Unsettled

IMHO, unless you are a hardened, non-caring, non-loving person, dealing with an observance of a national day of mourning like today should lead to a certain amount of feeling unsettled. In my case, I remember finding out about the attacks while at work - my brother lives and works on Manhattan, and my parents were out of touch on driving trip into eastern Canada - so tracking them down proved challenging, though ultimately everyone was found to be fine.

And then, we realized that one of Cat's nieces was flying into the country with a "significant other", but was forced to land in Canada after US airspace closed and, ultimately, returned to England without setting foot in the US.

Bringing this larger context into what's been happening this summer, and it does help provide some perspective. Death (on a couple of different fronts); graduating your only son from high school and setting him up for college; helping to manage your father's medical, financial, and overall well-being - knowing that he probably has at best a few months to live; and then falling ill with a recurrence of back problems in the last 6 weeks that seems much more debilitating than the last time this happened.

So, here's some of the detail about those issues:

- Mom died three years ago, and my aunt followed her in death in May. Both died in relatively short order, and I never really got to chat with either of them in any meaningful way at the end. Purely selfishly, I would have like to cleared up some issues - but that cannot happen during my time here on earth and I must wait until we're back together. I think I'm getting to be OK with that, but not entirely certain.

- Sparky is at college and seems to be settling in fairly well under stressful circumstances - 3 guys in a room designed for 2 and with a Bears fan with two Packer fans. Sure there's some stress there, but expect they're working through it. Let's just say that at times it's not too unexpected to have to drop everything for some emergency or other, but it's equally disconcerting to not hear from him for days and not really having any idea what's going on in his life. I have to live with the idea that we set him up the best we could, but that he really has take charge from here and make his own mistakes. Painful, certainly, but some of life's lessons are only learned that way.

- Dad. We all knew that Dad's maladies are many and complicated. Monitoring and controlling his medications and treatments is a full-time job. Hospice has come in to assist, which has led to several significant approvements in "quality of life" issues for Dad, but a recent misreading of the doc's orders by the pharmacy led to a gross overdose of a medication that made Dad really tired and ready to give up. I caught the error and confirmed it with the pharmacy. We have made the appropriate adjustments, and Dad's better but clearly still on the decline. Based on his comments, I fully expect he will discontinue dialysis in January, at the latest. Based on Hospice comments, no more than 2 weeks will pass at that time before the end comes. So there we are.

- And last, but certainly not least, the lumbar region of my back is FUBAR. All levels have some sort of degredation going on - bulging/herniation, stenosis, dehydration and other structural changes - all which can lead to nerve impingement and pain. Some of it is genetic, other from the years I beat my body to a pulp playing football. Could I change anything back then? I don't think so. But these many years later, you have to wonder.

Did I mention that my job requires significant amounts of travel and, being as physically debilitated as I currently feel, I have been home for a couple of weeks and will be for a while more? My boss has been accommodating to date, so I am hopeful. Given the slower, lower trajectory of recovery this time around, I am worried about testing that level of patience.

Nothing, in my experience, is as debilitating as long-term nerve damage/irritation. I have twisted ankles, broken bones, torn ligaments, and bruised/separated ribs. While there is pain in those injuries, the length of time and depth of the pain endured during those injuries is nothing like the depth and constant drain on the system is nothing like long-term nerve pain.

In the context of everything else, this is hardly living - it is existing.

The other HUGE aspect of this is that I've always viewed myself as being a relatively active, if not in-some-kinda-shape person. I have played baseball, softball, football, soccer, golf, and various other sports at some level of competition over the years, and enjoy "handyman" activities around the house as a way of blowing off steam. This last round of back problems has me wondering if any of this will continue to be possible. My last hold-outs from the first-round of these back problems was that I could golf and do the handyman stuff. I am truly starting to wonder if even those simple activities will be possible coming out of this second round of problems.

Time will tell, I suppose.