was cautiously optimistic that the mass was benign.  He referred me to a gynecologic oncologist at University of Mississippi Medical Center ~ the state's only teaching hospital.  He stated that Dr. Mildred Ridgway is a respected UMMC surgeon and a leader in robotic surgery in the southeastern United States. So, after the two-day ordeal, I understood that I was being referred to a surgeon.  I also understood that words like benign and oncologist are only associated with one thing ~ cancer.

At this point, I learned my first and most valuable lesson about mass removal: Professionals matter.  I cannot adequately articulate the impact that Dr. Ridgway and her staff, the resident physicians at UMMC Wiser Woman's Hospital, and the fifth floor nursing staff had on me and my entire family.  Professionals matter!  Dr. Ridgway is a kind, compassionate and thorough professional who will always matter to me.  She is a gifted healer who wears a white coat and cowboy boots!  My daughter and I nominated the entire nursing staff for the coveted Daisy Award offered to UMMC nurses who make life brighter for their patients.  When I made the return visit to have my staples removed, I experienced all those feelings of vulnerability as I waited in an urgent care holding room.  I just wanted to see one of those familiar faces.  A first-year resident who had stopped by my hospital room on several occasions walked in, and I immediately felt at ease.  Professionals matter.

The second lesson that I learned is that mass removal of any kind is difficult, and recovery takes time.  Recovery is such a strange animal. Even though my mass removal is complete, the pain is still present.  I am not quite sure how I define recovery.  According to Webster, recovery is a return to a normal state of health, mind or strength. But, I am not sure that a mass removal of any kind lends itself to a return to a normal state.  I think that I more clearly appreciate the etymology of the word convalescence derived from the Latin word which means to become valid.  I know now why a person who remains in a convalescent state is commonly known as an invalid or in-valid.

For the past two weeks at home, I have felt in-valid.  My mass removal not only affected me physically, it also affected me socially.  I experienced a mass removal of all my calendar of events.  I had helped with the planning of two National Library Week celebrations, which included a cooking presentation from a Mississippi Master Chef and a Shoe-La-La Tea Party based on the book by Karen Beaumont.  I was also scheduled to present a lady's luncheon entitled Return To Mitford: A View From Main Street...which meant Orange Marmalade Cake!  Unfortunately, all my library week activities were mass removed as part of my return to a normal state.

I remember when both my girls dated certain guys for a long period of time.  After the break-ups, mass removal began on a grand scale.  Pictures, letters, gifts...everything was gutted; however, for my son, mass removal was prolonged for years.  He just carried the insufferable mass with him everywhere he went, until his mass became part of his identity.  One day, my daughter called me from college and said, "Mom, Matt is getting rid of everything!  Garbage bags full of letters and signs, boxes of pictures and memorabilia, even all the cards!  He is taking everything to the dumpster!"

Of course, I replied, "What in the world?"  She said that he offered no explanation; just voluntary, deliberate and focused mass removal.  He finally opened himself up and emptied himself out in order to become valid again...not that he would ever return to a completely normal state.

Finally, I learned that an ounce of prevention is worth a 20-pound cure.  Over the past year, I ignored my body's growing need for attention, for maintenance, for concern.  I turned a deaf ear to everyone who pleaded with me to go to the doctor. Like a television hoarder, I held onto unhealthy situations because of irrational thoughts and resistant behavior.  I did not want to clear my calendar or waste time and money at a doctor's office.  I accepted heartburn, discomfort and weight gain as my state of normal. What I refused to accept is that nothing about my life was normal.  My eating, my sleeping, my working...every aspect of my life had been undermined by a 20-pound mass the size of a basketball.

So now, I want to respect the mass removal that I have experienced.  I want to appreciate the validity of my own body by implementing a total regimen of care, exercise and maintenance.  I have lost too many organs to ever return to a normal state, and I have a significant scar to remind me of the high cost of disregard, indecision and delay; however, I can cherish the health, mind and strength that is within my own responsibility to keep.

Mass removal has left me with a clean slate, an appreciable scar, and a second chance to become valid ~ if only to myself.

Dianne ; )

Wait and See, Part Two!

A full two weeks have passed since my last post, and I do mean full.  I started a new job as a children's librarian, despite a few misgivings that I might flip-flop at any moment.  The main reason I was offered the position is because I am an applicant with an excellent track record.  My resume is a summary of recognized accomplishments and work-related performance. I am an animated storyteller, a purveyor of quality children's programming, and a life-long lover of the public library. My family and closest friends are so happy that I am actually working at a real job with real benefits, a real retirement and most importantly, a real salary.

I completely understand.  After reading The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, I am beginning to understand more about myself than I have from any other work of literature I have ever read ~ and I have read hundreds  (maybe thousands) of books.  I do not know if I am able to articulate this self-discovery in a clear and understandable manner or if the grown-up lesson I learned from a children's book was meant just for me. However, I do want to try.  I am typing the excerpts from the book in italics, as they are written by the author DuBose Heyward.

One day a little country girl bunny with a brown skin and a little cotton-ball of a tail said, "Some day I shall grow up to be an Easter Bunny: ~ you wait and see!"

What on earth provoked a little brown country girl bunny to make such an epic declaration?  Thesaurus offers a selection of words which immediately come to mind: fearless, grandiose, gutsy, gallant, daring, valiant, bigger than life.  Like a dormant volcano, something inside her tiny bunny body erupted and out came the lava of fire-eating words.

Then all of the big white bunnies who lived in fine houses, and the Jack Rabbits with long legs who can run so fast, laughed at the little Cottontail and told her to go back to the country and eat a carrot.  But she said, "Wait and see!"

Wow...nothing like rejection to steal our thunder and eventually make cowards of us all.  One thing I know for sure: I am a country bunny. I have never been affluent, sophisticated or athletic; however, I have always known that I was born to be a writer. Wait and see!  No matter how high the rejections letters piled up, I still believed. Wait and see!  Even when my family and friends seemed to avoid the subject, I submitted manuscripts and contacted agents. Wait and see!  And yet, with each new story and each new round of rejections, I felt as though I should just go somewhere and eat a carrot.

Cottontail stopped thinking about hopping all over the world with lovely eggs for little boys and girls, and she took care of her babies.

I almost cry when I read that sentence in the book.  It is so difficult to stop thinking about something that, even as a child, you know is your life's purpose.  Despite her reluctant conformity, Mother Cottontail had twenty-one great babies! She taught those babies to clean house, to cook, to sew, to sing and dance, to garden, to color and paint, and most importantly, to have manners. There is nothing on earth like rearing bad-A bunnies ~ teaching them to appreciate art, style, music, food, and nature, showing them how to act in public, fostering originality, creativity and self-confidence ~ a masterpiece of your life's work on display for all to see. Then one day when the little rabbits were half grown up, she heard a great talk among the wood rabbits, and when she asked what it was about, they said, " Haven't you heard? One of the five Easter bunnies has grown too slow, and we are all going to the Palace of the Easter Eggs to see Old Grandfather pick out a new one to take his place."

So Mother Cottontail and all twenty-one of her little bunnies set off to the Palace to see the fun.  But their mother was sad because she thought that now she was nothing but an old mother bunny....

An old mother bunny...just when you think that fire-eating lava has turned to ash...Wait and See!  Once again, there's nothing like the success of your children to put you back in the driver's seat!  When the old, kind, wise Grandfather Bunny saw that Mother Cottontail had been the most loving and efficient mother bunny she could possibly be, he made a declaration of his own!

"You have proved yourself to be not only wise, and kind, and swift, but also very clever.  Come to the Palace tomorrow afternoon, for that is Easter Eve, and you shall be my fifth Easter Bunny."

WooHoo!! Wait and See!  I could just stop right here and take it all in; however, the story is not quite over and neither is the lesson.  At this point, it did not matter that she was brought into a place where she thought she might never belong.  She was chosen; she always had been.  She was accepted by Grandfather Bunny, and he was the one degree of separation that made all the difference.  She was accepted as a brown bunny doing a white bunny's job.  She was accepted as a female bunny doing a jack rabbit's job.  She was accepted as a country bunny doing an Easter bunny's job!

There she stood in her funny country clothes but none of the other four Easter bunnies laughed, for they were wise and kind and knew better.

Don't you just love complete and total acceptance in its purest form!  How gracious we become to others we when we fully recognize our own acceptance in this world.  So Cottontail delivered eggs all through the night.  When she was almost finished, Grandfather Bunny called her to him.  He had one final delivery for her to make:  the loveliest egg she had ever seen.  She had to carry the egg across two rivers and three mountains to a great mountain peak where a little boy lived who had been sick for a year. Grandfather Bunny told her, "The mountain is so high that there is ice on the top, and it will be hard to climb, but if you get there you will give more happiness than any other Easter Bunny."

What a journey! What a story! She was very tired when at last she got to the bottom of the great peak, and her heart failed her when she saw how high it was, and how slippery with ice and snow on top.  When she almost reached the top, a terrible thing happened.  Despite all her declarations, dreams, successes, and efforts, Cottontail fell.  When the downward spiral finally stopped, she hit the trunk of an apple tree that was just getting ready to bloom for Easter.  (I love that part.) The egg was safe, but she could not move.  OMG!...story after story after story of my life! She tried to rise again (rise again), because she saw a lovely pink light in the sky and she knew in a few more minutes it would be day...Then she felt something touch her shoulder...there in that distant land was old, wise, kind Grandfather Bunny.

Grandfather Bunny was holding a pair of little gold shoes, which he placed on her feet. Suddenly all the pain left her leg.  Then before she knew what was happening...she found herself flying high in the air...and in the hand of the beautiful sleeping boy, she placed the egg.

I just love that line...in the hand of the beautiful sleeping boy, she placed the egg. On the title page of the book ~ underneath the title ~ are the words: As Told To Jenifer. This past week I read an article entitled The Country Bunny by Aida Rogers which stated that DuBose Heyward did not actually tell the original story to his daughter, Jenifer.  Jenifer's grandmother, Janie Heyward, first told the bedtime story. The article states that Janie Heyward was a strong-willed, independent-minded, intelligent woman who lived in the shadows, but was very much ahead of her time...and she was a storyteller!  She embraced the African-American art of storytelling as each generation passed on stories to the next. She wrote Brown Jackets, a collection of Gullah folktales that she had grown up hearing from servants in her aristocratic white South Carolina home.  She also placed the loveliest egg of all in the hand of her beautiful sleeping granddaughter, Jenifer...who, by design, found her own pair of little gold shoes.  She grew up to be a professional ballerina who danced with Diaghilev Ballet Russes in France.

And the little house of Mother Cottontail can always be told now from the homes of all other bunnies.  Because in a special place on the wall, on a very special hook, hangs a pair of very tiny little gold shoes.

My husband knows that I have been obsessed with this book for almost three weeks. Last Saturday morning, I told him the story. Afterwards, I asked him to give his opinion. He said, "I think that the little gold shoes defy the reality of limited things." I ran and grabbed my notebook to write that down. He continued, "You know...we all have to work, and sometimes, it just seems like work. We do our best with the reality we have, and we find success in limited things.  Even though Country Bunny declared at an early age that she would be an Easter Bunny, she had to wait on the provision that would defy her reality.  The provision was there the entire time, but she did not waste the waiting period and that is what prepared her when the provision came."

Double OMG!  I could not write fast enough. "The little gold shoes represent the point in which we cannot proceed within our own capacity ~ the end of our natural journey. This is the place where the climb becomes too slippery and the fall back down to earth too painful.  Then, something unexpected happens, and we are able to rise again!  All the boundaries and constraints are lifted by one turn of events, one special touch, one pair of little gold shoes.  The place of despair becomes the place where we fly!  We defy the reality of limited things!  The apple tree blooms, the sky turns pink, and the sun comes up...and we recognize the miracle of it all. It really is the story of Easter."

Wait and See!

Dianne ; )