The Beauty of Slow

My dear readers, it is time to return to this blog’s theme:  a snail’s space.  Remember why I started this blog?  It was because I wanted to write about what it is like to be a "snail" compared to the rest of the world and to offer strategies and encouragement for others who, like me, are trying to cope with being "slow".

In this fast-paced western society, slow is not very highly valued.  In fact, slow-paced people are usually criticized.  They don't measure up.  They don't produce quickly enough.  They're never on time, etc, etc.  In the past decade, I observed some new favorable attention given to "slow", but it mostly had to do with food.  But now, I have discovered the magazine, Bella Grace.  It is the first magazine I've encountered that glorifies "slow".  I think this is why Bella Grace speaks to me so much.

While reading recent issues of Bella Grace, I came across several beautiful articles written by a lovely woman, Elle Harris.  

I contacted Elle via her blog: thisquotablelife.wordpress.com and we embarked on a new friendship.  Elle suggested that we “guest blog” for each other.  What an honor and a blessing!  I asked Elle if she would be willing to write a piece titled “The Beauty of Slow” to fit with my blog’s theme.  Dear readers, you are in for a treat!

It is my distinct honor to share with you:

The Beauty of Slow

By

Elle Harris

There is a beauty to being slow ... and it is a beauty that took me some time to appreciate. Slow, to me, is an acquired taste, and in younger years it was only bitter – not sweet.  I remember so many instances where time was my enemy – every minute a wrestling match for what I could get done next or cross off my never-ending list. At that time, I wasn’t so much a human being as a human doing, and while I believe we were given hands and feet to do ... more and more I am coming to understand that we were also given minds to reflect, lungs to breathe, and a heartbeat ... slow and steady ... with which we were meant to keep time.

What a difference my life would have felt, and still would feel, if I only paid more attention to that heart – to that beat. When I do take the time to listen to the parts of myself that speak quietly, I hear a great deal of questions ... questions I don’t know the answer to, but I want to. Like when someone asks me to tell them what I did in a weekend, I have to start backwards or I literally can’t remember. Why is that? Or when I was a little girl, I used to sleep like a starfish – open and free – limbs tossed this way and that haphazardly. Now, I sleep curled up on my side.  What happened to that little girl? What am I protecting myself from? Sometimes I have a sense of urgency to accomplish more, and I run myself ragged from the first rays to the last, only to exhaust myself for those who want the best of me. Why do I waste those best parts on a thankless day, instead of a precious night?

As you can see – I’ve not genuinely figured it out yet, but I’m thinking, and I’m trying, because when I do get it right ... the beauty of slow seeps in and enchants me. Slow looks like watching the sleepy dreamer beside me, whose chest rises and falls in peaceful rhythm to his unconscious reverie.  Slow feels like stretching every limb to its limit as I walk, and hike, and run to explore the hidden magic of nature. Slow sounds like hearing the words behind the song – becoming a part of the melody itself as it reaches the deepest parts of me. Slow tastes like the sea-salt air, the lilac wind, the damp dew of grass, the whispered sweetness of lilies.

It is the afterglow – the lullaby hum – the perfect contentment of still. And I may not have figured it out yet, but there’s one thing I know ... there is never such beauty, as the beauty of slow.

For more of Elle's beautiful writing and photography, check out her blog at: thisquotablelife.wordpress.com

Stories to Enchant

Now that I've started this next chapter of my life (ie, life after leaving Big Pharma and Corporate America), I am focusing my efforts on my writing.  One of my first articles to be submitted to a magazine is copied here.  I submitted "Stories to Enchant" to Bella Grace magazine.  I absolutely LOVE that magazine and anxiously await each quarterly issue.  Bella Grace is a work of art.  Their motto is: "We believe: An ordinary life can be extraordinary; there is beauty in IMPERFECTION, and that magic can be found in the everyday."  If you've never seen it, take a look at their website:  Bella Grace.

I've not heard, yet, whether the editors will accept my article.  Fingers crossed!  Even if they don't, I'm glad to have written it.  It is a beautiful story about my mother's childhood growing up in utter poverty on a small family farm in Southern Illinois.  My mother was able to find the extraordinary within her ordinary life; she could see the beauty in imperfection, and she definitely found magic in the everyday.  I hope you will enjoy reading "Stories to Enchant."

Stories to Enchant

By Jamie Scism-Bacon
Quotes by Nancy Scism

My mother grew up without the things of luxury that bring hygge to my life.  Little things like … an indoor bathroom.  It wasn’t that conveniences such as plumbing, electricity, and indoor bathrooms weren’t common during her childhood, it was that Mom grew up on a small farm in rural southern Illinois with three siblings and hardworking, but extremely poor, parents.

I loved listening to Mom’s childhood stories while I was growing up.  They sounded so fantastic, almost magical because of how different her life had been compared to my own.  But now that I’m grown, I can better appreciate the bitter hardship she not only endured as a child, but succeeded in finding joy and beauty within.

One of my favorite stories was about how she and her family took their weekly baths.  They did not have the extravagance of a shower, much less a large jacuzzi style tub for enjoying a decadent bubble bath.

“We started out with a round aluminum galvanized metal tub. And I was the only one that could really sit with their legs in the tub.  Everybody else had to just set their bottom in and let their legs hang out and bathe one part at a time.

Whoever was cleanest would bathe first and usually that was me, so I’d be lucky!  So, that person would bathe and get out and the next person would get in.  If the old bathwater started to get too cold, we would just add hot water to it.  After the last person bathed, a couple of buckets would be dipped out and then two people would carry the tub outside and dump it.

When I was in about seventh grade, we got really advanced – we got an oblong bath tub that you could actually sit down in and straighten your legs out.  We still had to carry water in buckets to the tub, but by the time we got that tub, we had a hot water heater, so we no longer had to heat the water on the stove.  We could actually run water from the kitchen faucet into the bucket and take it to the tub.  In the summertime, we set the tub out on the back porch in the sunshine and let the sun warm up the water.  Then you could bathe outside!  Mary [her older sister] and I were pretty modest, so Mother hung a curtain between the wall of the porch and our stack of firewood, so we could bathe behind that.

Our kitchen sink was where you washed up for a meal, got ready for school, brushed your teeth or washed your face.  You didn’t wash your hair in the bathtub, you washed your hair in the kitchen sink.  You just bent over and put your head under the faucet and washed it that way.”

Now, thanks to the knowledge of what my mom went through, every time I step into a hot shower, my soul thanks God for hot running water at my fingertips – such lavishness that so many of us take for granted.

Besides an indoor bathroom, Mom’s family also longed for space in which to sleep and live.  Before her younger brother was born, Mom shared one tiny bedroom with her older sister and brother.

“The width of the bedroom was the length of a bed with about a foot at the end of it.  Jim [her older brother] had his bed across the end of that bedroom and Mary and I slept together in the other bed, which we turned lengthwise in the room.  We didn’t have a closet, so Daddy put a pipe across the corner of the bedroom for the three of us to hang our clothes on.  And, we didn’t have any dresser, we just kept our clothes in a box under the bed.  Later, I had a suitcase I kept my clothes in.  The very first dresser I ever owned was the one I got when I got married.  And, oh my gosh, I just felt so wealthy!”

I look now at my huge house that is so big I can’t keep it clean on my own – I have to hire a cleaning service to help me keep it under control.  I am so blessed with abundance!

Another of Mom’s magical stories was about milking the cows.  I don’t know if magical is the right word.  Perhaps “fantastic” is a better word, in the true sense of it seeming like a fantasy, something unreal to me in my own world.

“We had to milk the cows twice a day.  So, we would get up at five o’clock in the morning and begin.  The cows would be standing at the gate and they would know which cow was to go in first and they knew which stall, or stanchion, was the one that they were supposed to go into.  So, they’d go put their head in, looking forward to eating.  Then we would slide a board across, up by their neck and fasten them there while they ate.  We would usually turn in three at a time, depending on who all was milking.

Often, I had other jobs as well as the milking because I couldn’t milk more than about one cow in one sitting.  One of my jobs, especially in the evening milking, was the task of holding the cow’s tail, so she wouldn’t swat at the flies and hit Mother in the face with her tail.  That tail hair really hurts if it’s swatted against you, especially in your face.  I was also assigned the job of grabbing the shovel, if necessary, and holding it under the cow’s backend.  And so, whichever it was, I held the shovel - and if I got splattered a little bit, well, that was better than Mother getting it all over her.

After we got a larger herd of about twenty cows, Daddy got a milking machine and we would put that on the cow that was the hardest to milk.  They were all different - and the thing that made them difficult or easy to milk was the way their udders were made.  The hardest one to milk was old Buttercup.  She had really large teats, so Daddy usually milked her, because it made your hands so sore - you had to have really strong hands to milk her.

Most of our cows were very good natured.  Usually, the only reason a cow would kick was if it had a sore place on its udder and you accidentally got on it, or if the flies were biting.  But, we had one cow that was kind of excitable – old Red.  She would kick.  So, we had ‘kickers’ we would put on her.  The old-fashioned kickers hooked over the part of the cow’s hind leg that sticks out.  You’d hook that over each leg and then pull a chain to link those together.  You’d pull the chain up tight, so then the cow would not be able to lift her foot.  But, old Red was able to kick so hard, she would loosen those and then, man, you might get kicked!  So, Daddy bought a pair of more modern kickers, which were a big contraption that fit down over the cow’s back like a wish bone.  The prongs of the wishbone would rest right in front of the cow’s hip bones, so if she tried to lift her leg, she couldn’t.  Well, old Red discovered that she could buck with those on, so she did!”

When I buy my milk in plastic jugs from the supermarket, the nitty gritty biology of everything that goes on behind the scenes never occurs to me.  No mess.  No dirt.  No grime.  All is sterile and in a grab-and-go atmosphere.  I laugh at myself as I think of my habit of washing my hands when I get home from grocery shopping in an attempt to avoid other people’s germs.  And, not once do I think about the possibility of being physically hurt while grabbing my gallon of milk!

One of Mom’s stories that always made my heart swell with tenderness and joy was her description of calving season.  It is obvious to me that I come by my love for animals through her.

“Calving season was a wonderful time.  I remember I got to see old Red give birth to her calf.  We would keep the cows in a pasture closer to the barn when they were about ready to calve.  Old Buttercup had twin calves one time.  We had a big stall inside the barn, where we would keep the calf for a few days after it was born.  The best smell you’ve ever experienced was when there was a newborn calf and it was all silky and sweet and cuddly – it smells even better than a puppy.  I would snuggle up with them and lay down with them in the straw.  It was pretty neat.  And then, when they got bigger, we’d let them be out with their mom a little while.  But, we needed to wean them pretty quickly to a bucket because we needed to sell the milk.  So, we would wean the calf away from its mother and it was my job to feed the calf and get it started drinking out of a bucket.  I’d mix up this powdered substance with water.  It was supposed to have the nutritional value of the cow’s milk.  Then, I’d have to put my hand down in the bucket, with my fingers pointing up and let the calf suck on my fingers to get it started to drink out of the bucket.  Once it was able to suck on my fingers, I’d slip my fingers out of its mouth and then it learned how to drink out of the bucket.  They had teeth, but it didn’t hurt, because they weren’t trying to chew, they were trying to suck.”

I marveled at Mom’s accounts of chores she had to do on the farm.  While my childhood chores involved dusting our household furniture and vacuuming our carpets, Mom’s were directly related to contributing to the family’s income.

“When we first had cows, we sold cream, so it was my job to separate the cream from the milk.  When we brought the milk into the house, it had to be strained into this ‘separator’.  The can itself was metal and it was about three feet tall and had a little window on the front and then a funnel shaped bottom, which also had a little window in it.  So, whoever milked would pour the milk into the top of the separator and strain it.  Then, I would pour water into that, so it would be half milk and half water and that would sit until the next milking.  Then I had to drain off that watery milk down at the bottom.  I’d watch it in the window and whenever I could see that the cream was getting close to the spigot, I’d turn it off.  It was my job to carry that milky water down to the hogs, which would usually take a couple of trips.  After I’d get the milky water drained out from underneath the cream, I’d let the cream out into a container.  Then I had to wash the separator and put a new straining pad in the strainer, so it would be ready for the next milking.  So, that was done twice a day.  We would save the cream in the refrigerator until we had the cream can full and then we’d take that over to the store and sell it.

One of the jobs I liked to do, especially because it was an inside chore, was making the butter.  We made our own butter from the cream we got.  I just had to turn the handle on the churn until it became butter and then Mother would drain the liquid off that and then wash the butter.  To wash it, she would put it in a crock and run cold water over it and squeeze the water through the butter.  She just used her hands to work it and work it and then kept pouring that water off until all of the butter milk was out of the butter.  After that, she salted it and worked the salt into it and shaped it into loaves or a pat about the size of a pie crust.  And, oh, that fresh butter was really good.”

I imagine the day is coming, or perhaps is already here, when most people do not know how to make their own cottage cheese.  I certainly did not.  Mine comes in a plastic container.  But, my mom’s description of making cottage cheese sounds so fun to me!  I want to try it!

“This wasn’t one of my chores, but I liked to watch Mother make cottage cheese.  She would let a crock of milk sit out on the counter in the kitchen at room temperature until it clabbered.  Then she would cut through it with a knife, sort of like making a checker board.  She would cook that on the stove and the little checker board pieces would become the cheese curds.  After that, she strained it, and the liquid that was left over, which was called the whey, would just be fed to the hogs.  Then she put the curds in a pillow case or a feed sack and hung it out on the clothes line for it to finish dripping.  Once all the liquid dripped out, she would bring the bag into the house, put the curds into a big bowl, salt them, pour cream over them, and stir it up and that was our cottage cheese.”

Though her daily life was demanding, there were moments in each day that brought comfort.

“In the mornings, when we would come in from our morning chores, Mother would always be cooking breakfast.  Every morning we would have bacon and eggs and toast and then some cooked cereal, either cream of wheat or oatmeal, and some juice or canned fruit.  So, it was nice to come in and smell all of that being cooked.

Also, our bedtime ritual was something that always made me feel cozy.  We’d get our pajamas on and brush our teeth and get in bed.  Then we’d call to Mother and say, “Mom, I’m ready to be tucked in.”  And Mother would come and literally tuck us in with the blanket up around us and, oh, that was just really great – it was so comforting and made me feel secure.  One time during a cold winter, Mother heated a brick on top of the cook stove and wrapped it in a towel and put it in our bed.  Oh, that was wonderful.  But, that was not a nightly occurrence, it was just a special treat.”

When I think of a special treat, I think of key lime pie or going to a movie, but as a child, Mom considered some of the simplest things treats and any free time at all was a delight.

“When I was pretty little, one of my favorite things was when the ice man would come.  We had electricity, but we didn’t have a refrigerator – we had an ice box.  Mother would put a card in the window with a number on it to tell the man how many pounds of ice she wanted.  When he would bring the ice, he would just have a canvas thrown over his big blocks of ice in the back of his truck and then he’d take an ice pick and chop it apart, depending on the size Mom wanted.  Then, Jim and I would run out and get on the back of the truck and pick up the pieces of ice and eat ‘em!  Isn’t that crazy?  But that just seemed like the best thing in the world to us!

If I had free time, I loved to climb up in a tree and read.  My favorite tree for reading in was our big maple out front, because some of its limbs were arranged so that there were two parallel limbs I could sit on and then lean back against the third one.  So, I would climb that tree with my book and read up there.  That was so wonderful – it was just like a heavenly place for me.

Another special treat was when I got to play in my play house.  I didn’t have an actual house, it was an area behind our smoke house.  I marked it off with bean poles – those were my pretend walls.  I had an old stove, sort of like a camp stove, that Mother didn’t want anymore.  Oh, that was so great that I could pretend to be cooking.  My cabinets were orange crates that were turned up on end and my table was two orange crates put together.  I had a table cloth that was actually an old head scarf.  I would make mud pies and then cut them and serve them to pretend guests.  Sometimes Mother would go out there and sit on a log or something and she would be my guest.  Mother would occasionally give me something like some old cocoa that she didn’t like or her empty spice bottles and then I’d fill the spice bottles with water – just silly stuff like that.”

Like most children, Christmas was a magical time for Mom.  What I find remarkable, though, is how little it took to thrill her.  I’ve witnessed my own child and my nieces and nephews so inundated with presents at Christmas that they went from one present to the next, unwrapping each and tossing the gift aside to unwrap the next.  Sometimes I’ve even felt guilty about what appeared to be gluttonous behavior on their parts – caused, of course, by our own overindulgence of them.  By comparison, my mom’s magical Christmas mornings, were of the simplest means.

“Some of my favorite memories were about Christmas morning.  It was just magical.  We would have our stockings, but almost as exciting as the stocking, was the stuff that Santa would leave under the tree.  There would be an opened bag of horehound candy, one of mixed nuts, and a coconut and sometimes a pomegranate.  We didn’t have those things on a regular basis, so that was really special.  In our stockings we’d have an orange and an apple, and usually some nuts and then one toy or gift.  One year there was a doll dress that Mary had made.  At the time, I didn’t know that Mary had made it, of course, but that was really special.  And then, Mother would fix a big Christmas dinner.  So, I’d be smelling that and looking at all the stuff that Santa had left, and it all just seemed enchanting.”

Enchanting, indeed.  My mom made my own life enchanting by instilling in me the ability to see the wonder of nature, to feel the magic of simple moments, and to cherish the love of family.  For those treasures, I will always feel wealthy.

Jamie Scism-Bacon, PhD, is a scientist and writer who loves nature, animals, and being creative.  When she’s not writing, she can be found out in the woods with her camera or crocheting in her favorite chair.  You can follow her latest adventures at https://asnailsspace.blogspot.com/.

Event #7: End of an Era / Reflections on Firsts

After Blaze died in the summer of 2018, I pretty much spiraled into an abyss of depression.  On top of that, the company I worked for was going through reorganizations from top to bottom.  There was chaos and uncertainty everywhere.  Just like in the movie “Office Space”, many people had to interview for their own jobs.  Those who were not chosen to be rehired into their job were placed into a pool of people for “reallocation.”  Reallocation basically means that you have a specified amount of time to find a different job within the company or you’re toasty toast.  Several people got “toasted.”  Needless to say, employee morale across the company was down.  My own department went through some huge changes, none of which I cared for.

Reflecting on what mattered to me most, weighing the value of time versus money, asking myself if my identity was still tied to being a scientist, I pondered the possibility of leaving the industry for good.  I found myself facing a similar question to that of the character, Tomas, from the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,”: [paraphrased because I can’t find the exact quote online at the moment] What is left of a man once his inborn mission in life is gone?  In other words, “Who am I if I am not a scientist (or substitute a specific role within the broader term “scientist”)?”  Fortunately, I had to face versions of this question a few times along the way in my career.  Each time I found that I acquired a new goal and eventually gained a new self-image, a new expanded identity and I was ultimately still me.  I gathered those memories to myself and held them close like a security blanket.  My past ability to recreate myself bolstered my courage to take the plunge.  In late November of 2018 I told my supervisor I wanted to leave the company at the end of the year.  I was grateful to my supervisor that she permitted me to finish out the year, which allowed me to qualify for a bonus (a source of money that would be quite needed in the coming year, given that our household income was about to drop by 55%).

As a good-bye of sorts to my fellow colleagues, I wrote a piece I titled, “Reflections on Firsts” and shared it in the final departmental newsletter of 2018.  I’ve shared a copy of that here, dear reader:

Reflections on Firsts

For many of us, this newsletter represents the end of an era.  It represents “lasts”, if you will:  the last newsletter written by Julie, the last quarter we’re all together as Clin Pharm Sci Com, and, for me, the last year of my career with Lilly.  Coming to the end of such a huge part of my life has caused me to pause and reflect on all of the experiences I had while working for Lilly.  Among my fondest are memories of my “firsts”.

Lilly was my first real job!  At what I thought was an old age of 31, I joined Lilly and was given an assignment of setting up my first laboratory from scratch.  Wow.  That seemed like a huge responsibility and I had never been allowed to spend money like that – ordering all of the equipment, microscopes, laminar flow hoods, balances, supplies, chemicals, everything.  But then, followed an even bigger first.  I was asked to turn a large storage closet into a surgical suite for performing in situ rat brain perfusion studies.  What a rewarding experience!  I worked with construction guys to install ventilation for a downdraft hood, so we could use isoflurane gas anesthesia for the rats, instead of the inferior way they had been anesthetizing them with only phenobarbital injections.  We installed surgical tables, dissecting microscopes, perfusion pumps, water baths, gas cylinders, everything necessary to perform surgery.  It was one of my proudest moments at Lilly.

After a year of working by myself in the lab, I was allowed to hire my first direct report, James Bacon (yes, there’s a connection J).  Together, he and I developed Lilly’s first in vitro blood-brain barrier model.  We were nominated for, and won, the President’s Award for that work!  (See photo at end of page).

My very first trip outside the United States was on behalf of Lilly.  Because of my work, I would eventually travel to England, Scotland, Switzerland, Puerto Rico, and Italy.  Those were exciting adventures for which I felt honored to represent Lilly.

After I tired of my time in the lab, I pursued my dream of being a writer and landed my first job as a medical writer at Lilly’s US Affiliate.  Little did I know that my role as a medical writer would open a whole new world of firsts for me.

I got to experience what it was like to lead a group of physicians and scientists in writing a clinical manuscript.  You all know what that’s like – VERY different from the writing we did as graduate students!  When my first clinical manuscript was published, my husband surprised me at work with a huge bouquet of flowers.  That seems funny now, so many publications later, but it felt like an incredible feat at the time.

While in the capacity of a medical writer at the US Affiliate, I had the privilege of being involved in a huge variety of assignments.  One year, I got to organize and lead my first Ad Hoc Advisory Board Meeting.  To accomplish that, I had to execute my first contract with a company called Virtual Meeting Services.  I had a budget, I got to choose the venue, I organized the agenda – down to the scheduled bathroom break times – I chose the meals and snacks, and I had to ensure all of the external Thought Leaders were appropriately compensated for their out-of-pocket expenses.  It was an amazing experience.  A lot of work!  I wouldn’t want to do it again, but it was something that I felt really proud of once it was accomplished.

One of the most unique “firsts” I experienced was standing in for the physician on the team during a market research study.  The purpose of the market research was to evaluate the effectiveness of the DURABLE trial manuscript that the physician and I had written together.  The physician was sick, so she asked me to take her place.  Market research is SOOO different from the types of things we writers normally experience in our day-to-day work.  This particular study involved a group of people from Lilly marketing sitting in a darkened room behind a two-way mirror while I went into the observation room and presented an overview of the DURABLE trial to a subject who had previously read the DURABLE manuscript (the subjects were practicing endocrinologists).  After my presentation, I left the observation room and went back behind the mirror.  A marketing person then entered the observation room and asked the subject questions about the DURABLE trial to see how effective the manuscript (and I) had been at communicating the results.  I felt like I was participating in some kind of FBI investigation or something.  It was so cool!

Then came my entry into Clinical Pharmacology and my very first New Drug Application submission (baricitinib – Olumiant).  O.M.G.!  I had no idea what I was getting into.  That was a year of my life I’ll never get back!  But, no, seriously, I wouldn’t trade that experience.  The feeling we had as a team, when we all were working in the wee hours of the morning to carry the submission over the finish line – that was a feeling of camaraderie, teamwork, and togetherness like I’ve never experienced before.  That was something really special!

Now, as I come to the end of dreams from the past, I smile with gratitude for all of the firsts I was so blessed to experience.  I did it!  Most of my dreams were fulfilled and there were others I didn’t even know I wanted that were given to me, as well.

Now, I dream of future firsts:  my first published freelance article, my first published photo, my first novel, first interview with a world-renowned scientist, first vet assistant position, first writing assignment requiring travel….  All are dreams.  But, I remind myself, so were my dreams of becoming a scientist, of getting a PhD, of working for a pharmaceutical company.  I recognize that all longed-for realities begin as a dream.  Who knows what lies ahead?  Perhaps firsts I haven’t even thought of.  Dreams I haven’t yet dreamt.  There’s a world of possibility and adventure out there just waiting for me to say, “Yes!”.

I’ll be writing about my next firsts on my blog at:  http://ASnailsSpace.blogspot.com

I would be delighted for you to follow me!  J

Caption:  Here we are, mere youngsters.  Little did I know that the man on the left side of Row 1 (James Bacon) would become my beloved husband and best friend.  Now, 18 years after we won the President’s Award, Jim and I will celebrate our 15^th wedding anniversary on May 22, 2019.

Events # 6: Blaze

If you are just joining, my past few blog entries have been an explanation, of sorts, for the 3-year period of time during which I wrote nothing.  If you’ve been following and wondering when the heck I was going to continue with my “Series of Unfortunate Events”, I confess that I’ve been stuck.  I’ve been avoiding writing this one.  In fact, there is something even irritating about having to write it.  I don’t know to whom or to what my irritation is directed, but I cannot deny it is there.

Blaze died.  There is nothing beautiful I can write about it.  It was horrible.  He was thirteen.  Selfish me for wanting more time.

He had arthritis badly in his left front leg and I could tell he was developing it in other joints, as well.  For years we tried to keep him as comfortable as possible with daily doses of anti-inflammatory medication and, when it seemed the pain was particularly acute, we’d give him tramadol.  One day last June, I noticed a big bulge on his left front leg.  We took him to the vet the next day and were told it was a hemangioma.  I had never heard that word before.

Our options were to euthanize him then or euthanize him later.  Basically.  I don’t mean to blame the vet.  We love our vet, but the choices seemed unnecessarily stark.  The problem was, we didn’t know yet, what the path forward for a hemangioma entailed.  We were mercifully ignorant.

The vet explained that the tumor would eventually rupture and then we would have “a bloody mess on [our] hands.”  That didn’t seem so horrible.  We’re scientists.  We’d seen plenty of blood in our time.  The vet explained that most people choose to euthanize their pet at that time, but some choose to go forward with wound management.  That didn’t sound so bad.  So, we have to clean and bandage his wound, so what?  As long as it was not harmful to Blaze, that would be okay, right?  The vet warned that the wound could become smelly.  Oh, that’s okay.  We don’t mind dealing with that.  As long as Blaze is comfortable and we aren’t doing him harm, we want to pursue the wound management route.  So, we loaded Blaze up in the car and the three of us drove home in silence.

Over the next few days, his tumor grew from the size of a quarter to about the size of a walnut, and I noticed that it was changing color.  It had started as a light pink color (the color of his skin), but now there was a dark purple center to it.  One day a little hole formed in the tissue covering the dark center and the center began to squeeze out through the hole.  The hole got larger and larger, until the whole tumor was open.  It looked like hamburger.  By now, it was about the size of a plum.

As soon as the tumor ruptured, we began the wound management process.  It was a tedious affair involving cleansing the wound with sterile saline, patting dry with sterile gauze, applying antibiotic ointment, applying sterile gauze pads over the wound, and then wrapping his whole arm in stretchy medical wrap.  There was a whole set up and breakdown process for each cleaning.  We did this twice daily.  About 4 days into the wound management process, we began to notice the odor.  The odor was of rotting flesh, because that was literally what was happening.  The vet told us we could cut away as much of the dead tissue as possible, and we tried, but I was constantly afraid I was going to hurt Blaze.

Here we are wearing masks against the stench and trying to make the best of the situation.

And, here is Blaze with his bandaged leg.

He was such a good boy through all of this – just like he had been his entire life.  So obedient.  So gentle.  He hated getting his wound cleaned, but he came to the blanket and laid down every time, anyway.  Each and every time, we gave him the best treat we could think of – peanut butter or popcorn.  Popcorn was his ultimate favorite treat all through his life.  He loved sitting at my feet while I ate a bowl of popcorn and I would toss a piece through the air and he made a game of catching it and crunching it up.  Oh, how he loved that!  Once I would get to the bottom of the bowl, he got to eat the crunchy, partially popped kernels.  Heaven on earth for him!

As the days wore on, it took more and more pain medicine to keep Blaze comfortable.  One day he stopped eating his food.  Jim and I had always said that the day he stopped eating, we would know something was seriously wrong, because he was such a food hound!  He wanted to eat constantly and we had to keep him on a strict diet to keep him from getting overweight.  During these last days, we observed that if we got his pain under control with enough meds, he would eat.  This told us a lot.  Now we were asking ourselves what was in Blaze’s best interest.

A few more days passed and Blaze refused popcorn – irrespective of how much pain medicine he had on board.  Now we had to face the unimaginable… we made the call to the vet and set the date and the time.

I don’t remember much of anything between that time and the moment we were at the vet clinic.  It was July 16 – a hot, sunny day.  Blaze, being a Sheltie, hated hot weather.  He loved winter and snow.  I remember there was a day long ago when it was 5 degrees outside and I took a photo of Blaze asleep in the sunshine on top of a heap of snow on our back porch.  Blaze loved being outside.  Even if it was sweltering, he would accompany me while tending my gardens.  As long as we were with him, he would endure the heat.  The technician asked us if we wanted to do it inside or outside.  Outside seemed the most appropriate choice.  The technicians led us first to a place in the adjacent park that was in the open sunshine.  The heat was suffocating.  Blaze hated this, I knew.  I spotted a large maple tree back across the road on the clinic’s property that was casting a large, inviting shadow.  I suggested we walk over there.

Blaze limped across the road to the shade.  I felt like a traitor.  I felt like we had tricked him.  He came over obediently, trusting us.  Jim and I were to choose the exact location on which to place one of his favorite blankets.  Something inside was rebelling.  The bigger part of me made the rebel surrender.  I chose a spot.  I looked down…and there was a FEATHER lying on the ground.  Dear reader, if you don’t know, feathers are my sign from God.  The feather did not make everything okay.  It did not make it any less difficult to kill my dog, but it confirmed the mercy and the presence of God.  I felt God close to my broken heart.

A catheter had already been placed in Blaze’s good arm.  He laid down on the blanket just as he was asked to do.  He must have wondered what was going on with all these people around him – 5 in all.  But, he just looked up at the vet, sort of with a question on his face – I don’t know, I couldn’t see for the tears flooding my eyes.  The vet told us what to expect and then asked us if we were ready.  I feel sorry for vets that they have to ask people if they are ready for their baby to die.  An automaton within me said the word, “Yes.”  The vet pushed the plunger on the syringe, then held his hands under Blaze’s chin.  Blaze’s chin fell into the vet’s hands and he lowered Blaze’s head to the blanket.  A minute passed.  Birds called, crickets chirped, cars passed, but I heard nothing.  The vet put his stethoscope to Blaze’s chest for a moment and then said, “He’s gone.”

Blaze Bacon  2005 - 2018

Go play with the angels, my precious baby.  We'll all be together again in time. 

Event #5: Self-Chosen Demotion

Throughout Jim’s hospitalization and in-home rehabilitation, I continued to try to keep up in my new role at work.  Once Jim went back to work, things became a bit more manageable, but soon a whole new set of stressors set in.

I was given the opportunity to take Six Sigma training to become a Green Belt.  I felt at the time like I needed to say yes to the offer because everybody who was anybody at the company had Six Sigma training.  I believe the training was to last a month (my memory is a bit foggy), with a full week of all-day, in-class training during the final week.  The expectation was that we would keep up with our regular full-time jobs on top of the training.  One of my colleagues had the good sense to say no to the offer because she could see that the work load would be insane.  I, however, did not have this foresight.

Simultaneously with the Six Sigma training, I was in charge of leading the writing efforts for our department’s part of an NDA submission for an oncology drug.  Things started going crazy then.  It was the final week of Six Sigma training.  I was in the all-day training class when suddenly I was called out to attend an “emergency meeting” with the project manager for the submission.  The sky was falling, apparently.

They kept asking me what my “strategy” was for writing the submission documents.  I had already made a few attempts to explain that the strategy would be that so-and-so would write Document Number 1 and so-and-so would write Document Number 2 (and so on) and that Documents 1 through ∞ would be delivered by such-and-such a date.  Each iteration of my “strategy” was more in depth than the last, with expanded timelines detailing review cycles and identifying reviewers, etc.  Apparently, in their eyes, this did not constitute a “strategy”.  I continued to try to understand what it was they were asking me to give them.  I even went so far as to look up the word “strategy” in Webster’s Dictionary.  In case you are curious, most definitions have to do with the conduct of warfare.  The closest definition I could find relating to accomplishing a goal was, “a careful plan or method; a clever stratagem.”  Now, for the word “stratagem”…its definition, as it relates to anything other than warfare is, “a cleverly contrived trick or scheme for gaining an end; skill or ruses in trickery.”  Aha!!!  No wonder I could not deliver what they wanted.  I do not know how to TRICK anybody!  Was that really what they were asking me for?  I preferred the “careful plan or method,” definition, which was what I thought I had delivered a gazillion times already!

Being the kind of person who wants to please my superiors, I was devastated at being seemingly incapable of performing my job at anything less than a superb level.  The stress of this failure began to weigh heavily on me.  All other challenges I faced in this new role seemed tangible.  They were things to which I could apply logic and eventually overcome.  This “strategy” challenge was intangible.  I could not solve an equation to fix it.  There was no computer program I could master that would allow me to produce what they wanted.  I felt at a loss.  And meanwhile, the feeling of a crisis, as it related to the behavior of my project manager and superiors continued to increase.  A breaking point was approaching.

I was at the same time completely stressed out and spiraling into a depression.  One day, in the midst of this misery, I was sitting at my desk and an email popped up.  The title was simply a person’s name.  Experience told me that emails of this sort almost never contained good news.  The person’s name in this case belonged to one of our vendor partner writers.  I had worked with this person on several projects and had come to feel fond of him.  I considered him a friend.  His voice reminded me of my brother’s voice.  I apprehensively opened the email.  The message said that he had been killed in a traffic accident during his commute home the evening before.  I was stunned. The weight of everything came crashing down on me.  Right there, in the middle of our "integrated work space", I held my face in my hands and wept.  

All of a sudden everything seemed so stupid.  All of the striving.  All of the stress.  All of the late nights to meet deadlines.  The tenuousness of life was made abundantly clear to me that day.  It was then that I realized life is too short to spend most of my time obsessed with empty pursuits that failed to feed my soul.

The next week I told my manager I wanted to step down and return to my previous role.

On July 1, 2017, I was officially reinstated to my previous position.  I had maintained my promotion for all of 10 months.  The sting of failure permeated my being, but I was determined to remember the lesson I had learned about the value of life and the value of tending to my soul.  I would now turn my attention to the pursuit of inner peace and contentment.

Event #4: Broken Bones (Concluded)

Jim’s shoulder surgery had to wait until Monday, Aug 29, because the surgeon was so busy.  I remember hoping for a similar outcome with the shoulder surgery as had occurred with his leg surgery – ie, pain cessation.

Monday finally arrived and I accompanied Jim, once again, to the pre-op room.  This time, they were going to put some kind of nerve block in his shoulder prior to surgery.  That should have given me a clue as to what to expect post-surgery, but I didn’t pick up on it.

While in the pre-op room, the funniest thing happened.  They started Jim on some kind of sedative and he was kind of loopy.  The nurse started asking him questions (I’m not really sure why the questions were asked AFTER the sedative was given, but oh well).  She asked him, “Do you have any metal in your body?”  I’ll never forget.  A couple of seconds passed.  Jim laid there with his eyes closed, and I thought he hadn’t heard the question.  Then, all of a sudden, he raised his head, looked straight at the nurse, and asked in a loud voice, “Do YOU!?”  I cracked up and the very serious nurse stifled a smile.  Then they wheeled him back into a different room to give him the nerve block.  I was worried about that, because I knew they had to stick a very long needle into his shoulder joint and hit a particular nerve to inject it.  Thankfully, he was doped up enough on whatever it was they had given him ahead of time, that it wasn’t horrible for him.

So, time passed….the shoulder surgery was finished and I met him back in his room.  I tucked him in, said goodnight, and went home, hoping and praying he would be all better in the morning.  WRONG!!!  Sometime around 3 a.m., the nerve block wore off.  Jim said it felt like he had broken his shoulder all over again.  The pain was horrible and there was pretty much no amount of pain medication that would keep it under control.

The nurses and staff at Community North were wonderful.  They gave Jim as much pain medication as they safely could and kept his shoulder iced constantly.  Days passed, and eventually, Jim’s shoulder pain ebbed.

It was then time to find a place for Jim to stay to rehabilitate his leg.  Going home was not an option.  Labor Day weekend was near, and apparently, it was difficult to negotiate a transfer from the hospital to a long-term care facility, so he stayed on at the hospital for a total of 2 weeks.

The next phase of Jim’s recovery occurred at Allisonville Meadows Assisted Living Center.  This was a dark chapter in Jim’s life – in both our lives, really.  He felt surrounded by death.  In fact, the resident in the room across the hall died two days after Jim arrived at the facility.  But, despite the depressing surroundings, Jim remained committed to his recovery.

I visited him daily, of course.  One of our favorite rituals became me bringing our dog, Blaze, to visit, along with a thermos of margaritas to sip while we watched TV and talked about whatever.  I don’t know how helpful the margaritas were to his healing bones, but they were very helpful to his healing soul.

At some point in his convalescence, it was time for Jim to see his shoulder surgeon to have his stitches removed and to take post-op X-rays.  I picked him up from the assisted living center and drove him to the surgeon’s office.  It was the first time in three weeks he had been outside of a hospital setting.  He craved something other than senior center food, so after the appointment, I drove to the nearest Arby’s.  I remember we sat in an empty parking lot eating our roast beef sandwiches and staring through the windshield at the gray September afternoon.  Our former life seemed very far away.  It was tempting to think it would never return.

Another week passed.  Finally, based on his ability to get around using a quad cane, the physicians at Allisonville Meadows determined Jim could be discharged.  One month after his bicycle accident, Jim was coming home!!!  In the interim, Summer had turned to Fall.

Once home, Jim began in-home physical therapy.  It was weird having a stranger in our house, but it was better than me having to take off from work to transport him back and forth between home and his physical therapist’s office.  Over time, Jim became capable of doing almost anything that didn’t require both hands at once.  Here he is icing his shoulder while vacuuming the family room.  Ya just can’t keep him down for long!

All told, Jim spent 1 month in the hospital/assisted living facility, and then 2 months at home rehabilitating before he was able to return to work.  I was so proud of his determination and positive spirit.  He never accepted a thought of defeat.  He drew closer to God throughout his experience and set his sights on a full recovery.  His shoulder surgeon said his recovery was a “poster child” for the type of reconstructive surgery he had.  Today Jim can do 14 unassisted pull-ups – something that is pretty much unheard of in the shoulder surgery world.

Here is Jim today (Jan, 2019) engaged in a workout routine, as usual.  Our God is a god of healing.  Never give up, people.  Never give up!

Event #4: Broken Bones (Continued)

The exact order of events from Wednesday night in the ER is a bit fuzzy in my mind, but it went roughly like this.  An awesome, attentive nurse was on duty at the time and got Jim hooked up to IV pain meds, which helped a little, but caused nausea.

There was a shortage of beds available in the hospital, because that day there had been multiple tornado warnings, which required the staff to push all of the patients’ beds into the interior hallways.  This, in turn, delayed discharges, which resulted in beds continuing to be occupied which might otherwise have been available.  I have to believe it was this shortage of beds that prompted the next memorable event.  The nurse said he had been instructed to attempt to “ambulate” Jim and send him home.  I was flabbergasted.  Thankfully, the nurse could see that Jim was not faking it, was not overreacting to a bad bruise or anything like that.  The nurse said, “Okay, I’m going to attempt to get you up, and you’re going to…”  On cue, Jim screamed when the nurse attempted to raise him to a seated position.  The nurse then filled out a form explaining he had attempted to ambulate the patient, but the patient experienced excruciating pain (or something along those lines).  That done, Jim was allowed to stay in the bed in the ER to await further examination by orthopedic surgeons.

At some point very late in the night, they took Jim for X-rays of his leg/hip and shoulder.  I can’t remember now exactly who told us that Jim’s femur was fractured near the hip joint and he would need surgery to stabilize it.  I do remember that a shoulder specialist came in and said, “Well….your shoulder is never going to be the same.”  I thought that was an odd way to deliver the news.  He went on to explain that Jim’s shoulder was shattered into multiple pieces (we would later learn it was 6 pieces).  He said, “We could do nothing, or we could do surgery.  Sometimes surgery is not all that much better than doing nothing.”  Again, I was flabbergasted.

Upon talking with the surgeon for some time, I came to learn that shoulder surgery success is largely dependent on the patient’s current physical health and the patient’s commitment to rehabilitation of the joint.  I insisted that Jim was an excellent candidate for the surgery.  I was not about to let them send him home without doing anything!  And, I knew I was right about Jim’s candidacy.  Thank God I did that!

After all the X-rays and consultations, Jim was still in extreme pain and still not in the hospital proper.  In the ER, the next nurse on shift got Jim started on stronger IV pain meds and gave him an anti-nausea medication.  Finally, he slept.  And I waited…and waited…and waited.  I had been told the next orthopedic surgeon would be doing rounds towards 6 a.m., but 6 a.m. came and went and nobody checked on Jim.

Finally, around 9 a.m., I started getting bitchy.  I raised my voice and demanded that somebody come check on Jim and get his surgery scheduled.  It turned out somehow the rounding physician had missed Jim when he did his rounds at 6 a.m.  After several phone calls that I had to place myself with the orthopedic surgeon, I was able to get Jim scheduled for his leg surgery that afternoon (Thursday, Aug 25).

Mercifully, around noon, they told us a bed was available in some other wing of the hospital (not the orthopedic wing), and Jim could have that temporarily while he waited for surgery.  They got him into the bed, got him settled, and then we (really I – because Jim was mostly “out of it”) met with the surgeon.  Everything was all set to go and the surgeon told me I could leave and come back in time for the surgery, if I wanted to.

I had not eaten anything since lunch the day before.  So, I grabbed McDonald’s, rushed home, let the dog out, fed the cats, took a quick shower, and got back to the hospital by 2:30 in time for the surgery.

Jim was assigned an actual room in the hospital’s orthopedic wing after his leg surgery.  The surgeon met us there and explained what he had done during the procedure.  He drew a diagram on a white board showing us the fancy hardware he had installed in Jim’s leg.  I took a photo of that (shown at the bottom of this post).

Somehow the surgery almost completely eliminated Jim’s leg pain.  I found that amazing and miraculous.  I was so happy that at least a part of his horrible pain was gone.  Now I felt like he was going to be okay and that I could let my guard down a little.

Finally, around 6 pm on Thursday, I tucked Jim in, kissed him good-bye, and headed home.  I hadn’t slept since Tuesday night.

To be continued…