A wild idea. . .

I have been thinking about the last few weeks. These weeks have been filled with medical treatment, but also with emotional thoughts and issues, as well as communication strategies that have proved very fruitful.

I have been assertive. I've been kind. I've spoken my mind. I've disagreed and sometimes been annoying and even humorous. It has surprised the heck out of me.

So here are my thoughts. How many people go to waiting rooms and only find either brochures on scary illnesses, or magazines on home decorating or golf. My thoughts are if the clinic would let me provide "A Patient's Blog." This is a small town where almost everyone knows your name.

I could do kind of a daily positive but realistic blog put in a weekly bulletin, how I coped, how I got through difficult treatments, how I dealt with the unknown and figured out ways to get around the house.

The instigating factor was the other day when I told my physicians assistant about my internet friends, the internet as my connection to the outside world. The medical field sometimes frowns on patents looking up meds and illnesses. Like my doctor said, "Why would you want to terrorize yourself that way?" but this is different. This is connecting on facebook and messageboards for prayers and support and finding people like you.

It would also be about resources and misconceptions. A friend told me the other day I needed to go to hospice. No. I would not have been accepted. I am still being treated. I still go to the ER when situations outside my control happen. People need to know the meanings of these things.

So those are just my ideas for now. I'd need to have a kind of starting place to take to the clinic and hospital administrator. They would have to approve all I said. And it would be a positive way for me to deal with the mistreatment I had in the beginning. It would not be pointing fingers to what was wrong, but giving a thumbs up to what is right. And it would include the kindnesses of all the staff from those who check the patients in to keep the place clean and spread kind words.

Just a concept in need of ideas.

Carol

Why not go for it Carol? Turning your situation into something positive that will help others is a good idea. There is no better person for this job than you.

Carol,

Concentrate on your creative side. You have helped others enough throughout your life, Now, you need some "me time."

During a phone conversation with my brother, I said why don't you plan building a car. Some people enjoy planning things even if they cannot see them through to completion. He replied, "Shelagh, I have always wanted to build a car." Where did he think I got the idea? We talked some more and he said he would think about everything I had said.

A few weeks later, he told me that he was planning all the things he wanted to do with his children over the following five years. He had invested in a brand new computer and he spent his days putting together a five year itinerary. Although he died and was unable to do any of the things he had planned, his wife promised that she would do everything he had planned for the following twelve months (the five year plan would have changed anyway had he lived). She did everything he had mapped out, including taking the children to Euro Disneyland.

I think you should work on the things you want to do over the coming years. Leave some projects open ended for your family to take up and complete. Don't dwell on what has passed but plan for the future. You never know, you might be around to finish more than you think you will.

~Shelagh

Dear Carol,
There is no right or wrong answer to this question. What Shelagh has said is from her heart, and I feel that to be true. Such sadness and such hope and such decisions to be made and the family needs the looking forward as she has said. You need the looking forward, too.

I also see what you need to do. It is important. So many people are sitting there with no one to smile back at them, hold their hand, or hope with them. Perhaps it is as easy as making up cards to put on the waiting room table that says, Need someone to talk to who has been there? Put your email address and see if anyone wants to hear.

Your heart is looking out. I hope someone can see you. I do. Love, Betty

Carol,

Write a book. How to books are popular.

Cancer is rampant. Write how you survived it twice.

It will be a best seller.

It will beat Brenda!

Your hospice friend is not a friend. She needs help she is none. Stay far way from her.

She sounds dangerously depressive.

Dear Alice,
Did I ever tell you that you are lovely?

Your idea is brilliant.

Carol, write a short book that has in it's covers all you would like to tell other people who have cancer. Print it yourself. Make it a small book in size. 5x7. Put it where you go on your medical trips through waiting rooms. Do not worry about asking anyone. Just do it. Lay it there on the table where anyone can look at it.

I have been to waiting rooms for heart problems that the latest edition was Family Circle 2005. Let it flow! Write what is in your heart to say. Someone needs the hope.

Love,
Betty

Betty, great idea--Carol, do it now.

Dear Carol,
The title could be, Living and Dying in Three Quarter Time. Three steps foreward and one step back.
What hope is in those three steps forward. That one step back seems small.

God bless your kind heart.

Love,
Betty

12/5/2009

Betty...

I love the title, Carol should go for it !


Carol..

Even though I have Congestive Heart Failure,
Plus Diabetes, at times I feel like I'm in a race against
time and myself, ever have that feeling ? I published
two books this year, I'm trying to get another one
done for 2010 , I love the idea of a small book you
can tell a story, write beautiful poems, Carol you
have it in you and I'm proud to call you friend. I did
get your e Christmas card but for some reason I
couldn't open it, thank you ..

Love Joe

I know taking time for myself is a good thing. But when I get into myself, I feel worse. What helps is to see myself as still part of the universe, part of the myth as Ann would say, part of life. It is energizing. Anything energy draining is eliminated from my life. I have found myself with kind of a strange sense of humor with medical staff.

My brother also died of cancer n 2007. He achieved many things, even going to DC to get funding for lung cancer research and having a golf tournament each year. But so many things he never finished. He never went to see a daughter he had never seen in years.

I traveled last month on a kind of bucket list trip to visit relatives. I have traveled more places in my life than ever expected. I've written memoirs and stories to be discovered later. I've taken photos and labeled the family archives, and I have no regrets.

As Dick said, independence keeps disappearing. I remember my husband once yelling at me that I was too independent. No more.

I am going to begin a blog on Caring Bridge and will put the link here.

Life could go on for years, or end next month. Neither is known.

In the meantime, I want to give what I can even in my dependent state. I want to honor and share what I have found here with all of you, part of our new world of support and communication.

Carol

Dear Carol,
You are right, of course, my gentle and kind friend.
My best love to you this night. Well, every night. You are no small miracle your own self.
Love,
Betty

Carol Troestler wrote:

I know taking time for myself is a good thing. But when I get into myself, I feel worse. What helps is to see myself as still part of the universe, part of the myth as Ann would say, part of life. It is energizing. Anything energy draining is eliminated from my life. I have found myself with kind of a strange sense of humor with medical staff.

My brother also died of cancer n 2007. He achieved many things, even going to DC to get funding for lung cancer research and having a golf tournament each year. But so many things he never finished. He never went to see a daughter he had never seen in years.

I traveled last month on a kind of bucket list trip to visit relatives. I have traveled more places in my life than ever expected. I've written memoirs and stories to be discovered later. I've taken photos and labeled the family archives, and I have no regrets.

As Dick said, independence keeps disappearing. I remember my husband once yelling at me that I was too independent. No more.

I am going to begin a blog on Caring Bridge and will put the link here.

Life could go on for years, or end next month. Neither is known.In the meantime, I want to give what I can even in my dependent state. I want to honor and share what I have found here with all of you, part of our new world of support and communication.

Carol

This is true for all of us.
Why a bucket list trip?
If you said this to your friend, no wonder she mentioned hospice.

Write your book.

Adjusting to a loss of mobility takes time. Maybe yours will return.
It did before -it can again.
You are part of life --you are still breathing and thinking.

Somehow I am more peaceful. I can never explain where I'm at in a few words. I only know I love life and am living the myth.

I found this program where I could keep a log of my progress instead of worrying if I told everyone what was going on. (And I so appreciate your interest and support.) See if you can get in and let me know and I'll try to keep it up to date.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/caroltroestler

Carol

I've heard a lot about Caring Bridge. It is a good place.

Carol, I strongly suggest you try the book that Malcolm recommended a few months ago, The Voice of the Muse. You can find out more about it if you google it. I also have the CD so I can play the meditations as well as read them.

It is about journaling. It might give you some inspiration. One of the most important ideas I got from it is that it doesn't matter if your writing is getting published - it doesn't even matter whether or not you are actively involved in giving service - because your writing and your thoughts are going out into the universe anyway, and are contributing to the accumulation of enlightened ideas that will bring about that critical mass where all will see the truth in the world you envision.

You are necessary here. You will not be leaving us anytime soon. Just keep envisioning that ideal world, and see your healthy self as being in it.

Ann

Thanks for the linkl
It is good to have a place to keep up to date.

You are still independent.
In the meantime write your bestseller.
You can call it: Refusing to Go Underground

12/6/2009

Carol..

I've joined Caring Bridge. Keep up the
good work and that joyous spirit of yours.

Love Joe

Carol your idea is not so wild but born from gut instinct.
I still say go for it. It gives you purpose and something to focus on. It is good therapy if nothing else.
It gives you a means of using your predicament in a positive way. I believe we all have a purpose in life and I'm not talking religion here.
Turning bad things round and using them to help others is a noble purpose, it's a way of controlling these things in a sense and shifting your focus off the doom aspect of what is happening to you. That alone is good positive therapy and may help you fight this thing with a new vigor.

None of us know how long we have on this earth, good health or poor health it does'nt matter, our alotted life span is unknown.

alj wrote:

I've heard a lot about Caring Bridge. It is a good place.

Carol, I strongly suggest you try the book that Malcolm recommended a few months ago, The Voice of the Muse. You can find out more about it if you google it. I also have the CD so I can play the meditations as well as read them.

It is about journaling. It might give you some inspiration. One of the most important ideas I got from it is that it doesn't matter if your writing is getting published - it doesn't even matter whether or not you are actively involved in giving service - because your writing and your thoughts are going out into the universe anyway, and are contributing to the accumulation of enlightened ideas that will bring about that critical mass where all will see the truth in the world you envision.

Ann

Good thoughts about not worrying about publication. Oh, how I get hung up on that issue. I will put my little thoughts out in the universe and let them go wherever. I think you were one who had suggested Caringbridge a while ago, but I wasn't quite ready to write there, but something happened in the MRI the other day. When the light entered through the window of the room, somehow acceptance and surrender entered my being. Maybe the white tunnel of the MRI was my tunnel of finding peaceful meaning.

Thanks to everyone.

Like Dick said about loss of independence, there is still much that can be done.

Love, Carol

Carol wrote:

Quote :

When the light entered through the window of the
room, somehow acceptance and surrender entered my being. Maybe the
white tunnel of the MRI was my tunnel of finding peaceful meaning.

Carol, I'm remembering a book I read years ago. It was about Peter Marshall, a well-known Presbyterian minister during the 50's. The book was written by his wife, Catherine, who at one point, was stricken with a serious illness - I can't remember which one - and was frustrated by setbacks and weakness. At one point, she said a prayer expressing that acceptance and surrender, and was almost immediately healed. God, she decided, just wanted her to let go of the need to control.

Ann

Carol Troestler wrote:

So here are my thoughts. How many people go to waiting rooms and only find either brochures on scary illnesses, or magazines on home decorating or golf. My thoughts are if the clinic would let me provide "A Patient's Blog." This is a small town where almost everyone knows your name.

I could do kind of a daily positive but realistic blog put in a weekly bulletin, how I coped, how I got through difficult treatments, how I dealt with the unknown and figured out ways to get around the house.

Carol

How would the people in the waiting room see your blog, though?

If the hospital puts out a brochure to the community -one in my town does , it's a quarterly promotional disgusied as health info- they might be receptive to your idea as a column. They'd probably want you to do it free, though. You know me ...I'd suggest making a book of your idea. I know you want to do a history book. But maybe you should clarify your goals: to write what you want? To give commercial publication another shot? If the latter, your chances of success are greater if you write what there's a demonstrated need for and what you have strong credentials for. Your blog proposal sounds spot-on.

They have removed all reading material from my dentist's waiting room because of swine flu.

This past week it was reported that a pig got swine flu from its owner.

Abe F. March wrote:

This past week it was reported that a pig got swine flu from its owner.

Was that owner Tiger Woods?