Addiction

Yesterday I went to work and barely got through half of the report before I had to take in a new admission. By the time my paperwork cleared up enough to be able to see over the top of it, I was busy assessing patients.
People withdrawing off of opiates like heroin and morphine have a decreased pain threshold, so everything bothers them. "My pancreas is on fire, I think I'm dying". "I have a splinter in my finger". "I miss my kids so much". "I hurt all over".
The withdrawal is tough; most of them turn into whining, sobbing babies. But I would be the same way, I know I would.
"The root cause of addiction", says Dr. Gabor Mate in his excellent book 'in the realm of hungry ghosts' "...is pain". Pain upon pain upon pain.
All my female patients yesterday had been sexually and physically abused. One young woman's father had taken a hammer to her head as a child, so now she struggled with multiple allergies and brain injury-induced epilepsy (daily seizures!) and coping with a drug addiction while trying to parent three active boys. She said she had a yeast infection and when I asked to examine her she refused, saying since she'd been sexually abused she had post-traumatic stress disorder and wouldn't let anyone touch her. (I've sanitized her reply a little bit!)
But the saddest story, the one that kept me awake last night, was a 58-year-old woman named Elise (not her real name) who was trying to detox off of alcohol. Her entire body was covered in bruises. Some of them looked like belt marks. She shook constantly and at the slightest touch or noise she would flinch. She was a little lady and she was unsteady on her feet and needed my help getting onto the examining table.
After we'd talked for some time and she was reassured that I wasn't going to judge her, I wasn't going to hurt her, I really cared about helping her, she told me that she lived with her elderly parents who were also alcoholics. When she drank her father would lock her in her room, and he often beat her. The details (which I'll skip) made me feel sick and I listened to her and comforted her and told her it wasn't her fault and that we wanted to help and that we could find her somewhere to stay. She was tearful at the thought of leaving her mother and said that her Mom needed her, and she couldn't afford to get her own place, and her Dad was always sorry the next day, and maybe she just needed to talk to them and lay out some rules for her living with them.
I encouraged her to write down what she wanted and later I saw her list. Point 1: No more locking me in my room.
Sandra was beautiful, too beautiful, and she radiated vulnerability and sleezy sexuality. Alone in the examining room with me her mask slipped off and she cried and told me that her common-law husband had given her an ultimatum for getting off drugs, otherwise they would break up and he would sell her show horse. But she was desperate to be taken care of. She told me how she had been sexually abused and how she needed to use drugs to have energy and happiness. She tried to stop her tears but they kept coming.
Last night I had a terrible dream and I was crying out and Robin woke me up and pulled me into his arms and held me. It was just a dream, he said. I told him about it and he prayed with me, and I lay there for a long time thinking about it and how lucky I was to have his arms around me, have him looking after me.
Isaiah the prophet talked about Jesus. "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering."
I told Elise yesterday about Jesus, how he was a friend that stood by your side no matter what you were going through.
"Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we did not esteem him."
Do you think that God cares about these people who are living with pain, upon pain, upon pain? Does he see through their masks? Does he reach out to them in their crippling addictions and offer them hope?
"Surely he took up our sicknesses, and carried our sorrows.... he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."

Yes, the wedding is over

Well, that's the end of my lengthy blog hiatus. However.... things might change now that I'm married. I'm used to writing about my life, my thoughts, my perspective on things and now I'm not just by myself anymore. It's quite a bit different and I'm still getting used to it. Sure, I can still write about Heather Mercer (who is the same person as Heather Davies by the way) but I have to be careful that what I write about doesn't violate the personal space of my other half. Of course, as always, clever readers can read between the lines.
We got married on Burnaby mountain which was not what I'd anticipated for a wedding but it was great nontheless. The sun was shining and nothing went wrong (imagine that!). No lost rings, no forgotten vows, the only thing to mar the perfection was the heat, which caused massive perspiration, especially on the part of the groom, whose deep emotions leaked through the front of his shirt during the ceremony.
The morning of the wedding Robin and I and our extended family had a leisurely breakfast and I jumped in the hot tub with Kiara and went for a walk with Robin so we could have some quiet space to talk.
Just before the wedding (about two hours) I was hit by a sudden case of the butterflies in my stomach. It felt like there were a million of them clamoring to get out and they were going to shoot out my mouth at any moment. I put on my wedding dress and my shoes and waited impatiently for everyone to get ready. I'm ready to get married, I told them. What a dumb idea to wait until 4:30 in the afternoon. My Dad couldn't find his wallet. He decided to wash his car at the last minute. One of the cars left without all it's occupants. I sat on the couch and sipped on water and tried to calm myself down.
On the drive to the mountain Dad was joking around and telling me it wasn't too late, he could still call the whole thing off. Daddy, I told him, what I need from you right now is for you to keep a strong grip on my arm and walk me down that aisle and don't tell me I can still walk out. He parked his car behind the garbage dumpster behind the restaurant on the top of the mountain. We waited in the shade of the dumpster and I watched my bridesmaids walk into the crowd of people.
We both cried when we walked across the grass together. Robin was there but he wasn't looking at me (he said I had a scowl on my face). And then we got married, just like that, everyone was smiling at us and I hoped that without microphones they could all still hear us, so I said my vows extra loud.
We took pictures in the rose garden and then went into the restaurant for our reception and it was lots of fun; noisy and the food was delicious and we talked and laughed and danced. At 10:00 or so outside there were fireworks going off in English Harbor and people went out onto the deck and they looked like colored stars in the sky.
We drove away.... (I'll just skip the next part of my narrative since no one wants to hear about our honeymoon anyway, even though they all ask how was it? Fine, I tell them. Do you really want to know what we did? No, I didn't think so. Well, we did go explore, and we slept in mosquitoville in Uclulet and got bitten from head to toe, and we read on Long beach, and we cycled in Victoria, and we Kayaked in Cowichan Bay...)
Now we're back home in Kelowna.
I've moved most of my stuff into Robin's apartment and I set up my plants on the back porch, but they don't look as spectacular as I'd hoped because the Zucchini didn't really grow this year. We still have things to do, like put pictures on the walls and figure out what to do with my car, which is broken down, by the way.
I'm taking a course this month but I haven't even started it yet and I don't feel really motivated to study. It has been a lengthy break for me and it's always a bit hard to get into it again....
Well, I'm not sure what you managed to ready between the lines in all this, because I didn't really intend anything beyond the english words I put down. I'll keep you posted, though.
Have a wonderful day...
love Heather

The wedding hiatus

I apologize for not writing for two weeks and please forgive the brief hiatus from Hullaballooing- it is due to the fact that I am ridiculously busy with wedding planning. I'm not sure if it will settle down once I'm married but at least then I'll have wireless internet in my house and be able to write any time if I wanted to.
16 days until my wedding! And not just a wedding. A life change. A name change. I'm not sure at this point if I'm nervous or excited or stressed or all three. A wedding is a horrible thing to plan; I don't recommend it unless you have a couple of years and infinite patience and only 3 relatives. Failing all those, it will be worth it if it's what's required to start life with the person you're crazy about.
I discovered there are ways that things are done and there are ways that things are JUST NOT DONE when it comes to planning weddings. For example, you have to send thank you notes for presents you receive. I didn't know about this custom and I am used to expressing my thanks verbally and in person, but I have been educated about thank you notes now and will most likely send them out asap.
I went into a florist's the other day to choose flowers for my wedding. AFter being told that I needed to order the flowers I wanted weeks in advance in the right quantities, colours, etc., and get them made professionally, I decided to just go on the morning of my wedding, pick out what looked pretty, tie it together with a bow and go with that.
It apparently takes a minimum of 6 months to get a wedding dress- it must be shopped for, ordered, sized, and altered. Of course, that doesn't count if you have a friend like Yvette Smith, who looked at a picture I tore out of a magazine, made up a pattern, and sewed the dress of my dreams in four days. That including a sewing machine breakdown and a simultaneous packing for family camp.
Of course planning a wedding in 8 weeks is not everyone's cup of tea, but from what I've seen in other friends, no matter what the length of time before their wedding, they get majorly stressed out. I was told, by the time your wedding comes, Heather, you won't care about anything except marrying Robin. It is true. At this point I just want to marry him. Perhaps the elaborate social construct of weddings and wedding planning and brides and all that fluffy lacy fancy crap just serves the purpose of making two people see that all they really care about in the world is being together, and if they can survive wedding planning they can survive anything.
So, yes, everything is coming together for my wedding and it's going to be a good time, I think. I told Bob (who's going to marry us) that if it rains during the ceremony our plan B is to hold umbrellas. And if he mixes up our names or nothing goes right during the ceremony or reception I don't really mind. It's just a wedding. I have the rest of my life ahead of me to be a family with Robin Mercer and that's what I care about most.
So anyway, I can't guarantee that in the next three weeks there will be any blog postings, but please do keep reading after that because I'll still be happy and I'll still be in a hullaballoo and I'll still need to write to get it out.

Of boats and weddings

Can you believe I'm getting married in less than a month? We contemplated taking our time and planning a wedding properly, but Robin described a wedding to me as a door to a house. Why would you spend years and countless stressful hours and so much money just building a fancy door and forgetting about the house?
But the reality is that I am going to have a fancy wedding. I squirm at the thought of it. Of course like every girl I like to dress up, and I used to dream of a fairytale day when all the littlest details would be perfect.
But when it comes down to it I just want to marry Robin Mercer and move into his apartment and be a family with him. And I'm much more comfortable in flipflops and a sundress. And I'm scared that the waitresses at my reception will be better dressed than me.
I suggested to Yvette that I was a classy girl and she laughed her head off. So maybe I'm not classy.... but maybe I can pretend that I am for a day and have a proper wedding.
We seriously considered eloping on our boat trip last week with my whole family. In the end I'm glad we didn't because after 8 days with 18 family members on a 30-foot boat, I just about went crazy. Add a honeymoon to that mixture and I'm sure I would've jumped ship.
We sailed around the gulf islands and fished and crabbed and shopped and slept and threw up (I did most of that on the boat) and explored and played games (including a 4 hour croquet game) and fought and laughed. (I'm pleased to announce that my fiance came out on top in the fight).
And I love my family a lot. They are not all easy (and you wonder why I get accused of being difficult! At least I come by it honestly). Yet they are my family, which is something you don't choose but get stuck with, unless it is your fiance, which in this case I think God chose us for each other and made it impossible for us not to get together. At any rate, they are my family, and I love how diverse we all are. I love that my brother Sam has the creativity to design a croquet game involving jumping your ball off a tire ramp through a hoop. I love that Alpha brought enough clothes for a month, which came in handy when I didn't bring enough; and somehow she seems stylish even when camping. I love that Will sat on the front of the boat with Robin and Alpha for 3 hours, getting soaked by waves and chilled by a bitter wind, while only wearing shorts and bare feet. I love that Kiara and Betsy are both so beautiful and cute but in different ways. One dark and exhuberant and the other blond and sweet. I love that my Mom can be suffering from a concussion and a detached retina and seasickness and mothering woes and the loss of her own mother and yet, hardly ever complain. She is a soldier in the truest sense.
I love that my Dad can pilot a huge boat that he's never had proper training for and he can catch pots of crab and do all sorts of things by the seat of his pants, and that he loves us all enough to do it for us. And that he loves me enough to plan me a beautiful wedding.
But I am a Davies first of all which is why I won't be surprised if a fight breaks out on the dance floor and the rings don't show up and our get-away car is an '87 Volvo and my siblings put money on who will be the first to cry during the ceremony. It's my last month to be a Davies. I am happy and sad all at the same time.

Pain

I always said I would never become one of those mean grumpy nurses. But now I understand them a bit better, I think. Not that I am becoming one, but at least I understand.
Because people lie and cheat and steal. And they hurt and call names and defraud and all that stuff. So nurses (and other people of course!) get hardened to it and become insensitive.
This week at work I had to be tough with a few people, and that's hard for me. I like to be compassionate and kind all the time, but sometimes that isn't the right approach.
Take, for example, my patient Robert. He went to take a bath with some epsom salts to ease the discomfort of heroin withdrawals. He'd been in the bath room for some time and I got this funny feeling about it. Maybe he was in there too long.
I went to the door and called his name. On the other side of the door I heard snoring.
I unlocked it with my master key and there he was, completely naked, sprawled out in the tub sawing logs.
"Robert! Wake up!" I said to him.
I threw a towel over him and shook him and he gradually came too.
"What are you doing?" I asked him. "You were fast asleep in the tub! You could've drowned!"
"Oh, it's not very deep." He said groggily. "And it feels really nice on my sore back."
"Get out of the tub." I told him. "I don't want you drowning in here."
"Aw come on, I'll be okay!"
"Get out!" I told him. "If you're sleepy enough to fall asleep in here, you can go to bed."
He got out. Later that day I had to kick someone out. And I had to tell him that there was nothing left I could do to help him unless he wanted to be helped. It was a hard thing to say. I wanted to put my arms around him and comfort his pain but I thought about something I learned in a nursing conference last week.
The number one factor that influences a person staying off drugs or alcohol permamently is whether or not they feel enough pain. Pain they've caused those they love; pain in themselves from their choices. And if health care professionals (and christians, and counsellors!) work too hard to eliminate people's pain and suffering, we may actually be short-circuiting the process that will set them free.
I'm sorry that you are hurting, I say to him. But it is that hurt that will continue to worsen, that will eventually make you change.
So maybe on the surface I will appear to be a mean grumpy nurse. But inside, I'm really kind and compassionate.