Cogitation

June 26, 2022 — Pat Bertram

It was supposed to rain last night and well into today, so I was going to take it easy and do nothing, and when I finished doing nothing, I was going to take a nap. Unfortunately, the rain did not materialize except for a few drops that didn’t completely darken the sidewalk.

I still took it easy, though I did have to water my grass and newly seeded garden. (I didn’t want to spend all summer looking at the gone-to-seed larkspur, so I pulled them up and planted marigolds and a few other flowers that should last until fall.) Even though it didn’t rain, it was a pleasantly cool day, so that was enjoyable.

All this taking it easy, unfortunately, has given me too much time to think about things I’d rather not think about, such as the ramifications to the recent Supreme Court ruling. From what I understand, a lot of the power behind HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) came from Roe vs. Wade, which protected the medical privacy of individuals, though that may not be as significant as I thought. I paused here to read a few articles about how private medical records really are now, before the ruling, and they aren’t as private as we’d like to believe. Although our records are supposed to be accessed only by those to whom we have given permission, health insurance providers, law enforcement, and the government are all able to ask for the records. And then, of course, any time we get lab work done, the lab pretty much owns whatever records they glean as well as the actual samples taken from our bodies. Still, the ruling does make the whole privacy issue a bit dicey.

Even worse, bans are not just about forcing women to carry babies, even unviable babies, to term, especially since the USA shockingly has the highest maternal mortality rate of all developed countries and is the only country where the mortality is increasing. It’s also about women who suffer miscarriages. Abortifacients are given to women who have miscarried to make sure the fetus is completely dispelled. I can’t imagine what those poor women who are already suffering from a miscarriage would have to deal with if they also had to contend with accusations of abortion.

I hope I’m wrong, but I see a whole lot of heartache for a whole lot of women ahead.

As for other medical issues, one that involves me more directly, is the opioid crisis. If Percocet is removed from the market because some people get addicted, I will have no recourse when it comes to pain. When I was in the hospital after I destroyed my arm, they tried just about everything, even morphine, and nothing but Percocet even dimmed the pain. I ended up with a lot more pain than I should have because although the doctor prescribed six pills a day, the pharmacists refused to honor the prescription until they decided when it was okay for me to get more pills. Even though I was on the pills for months, I knew I’d never get addicted. The drug never made me feel good and never took away all the pain (just made it bearable). They did, however, make me disoriented and constipated. And they made me itch all over.

I would think, if people and government entities and regulatory agencies wanted to get personally involved in people’s medical business, they would figure out a way to make such potent (and necessary) drugs nonaddictive, or barring that, figure out a simple test to see how someone would react before prescribing the drug. Instead, they are taking a shotgun approach and attempting to ban the drugs altogether. I can’t imagine what horror I would have endured without the one painkiller that worked.

Luckily, I am not in any pain at the moment except for occasional knee issues. And luckily, too, this time of cogitation will pass, and once again I’ll be focusing my attention on something I might have a modicum of control over — my yard.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

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Doing Not Much

March 11, 2018 — Pat Bertram

It’s been a long time since I’ve done nothing. Every day, there is a compelling item on my calendar — either dance classes or backpacking practice — but ever since I popped something in my thigh on Friday, I haven’t done anything. Well, nothing physical, that is. I’ve been taking it easy, reading and writing. Mostly writing.

I still don’t know what happened to my thigh. The tiny pop I felt/heard was definitely some sort of tear, but it doesn’t seem to have caused major damage. There is no bruise, no pain, no limitation of movement except for the limitations I’ve put on myself. I was concerned about exacerbating the tear, but with no real effects from the pop, I don’t suppose it’s necessary to continue resting. Too bad. I’ve really enjoyed these two days of doing not much.

If all continues to be well, I will go to my dance classes this week and hope that by Friday, I will be able to practice backpacking again without ill effects. Unfortunately, I will probably have to reduce the weight in the pack, so that will set me further back in the conditioning process than I want to be, but better such a setback than shouldering the same poundage and destroying my thigh permanently.

Even if I couldn’t go hiking today, I can do it vicariously through my poor benighted (and gaily bedighted) hero since, oddly, he is setting out on a journey across the desert. (Well, not so oddly considering who the author of this journey is!) Luckily, when I go out to the desert for real, I get to wear clothes that cover almost all exposed skin. My poor hero is clad only in that silly pink and lime green polka-dotted loincloth.

Maybe I’ll write an oasis to give him a break from the relentless sun.

But first . . . more of doing “not much.”

I hope you are having as enjoyable day as I am, and with as little to do.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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No One to Do Nothing With

October 2, 2012 — Pat Bertram

When my life mate/soul mate/best friend died two and a half years ago, people often compared my loss to the death of a pet or an aged grandparent or a sibling (all the while snug in the comfort of their own marriages). Some people compared my loss to their divorce. A couple of people even mystified me by comparing my loss to their struggles with alcoholism. Although these comparisons seemed insensitive at the time (I had previously lost both a sibling and my mother, and those losses in no way resembled what I felt after my soul mate died), I now understand people were reaching out to me, trying to comprehend my grief and to put it into a context they could understand.

The wound where his presence was ripped from my soul no longer gapes as widely; the feeling of his total goneness doesn’t haunt me quite so much; the anguish and physical distress has ebbed to an underlying sadness. This easing of grief has unmasked more subtle feelings of loss, and suddenly I can see how this itch to see him once more is comparable to the struggles of an alcoholic. We both  have to live — forever —with a deep craving that can never be satisfied, both have an empty feeling that can never be filled, and we both live in a world where others routinely enjoy what we can’t. (Like all comparisons, this one falls short since those who give up drink have to do so from sheer force of will, while my lack is simply a result of fate.)

I hadn’t realized until after he was gone how much I counted on his very presence.

The sound of his voice filled my ears and my mind. From the moment we met until the cancer metastasized into his brain, we talked and talked and talked. We talked about everything — history, books, health, truth, all the many and various things we researched over the years. Though we said everything we needed to say, I still wish for one more word from him.

During silent times, his smiles nourished my soul. Even at the end, in his moments of lucidity before either the pain or the morphine swept him away, he still managed to smile at me. And oh, how I wish for one more smile.

A couple of days ago I wrote about my growing soul hunger, an indefinable need his presence had once satisfied, and now I wonder if that need is . . . nothing. Although we worked and played and talked for more than three decades , we often did nothing together. Were just there, a presence in each other’s lives. As his dying became the focus of our lives, and we couldn’t do much of anything together, not even carry on a conversation, we could still do nothing together, and we often did.

Although I am finding others to fill some of the roles he played in my life, this last is the role no one can fill. I have people to do things with, but I have no one to do nothing with. And, like an alcoholic, the one thing I need is the one thing I can’t have. He was a presence in my life first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. He was a presence in the kitchen when we fixed meals together. He was a presence when we watched movies or ran errands or did chores. He was a presence in my thoughts — because we had spent so much time together, discussing history and current events, our ideas developed in tandem. And we didn’t have to explain ourselves or our state of affairs — we were there and saw the effects life had on the other.

I understand that this sort of companionship is rare, and I feel greedy and perhaps insensitive for even mentioning the lack of his presence in my life, but this is my truth, my experience, my sorrow. No matter how much I wish things were different, these circumstances will never change, but I will. I am becoming more accepting of my situation, more respectful of the soul hunger, more grateful for what I once had. It’s possible someday I will even get used to having no one to do nothing with.

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Nothing For Christmas

December 27, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I never have enough time for all the nothing I want to do, so I decided to do nothing for Christmas. I am such a procrastinator that I will do anything to keep from doing what I’d planned to do — even if that something was nothing. On Christmas morning, to keep from doing the nothing I had planned, I decided to bake made-from-scratch carrot cake with yoghurt frosting so I would have something to eat when I finally settled down to doing nothing.

Leafing through my cookbook, I came across a recipe for cranberry sauce, and I was surprised to discover how simple it was — boil sugar and water and add cranberries. Seemed like a nice nothing thing to do, so I made the carrot cake and set the cranberries to cooking. Then it dawned on me I didn’t have anything to eat with the cranberries. So I cooked chicken and gravy, and since I just happened to have some stale bread, I made stuffing to go with the chicken and gravy and stuffing. I had to make a salad, too, because a meal is not a feast without fresh vegetables.

While all this was cooking, I happened to notice that the living room needed to be vacuumed, so I . . .

Vacuumed? Of course not. It was Christmas. And I’d procrastinated enough. I grit my teeth, gird my loins, got pumped, and did what I’d planned to do.

Nothing.

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