Velveteen Rabbi

Test run

The late-night drive to the hospital sometime before one's child is born is a rite of passage. Almost every pair of expectant parents I know has done it. Maybe there's a preterm labor scare, or the mother starts having contractions which seem to be trending longer, stronger, and closer together and the parents-to-be dash to the hospital to see if this is "really it," bringing their already-packed labor suitcase and strange new carseat along for the ride just in case. In our case it was some blood pressure readings which led us to call the Mother-Baby Unit late at night; their instructions were to come in immediately, so we did, and we wound up staying for a while.

There's no cause for alarm; baby and I are fine, though the staff there kept us for observation (and to work on titration of blood pressure medication) for a few days. The first night at the hospital I dozed a scant few hours of sleep, interrupted by the sounds of laboring women down the hall and the sudden startling (and startled) cries of newborns. The second night, although nurses woke me every few hours to check my BP, I was so exhausted from that first night that I actually slept in between the checks. Being able to get reasonably satisfying sleep in short snatches seems like good preparation for the early weeks of parenthood.

There were things about this adventure which reminded me of my stroke hospitalization a few years ago. This is the same hospital where I was a patient then. (Indeed: the stroke center is right down the hall from the wing where laboring mothers and their babies stay.) And there are elements of the hospital experience which feel the same no matter what one's in for -- the sounds and scents, the beeping of monitors, the tactile experience of getting an IV port or feeling an automatic blood pressure cuff inflate. Since I just recorded a podcast of a stroke poem for Qarrtsiluni's upcoming health issue, it's been surreal to revisit those memories.

Of course, in other ways this experience is entirely different from that one. Where the strokes came out of the blue, these late-term pregnancy complications are not a big surprise. (My history of hypertension all but guaranteed that this, or something like it, would arise.) And there's the awareness that at the end of this journey, God willing, we'll come home with a tiny person: that changes everything.

The view from week 35

Pregnancy, 36 weeks. (I'm not quite there, but I'm close.)

I haven't written much at Velveteen Rabbi about being pregnant, aside from that initial announcement post this summer and a handful of offhand mentions this fall. Those of you who don't know me in person (which is most of you!) could be forgiven for imagining that perhaps the pregnancy hasn't loomed large in my consciousness. Maybe the reason I'm not writing about it is that it's just not a big deal?

That's an erroneous assumption, of course. If anything, pregnancy is such a big deal that I find it hard to write about, at least in prose. I've written half a dozen poems on the subject since I found out I was pregnant last Pesach, but they aren't ready for public consumption. Unlike the Torah poems I often share here, these poems don't feel ready for prime time. There's something intimate about them, about the whole experience. Which is funny, because it's also a very public experience; no one who sees me now can doubt that they know (at least some of) what's going on in my life.

I write here about Judaism, about God, about spiritual life -- a range of subjects which could easily encompass meditations on pregnancy and impending motherhood, if only I could find the way in. Part of the challenge is that the subject is at once so big and so small; it's an enormous life-change and a perennial miracle, and yet it's a perfectly ordinary thing that humanity has done since time immemorial. There's a balancing act here. This is incredibly important, and it's also incredibly mundane. Though I guess the same could be said of daily spiritual practice, too.

Braced for surgery

As Ethan notes, he's about to go offline for a month -- maybe longer -- because tomorrow he's scheduled for his second vitrectomy. (For those who are curious, here's his explanation of the process, written last year.)

This is the same surgery he had last year (this time, they'll be operating on the other eye.) The good news is that the first vitrectomy was successful, and this time we know what the recovery curve might look like. (Last time, they just didn't know how long he would be incapacitated by the surgery, and told him he might be able to drive again after a few days; this time, we know it will be at least month before he can read again, and that he won't be behind the wheel of a car anytime soon.)

Even though it's easier to face with some advance awareness of what we're in for, the prospect of surgery is never comfortable, and neither is the recovery. Thanks for understanding if I'm a bit slow to answer email or moderate blog comments over the next few days -- even though there's relatively little I can do to make this easier for him, my attention needs to be focused here at home for a while.

Technorati tags: body, eyes, vitrectomy.

Different Strokes

I posted last month that an essay of mine had been published in the February 2009 issue of The Women's Times. The story told in this essay will be familiar to longtime readers of this blog, but a few of y'all asked to see the piece, so I figured I'd share it here now that the March issue is on the stands. Thanks to the editors of TWT for soliciting and publishing the essay.

In June of 2006 I traveled to Montreal to meet friends. When I got off the train, I found that I couldn't speak French. I could hardly hold Ou est le metro? in my mind, and my English wasn't much better. I clung to a slip of paper with my hotel's address on it, and navigated my way via beseeching looks to strangers who kindly pointed me in the right direction.

I unloaded my luggage, met my friends for dinner, and said, "Something strange is going on." They embraced me and pressed Thai food and a beer into my hands. By the time I had eaten half a plate of dinner the mysterious inability to speak coherently had passed. I had a fleeting thought that perhaps I should see a doctor, but I was on vacation in a foreign city with farflung friends; I put it out of my mind. I was thirty-one.

Six months later, on Christmas Day, I lost vision in one eye. We were eating Chinese food and watching a movie when it happened. Half of my field of vision disappeared, as though a veil had descended.

I thought it was a floater. I feared a detached retina. But I didn't want to schlep to the emergency room on Christmas, so I didn't see a doctor until the following day, when the diminished vision didn't improve on its own. A visit to the opthalmologist led me to my first MRI, which showed that the visual problems were rooted in my brain.

"Different Strokes" published in The Women's Times

If you live in the Berkshires or bordering regions in Vermont, Connecticut, or NY, pick up the February issue of The Women's Times and you'll find an essay by me in its pages. Every February TWT does an issue focusing on health; this year they asked me to write an essay about my strokes and their aftermath, seen from the vantage of two years out.

(I'm pretty sure the essay is also in the Pioneer Valley edition; PV readers, can you confirm/deny?)

Many of the observations in the essay may ring a bell to longtime readers of VR. Because the piece begins with the strokes and moves forward through time until now, I touch on several of the stages of my recovery (both physical and emotional) which I chronicled here.

Writing the essay gave me a good opportunity for reflection on the strokes and their lasting implications. Thanks, TWT. (And if any of y'all do read the essay, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to leave a comment below.)

March 2009 ETA: the essay is now online here.

Technorati tags: strokes, health, TheWomensTimes.

Taking care

What a week: anticipation, tension, relief, and aftermath.

Ethan's surgery seems to have been successful. When they let me back into the recovery room and I saw him sitting in a chair, upright and becoming alert again (right eye bandaged tightly), a fierce relief grabbed hold of me that didn't let go for hours. The unmitigated good news is that the surgeon believes they were successful in doing the work they wanted to do -- baruch Hashem and alhamdolillah! Deep thanks to all who left comments, sent emails, and have been saying prayers of all sorts on his, and our, behalf.

Since then, the week has been a bit of a roller-coaster. The surgery is over, but the recovery is just beginning, and the elation of making it through the surgery has given way to some frustration with the limitations of this post-surgical period. Slowly and surely we're finding our way. Yesterday afternoon while I was teaching Hebrew school, a friend came over to read to him for a while. He's planning and cooking elaborate menus; he can't work, exercise, or read, but at least he can cook. (As long as he stays clear of our very sharp knives...)

And I'm learning how unlike chaplaincy is the experience of watching a loved one undergo surgery. I've facilitated lifecycle events for "strangers" (folks I didn't know until they engaged me to work with them), for old friends, and for family, and those three categories feel entirely different to me. When a relationship already exists, the work can be both sweeter and more challenging. Of course, I'm not here to do the work of pastoral care! Though the chaplain part of my brain keeps pointing out how I might try to do things differently if I were.

The counsel I would offer to someone else in shoes like mine this week is this: being family to someone who's undergone trauma -- physical or emotional -- can be difficult. So be gentle with yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Do something nice for yourself. Remember that it's not your job to make things "all better" -- you can't. What you can do is be loving, and be present, and be responsive as best you can. That's all anyone could ask, and it's important work, so kol hakavod to you for doing it.

Anyway. Today is the third day after the surgery and so far, so good. Thanks to everyone who's been with us along the way.

 

Technorati tags: life, post-surgery.

T-minus one day and counting

A few weeks ago Ethan blogged about eye trouble and forthcoming surgery, a pars plana vitrectomy on his right eye. That surgery is happening tomorrow, as per his latest post. We'll wake up at 5am and drive the three hours to Boston. After the surgery we'll spend a night there, and have a follow-up visit with the doctors on Wednesday morning. Assuming all goes according to plan, we'll get home by Wednesday evening.

I don't entirely know what to expect. We've read everything we can get our hands on, and Ethan's doctors have told us about how the procedure works and what its aftermath is likely to entail, but that kind of advance knowledge is only so helpful. Beyond the bare outlines -- surgery, recovery, an estimated three weeks abstaining from reading (!) -- we don't really know what's ahead.

I'm chagrined to discover the extent to which I'm more comfortable being the patient than the worried family member in the waiting room. I'm reminded, too, of something I learned from my supervisor during my year of CPE: ministering to one's family doesn't really work. In this situation I'm not the chaplain, I'm the wife. It's fascinating to be reminded how discrete those two roles are.

Anyway, we have high hopes that the surgery will be successful; that's something to, er, focus on. Meanwhile, if I'm somewhat slow to respond to emails and blog comments for a few days, I ask your understanding. And if you're so inclined, good thoughts and prayers are always welcome.

Technorati tags: body, eyes, vitrectomy.

The limitations of personal experience

When I was a student chaplain at Albany Medical Center I used to case the neonatal intensive care unit every time I was on call. I felt a connection with that ward because I was a NICU baby myself. My birth weight (three pounds, one ounce) halved by the time the ambulance got me from one hospital to another, and I spent weeks in an incubator overcoming hyaline membrane disease. Walking the halls of the neonatal intensive care unit at AMC, I used to make every step a prayer for the tiny babies in their little glass houses, that they might flourish as I have been blessed to do. I thought maybe my story made me a more effective chaplain there. Offered parents hope.

But I have no memory of those six weeks behind glass. Whereas I have plenty of memories of my recent strokes and their aftermath. So when I'm called to minister to someone who has suffered a stroke, it's a poignant and surreal experience for me in a whole new way.

Do my strokes make me a better chaplain? I'm certain that having been sick -- having faced, however imperfectly, my body's failings and my own mortality -- makes me a more empathetic listener. Telling about my experience, in a tiny nutshell, might offer comfort either to the patient or to the patient's family. I know what it's like to be on the inside of that experience, in a way most chaplains don't. In those ways maybe my experience does help me offer care.

But there's also the danger that I might overlay my own experiences atop the experiences of the person now suffering, which would make me not a very good caregiver at all. I know what it was like for me to open my mouth and not be able to make words come out the way I intended. I know what it was like for me to lose vision in one eye, to enter my first MRI machine, to wonder whether there was something seriously wrong with my body which we might or might not ever uncover. But I don't know what it's like for her. I don't know what it's like to be in her body, to experience it with the stretch of her experiences and memories. I have empathy, and I have sympathy, but I still can't presume I actually know what she's going through.

One can never presume one understands what someone else is going through. Even if the experiences have the same name, they're not the same. When I lay tefillin, that experience is necessarily different than I imagine it is for men who have the same practice. My experience surely differs from that of other women who take on the practice, too. If you were to wrap the leather retzuot around your arm, what would it evoke for you? How would you feel? Can you really express it in words? How much more true that is for embodied experiences like illness. So I'm a stroke survivor: that doesn't mean I truly know what it's like for someone else to suffer.

All I can do, in the end, is all I can do visiting anyone: be present to the reality of what's in front of me. Honor what I can understand of her story. Manifest the ear of the Holy Blessed One, Who listens in and through me. Admit that I can offer this sage's opinion or that sage's pithy quotation, but in the end, I can't answer the question of why we suffer, either. Offer the prayers of my heart, that she know a complete and speedy healing, a renewal of body and a renewal of spirit, now and swiftly. And, if she'll let me, take a long moment to clasp her hand.

 

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, pastoralcare, health, stroke.

This week's portion: Clean

 

CLEAN (TAZRIA)

Depression whispering poison
anxiety's frantic wakefulness
cancer teeming beneath the skin:
the afflictions we truly fear

are chronic and invisible.
Even doctors look for ways
to blame the victim -- you smoked
too much, your cholesterol

is poor, you shouldn't have been
on birth control -- because
we can't stand that life isn't
a meritocracy, the way disease

sometimes just happens.
It must have been easier
when what distanced us from God
was a visible patch of skin

turning white or red, a spot
on the body to show to the priest,
the binary of tahor or tamei.
When what erupted in us

was on the surface, when we
like cloth could be sterilized
the damaged parts cut away
and consumed in fire

leaving behind only
what could be washed
and washed again, what could
become wholly (blessedly) clean.

---

Tazria: not, historically, the easiest parsha for me to connect with! Though over the last few years I've been finding various pathways in, ways of understanding the conditions of taharah ("ritual purity") and tumah ("ritual impurity") that make sense to me. Part of my problem tends to be how those words are rendered in English; longtime readers know I find those words both inadequate and wrongly freighted...

Here, again, I'm finding that when I let myself relate to this section of Torah through the prism of poetry, new insights emerge. (If you're interested in how I've engaged with this portion through prose in years past, you can always check out the Velveteen Rabbi's Torah Commentary, the page where I keep links to all of my divrei Torah.)

Though the arcana of taharah and tumah may feel distant for modern readers, the sense that sickness can keep us feeling distant from God resonates strongly for me. Behind this portion and its rules, I see a sense of longing for the kind of wholeness that would make holy connection possible.

As usual, you're welcome to download Clean.mp3 if you can't see the audio player at the top of the post or if you'd like a recording of the poem.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, poetry, Torah, Tazria.

One year stroke-free

We were eating cheap takeout Chinese food and watching a dvd when the vision in my left eye became occluded. At first I thought it was a floater. Then we thought it might be a detached retina. I convinced myself it would be better in the morning, but when I woke up on Boxing Day it had not improved. Finally, despite the sleet, I dragged myself to the emergency room for an adventure that took me all over Pittsfield, into my first MRI machine, and -- by nightfall -- into an inpatient stay at BMC...

---

My last stroke happened on Christmas Day of 2006. As of today, I have gone a year stroke-free.

We still don't know what caused the strokes, and it seems likely now that we never will. They are not only idiopathic (of unknown origin) but cryptogenic (though their origin seems like it ought to be discernible, it is not.) We know that hypertension is correlated, so I take a beta blocker and a calcium channel blocker daily to keep my blood pressure low. And we know that clots are correlated -- though my blood doesn't show a tendency to clot in lab studies, and I don't test positive for any genetic clotting factors -- so I take a mild blood thinner daily. We trust that these three small pills each morning will keep my body in working order.

Miraculously, there has been no lasting damage to my body. My language skills seem to be as good as they ever were (so if I have trouble with Hebrew and Aramaic, I can blame only my study habits), and I am no longer conscious of diminished vision in my left eye (though field-of-vision tests show there is still some impairment, it's imperceptible to me now.)

The strokes did some emotional and spiritual damage which I think we are still working to repair. They shook my sense of my body's integrity, and they scared the people I love. We spent many months of 2007 working with specialists here and in Boston, searching for the elusive syndrome that would explain everything -- three strokes, two abscesses, and a partridge in a pear tree! -- and although every negative test result brought some relief, every new possible diagnosis left us tense and shaken again. Though in theory we've accepted the reality that the strokes are cryptogenic, in practice it isn't always easy to live with not-knowing.

The strokes also brought some blessings. I have a new sense of my body as a complicated miracle, which I've tried to hold on to as the immediate sense-memory of the strokes and the testing has faded. Over the year I've received unbelievable outpourings of love and prayer -- from family, from friends, from colleagues, from teachers, from readers, from strangers --which I appreciate more than I can say. And the strokes brought me a lot of new poems, work I might never have created otherwise. (I've worked hard at finding the silver lining in this experience.)

I'd like to be able to say that the strokes taught me something about embodiment, about this existential and theological state of unknowing. Sometimes I feel like they did. Other times their lessons, or gifts, seem pretty distant. I suspect being a multiple stroke survivor will make me a more compassionate pastoral caregiver, though I like to think I was fairly compassionate to begin with.

In the end, the strokes can only be what I make them. I try to make them a reminder not to take my life or my body for granted, and a chance to marvel at how it's possible to feel connected with God even "min ha-meitzar," from narrow straits like these. One way or another, I'm pretty sure Christmas Day will never feel quite the same...and we'll be celebrating Boxing Day tonight with a couple of bottles of fancy microbrewed beers (a Unibroue Terrible, and a Lindemans pomme lambic) toasting my health.

I hope you'll raise your cup or mug or glass too to the miracle of embodiment, and the miracle of health, and the miracle that my loved ones and I -- and you, my blog-readers and friends -- have made it through the first year of this post-stroke journey together.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, stroke.