The small trials of winter

It's been a while since my last post, and that's mostly due to illness in our household. Even though we've taken the vaccines against Covid and this year's influenza, that doesn't stop regular colds, sinusitis, bronchitis or any of the other winter illnesses from rearing their irritating heads. I so prefer the other seasons, mostly because we don't have to deal with all of these illnesses. Well, sometimes an occasional summer cold. I find it hard to believe that we made it through a pandemic back in 2020 and 2021. We managed to avoid Covid until June 2021, although I can't say that it was worse than some of the major colds we've had. We were apparently lucky. But it's interesting that we weren't sick during the winters of 2020 or 2021, most likely due to lockdowns and the like. I don't want to go back to that time, of course. But I would like to be illness-free. 

When I was younger, I was susceptible to getting bronchitis. I've had some wicked rounds with bronchitis--coughing so intensely that I cracked two small rib bones. I remember one year (1993) vividly; I lived on antibiotics from November until February. Coughing was extremely painful with broken ribs, not an experience I care to repeat. But the worst bout of illness I've ever had was in 2004, when I got a flu that knocked me out completely. It took me months to recover; the worst part of it was the fever and the chills, but also the total lack of energy. Flus are nasty illnesses and that experience pushed me to take the flu vaccine each subsequent year.

I have friends who are dealing with RSV, bronchitis, sinusitis (also very painful) and regular colds. All of us are getting older. My good friend who recently passed away was stricken by Covid; although her neurological illness would have eventually taken her, it was Covid that ended her life. I guess the immune system weakens as we age. I guess we just have to deal with it. 

When I was younger, I never understood why older people traveled to warmer climates during the wintertime. Now I know why. I don't know if one avoids all the respiratory illnesses that way, but one certainly avoids all the other pitfalls of winter--snow, ice, intense cold. Here is the city of Oslo, they've gotten better about cleaning the sidewalks and throwing down some gravel after a snowstorm, but that doesn't prevent the remaining snow from caking and becoming ice. The sidewalks can be slippery. I'd like to reclaim my joyous love of winter that I had as a child, but I do believe it's long gone. And since I became a garden enthusiast, I know how I want to spend most of my days. In the garden. I can't do that in winter. 

Thank God for the month of December--we have Christmas to look forward to and all the preparations leading up to it are enjoyable for the most part. So I focus on that, and not on the small irritations and trials of winter. But because this past summer was neither sunny nor warm, I didn't get my usual dose of sun and warmth that gets me through the winter. So in January I'm heading to Florida for a week together with my friend Jean, and I'm looking forward to that! 

Remembering my mother on her birthday

Had my mother still been alive, today would have been her 94th birthday. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2001. The cause of death was sepsis, which is not a very uncommon cause of death among elderly people for reasons that are not well-known. My mother had been in very good health until she neared her 78^th year; I can recall only two times in her entire adult life when she was hospitalized, once for a viral infection in her middle ear, and the other for an operation to remove an inflamed appendix. When she was in her late seventies, she began to have problems with her back. She was eventually diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the spine, again, not an unexpected diagnosis for many of the elderly. Having been a great walker for most of her life, my guess is that she looked ahead and did not like what she saw—a future with limited opportunities for walking, perhaps the use of a wheelchair and/or walker—in short, a more restricted life than the one to which she was accustomed. She was independent and stubborn; when she was hospitalized initially for medical tests, she was in good spirits and was sure she would be able to return to her old life. Sadly, that was not the case. She ended up at a care center so that she could undergo physical therapy to get her back on her feet again. For some reason, she became quite stubborn (more so than usual) and refused that help. And that refusal was her undoing. Had she worked at her physical therapy, she might still be alive today. All these many years later, I understand that she simply could not accept the idea that she would be dependent upon anyone or anything, and the idea that she was suddenly infirm did not appeal to her. My mother had no patience for being old, for the various small irritations and physical limitations of old age. She was vehement about not giving in to old age. What is surprising is that she did not understand her role in her own recovery, even when it was explained to her; had she taken the reins and insisted upon therapy, had she done what it took to get better, she might still be alive. But she had no personal experience with chronic or long-term illness, even though she had taken care of my father, who had debilitating heart disease, until his death. Taking care of him had not prepared her for suddenly being afflicted herself. Her two brief hospital stays must have convinced her to get out of the hospital and back home as fast as possible. I understand her at the same time that I question her actions during the last few months of her life. But I accept what happened even though I don’t understand completely what happened.

In the intervening years, there have been other illnesses and deaths--family members and friends alike—and I have had a chance to witness first-hand how these people tackled the illnesses that preceded their deaths. Illness does some surprising things to people. Some of them simply accepted their diagnoses and the accompanying conditions, others fought against them. Those who fought were mostly younger or middle-aged people. I also know older people who have done what it takes to get well, who were assertive about getting back on their feet again; interestingly, they are still with us. I've also known older people who did what they had to do to get well, but death took them anyway. Along the way, I've learned that you simply cannot know how you would think or feel if faced with a similar situation. And until you step into the shoes of a person who is ill (with a terminal diagnosis or long-term illness) you have no real idea of what they’re going through. It’s best to be there for them, to help out, to listen, to advise when asked for advice, to offer hope, to be positive, even if we don't always understand their situation or their response to it. Not much more is asked of us. 

The Surrealism of Illness

Since the New Year began, major illness has already reared its ugly head for two people I know, one a close personal friend who received the diagnosis of multiple systemic atrophy of the brain, the other a valued colleague and friend who suffered most of the autumn with a persistent cough and was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. In both cases, when I heard the news, I was truly shocked. It just seemed so unreal and so unbelievable that this could be happening to them. When I finally ‘came to’, I realized that I have to learn how to be strong so that I can be there for the both of them in the best way I know how. Because their shock and disbelief, their sorrow and pain, are so much greater than mine; they have to tackle the surrealism of being given a diagnosis that could mean an earlier passage from this life compared to the rest of us. I cannot imagine what that must feel like. I do know what it feels like to witness the journeys of two friends who were diagnosed with breast cancer a decade ago. One of them received a diagnosis of breast cancer when she was sitting in her doctor’s office. She fainted on hearing the news. Luckily her husband was with her and he caught her as she fell off her chair. She was operated on to remove her tumor, received chemo and radiation, and is disease-free today. Another friend of mine was not so lucky; she passed away three years ago from metastatic breast cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after my other woman friend, underwent an operation to remove the tumor, but did not start with chemotherapy right away for reasons that made sense then but no longer now. Just because no cancer was found in the surrounding lymph nodes is no reason to not undergo chemo. But doctors have their viewpoints, and they most often prevail.

At times, I am struck by the surrealism that surrounds illness. It just seems so unreal at times and impossible to deal with, whereas at other times I am more inured to the idea of illness. I have a long relationship with illness; my father had his first heart attack when I was twelve years old, his second when I was twenty-one, his first stroke when I was in my mid-twenties, and the stroke that took his life when I was twenty-nine. I remember growing up worrying that my father could die at any time. I know he worried about the same thing because he told me that and so many other things on our walks together during summer evenings when I was a teenager. He had a wife and three children to consider in addition to the fear that he might die young. He was sixty-seven when he died, and that is young. When you are a child, you are perhaps somewhat more protected psychologically than you are when you are older and a loved one gets sick and dies. When I was twelve, I remember that my father was home on sick leave, that he watched TV and soap operas with us, and that he read a lot. It was enjoyable to have him home and available to us. When I was in my twenties, I understood more of what chronic illness can do to the afflicted person as well as to his or her family. The stress associated with worrying about a loved one affects the lives of those around him or her. Love becomes tightly connected with sorrow and the preparation for loss. Our teenage years were not carefree or sorrow-free.

I have learned to live with hopeful optimism and an objective realism where major illness is concerned. They co-exist within me, side by side, without battling each other for dominance. I pray for miracles at the same time that I know that there aren’t many of them. I’m aware of the statistics; I’m a cancer researcher, I know the odds associated with major illnesses, not just cancer. But I pray anyway for both of my friends. I also pray for the strength to be a good and supportive friend in the years ahead. It scares me to think that I won’t know what to do, how to be, or what to say. But then I remember my father, and how the most important thing was just to love each other. In the end, it comes down to that. Make the most of the time you have together. Create good memories. Life is short; for some of us, it is shorter, but all of us will face the day when we must leave this earth for good. That’s a thought that is always with me, since I was a child.