Tag: illness

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Seeing Through the Walls

Big Blake’s tail didn’t thump when we walked in the room.

His eyes were … there but not there.

Even the magic word “Food!” provoked only a little attention and some reluctant movement – maybe. For a dog who had always been ruled by his stomach, that was the scariest of all.

“I think we’d better call the vet again.”

It would be his second trip in two days. Yesterday he had been moving fine and eating fine, but with rather messy results out the other end. He’d been checked out and sent home with something for an upset stomach – but this seemed like a new ballgame.

There are moments in a crisis when all the walls turn transparent. You can see all the possibilities but you have no idea which one the path leads toward. Were we looking at an intestinal blockage? An injury, from a slip as he left the car the day before? Something more insidious that had been waiting until now to show its head?

All we could do was take him in, hope, and watch the clock.

Two hours later, the call came. Two minutes later, so did our reaction.

“It looks like what he’s having is an extreme arthritis flare-up . We’ve added some pain medicine to his NSAIDs for now ….”

I think our collective sigh of relief must have re-routed hurricanes in the Gulf.

We could see the path at last. And it actually led somewhere that we wanted to be.

Now, with our furry friend beside us, we get to watch another moment of clarity and uncertainty – this time on a national scale.

As I write this, the drama of COVID-19 entering the White House is still going on. So many questions are still hanging in the air. How many more names will we hear that we recognize? What does this mean for the country? Headlines about confirmations, debates, economies, elections, and yes, very real lives – those actually infected and those affected by them and their choices – continue to whirl and spin across the landscape like a Kansas tornado.

Once again, the walls are transparent and the path unclear. The nature of the virus almost guarantees it. Some get sick and get well and get on with things. Some require much more intensive medical care. Some recover, but with serious after-effects that can hang on for months.

And yes, some die. Too many have.

Again, you’re reading this later than I’m writing this. You may already know the next chapter of the story. But if we’re still watching the news, wondering what’s next and what it will mean – well, I suppose in 2020, it isn’t all that surprising.

Once again, we have to wait. And to keep doing what we need to do while we’re waiting. Because life doesn’t stop for the rest of us.

We still need to hold out hope for the future and caution for the present, looking to a day when things can be better while taking the careful steps needed to make it there.

We still need to look to each other as friends and neighbors, giving and accepting strength.

We still need to look to our own care, so that whatever the world sends us tomorrow, we’re ready to meet it.

Ready when the path starts to re-emerge.

For now, we’re once again walking the path with our dog. Big Blake’s tail is thumping. His eyes are bright. And his attention to food is as laser-sharp as ever.

It’s the moment we didn’t dare hope for.

And we couldn’t be happier.

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In Good Hands

Years ago, my wife Heather referred to an omni-competent physician as a “Swiss Army Doctor” – the sort who seemed to be good at everything, whether they were part of his specialty or not.

She ought to know. Because Heather is one heck of a Swiss Army Person.

She’s a fearless driver who’s undismayed by Denver traffic.

She’s an aunt who speaks fluent Child, winning the immediate trust and understanding of anyone under 10 years old. (Yeah, she was going to be a teacher at one time.)

She’s a patient who’s done everything from diagnosing her own conditions before her doctors did, to fixing her own IV when it threatened to come loose after a home infusion.

Lifehacks? Minor repairs? Odd bits of knowledge? Never bet against the mind of a woman who’s read War and Peace cover-to-cover and is ready to start again.

In short, she’s the kind of person that everyone knows they can rely on. And that’s the trouble.

Because Heather has also been chronically ill most of her life – Crohn’s disease, ankylosing spondylitis, and most recently, multiple sclerosis. And that means two things.

One, it means that life can get very frustrating for her, when something she should be able to do suddenly becomes difficult – say, because of the balance issues that MS can bring, or the “brain fog” that can even make reading a trial at times.

But the second is more subtle. Heather needs to sometimes not be needed. To just be sick, and have everyone else carry the weight for a while.

That’s all too easy to forget. Embarrassingly easy, in fact.

And the truth is, most of us have been in similar situations.

Sometimes it’s on the personal level – the parent, or neighbor, or colleague, who can seemingly do it all, and thus often gets asked to. Whose hands keep getting filled, even when there’s no room left to grip. If none of it gets passed on, something is going to slip. Probably several somethings.

Sometimes, it’s on the institutional level – services and agencies and organizations that you’ve come to rely on, whether local, federal, or in between. You assume things will go on as they always have, and so they do … until the day that there’s a new person in charge, a new policy in place, a new mandate from higher up. Suddenly the secure becomes scary. Suddenly things you never thought could happen are becoming the new normal, while things you could trust are no longer certain.

In both cases, the panic usually comes when a crisis hits – and at that point, a lot of damage has already been done. That’s when you’re scrambling, trying to patch the holes, grab the tasks, juggle the flaming chainsaws that are already in the air. And sometimes that’s unavoidable – but only sometimes.

Most times, the needs and the dangers can be seen far ahead. But seeing them requires attention. Understanding. A willingness to work before there’s a need.

It means anticipating when a loved one might be overwhelmed, and taking the initiative to relieve the pressure.

It means having a plan before the roof leaks or the furnace dies.

It means doing more than vote, but being engaged and involved in the political process before it comes down to casting ballots.

Sure, it’s not always possible. No one can do everything they need to do – and that’s the point. If we all look out for each other, if we all stay alert to jump in where we can, then we can make the ride easier for all of us. We’ve seen this in times as dramatic as the 2013 flood and as quiet as a family’s mourning – when we stand together, we’re stronger. We’re family, neighbors, community.

We all remember that less than we should. Myself included. So here’s the reminder.

Be there. Do what needs doing.

And let the hardest-working hands get some rest at last.

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Half the Fun

They’d taken Heather’s temperature. Too high. Again.

Time to wait. Again.

For half a moment, I could feel the old station wagon forming up around us.

Longtime readers of this column may remember that my wife Heather was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about two years ago. At the time, we were more relieved than anxious, since it explained so much that had been going on – the periods of foggy memory, the occasional bouts of weakness, and so on. Better to have an enemy you know, right?

Since her MS is of the “relapse-remission” sort, we even managed to get some stretches where things were just about normal again. Well, as normal as you can get when a person also has Crohn’s disease and ankylosing spondylitis (quite a mouthful, huh), but you know what I mean. During that normal time, she and her doctor started planning ahead. A periodic infusion of a “biological” medicine might help her keep on top of things – basically, trading an occasional and very boring five to seven hours in a chair for the ability to keep the MS on a leash.

No problem. Boring medicine days are why God put the Lumberjack Olympics on TV, right?

But something always seemed to keep that medicine just ahead of us, like a will o’ the wisp in a swamp. Things like paperwork that didn’t make it through the mail, or blood tests that had to be rescheduled again and again because another chronic illness had flared up that day and left Heather unable to come out.

Finally, the preliminaries were over. Medicine Day had come.

Unfortunately, so had the Creeping Crud. You know this one. Maybe you’ve even had it, the one that keeps circling back around for another pass? It bumped up Heather’s temperature, just a bit.

Just enough to postpone the infusion. Twice.

It’s a good thing I already have a bald spot. Less hair to tear out in frustration.

That’s when my mind’s eye began to see the Volvo arrive.

When I was a kid, my parents liked to plan long vacations for all of us. This included, more than once, the Great Overland Trek from Colorado to California, with two adults and three children in the confines of one car for multiple hours.

Mom was an expert at distracting us. Dad planned out small jobs that each of us could do. But inevitably, at some point along the highway, the Official Kids’ Chorus of Summer Vacations would arise.

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

The answer was obvious, of course. Not yet. Not for a long time. (Maybe not for a very long time, if the chorus started while we were still in Wyoming.) But when the good stuff is still ahead and doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, what else can you do?

Some things don’t change very much in three and a half decades.

We still wind up on long journeys, where we’re not at the wheel. We still find ourselves watching the landscape crawl by. And again and again, it seems like each passing hour brings … another passing hour.

It can be maddening. Or at least wearying. Especially if the resolution refuses to come into sight.

All we can do is trust. That California is out there somewhere. That the road does reach a destination. It’s not easy. But it’s necessary. We just have hang on to each other, do what we can on the journey, and keep traveling.

In our case, at least I know we’ll get there. The infusion will, eventually, happen. The treatment will, eventually, begin. And then we can start on a whole new road.

I hope we packed enough snacks.

 

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Piling On

In The Naked Gun, there’s a wonderful scene where the bad guy has just been zapped by a dart from the hero, Lt. Frank Drebin. “He’ll be all right,” Drebin says, and he would have been –  if the bad guy didn’t proceed to then fall several stories onto the freeway and get run over by a bus. And a steamroller. And a marching band playing “Louie, Louie.”

Some weeks, there’s just no way to win.

This week, to be honest, has been a Louie, Louie week.

It started with a Saturday bug. It had to be Saturday, of course, since that was the one day guaranteed to shorten a Missy outing. With apologies, I took her home from lunch and sought the couch.

The couch and I then became close friends as “bug” turned to “cold” turned to a five-day-long “flu.” All the while, my lungs were turning into the cannons from the 1812 Overture, my body was shaking like a chicken that had been asked to cross I-25, and my sense of time was becoming about as reliable as a soap opera’s – lots of fade-ins and fade-outs, with the occasional flashback.

My first day of true recovery was met with ice everywhere, because there’s nothing that helps you bounce back from the flu like hastily clearing your car’s windshield in sub-freezing weather.

But the ever-helpful universe made sure that didn’t matter anyway. After one patch of icy road during a lunch break, I no longer had a car. No injuries, it’s true (thank heaven), but no transportation either.

As I listened for the sound of a marching band in the distance, I wondered if it was possible to take a week back for a refund. (If nothing else, I had a chance to beat the Super Bowl rush.)

What can you do?

We’ve all been there – the days and weeks when it seems like the world is personally out to get you. You know the thought is ridiculous, but as events accumulate like snowflakes in a blizzard, it stops mattering whether it’s purposeful or not. You just want the blessed train to stop, already.

And maybe a blizzard isn’t the worst comparison I could think of. Or a flood, or a fire, or some similar wide-scale natural disaster. Not because of the devastation it leaves. But because of the dependency it creates.

When a disaster gets extreme enough, you realize how many friends you really have.

When a week starts tipping over like a pile of dominoes, you realize how many co-workers stand ready to lend a hand. How many friends are willing to offer a ride. How many people are thinking of you and trying to come up with ways to make something better, even just a little, so that life can become normal again. (Particularly your long-suffering wife who’s watching the pile-up from the sidelines and figuring out how to extricate the survivors.)

That’s huge.

More than huge – that’s the definition of “friend.” And even “neighbor.”

It’s easier to forget that than it should be, in a world where “friends” are a way of keeping score on Facebook and social media seems to reward social discord. Those same channels can bring people together in common purpose, of course – few tools are so poor as to have only one edge – but it’s easy to get cynical and think that “neighbors” went out with Mister Rogers.

Until you get reminded otherwise. And reminded. And reminded.

That’s the best kind of parade.

So thank you, everyone. Now and in the future. As the good lieutenant says, I’ll be all right.

Just help me keep an eye on that freeway. It’s a long way down.

And you never do quite get “Louie, Louie” out of your head.

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A Healthy Respect

When you think about it, we don’t ask for that much from our presidential candidates. Just the agelessness of Superman or Wonder Woman. The steel-clad sweat glands of the Terminator. And maybe the all-around athleticism of Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man.

Simple, really.

As you may have gathered from the most recent news cycles, though, we don’t exactly have the Clark Kent candidacy yet. On one side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton’s attempt to continue her campaign through a case of pneumonia drew alarmed coverage from journalists across the country. But there was plenty of criticism left for her opponent Donald Trump as he openly hesitated about releasing his own recent medical information, before eventually presenting the results of his latest physical on-air to Dr. Oz.

Now, on one level, I get it. The presidency is a highly stressful, demanding job. When you look at the before-and-after pictures, our typical Leader of the Free World looks like they’ve aged about 20 years overnight. And when both candidates are among the oldest to ever run for the position, it can be important to know whether they’re one good White House dinner away from saying “Your turn, Mr. Vice President.”

But I’m also not too surprised that a candidate would hold that information back. Or a president, for that matter. In a way, we all but demand it.

Simply put, we don’t do sickness very well.

The Christian writer Max Lucado once noted that if you ever want to stop a conversation cold, ask someone what they think about their impending death. We don’t want reminders. Not as a species. Not as a country. Entire industries are built on the premise that a person can always be young, beautiful, and healthy, a movie star on Main Street.

Illness? Worthy of sympathy, of course. But please, have the decency to get better soon so we can go back to our fantasy. As I’ve mentioned before, even the best-intentioned friend can begin to suffer “compassion fatigue” when continually exposed to the reality of a long-term physical condition.

So we build up an ideal. And to meet that ideal, our presidents lie.

It’s not a new thing, born of reality TV and the celebrity presidency. Franklin Roosevelt concealed the extent of his polio, attempting to “walk” with braces in public and never letting his wheelchair be photographed. Jack Kennedy publicly played rough-and-tumble football games with his brothers to hide his difficulties with back pain and Addison’s disease. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke that basically incapacitated him for the last year and a half of his presidency; the public was told he was suffering “nervous exhaustion.”

Never let ‘em see you suffer. Keep up the face at all costs.

Sometimes, of course, the face slips – and oh, boy, do we react. The elder George Bush famously tried to attend a state dinner despite an illness, and was roundly ridiculed when he threw up on the lap of the Japanese prime minister as a result. Even lesser reminders of physical imperfection become the stuff of late-night comedy – when Gerald Ford, a former college athlete, began suffering an extended attack of the clumsies, it pretty much launched the career of Chevy Chase.

And each moment with derision, we remind our presidential aspirants to build that wall a little higher.

I’m not saying presidential candidates should be dishonest. At this level, the information often needs to be out there. But some of the burden is on us, too. We need to be able to react without hysteria, without mockery, and with as much common sense and calm judgment as we can bring to the table. (A little sympathy might not hurt, either.)

Trying to pretend an illness isn’t there can make things worse. We all know that. But if we insist on the mask, we’ll get it.

And I guarantee, it won’t be hiding a superhero.

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Keeping Watch

On Wednesday evening, I’m pretty sure Denver International Airport was tracking an Unidentified Flying Missy.

As Heather waved me over to the car, Missy began bouncing in the passenger seat. And bouncing. And … well, you get the idea. She had a cold, she had a seat belt, and at that moment, absolutely none of that mattered.

“Hi, you!” I called out. Missy was too excited for anything but a laugh and a hug. And oh, what a hug!

Longmont was still most of an hour’s drive away. But I was already home.

***

For a lot of movie fans, Oct. 21 was Future Day, the 30-years-ahead date reached by the time-traveling DeLorean in “Back to the Future II.” For me, it was more like Back to the Present – or maybe Back to Reality.

I had been off to Austin, Texas for four days on my first extended business trip since changing jobs. That meant a lot of planning, and not just for plane tickets and hotel reservations. It also meant dealing with the two biggest unknowns for an out-of-state stay: the health of my wife Heather, and the reaction of our disabled ward, Missy.

As it turned out, we hit a good patch with Heather: the symptoms of her MS began to subside about two days before takeoff. Neither of us were sure how long it would last, but we weren’t going to complain, any more than a pilot gripes about hitting unexpected good weather.

Missy … was a little more complicated.

Mind you, Missy’s dad used to be a traveling salesman. So having a relative away for large chunks of time used to be nothing new. But that had been a long time ago and Missy had always been a “Daddy’s girl” – after Heather and I moved in, one of her most common questions while I was at work was “Where’s he?”

Missy’s perception of time can be interesting. On the one hand, she easily recalls faces from more than 35 years ago. But she can also worry when someone is gone for more than a couple of hours, keeping a vigil in the bay window until their return. Our first real test for an extended absence had been the flood, when I was working 14-to-15 hour days for the newspaper, but even then I was still coming home at night.

Then, she had dived into artwork, her blues and browns evoking the deluge around her. We could only hope to be so lucky a second time.

We weren’t.

***

“She slept for maybe 2 hours” came a text from Heather on the first day. Part of that was from a head cold, part from waiting up for me.

Further updates: Missy was spending time in her room, except for a little bit of painting and puzzles. She was trying to talk into the telephone. (I had called the other night to reassure her.) She wasn’t taking her bath.

In the middle of it, Heather pointed out the upside. Missy hadn’t done this when other relatives had moved out, or when Heather had taken her big trip to Devil’s Tower. That at least pointed to something special.

“U are very awesome,” the message on my phone read.

It had become a Dorothy moment for all of us, when you realize the value of something through its absence. For Dorothy, lost in Oz, it was the Kansas farmhouse. For others, it might be a lost relative, a longtime job, an old home that had to be left behind.

We were lucky. Ours could be cured in four days, without the intervention of a humbug wizard. And we’d realized more than ever how strong a family we’d become.

***

Toward the end, Missy began to perk up a little. She worked out her new stereo (especially the volume) and even dressed herself – a bit creatively – for the trip to the airport. Even so, I’m not sure she believed I was coming back until the moment she saw me.

Then there could be no doubt. Or escaping the force 5 hug.

Home was healed. Missy had learned I would come back. And that night as I closed her door, I re-learned the five most magic words in the universe:

“See you in the morning.”

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Walking in the Dark

The distance falls away softly, a yard at a time in the still of a Longmont night.

Step. Step. And step again.

Even just a few blocks from Main Street, sounds are muted and far between. The metallic chime of a sprinkler hitting a fence. The odd car. The ripple of the Oligarchy Ditch, making its own muffled and effortless journey.

It’s a short trip that would take five minutes in a car. On foot, it’s closer to 20, with light and activity only gaining a more normal level as the destination grows nearer.

Step. Step. Another step still.

There are worse ways to pick up your groceries.

I’ve always been fond of the late nights and the early mornings, when even a smaller city seems to be a world transformed. And I’ve always been fond of walking, a habit I probably inherited from my English granddad even if I didn’t inherit his love of doing it at the hottest part of the day. (“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,” as they say.)

So when the opportunity came to merge the two, making regular forays into the dark for a few supplies and a little quiet, I seized the moment. And night upon night, it’s oddly regenerating – maybe even a bit familiar.

After all, Heather and I have been doing a lot of walking in the dark lately.

Things have progressed slowly since my wife was diagnosed with MS last spring. Days get measured not in hours, but in careful rations of energy – how much can be done today? How far will a window of relief open? How much rest is needed now to turn tomorrow’s plans from theory into action?

Sometimes the calculations go badly awry. We’ve already ridden out one flare, a week stolen by pain and dizziness where traveling to the bathroom requires the timing and partnership of a carefully measured waltz.

Step. Step. And step again.

It’s a longer journey than 20 minutes. Streetlights are few and far between. Once again, it seems to carry us through the world while keeping us somehow apart from it.

And yet. Somehow, slowly, progress does seem to come.

It comes in pieces, the resumption of the ordinary that we had once taken for granted. A few hours of peaceful sleep. A chore as simple as cleaning the bird cage. A realization that she’s feeling tired at the end of a Saturday – not the all-consuming fatigue of illness and pain, but a more ordinary exhaustion from having two young nieces come over to play.

Those are the moments of hope, when the pavement draws near to something at last.

I know how fortunate I am in my actual walks into the night, to be in a place and situation where I can travel peacefully. I’m only beginning to realize how fortunate we are in this larger walk. This is a rockier road, with more than its share of broken pavement, but hope does come. Hope can come. No matter how far away it may seem.

Step. Step. And step again.

Thinking back, the solitude of the night was always more illusion than reality. When walking, it’s a blessed insulation, a chance to put the trials of the day at arms’ length. On the bigger path, it can feel more like isolation, feeling like nothing can touch this topsy-turvy world you’ve come to inhabit. In both cases, friends and neighbors are closer than they seem.

That, too, is regenerating.

Another night. Another walk. Another journey. But every journey leads somewhere eventually, if you just keep walking.

Let’s see what the next step will bring.

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If There’s Anything …

I’m tempted to just write the words “Thank you” and be done with it this week. After all, what else is there for me to say?

I’m referring, of course, to the steady stream of comments, offers and good wishes that followed the appearance of last week’s column, where I noted that my wife Heather had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That included the oddly celebratory mood both of us had been feeling, since we had finally ripped the mask off our opponent and knew what we were fighting.

Pieces like that are always a little risky to write. My oldest rule for this column, taught to me a long time ago, is “No navel gazing” – anything said here has to be of interest to more than just me. There has to be a universal tie, something for a reader to latch onto and care about, even in the most personal of stories.

Even so, I was shocked at just how many of you turned out to care very much indeed.

Some of you shared words of encouragement or stories of friends and family with MS that kept living normal lives. Others had suggestions for how diet could help Heather, or how activity could. A couple of very powerful accounts talked of their own struggles to put a name to a chronic condition and how isolating and painful it could be to just not know.

And of course, from friends and family across the board, we’ve heard the invocation: “If there’s anything I can do …”

Simple words. Powerful ones, too.

We’ve all said it, of course. Often when we don’t know what else to say. The times when the mountain seems so large and threatening, a mystery too great to even comprehend – and yet, we know we can’t let a friend go up it alone.

And so, when the hard news comes, we reach out a hand. Maybe with a confident grip, maybe unsure of our own strength and ability. After all, sometimes there isn’t much one can do. The late, great fantasy author Terry Pratchett, who died recently from Alzheimer’s-related complications, once said that he appreciated the sentiment but was only accepting offers from “very high-end experts in brain chemistry.”

But it does help. More than anyone realizes.

Pain isolates. It can be the physical pain of an illness, the emotional pain of a death, the all-consuming anguish of news too terrible to comprehend. All of it tries to draw limits, to seal us off from the world, to trap us in our own bodies and heads.

Granted, some withdrawal can be necessary to heal. But it’s easy to get trapped in the cycle, to become convinced that you have to deal with this yourself, that you don’t want to be a burden. It feels like a surrender to ask for help, an admission that you’ve lost control.

And then, someone reaches beyond the walls.

It may not be huge. It may not even be much more than the words themselves. But like a candle in the night, it becomes a small gesture that changes the landscape.

Someone cares.

Someone noticed.

Someone wants to help, even if they’re not quite sure how.

Someone’s heart has opened to me.

That is a powerful realization.

A friend recently reminded me that it’s a gift to allow others to give. It’s a harder lesson than it sounds. But a true one.

In admitting our mutual need, we summon our mutual strength. We become a family. No … we remind ourselves of the family that we already are.

Thank you for that reminder.

“If there’s anything I can do ….”

Trust me. You certainly have.

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Words of Honor

“He wrapped himself in quotations – as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”

— Rudyard Kipling

 

Slowly but surely, the words are claiming the wall.

Muhammad Ali watches from one point, Saint Paul from another. Novelists share space with masters of social media. It’s a small crowd right now, but I know how quickly it will grow, piling wit onto wisdom onto timeless endurance.

I ought to know. We’ve been here before.

And as before, it’s more comforting than a few rows of taped computer paper has any right to be.

 

“In the garden of literature, the highest and the most charismatic flowers are always the quotations.”

— Mehmet Murat ildan

 

It started, as it often does, with Heather’s health. My wife is a lovely, funny, creative and tough-minded person. But she also tends to attract chronic illness the way a car accident attracts rubberneckers. Years ago, before we met, it was Crohn’s disease. A couple of years after we married, ankylosing spondylitis came along for the ride. Endometriosis used to be part of the mix, and we’ve never been quite sure if lupus was milling about in the crowd or not.

Lately, as some of you have read here, there’s been something new. We’re still pinning down all the details – which is a bloodless way of saying that we’ve been going through a lot of sleepless nights and painful days trying to figure out what in blue blazes is going on.

One morning I had just checked in with my boss to mention that I was going to have to work from home – again – in order to help Heather through the day. She sent back her best wishes for the struggle – and a few words from Muhammad Ali for comfort.

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses,” the words read, “behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”

And all of a sudden, I remembered.

 

“Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author?”

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

 

The last time something like this happened, back in Kansas, Heather had had to spend far too much time in the bathroom. (Having Crohn’s in combination with severe back pain will tend to do that.) So, to make life a little more bearable – or at least entertaining – I started to paper the opposite wall with quotes.

Like many writers, I’ve always been a fan of the well-chosen word, whether from prophets or Muppets. A good quote is a quick moment in life when your mind suddenly blinks and then laughs, or winces, or nods “Yes – yes, that’s exactly how it is.” They’ve decorated my college papers, my desks, even my email at work.

And now, they decorated my bathroom. Heather found the first one and I quickly gave it a lot of brothers and sisters. Soon, you couldn’t drop a hand towel without coming across the latest aphorism or wisecrack.

Now, we seemed to be in a similar place. Maybe it was time for a similar remedy. This particular illness was keeping her confined to bed for much of the day, so I picked a readily visible bedroom wall and went to work.

Some space went to encouragement. (“We must live lives of unstoppable hope.” – Stant Litore.)

Some was claimed by humorous sympathy. (“I’m not clumsy. It’s just that the floor hates me, the tables and chairs are bullies, and the wall gets in the way.” – Liza Mahone.)

And some, inevitably, went to doctor snark. (“I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.)

I don’t know. Maybe it’s not doing anything but using up ink and Scotch tape. But maybe, in its own small way, it helps. It’s a way to bring life over the walls, to remind us that someone’s been there before, that there’s more to think about than “Ow, ow, ow.”

Maybe, to borrow from Miguel de Cervantes, these “short sentences drawn from long experience” are better medicine than we know. I hope so. I really do.

Sticks and stones can break our bones. But words can maybe heal us.

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The Kitchen-Table Journalist

I think I’m becoming a rumor.

That’s usually my wife’s job. When we lived in Kansas, Heather got out of the house so rarely that she said people would decide I was making her up – or that I had quietly buried her in the backyard, between the rosebush and the rabbit warren.

Now it’s my turn.

It’s been the same cause both times: Heather’s chronic health issues. Sometimes she hurts so intensely that she needs me close by for even basic things. Sometimes Missy has a cold or something else that keeps her out of her day program, and Heather lacks the strength to deal with her by herself for a long period of time.

Either way, it means it’s once again to discover those three prominent words of the modern workplace: “Work From Home.” Sometimes for days at a time.

I’m lucky. I know that. Between cell phones and the Internet, being a home-based reporter is easier than it’s ever been.  And I’ve got a lot of company. According to the Census Bureau, almost 10 percent of Americans work at home at least one day a week; almost 4.5 percent work the majority of their week that way.

If the scholars are right, it’s even good for me. One study out of Stanford of a Chinese travel agency found that telecommuters were more productive, were sick less often and had less turnover. The main drawback was they also got promoted less often.

I can believe the productivity gains. When your desk is the kitchen table, you feel a pressure to justify every minute, to make sure your boss knows that you’re not just curled up with a soap opera and a can of Coke. And since you’re in familiar surroundings, able to attend to domestic needs as they occur, that surely doesn’t hurt.

But there’s a less obvious downside, too. When you work from home, it gets increasingly difficult to tell which one is which.

I’m sure most of you know what I’m talking about. Ideally, home’s supposed to be the place where you get away from work, where the problems of projects, deadlines and office drama can be replaced with the problems of chores, bills and family drama. And among all that, it’s the chance to recharge, to be with the people you’re doing it all for, to get back in touch with the world of pets, paints and bedtime stories.

But when the workplace becomes the homeplace, the boundaries disappear. The outside stress comes in, by invitation. And you begin to understand what the Flash felt like as you dash between the roles of employee, spouse, parent and sickroom attendant. Often at the same time.

Put it this way. Human cloning can’t come fast enough.

Don’t get me wrong. Telecommuting is convenient and I wouldn’t turn it down for the world. But it’s also exhausting. Work from home is no disguised vacation day. Sometimes it even makes you long for the comparative sanity of the office, where you’re only one thing to one person.

And yet, even as it creates a strange marriage of two worlds, it also makes it possible to keep those worlds going.

When I first started out, at The Garden City Telegram, I had a similar stretch of time where Heather’s needs would often call me home. Back then, my answer was to work an unholy number of hours when I was at the newsroom, to trade off against the times I wasn’t there.

This is better. Not perfect, but better.

And better still will be the day when my worlds no longer need to collide. When Heather is again well enough to throw me out of the house. When my co-workers can stop listing my appearances with those of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and my boss can actually see me in the flesh.

I wonder if I’ll need a name tag?