tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-104240352024-03-13T21:22:00.702-06:00Reach UpwardExploring issues involving religion, politics, family, health, etc through my personal religious and moral filter.Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.comBlogger1383125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-22575612320747781602023-12-13T14:11:00.001-07:002023-12-13T15:41:14.023-07:00Learning why dogs are called man's best friend<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWwTi6bM0DZiFI-OmqtEHFAoUVb0GogS1V_xEREySxoPZhyvZajTnqi58SjKWQ7nM9xP06yEVagP5fy9TSmNzWpxvmxTccJVxLg9PxEV_mvZOilaQBIWBOaqLq8KRw5TxUAks-lFP2UpbR6uhkke2CH8LJypFFFE5ipJZoQ8XExP38_Z3875jQoA/s2980/Shiranui%20professional%20photo.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2980" data-original-width="2384" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWwTi6bM0DZiFI-OmqtEHFAoUVb0GogS1V_xEREySxoPZhyvZajTnqi58SjKWQ7nM9xP06yEVagP5fy9TSmNzWpxvmxTccJVxLg9PxEV_mvZOilaQBIWBOaqLq8KRw5TxUAks-lFP2UpbR6uhkke2CH8LJypFFFE5ipJZoQ8XExP38_Z3875jQoA/s320/Shiranui%20professional%20photo.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>Twelve years ago in December, our family was having active discussions about getting a dog. I had grown up with a dog that had lived 13 years, so I had a good idea of what dog ownership was like. And frankly, I didn't want to do it.<p></p><p>My wife and I had survived a quarter century of marriage without owning furbearing pets. Or, without owning pets at all, if we go with the my children's mantra that "fish are not pets." It boggled my mind that we were discussing getting a dog at that point.</p><p>We had recently discovered that our youngest son is on the autism spectrum. He was working with a therapist as he struggled to manage related mental health challenges. The therapist had suggested that pet ownership — specifically, dog ownership — might be healthy for our son.</p><p>I had plenty of reasons against getting a dog. For starters, the kids would not feed, care for, cleanup after, or walk the dog nearly as much as they promised. I knew this because I had been a kid who had made ... and broken such promises. And so had my siblings. And every child I ever knew whose family had gotten a dog. Ergo, my wife and I would become the dog's main caretakers.</p><p>Dogs are messy. They tear up the house, the furniture, and the yard. They poop wherever they want. They track stuff into the house. They smell. They bark and annoy the neighborhood. And their needs must be considered anytime the family wants to do something. Even an evening out can present a challenge.</p><p>And dogs cost money. Food and supplies, bathing/grooming, veterinary visits, licenses, etc.</p><p>I also strongly suspected that, despite the promise of the dog living outdoors, it would end up living inside the house.</p><p>But the main reason I didn't want a dog was because I knew my own nature. I have a weak spot for the puppy dog face. Dogs seem to know how to manipulate that weakness. They simply look at me in a certain way and I end up indulging them in whatever they want.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2y3TYYzBmA9QMLoYOKj-6cIYLgRIo24YwPrxwFEbhJ76yfFkSffYty-8PJtxlhq3jBW2ugZ2t3YSyWIIxz32d4NInv74i4suWgVp3qiwjJyCuTtuh_94WS0tzBYVCXuwuiMGVZ6AJKg9ypwC4360Z3dj53MTpL5S-NNUiwOmn42sDRz07upU6Zw/s1494/Shiranui%20puppy%20(cropped).jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="988" data-original-width="1494" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2y3TYYzBmA9QMLoYOKj-6cIYLgRIo24YwPrxwFEbhJ76yfFkSffYty-8PJtxlhq3jBW2ugZ2t3YSyWIIxz32d4NInv74i4suWgVp3qiwjJyCuTtuh_94WS0tzBYVCXuwuiMGVZ6AJKg9ypwC4360Z3dj53MTpL5S-NNUiwOmn42sDRz07upU6Zw/s320/Shiranui%20puppy%20(cropped).jpg" width="320" /></a></div>We had family meetings where I expressed my concerns. I thought the discussion was ongoing when I came home from work one day and discovered that we had an eight-week-old puppy who was amazingly adorable. (A designer breed called <a href="https://www.dogbreedinfo.com/imoinu.htm" target="_blank">Imo-Inu</a>.) If I had raised a fuss about it, I think I would have been ejected while the puppy stayed.<p></p><p>I wasn't happy about the fact that the puppy peed on the carpet 20 times a day. We went through lots of pet stain cleaner. Family members learned to take the critter outside at regular intervals.</p><p>We took to giving the puppy treats and cheering for him every time he relieved himself outside. This worked. But maybe too well. For the rest of his life, he liked to have someone come outside with him when he needed to relieve himself. He didn't get treats after he was house trained, but he wanted company to take a leak.</p><p>Of course, we weren't going to make our little white puppy live outside by himself at that tender age. I was promised that he would be moved to the fenced backyard in the spring or summer after he had grown a bit. As you might suspect, that never happened. He became a house dog who spent time outside rather than an outside dog who occasionally came inside the house.</p><p>Our oldest son was at that time enamored of an anime show that featured a white wolf named Shiranui, so the children voted to name our dog Shiranui. Only a few people outside our family could ever remember or pronounce his name. He responded to all kinds of wonky things we called him (Poo-butt, Burdtucket, Little Mr. Puppy Pants, Nui-pie, Dog, Borkloaf, etc.) but he responded best to his actual name.</p><p>A good (and sometimes bad) characteristic of the Imo-Inu breed is that they self-groom, not unlike cats. Shiranui didn't like to get or stay messy. He cleaned himself by licking his paws and any other body part he could reach.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVovSE5_NkTdkNBy6EPL03K9WeaP1uwmISZC5hELmY7UizQJ4AzdrRg9pwhEfNFEezjfqQYKipsW670w3rfK2RaRVUNtHvf8zXB9PBeF3uLYSabgvNu_hZkqKTk6QsIQXlsQMe7yWTpCUzWRwIIARM1Prqf7UQcnSs05NkxrFNoMEPPShtdR9O-g/s3119/Shiranui%20-%20Conehenge%20(cropped).jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1373" data-original-width="3119" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVovSE5_NkTdkNBy6EPL03K9WeaP1uwmISZC5hELmY7UizQJ4AzdrRg9pwhEfNFEezjfqQYKipsW670w3rfK2RaRVUNtHvf8zXB9PBeF3uLYSabgvNu_hZkqKTk6QsIQXlsQMe7yWTpCUzWRwIIARM1Prqf7UQcnSs05NkxrFNoMEPPShtdR9O-g/s320/Shiranui%20-%20Conehenge%20(cropped).jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Unfortunately, the self-grooming could go into overdrive when dealing with a sore or a wound. No ordinary protective pet cone was sufficient to keep him from licking a wound raw. Or from eating bandage wraps (which might be barfed up two days later). We once had to resort to making him wear a massive cone extended by parts of ice cream buckets, which we dubbed <i>Conehenge</i>, to allow his paw to heal. The dog could barely walk with the thing on, but it did achieve its goal.<br /><p></p><p>We researched our puppy's breed and bought a kennel that would fit him as an adult. <a href="https://wagwalking.com/breed/imo-inu" target="_blank">This Wag! site</a>, for example, says that an adult Imo-Inu will weigh 20-30 lbs. and reach 14-17" in height. But Shiranui kept growing and growing until he outgrew his kennel while he was still a puppy. We had to get something much larger. When he finished growing, he was closer to 25" tall. At one point, he weighed 76 lbs. (Did I mention that I have a problem with indulging dogs?) With diet and exercise, he got down to 61 lbs., but that's still double what we expected for his breed.</p><p>As I suspected, our children walked the dog only sporadically. Our daughter liked to take him for a run around the neighborhood, holding his leash while she rode her scooter. Until Shiranui once decided to suddenly veer off the path to pursue something that interested him, causing our daughter to crash.</p><p>When Shiranui was about two years old, a job change allowed me to get home from work earlier. I started taking him for walks when I returned from work. We usually walked much farther than the simple round-the-block walks he was used to.</p><p>A couple of years later, when I started working from home full time, we added a lunchtime walk each day after I finished eating lunch. These ranged in length. Then about three years ago, we added a morning walk before work. I originally thought this would replace the lunchtime walk, but apparently both of us had become too deeply trained to give up the midday walk. So, most days, Shiranui got three walks.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Wr5IB9TuLXQao5IMG-IZcItpNBtEGa-vlmJSZvNDV0_I_Dq0BGNpfjLfqlMyWlUmflZX2Hi1YX-m_cA654kERlZLdSWPFpWtS8LBxAQ-6zm10zWNPBIZJYJQKTG0Rh6IByhA3f6D4SFUG01AvJbnoXffxB2ULybAzFktxZy6cd0yXJypnhw4ew/s4080/Shiranui%20on%20a%20walk%20with%20Scott%20in%20the%20Hollow.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4080" data-original-width="3072" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Wr5IB9TuLXQao5IMG-IZcItpNBtEGa-vlmJSZvNDV0_I_Dq0BGNpfjLfqlMyWlUmflZX2Hi1YX-m_cA654kERlZLdSWPFpWtS8LBxAQ-6zm10zWNPBIZJYJQKTG0Rh6IByhA3f6D4SFUG01AvJbnoXffxB2ULybAzFktxZy6cd0yXJypnhw4ew/s320/Shiranui%20on%20a%20walk%20with%20Scott%20in%20the%20Hollow.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>It wasn't that other family members never walked the dog. But for the past 5-6 years, I have taken Shiranui on at least 80% of his walks. That means that the two of us have been on about 5,000 walks together. I have learned that we were a mainstay in the neighborhood. People became very used to seeing the two of us on walks, and many have kindly expressed their condolences at his passing.<p></p><p>There is a sprawling city park a few blocks from our home. It has expansive grassy slopes in the more developed portion and woodland trails in the less developed part. Shiranui loved going there. Rarely did he miss going there on at least one of his daily walks.</p><p>When walking Shiranui, random people would regularly say something like, "Your dog is so beautiful!" And he was. Occasionally someone would say, "She is gorgeous." I rarely corrected the gender confusion.</p><p>Shiranui was a cold weather dog. He loved snow. When he was young, he would run around trying to catch the discharge from the snow blower, to the point that he would choke on the snow. He liked to stick his muzzle in fresh snow and toss the snow up in the air. He enjoyed drilling his head under the snow like a snow torpedo. He would sit, roll in, and lay down on the snow.</p><p>Heat was Shiranui's nemesis, especially as he grew older. He couldn't walk as far when it was hot outside. Sometimes, especially during the past couple of years, he would walk the three lots to the end of our street and back. And even that took a long time.</p><p>Our walking routes grew increasingly shorter over the past two years. Shiranui developed hip pain, which we treated with a prescription strength veterinary anti-inflammatory. Later we added a painkiller. These drugs really helped him with mobility and quality of life. But they cost money.</p><p>As our dog became geriatric, his immune system underperformed. This led to his seasonal allergy pills becoming year round, occasional steroid shots, and occasional antibiotic prescriptions. These all helped too, especially with skin rashes that went from rare, to frequent, to constant.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl_uvCRrPOpn9WOArB7ZbtAS3zGIGkxxupQnls7-fWcZAUkjtKHddjT2HrigumwlYpe8XIkxj26vXXZ7QtgtBCs2nvLKXwgaBsrQ6JCg9-UG-SiulsvnLKqcW9KNGgDbMJYchfHmCJt7OkZQh8H_piJ6AnifnVKogJagMZBu8a7uriPrW8sS_UjA/s4032/Shiranui%20gets%20scritches%20from%20Dan.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl_uvCRrPOpn9WOArB7ZbtAS3zGIGkxxupQnls7-fWcZAUkjtKHddjT2HrigumwlYpe8XIkxj26vXXZ7QtgtBCs2nvLKXwgaBsrQ6JCg9-UG-SiulsvnLKqcW9KNGgDbMJYchfHmCJt7OkZQh8H_piJ6AnifnVKogJagMZBu8a7uriPrW8sS_UjA/s320/Shiranui%20gets%20scritches%20from%20Dan.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Our family was definitely Shiranui's pack. He loved to be with his peeps. Often when a family member left the house, he would come to my office and look at me to let me know about it. His peeps loved him too. Shiranui became a common bonding point for each of our family members. One of my children noted that we are closer to each other than we would otherwise be because of our common bond with our dog.<p></p><p>Shiranui loved to be petted and doted on. But on his own terms. He had an odd habit of coming and sitting down next to a family member (or even a guest), obviously wanting to be petted, but maddeningly just barely out of reach. Often as he was being petted, he would slide down to the floor and then roll over to get his belly petted. He liked to lean on people who were standing or else sit on their foot. That wouldn't have been a big deal if he hadn't been so much larger than is typical for his breed.</p><p>I think Shiranui thought of himself as the defender of the home. He got to where he knew the sounds of the various types of delivery vehicles that commonly visit our neighborhood. As soon as he detected one of these, he would start barking. (Sometimes even when he was apparently asleep.) He reserved special attention for UPS trucks, for whatever reason. Maybe their engines growl in a tone he didn't like.</p><p>Shiranui generally loved guests. He would start barking before the doorbell rang. In fact, on the rare occasions when the doorbell rang without him previously detecting it, he would nearly go berserk. He usually sounded pretty vicious but would become extremely friendly as soon as a guest would pet him. Once a guest was in the house, he loved to rub up against them and solicit attention. Most of our guests left with more than a few 'white fibers of love' adorning their clothes, even after using a lint roller.</p><p>I was told when Shiranui was a puppy that his breed was double-coated but only shed once per year. Maybe. But shedding season seemed to last twelve months.</p><p>Our dog definitely had his own personality. He did his own thing, even when he knew you wanted him to do something different. We trained him to do a number of tricks. But he would only do them when offered sufficient treats as a bribe. He never was into balls, so he didn't respond much to throwing a ball. Ditto with frisbees. He loved tug-o-war until he got old and his gums bled when he played.</p><p>Something people don't think about or only distantly think about when they get a puppy is the other end of the animal's life. It has been clear for a couple of years that Shiranui was slowing down and was experiencing a variety of health problems. About half a year ago, he had some scans that revealed a rapidly growing liver tumor with growths on other organs. Surgery didn't make sense, given his age, the distribution of the tumors, and the rate of disease development. So, we mostly worked on making his life as comfortable as possible.</p><p>As the vet had warned, the liver tumor grew rapidly, causing the dog's abdominal region to bulk without adding much weight. We increasingly watched for end-of-life symptoms. We thought he was there a couple of weeks ago. But then he rallied after some rough days and seemed pretty much back to his usual self.</p><p>Last week, Shiranui came into our bedroom in the middle of the night, obviously in a bit of distress. I got up with him, but he soon became sleepy and lethargic. Over the next day, he vomited several times. He would only drink small amounts of water cupped in our hands and he wouldn't eat. He barely urinated. He mostly just lay around for hours on end. He didn't seem to be in pain. He would get up momentarily, but his rear legs weren't working well, so he would just reposition himself and lay back down. We made an appointment for the vet to see him the following morning.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqm4fjJAKzSoSQHa1JKUH1VvNLLUKqPO3pFFRtDArSY5HqRHL9pzt8GlC5MlNpWODi4WTNwLz3r_0wWdmVxDd9BZWgBtUsK7LRBPerFJHGhbWee0weYX8a6LOVQuuZOJ_K5MyoSNARaX1hOEzJYtaEeeB-EPdMNetCOFrkw_w_ssLLIFs8ZNsSKA/s480/Shiranui%20on%20deathbed.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="361" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqm4fjJAKzSoSQHa1JKUH1VvNLLUKqPO3pFFRtDArSY5HqRHL9pzt8GlC5MlNpWODi4WTNwLz3r_0wWdmVxDd9BZWgBtUsK7LRBPerFJHGhbWee0weYX8a6LOVQuuZOJ_K5MyoSNARaX1hOEzJYtaEeeB-EPdMNetCOFrkw_w_ssLLIFs8ZNsSKA/s320/Shiranui%20on%20deathbed.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>Shiranui actually seemed to be doing a little better that morning, but he still wasn't good. He did let me walk him to the neighbor's yard and back. His abdomen had gone from being stiff to being saggy and squishy. The vet explained that the liver tumor had ruptured. We could try to sustain him for a few unpleasant days if we wanted to. We opted for euthanization and called family members to come to the clinic.<p></p><p>Shiranui was soon surrounded by his peeps, who were all in a grieving emotional state. All our children are now adults and each had been prepared for this experience. But it's surprising how much it impacted each family member when the moment actually arrived. The folks at the animal clinic were professional and caring. The process was handled well. It didn't take long for our old sick dog to pass from this life as we knelt on the floor around him stroking his fur.</p><p>I was frankly surprised by the hole I felt inside. For the first day or so, almost anything that even remotely reminded me of Shiranui brought tears. It's even taking time to adjust to the doorbell ringing with no barking. It has become a little easier to manage the grief with each passing day. Those first few walks without Shiranui were pretty difficult. I appreciate family members joining me on some of those walks.</p><p>To be honest, I constantly complained about Shiranui nearly his whole life. Countless times I said, "I never wanted a dog," even as I cared for him, walked him, and picked up after him. (I learned guilt tripping and martyr syndrome from my mom, who was one of the best.) I mostly thought about the duty and inconvenience surrounding pet ownership.</p><p>Then as I prayed the evening of the day following Shiranui's passing, I received a distinct impression that it was essential for me to express gratitude for Shiranui each time I felt a wave of grief. That impression has radically changed how I have felt and responded over the succeeding days. There are so many things to be grateful for. Yes, there is grief. But there is joy! Gratitude reveals that joy. Why did it take Shiranui passing away for me to learn gratitude for him?</p><p>Regardless of any philosophy or religious doctrine, I sincerely believe that there will be a future beautiful meeting with Shiranui. It just feels right within my soul. Until then, goodbye, my friend.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiie66bzLhdbafc8MiCWRrwNr2SE1XzlSNjQybXZSdSW9jgwP3xosAZsxLqPh3vY0NovmQFPcI9Op_ggE3vZSRYvAHGn8KXIJ9BnB7G1Bsj5EdnpfRbSI2bS9O3O9m0U5dZo0xj_0EnqwmuSzM4ZGGZHItSdHzdYhjeAAbMk9t4J4TvVBQaHGcn7Q/s2040/Scott%20and%20Shiranui%20in%20Barker%20Park%20-%20epic%20shot%20-%2020231001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2040" data-original-width="1530" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiie66bzLhdbafc8MiCWRrwNr2SE1XzlSNjQybXZSdSW9jgwP3xosAZsxLqPh3vY0NovmQFPcI9Op_ggE3vZSRYvAHGn8KXIJ9BnB7G1Bsj5EdnpfRbSI2bS9O3O9m0U5dZo0xj_0EnqwmuSzM4ZGGZHItSdHzdYhjeAAbMk9t4J4TvVBQaHGcn7Q/s320/Scott%20and%20Shiranui%20in%20Barker%20Park%20-%20epic%20shot%20-%2020231001.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-84143236051672253702022-11-26T17:39:00.003-07:002023-12-12T13:42:07.581-07:00The End of an Era: Delose Conner Passes<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMa3B-rzHBWEYJ9Rg-5FutB9_8FexRw6Jos0uB6C1eW0acn_28-3Ap9sv9MzRTrUE3c7FHW0-Y4E51FMX5Kw_MlqurzR6_abOh3Yxp-R0UboT-Se0YA6d08u89Ed7D3zO2qPY7jaHo3-isC5uvzg-sLzqOINN4pGsDTxo5LFeY8fj12XyWCeS-Fg/s403/Delose-Conner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="319" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMa3B-rzHBWEYJ9Rg-5FutB9_8FexRw6Jos0uB6C1eW0acn_28-3Ap9sv9MzRTrUE3c7FHW0-Y4E51FMX5Kw_MlqurzR6_abOh3Yxp-R0UboT-Se0YA6d08u89Ed7D3zO2qPY7jaHo3-isC5uvzg-sLzqOINN4pGsDTxo5LFeY8fj12XyWCeS-Fg/w233-h295/Delose-Conner.jpg" width="233" /></a></div></div>There has never been anyone quite like Delose Conner and there will never be another quite like him.<p></p><p>Delose lived life passionately. He held strongly to deeply rooted principles and he constantly strove to effusively enact those principles in his life and to instill the best of those principles in others.</p><p>Many know "Mr. Conner" through his long career teaching demanding high school history courses and advising school clubs or activities. But my association with Delose came through his lifelong love of Scouting.</p><p>I have had the privilege of meeting and working with many people who have been dedicated to the Scouting program throughout my life. But Delose's devotion to the program was unusual even among this elevated group because he was deeply committed to the program's noble principles and aims. The more time I spent with Delose, the more it became clear that those principles undergirded everything he did in the program. He was serious about them</p><p>My memories of Delose after four and a half decades of association are many and varied. It's difficult to know what to share. Here are some things I learned from Delose.</p><p>The first thing I learned from Delose is that he saw me as a leader and respected me, despite me being a 16-year-old kid who lacked confidence. I had just returned from a summer of planting pineapples in Hawaii. (Which sounds far more glamorous than it really was.) I had been active in a fraternal Scouting organization called the Order of the Arrow. But my term as chapter chief would end in a few weeks and I was thinking that would be the end of my Scouting pursuits.</p><p>Delose was a recent college graduate and a newly minted district Scouting professional who had spent many summers working at Scout camp. He called me to arrange a meeting with me and my chapter adviser. We had no functional chapter adviser at the time, so I met with Delose on my own. He clearly expected me to step up and fill the leadership role to which I had been elected and expressed complete confidence in my ability to do so.</p><p>The next two and a half years led me through a growth experience that included two summers working as a commissioner at Camp Loll, many OA events and activities, and a trip to the Explorer President's Congress in Washington DC. I met people, engaged in activities, and learned new things that fundamentally changed the way I thought about and approached life. I still relish many of those relationships. Delose was with me and helping me each step of the way as I became the OA lodge chief and then section chief. He even spoke at my missionary farewell.</p><p>I learned from Delose how to do hard things and to even have fun while doing them. Working on Camp Loll Staff was physically and mentally demanding. Delose taught me to regularly step out of my comfort zone and find the glory in doing so. Where else can you spend a summer living in a tent, being chewed on by bugs, working 16-hour days while being on call 24x7, covering miles of trail by foot daily, and doing crazy skits and songs, all while getting paid next to nothing, and then hunger to do it again the following summer?</p><p>Some of the things I learned during those years were to take care of and spend time with my troops, work together with other people in the program, make it fun, develop meaningful relationships, be proud to wear the Scout uniform in public, do what needs to be done.</p><p>I also learned about priorities. Delose and I had been nominated to keep the Vigil early one June at Camp Bartlett. There were no cell phones back then, nor was there a telephone at the camp. A car arrived in camp and its driver told Delose that his wife Janice was in labor with their first child. Delose dropped the tools he was holding, ran to his car, and drove out of camp with impressive haste. He arrived at the hospital minutes after his oldest son was born. Family trumped Scouting, although time would cause the two to intertwine quite often.</p><p>By the way, Delose told me that as he admired his newborn son, his dad told him not to give the child a strange name. He said that he turned to his father and told him that he had no room to talk about giving a child an odd name. Yet, Delose seemed to quite like his unusual name.</p><p>Did I mention that Delose taught me that fun was important? Once as our camp cook made a batch of chocolate cake donuts, she put the donut holes in a large bowl. They were oblong rather than round and they looked exactly like moose droppings, of which there were many piles around camp back in those days. Delose walked up to Jed Stringham, who was a hard-working no-nonsense Scouting professional with a handful of the donut holes, asking Jed to look at the moose scat he had just found. Jed was a great naturalist. As he leaned over to take a look, Delose popped a donut hole into his mouth and gobbled it up. Jed just shook his head and walked away. But to those of us who saw it happen, it was pretty hilarious.</p><p>As the years passed, I moved from being a teenager to being a young adult OA adviser, and then to being an adult Scouter. I took my own troops to camp and accompanied my sons as they went to camp with their troops. I ran large Scout camping events, teaching younger Scouters the skills I had learned under Delose's tutelage. I brought my own sons to camp to work on camp staff. I returned many times to camp to do volunteer work.</p><p>I deeply cherish the times when I got to sit and chat with Delose, usually in his office at camp, but sometimes out in the camp. During one of these sessions, Delose told me about the months he and his family cared for his dying father in their home. Some of the duties and experiences didn't sound very pleasant to me, but Delose assured me that taking care of an elderly parent's end of life experience would be one of the most beautiful and rewarding things I would ever do.</p><p>Sometimes our chats would turn to philosophy. I will never forget the time he compared artists Norman Rockwell and Pablo Picasso. In Delose's mind, one of these men was the greatest artist of the 20th Century and a truly great soul, while the other was a selfish opportunist. Ask me about it sometime if you want more details. We didn't always agree but we could always be respectful of each other.</p><p>Delose loved to sing songs that were appropriate for Scout camp. To be honest, Delose was not a great musician. His formation of a tune could vary significantly from the original. But whatever musical deficits he might have had were more than compensated for by passion and enthusiasm. Those who have worked on Delose's camp staffs know that singing is more than fun; it's essential.</p><p>Photographs were very important to Delose. He took lots of photos of Scouting escapades throughout the years and filled volumes of photo albums. No one was to be forgotten. They were all important. Delose was a devoted naturalist and a lifelong artist. He deliberately worked throughout his life to hone his art skills and he even wrote a book about essential art basics.</p><p>Several months ago, my son Ben and I went to visit Delose and Janice. I had heard that Delose was grappling with prostate cancer. He didn't look well at all, but his spirits were strong. Despite his great difficulty traversing the basement stairs, Delose insisted on taking Ben and me down there to see the room that has been converted into a type of Scout shrine or museum. It was wonderful.</p><p>I felt bad about being unable to make it to Delose's art exhibit three weeks ago. I had church responsibilities that coincided with the event, and I simply could not make it work. The news of Delose's passing was not surprising to me. I find myself experiencing an odd mixture of melancholy, gratitude, and joy. He lived a beautiful life. He positively influenced thousands and deeply influenced hundreds. Perhaps in his passing, Delose has taught me a final lesson about dying well.</p><p>Godspeed, my friend. Until we meet again.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Addendum 11/30/2022</i></p><p>My son Ben wrote the following tribute for Delose:</p><p>I've always loved fantasy books, enough that I've written a few. Delose somehow turned a patch of wilderness into one of the only places on earth that ever felt like I was living in one. </p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Amidst the temples of dust and pine, he the oracle of lake and fire. Beneath the vault of heaven's glittering treasures, he the warden of our futures. Howl not now at the moon, for he was its friend too. Softly now, softly now; day is done.</span></p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-15734359100295495282022-08-08T18:07:00.001-06:002022-08-08T18:07:06.656-06:00Fostering an adult child's independence - part 2<p> Last April <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">I wrote about</a> our family's journey with moving our youngest son toward independence. As I stated then, "Our youngest son has <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd#:~:text=Autism%20spectrum%20disorder%20(ASD)%20is,first%20two%20years%20of%20life." target="_blank">autism spectrum disorder</a>, has grappled with major depression and anxiety, and has been seriously suicidal multiple times."</p><p>Over time our son's world seemed to shrink until he found himself unable to do much at all. Both he and we wondered whether he could ever live any kind of independent life. It was a disheartening place to be for all involved.</p><p>For the past eight months, our son has been participating in an immersive program hundreds of miles from where we live that helps "young adult men work through levels where they develop and demonstrate the skills necessary for independence."</p><p>At the same time, my wife and I have undertaken a soul stretching journey of our own designed to help us become the kind of parents who can support our adult son's independence, despite his challenges. We have gone through a lot of hard work to redefine how we think about ourselves and how we view each of our children.</p><p>We have had to seriously confront our unhealthy codependent attitudes and behaviors. Confronting your own deep-seated deficiencies with the prospect of working to change them is challenging enough that many people choose an unhealthy status quo instead. Our growth hasn't always been much fun, but it has been highly valuable.</p><p>Even now, much of our development is fresh and tender. It is soooooo easy to slip back into old established scripts and roles. Sticking with our growth will require work, therapy, diligence, and vigilance. It takes discipline and work to establish and maintain healthy boundaries, but we are discovering that this is what makes it possible to bring wholeheartedness to our relationships.</p><p>In April I wrote, "We have learned that we must give up trying to manage our son's outcomes." We have had to give up on thinking that our son must choose to adopt our values or religious beliefs, must seek the kind of education we have, and must achieve the kind of careers and family life that we have found so fulfilling. It has been a relief to realize that we are not responsible for his happiness or even his survival. But this also means giving up on our ideas of what his life should look like.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIIqZE-TVQDk8Cxl9BzBoa38NdgqAZ4-dXqp94DLDLbB9wRCrLlMke8lUnHMcZp9mtdIU9Eg43U8mYU7zzyrhMIhmRxxVO2QIh8W-61MPcIhFwu857AabbpLHwWf3Dw0ynr8-1NOtG7uhhlVXqi9MpNzJe9Z3jjGdJeInY9zbz5VhT6TWDac/s1920/IMG_20220807_212241.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIIqZE-TVQDk8Cxl9BzBoa38NdgqAZ4-dXqp94DLDLbB9wRCrLlMke8lUnHMcZp9mtdIU9Eg43U8mYU7zzyrhMIhmRxxVO2QIh8W-61MPcIhFwu857AabbpLHwWf3Dw0ynr8-1NOtG7uhhlVXqi9MpNzJe9Z3jjGdJeInY9zbz5VhT6TWDac/s320/IMG_20220807_212241.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>Our son recently posted this before/after photo. He was in worse shape eight months ago than he appears in the January 2021 "before" shot. The difference between then and now is astonishing even to us. The program he is in includes a fitness component. But I assure you that not all of the young men in the program achieve our son's current level of fitness. This has been something he has chosen to do for himself.<p></p><p>A month ago, we joined about half of the program participants and four staff members as our son and his companions competed in a grueling 10K <a href="https://www.spartan.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Spartan Race</a> that included a climb of about 2,000 feet and twenty-five significant obstacles. Our son was tired as he approached the final obstacle stations, but he was in pretty darn fine shape. Instead of collapsing after the race like some participants, he seemed energized and ready to do other things.</p><p>Similar changes are reflected in many aspects of our son's lifestyle choices, including employment, emotional management, interpersonal skills, money management, etc. He has learned that he can use failures as learning and development tools. He seems confident that, regardless of what life throws at him, he can figure out a way to get up and move forward. It is difficult to explain how different this is from where he was at the outset of the program.</p><p>At this stage of the program, our son is making plans for independent living after graduation. That includes figuring out housing, employment, transportation, food, etc. We are prohibited from getting much involved. And for good reason. Our son needs to own this. He needs to own his successes and failures.</p><p>I am deeply impressed by our son's mental and emotional development. And yet, what I said in April still holds true. We don't know where this is headed or what his life over the next couple of years will look like. We must avoid trying to control his outcomes.</p><p>We are more at peace with what we can and should do, which is to be the kind of parents we should be. We too can learn from our failures and can use that learning as steppingstones to our own growth and development. We too will be graduating from the program. But like other graduations in life, this won't represent retirement from challenge, but the beginning of continuous challenge without the structure offered by the program.</p><p>Why would we want that? Why wouldn't we? We are older than we were eight months ago. But we are more alive than we were back then. Forward!</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-51546100257690420172022-04-24T20:57:00.000-06:002022-04-24T20:57:31.680-06:00Fostering an adult child's independence<p>I haven't written for half a year because life has been ... interesting. New job. New adventure with our son that has involved a lot of growth. Dealing with our daughter's unusual medical problems. Etc. Today I am writing about our son's journey. And our journey with respect to our son.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Shrinking world, shrinking hope</h4><p>Our youngest son has <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd#:~:text=Autism%20spectrum%20disorder%20(ASD)%20is,first%20two%20years%20of%20life." target="_blank">autism spectrum disorder</a>, has grappled with major depression and anxiety, and has been seriously suicidal multiple times. This has led to a variety of challenges over the years. We have tried very hard to make sure that our son has had access to good mental health treatment. And yet, it has been a real struggle for him, us, and the whole family.</p><p>Oddly, our son's social and employment capacities seemed to shrink from the time he got his first part-time job in high school until he spent much of last year holed up in his bedroom sleeping. Even his time gaming and doing stuff on the computer diminished.</p><p>As his world shrank, our son increasingly tried to control his home environment. We kowtowed to that for fear of him turning to self-harm. But months of walking on eggshells in our own home took a toll on other family members.</p><p>The problem with this was not lost on our son. He felt increasingly hopeless about ever becoming independent or living a decent life. He and my wife searched out various programs focused on helping with these kinds of issues, but they were all very expensive. We even initiated the enrollment process for a program designed to address <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/202003/failure-launch-what-it-is-and-how-handle-it" target="_blank">failure to launch syndrome</a>, but the cost prevented us from pursuing it further.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Coming to terms with the cost</h4><p>After nearly a year of living through this situation, we visited our financial planner for our annual review. He suggested that we consider cashing out some of our carefully earned investments to cover the cost of a program for our son. We were surprised by this advice, but our planner contrasted this approach with what it might cost us to care for a nonfunctional adult son for the rest of our lives.</p><p>Our son was fully on board with this plan since he had researched the target program himself. The enrollment process required him to undertake significant steps, so it took a few weeks. The staff reviewed the application and accepted our son. (Some applicants are not accepted because they don't fit the program profile.)</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">The program</h4><p>About five months ago, we drove our son many hours to the main office of the program, left him there, and drove back home.</p><p>This program differs from some others in that it includes a significant amount of unstructured time with a high degree of accountability. Many of the young adult men in our son's program have autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, OCD, depression, anxiety, executive function disorder, and/or other challenges.</p><p>In this program, young adult men work through levels where they develop and demonstrate the skills necessary for independence. Over time they engage in a variety of program activities, participate in personal and group therapy sessions, find and work jobs, gain transportation independence, save money in a launch fund for independent living after graduation, and develop a viable plan for living independently.</p><p>The young men live in townhouses that each host five participants. A professionally trained life coach is assigned to each house. Each participant works with a licensed therapist. As the typical kinds of problems with living in this kind of arrangement arise, participants learn how to deal with the issues and learn healthy accountability.</p><p>Most who enroll in the program reach graduation in 6-9 months. It might take some longer because the pace of preparation for independence differs by individual. Some leave the program without graduating. They are adults and can legally make their own choices on the matter. Some participants move to other programs that are more suited to their specific needs (including substance abuse issues).</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Family involvement</h4><p>Parents of participants also work with a therapist to advance through levels designed to help them learn healthy ways to support their adult children. They also engage in family therapy sessions and weekly parent group sessions.</p><p>Program staff make it clear that they cannot "fix" your child. They can provide tools to help participants and their families develop healthier personal and family dynamics. How the participants and families use those tools is up to them. The support system is designed to help participants and families wean themselves from the program, which can seem confusing or disorienting from time to time.</p><p>The growth experience over these past months for our son and for ourselves has been painful, soul stretching, and healthy. As parents, we have:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Read a pile of books (see list after this post).</li><li>Learned about our enabling and codependent tendencies.</li><li>Written letters of accountability and hope.</li><li>Worked on implementing healthier patterns.</li><li>Developed a whole new way of being toward our son and toward each of our children.</li></ul><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Telling stories</h4><p>Humans function on the stories we tell ourselves. One of the main goals for parents involved in this program is for them to be able to tell their son's story in a way that is meaningful to their son, and to be able to tell their own story in a way that is meaningful to themselves. Participants have a similar goal.</p><p>That may sound easy, but it requires a whole lot of listening and giving up on scripts and roles that have defined relationships for years. It can feel like ripping away parts of your own identity, so it can be painful. The truths found under those layers feel raw at first but exposing them allows for a level of authenticity that has been hidden even from ourselves.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Some of our story</h4><p>Our first serious encounter with our son's challenges occurred when he expressed suicidal thoughts at age 10. His first therapist told us that we had to back off our expectations. We took this (probably far too) seriously. We grew to where we unwittingly tried to protect our son from any and all challenges.</p><p>The message we derived from much of the suicide prevention material was that we would be at fault if our child completed or even attempted suicide. The guilt this promotes is harsh. As our lives became a constant suicide watch, we spent years parenting from a place of fear masquerading as love.</p><p>Our parenting styles strongly sent "you are not OK" and "you can't do this without us" messages to our son. It nourished "we must fix our son" and "we must fix situations for our son" attitudes in ourselves. Frankly, that can offer a heady feeling of importance and even identity for a parent. It also allows a parent to seek validation by whining about their son, his challenges, and how this affects them.</p><p>This was a toxic mix that wasn't good for our child or for us. It also fed unhealthy relationships with our other children, and between our son and his siblings. We did not realize that we were seeing our son as an extension of ourselves rather than as a separate individual with unique capacities, hopes, dreams, and accountability.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Changing for the better</h4><p>Stepping away from these kinds of codependent patterns has been difficult. For years we have been telling ourselves stories suggesting that these patterns demonstrate that we are good parents and individuals. These stories have been deeply imprinted, so it is easy to get sucked back into the old patterns.</p><p>At the same time, our son has gone through his own soul stretching. He has been learning to see himself as a separate individual who is part of our family group rather than as simply an extension of our family. This is a fundamental identity shift, so it has been painful.</p><p>One of the more challenging aspects for us has been establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries. We have frankly been poor at that. After our son entered the program, we had to put up a solid boundary saying that he would not be permitted to move back home for any reason.</p><p>While that is a liberating stance in one way, it led to one of the most challenging experiences of my life. About a month into the program, our son was seriously struggling. He couldn't see himself succeeding in the program. His fundamental identity was being challenged. The fact that he had been sick with a cold and was short on funds didn't help his mental condition.</p><p>The program ensures that participants have enough to eat even when they are out of cash. The food provided in these cases is utilitarian but adequate, so our son wasn't going to starve. But he was determined to leave the program. He said he was leaving even if he had to choose homelessness.</p><p>We reiterated our boundary that we would pay for our son to move to a different program, or we would send him camping gear if he desired it, but he could not move back to our home. He stomped out of his therapist's office and walked away. The staff kept tabs on him until he eventually wandered back to his townhouse several miles away. He was crushed that we would not let him come home.</p><p>Holding that line was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. And frankly, I wasn't sure at the time whether it was the right thing to do. It is difficult to describe the level of guilt I felt for weeks. Some of that pain remains even now.</p><p>But we have discovered that guilt is neither a good source of motivation nor a good framework for determining what is right. Healthy parenting may require a parent to learn to sit with parental guilt for some time. Doing what is right doesn't always feel good.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">A glimmer of hope</h4><p>The first few months in the program were rocky for our son. Almost every interaction with him involved him appealing to us for rescue on some level. After all, we had been rescuing him for years. But little by little, he has begun to find his way.</p><p>Recently we had a very good adult-to-adult conversation with our son with no hint of a rescue request whatsoever. He is feeling competent. He is owning his own path. Although he was originally opposed to working in food service, he is a line cook at a restaurant for now. He envisions better things in the future. He is putting money into his launch fund and has an initial (realistic) plan of how he will live independently after graduation.</p><p>That plan will have to become more concrete and fully funded over the next few months. Our son is much fitter than he was during his basement-dwelling couch potato life. He recently hit his highest squat press weight, which is amazing for a guy who used to only wishfully think about exercise.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Our path and our son's path</h4><p>But to be honest, we don't know where this is headed. We have learned that we must give up trying to manage our son's outcomes. We are working to accomplish the parent requirements in the program. We can do the work that brings our own inner peace. We can model healthy parenting.</p><p>We can do many things better than we used to. But we can't dictate where our son is headed. That's his journey and his life. We must allow him to go where he chooses and allow him the consequences of those choices. We can connect with him, learn his story, and honor his pain. But we must not rescue him from it.</p><p>This is the way to parental peace, even if it sounds painful. Truth be told, you can experience pain and peace at the same time. You can empathetically hurt for your child while incorporating that pain in healthy ways. Easy? No. Right? Yes.</p><p>One parent with a struggling child asked why they should go to all the work of good parenting if it can't guarantee healthy outcomes in their child. Their therapist responded that good parenting is its own reward. You choose healthy parenting practices because it is the right thing to do, regardless of what your child chooses. Doing the right thing brings internal peace, even when external things work out less than optimally.</p><p>This is the journey we are on. For now, it consumes a lot of resources and takes a lot of our energy. But we have greater inner peace. And it is the right thing for us to do.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Some of the books we have read on our journey:</i></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Heroic-Parent-Childs-Struggle/dp/1682450023" target="_blank">The Journey of the Heroic Parent</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-Out-Box/dp/B07H3G1KCN/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3SZRI059YCDKM&keywords=leadership+and+self-deception&qid=1650844014&sprefix=leadership+and+s%2Caps%2C119&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Leadership and Self-Deception</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Peace-Resolving-Heart-Conflict/dp/1626564310" target="_blank">The Anatomy of Peace</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Outward-Mindset-Arbinger-Institute/dp/1523087307/ref=pd_bxgy_img_sccl_2/147-8375164-7435715?pd_rd_w=z3jIY&pf_rd_p=6b3eefea-7b16-43e9-bc45-2e332cbf99da&pf_rd_r=PJ9ATJXK2SKS79TZ2J6M&pd_rd_r=d1e8b8f4-e105-4aa0-a202-71675b24f0fd&pd_rd_wg=NSTZY&pd_rd_i=1523087307&psc=1" target="_blank">The Outward Mindset</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Parent-Transforming-Ourselves-Empowering/dp/1897238452" target="_blank">The Conscious Parent</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable-Transforms/dp/1592408419" target="_blank">Daring Greatly</a></li></ul><p></p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-15201192571760377402021-10-29T13:42:00.000-06:002021-10-29T13:42:10.030-06:00A job change engineered by God<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e96hoMM6VEc/YXhxgvtpAgI/AAAAAAAAJtw/nOn1LI4jaPILSlDUN6UngDE-fsyOpbZgACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/incomingcall.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="113" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e96hoMM6VEc/YXhxgvtpAgI/AAAAAAAAJtw/nOn1LI4jaPILSlDUN6UngDE-fsyOpbZgACLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h113/incomingcall.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>"Answer that call." The impression was clear and surprising. As a software engineer, I have been used to being contacted by recruiters throughout my career. Software engineering has long been a hotspot in the job market.<p></p><p>Beginning last spring, I noticed a significant uptick in recruiters reaching out to me by phone, email, and LinkedIn. Turning down recruiters seemed like swatting away flies. My LinkedIn profile doesn't even show that I'm interested in looking for a different job.</p><p>Besides, I had a good job as a senior engineer at a growing logistics management firm. I was an influential member of a great team of professionals, some of whom were good friends. My work was highly valued. I had a lot of deep tribal knowledge. The pay was good and the benefits were decent. I was earning plenty of vacation time annually. I worked from my home office full time. I honestly told people that this was the best gig of my entire career. Why would I give that all up for something unsure?</p><p>Growing pains often accompany growing organizations, and so it was in this case. Over a period of less than a year, nearly the entire executive team had been replaced with executives hired from larger firms. Each came onboard wanting to quickly make their mark. The result was chaotic for my position, as various executives ordered immediate competing priority changes seemingly willy-nilly. But this alone would not have caused me to consider changing jobs. Growing pains tend ease over time.</p><p>Frankly, I had been sensing a need to consider a different challenge career-wise. I am getting along in my career. Too often I have seen seasoned workers slowly slide toward becoming living inventory as they rely on past accomplishments and look so longingly at retirement that they lose the drive to learn and do new things. Although I found challenge and reward in my work, I had been feeling a subtle itch to reach for the kind of challenge that can usually only be found through a job shift.</p><p>In recent years, recruiters have opted for email and LinkedIn messaging over phone calls. I usually screen recruiter phone calls and let them go to voicemail. When the phone rang showing an unrecognized number, I pressed the call screen button and watched to see if the caller would say anything. As the recruiter started talking, I sensed the unmistakable prompting to answer the call. I almost surprised myself by pressing the green answer button.</p><p>As I chatted amicably with the recruiter, I heard several things that normally would have caused me to conclude the call quickly, but I felt a deep inner calm signaling me to continue learning about the position being discussed. I also heard one thing that really made me pay attention: <a href="https://www.familysearch.org/en/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FamilySearch</a>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.familysearch.org/en/" imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="181" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gmtqmq5WC3E/YXxM9ejI3EI/AAAAAAAAJt4/LkLMMOKEDjowTGYKKjzuElo2DRg-FIYTQCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h181/FamilySearch%2Blogo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>Like many family history enthusiasts, I have been an avid user of <a href="https://www.familysearch.org/en/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FamilySearch</a> products for many years. An opportunity to work on software systems for products that I deeply believe in? I was all ears.</p><p>Later I would learn that the recruiter came upon my information in a very unusual manner. He also felt that he should call rather than reaching out via electronic message. That first discussion led to a series of interviews, all of which felt very natural and comfortable.</p><p>The entire process from first contact to confirming a job offer went so smoothly and quickly that it seemed uncanny to me. I have been around the block a few times and I know how these things usually go. The recruiter later confirmed that nothing ever works that smoothly in his line of work. Well, nothing except this job.</p><p>The whole time, I have felt very strongly that I have been guided to this position, almost as if all my past training and experience have been preparing me for this exact situation. I continue to feel that way now. Each time a new coworker has told me that I was divinely brought to this job, it has simply echoed something I have already known to be true.</p><p>The hardest part has been leaving my old job and coworkers behind. And yet, as I prayed about that, I felt strongly that this would actually work out best for that organization too. Frankly, it is humbling to be told by God that your workplace will be better off without you there. But it all felt good and right. A good friend at work was so distraught about my announced departure that he prayed about it and received a witness that it was the right thing for both me and the organization.</p><p>Jumping jobs at this point in life is not without its challenges. I am back to starting over on earning vacation and starting new insurance right when we had covered our deductibles for the year. Our home budget system has been thrown into a bit of disarray. Unlike working for a place where the home office was inaccessible on the other side of the country, I now live an hour and a half from the office, which is within range. Although I work from home full time, I find that I am commuting to the office once every two or three weeks.</p><p>I don't know what the future will bring. This is still the right thing for me to be doing right now. While my skill set meshes well with my new job and I am highly aware of <a href="https://www.familysearch.org/en/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FamilySearch</a> products and offerings, I am still learning many new things. I am having to stretch. It isn't always comfortable, but it feels good and right.</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-65958169291616096652021-08-23T19:32:00.004-06:002022-01-08T21:01:27.508-07:00We testify of Christ<p>Years ago when we had only three children, I was unable to attend church one Sunday, so my wife took the three children to church by herself. It happened to be our monthly fast Sunday. (See <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/fast-sunday" target="_blank">Fast Sunday topic</a> for explanation.)</p><p>In Latter-day Saint congregations, the fast Sunday <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/sacrament-meeting" target="_blank">sacrament meeting</a> program consists of congregation members voluntarily expressing extemporaneous <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/testimony?lang=eng" target="_blank">testimony</a>. This format is not without its challenges. It's like open mic Sunday. Congregation leaders have little control over who decides to speak, how long they speak, or what they say.</p><p>Most active Latter-day Saints can likely cite a few quirky, strange, awkward, or inappropriate testimony speeches. But most church members sense that a certain spirit of sacredness should pervade the meeting, so there are probably fewer of these unfortunate events than one might expect.</p><p>Back to that Sunday years ago. When the baby needed to be fed, my wife retreated to the mother's lounge for some privacy. Our six- and four-year-old boys seemed to be managing just fine with coloring books and they promised they would be good.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VmTB2iamlFc/YSPTeb-7qwI/AAAAAAAAJak/NlTkLPf0DK4DNpVZq7gteZFhilfLwxVlgCLcBGAsYHQ/s600/primary-boy-testimony.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="600" height="250" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VmTB2iamlFc/YSPTeb-7qwI/AAAAAAAAJak/NlTkLPf0DK4DNpVZq7gteZFhilfLwxVlgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/primary-boy-testimony.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>As my wife listened to the testimonies being voiced over the speaker in the mother's lounge, she was surprised to hear the familiar voice of our oldest son. That day our normally introverted son spoke about many things in a manner that I am told was quite entertaining. Unfortunately, few of these things had anything to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ.<p></p><p>My wife couldn't stop feeding the baby and run to the chapel. She thought that surely our son would quickly button up his verbal stream of consciousness because he had never been much for public speaking.</p><p>That was not the case this time around. My wife sat increasingly mortified as the minutes passed. Our son talked about the tack strips that were exposed in the dining area after the old carpet was removed and before the new carpet was installed, among many other topics of that nature. Surely a member of the bishopric would put a stop to our son's rambling. Or maybe another mom would kindly step in. But nobody did.</p><p>Our son finally ran out of things to say after seven long minutes. In the weeks following this event, numerous congregation members told me how entertained they were by our son's extemporaneous speech. But entertainment is not the goal of testimony meeting.</p><p>Following this event, we decided that we would hold our own monthly family testimony meeting. During one weekly family home evening each month, a family member would conduct the meeting and invite family members to present their testimonies. The individual conducting would first repeat what has become a mantra in our family:</p><blockquote><p>As a reminder, a testimony in the church is what you know or believe to be true about Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, Their church, their workings in our lives or in the lives of others.</p></blockquote><p>This may not be the best textbook definition of a testimony in the church, but it has worked for our family. The church's <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/testimony?lang=eng" target="_blank">testimony topic page</a> states, "A testimony is a spiritual witness given by the Holy Ghost." This is an indispensable element of a testimony that my family's mantra doesn't adequately address. The church's testimony topic page adds:</p><blockquote><p>The foundation of a testimony is the knowledge that Heavenly Father lives and loves His children; that Jesus Christ lives, that He is the Son of God, and that He carried out the infinite Atonement; that Joseph Smith is the prophet of God who was called to restore the gospel; that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Savior’s true Church on the earth; and that the Church is led by a living prophet today. With this foundation, a testimony grows to include all principles of the gospel.</p></blockquote><p>A testimony in the church may include any element of the gospel, but it must be founded on the basic doctrines of the gospel. Without this foundation, testimonies of peripheral matters are like branches severed from the trunk of the tree, or from the "true vine" (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/john/15.1?lang=eng&clang=eng#p1" target="_blank">John 15:1</a>, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/1-ne/15.15?lang=eng&clang=eng#p15" target="_blank">1 Nephi 15:15</a>). Without a witness of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and their true work among their children on earth, testimonies of incidental doctrines become secular pronouncements devoid of true spiritual power.</p><p>I recently attended a fast and testimony meeting at a Scout camp. The meeting was conducted by an authorized <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/military/chaplains?lang=eng" target="_blank">chaplain</a> of <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng" target="_blank">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a> in conjunction with the administration of the sacrament, so it was an official church meeting. I was deeply disappointed in some of the extemporaneous speeches that were presented. One individual testified of the importance of doing daily acts of personal maintenance. Another testified of the value of hard work. Others spoke of the value of friendship, service, the great program at the camp, standing for what is right, etc.</p><p>All of these are good things, but most speakers seemed to shy away from testifying of Jesus Christ and of the Father's great plan of happiness. Some didn't even bother to close their speeches in the name of the Savior, perhaps sensing within themselves the lack of connection between their words and the Divine Son of God.</p><p>Why do we close testimonies, talks, lessons, and prayers in the church in the name of Jesus Christ anyway? For starters, because the Lord has commanded it (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/5.8?lang=eng#p8" target="_blank">Moses 5:8</a>, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/3-ne/27.5-7?lang=eng#p5" target="_blank">3 Nephi 27:5-7</a>, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/1.20?lang=eng#p20#20" target="_blank">D&C 1:20</a>). But isn't it a bit presumptuous to claim to speak in the name of the Lord? After all, anyone who has been in the church for long enough has heard plenty of nonsense uttered before a speaker has closed in the Savior's name.</p><p>It is understandable that some might feel uncomfortable presuming to speak for Jesus Christ, yet the Lord himself says that his goal is "that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world" (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/1.20?lang=eng#p20#20" target="_blank">D&C 1:20</a>). But isn't that at some future point when we are perfected?</p><p>CS Lewis wrote something that still bothers many Christians: "Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." He likens our efforts to act like the Savior to a child play-acting a grown up role, something children do quite often. Researchers have found that this play-acting is a very important part of growing up to be a functional adult.</p><p>Lewis posits that when we pray or speak in the name of Jesus Christ, we are play-acting at being Christ. We know even while in the throes of doing so that we are not Christ and that we are very unlike him in many ways, just as the child playing an adult role knows that in many ways she is very unlike the role she is playing at the moment.</p><p>Many Christians are well and good with becoming more Christlike, but they draw the line at actually becoming like Christ. That is tantamount to blasphemy in their eyes, although John teaches that disciples will ultimately meet Christ and see that they have become like him (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/1-jn/3.2,3?lang=eng&clang=eng#p2,3" target="_blank">1 John 3:2-3</a>). If the Christian's job is to become like Christ, it is unclear from the scriptures where or why that effort should be halted. Latter-day Saints should fully embrace the quest to receive the Savior so completely that he eventually makes us equal to him.</p><p>Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been repeatedly called upon by modern prophets to make Jesus Christ the center of every facet of their lives. We are supposed to be obsessive about following Christ. We should talk of, rejoice in, preach of, and even prophesy of Jesus Christ (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/25.25,26?lang=eng&clang=eng#p25,26" target="_blank">2 Nephi 25:25-26</a>). How sad it is that some members of Christ's church struggle to mention the Savior in a meeting devoted to bearing witness of him.</p><p>"I feel moved to participate in the testimony meeting," one might say, "but I do not at present feel particularly close to Jesus Christ. In fact, I'm not sure how much I believe in the church and its spiritual claims anymore." Is the answer for someone who feels this way to keep their mouth shut in testimony meeting?</p><p>Perhaps the experience of a friend of mine can be instructive. The first time Ron bore witness of Jesus Christ, his church, and his prophets, was at a sacrament meeting just prior to Ron leaving on a two-year mission for the church. As Ron testified that he believed these truths, he was suddenly filled with the Holy Spirit and he <i>knew</i> that the words he was saying were true. His fledgling witness came as he exercised a particle of faith (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/32.27?lang=eng&clang=eng#p27" target="_blank">Alma 32:27</a>). He has spent a lifetime cultivating his faith so that he now has a vibrant burning witness within his soul.</p><p>The primary purpose of a testimony meeting in the restored Church of Jesus Christ is to bear witness of the Savior. If you can say something that helps fulfill that purpose, go ahead and say it. It seems to me that the Lord is very compassionate toward those who make earnest efforts to follow him, no matter how clumsy they might seem.</p><p>If you can't currently even express belief in Christ, perhaps it would be best for you to first spend some time building your faith by play-acting like Christ in your thoughts and actions more often. CS Lewis promises that as you do this, the Savior will work with you to re-create you in his image, "killing off the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity." (Mere Christianity, 1996 edition, p. 165)</p><p>We still laugh about the time our oldest son rambled at a testimony meeting as a young child. He was just doing what he perceived others doing according to his six-year-old understanding. Some of our adult children have pursued other paths than a fully active Latter-day Saint lifestyle. But if you ask any of them what a testimony in the church is, each one still knows the answer.</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-17099277714837806582021-07-21T14:11:00.001-06:002021-07-26T13:11:16.928-06:00Fishing with Dad: the time I caught no fish all week and was glad<p>I was about nine or ten years old when Dad took a week of vacation one summer and took my three brothers and me up to <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/uwcnf/about-forest/districts/?cid=stelprdb5048556" target="_blank">Pineview Reservoir</a> to go fishing for a few hours on a daily basis. (My youngest brother was yet to be born.) Mom wasn't able to take vacation from work that week, so this was a way for Dad to enjoy a staycation with his sons. As I recall, we had gone on a bigger ticket vacation the previous summer and my folks were saving for another major event down the road, so this was a way to vacation on a budget.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MpMsml5bNZQ/YPh3g1e7dNI/AAAAAAAAJKk/Dh96ptE_v0AqRdBgra0ekK_q007F8_sAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s330/Andy-Opie-fishing.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="310" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MpMsml5bNZQ/YPh3g1e7dNI/AAAAAAAAJKk/Dh96ptE_v0AqRdBgra0ekK_q007F8_sAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Andy-Opie-fishing.jpg" /></a></div>Fishing is not fun for me, but this daily excursion still turned out to be a memorable experience.<p></p><p>Each day we would arise much earlier than a kid wants to get up during the summer months, eat a quick breakfast, grab our gear, and head up to the reservoir. I was terrible at preparing my fishing line. I didn't know how to tie knots, couldn't bait a hook or attach a lure, didn't understand how the plastic bubble worked, etc.</p><p>The most likely reason I didn't understand these things was that I didn't care about them. I have a brother-in-law who is an avid fisherman. He fishes year round, multiple days each week. He knows all about fish behavior and how to entice the right kinds of fish under the right conditions using his hand-tied flies. But I simply can't bring myself to care about any of that stuff. The entire activity is mind-numbingly boring for me.</p><p>Back during our staycation, after the seemingly endless time it took to get my pole and line ready, I would plunk my hook into the water and hope that I would not catch a fish. Because if I caught a fish I would actually have to touch the thing. Yuck! Maybe five minutes into the interminable waiting for a fish to steal my bait, I would be goofing off doing something other than fishing.</p><p>It was during one of these many goof off sessions that I learned that other fishers didn't take kindly to some stupid kid awkwardly trying to skim rocks across the surface of the water where they were fishing. It turns out that chucking rocks in the water tends to scare the fish away. And unlike me, some of these people actually did want to catch fish. Go figure.</p><p>Dad loved his sons. But he was not very patient with kids who didn't quickly demonstrate proficiency in anything that came easily to him. We used to hate it when Mom would send us outside to help Dad with a task he was doing in the yard or on the outside of the house. Dad couldn't understand the necessity of baby steps and instructions for any process that seemed self-evident to him. Nor could he understand that mistakes were a natural part of teaching a kid how to do a task.</p><p>Actually, Dad didn't seem to grasp that teaching a kid was of any value whatsoever when there was a task to be finished. The task always took precedence. So Dad often ended up doing these things by himself. He excelled at thinking deeply and getting stuff done; not so much at teaching. Sometimes when my deeply philosophical dad would try to teach us, the content would cruise so far above our heads that our eyes would glaze over, seemingly for hours.</p><p>When my parents had young grandchildren, I saw Dad get down on the floor and horse around with them in a silly manner. It was only then that I remembered Dad doing the same thing with us when we were young. The childish goofiness each of us shared with Dad ceased about the time we started elementary school. Then Dad expected us to step up and act responsibly, as he had been required to do at that age, growing up in Nazi Germany.</p><p>Once we were no longer small, Dad exuded the persona of a northern German stoic. But there were times something more whimsical would break through his staid surface. One of my favorites was when Dad spilled his milk at the dinner table one evening. Kids spilling drinks at the table was one of Dad's pet peeves, because the liquid was bound to drip onto the new dining room carpet.</p><p>This carpet was avocado green colored deep shag that was all the rage in the early 70s. It looked horrid when it was in optimal condition, so it is hard to see how a little bit of milk would make it worse.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pfsn0OM4XK0/YPh8aieLVtI/AAAAAAAAJKw/d9zkOs4X1H8F20vA1GZP7ZzAe2Ky1feFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s225/spilled-milk.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pfsn0OM4XK0/YPh8aieLVtI/AAAAAAAAJKw/d9zkOs4X1H8F20vA1GZP7ZzAe2Ky1feFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/spilled-milk.jpg" /></a></div>Still, when Dad spilled his milk, we all watched as the liquid quickly spread toward the leaf seam in the table. Dad cast about for anything close and ample enough to blot the spill before it reached the critical spot. The only thing he could see was my brother's fresh sandwich. He grabbed it and mopped up enough of the spill to save the day, giving Mom enough time to jump up and grab a towel, which she used to mop up the rest of the spill.<p></p><p>The interplay was beyond hilarious for us kids. Well, except for my brother, who was deeply offended that his sandwich had been used as a mop cloth. Mom quickly replaced it with a fresh sandwich. The irony of Dad enacting his own pet peeve was not lost on him. He couldn't help laughing out loud about it, which was something we rarely saw in those days.<br /></p><p>Dad has been gone for 13 years now. His last couple of years of life were marked by declining physical and mental health. It was painful to watch my intelligent, learned, analytical, serious, hard-working, spiritual father deteriorate until his comatose, emaciated mortal form stopped sustaining life.</p><p>I am still left with a lifetime of memories of Dad; some good and some bad, but good overall. Among those memories is the summer we went fishing every day for a week. I'm still glad that I never caught any fish during those trips. I didn't like fishing then and I still don't like it. But I like the memory of that week with Dad and my brothers, as well as many other memories that evoke a mixture of feelings, weaving a rich tapestry of love that I know will endure beyond this mortal sphere.</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-4688668970887443412021-05-27T14:27:00.002-06:002021-05-28T09:04:34.519-06:00My favorite daughter graduates, thanks to some teachers, despite others<p>"There is no social distancing going on here," I said in my wife's ear as we entered the high school football stadium. Nearly every inch of bench space in the stands on both sides of the field was occupied by those who had come to witness their loved one endure the time honored robed ritual signifying their completion of high school graduation requirements.</p><p>The high school had permitted up to five guest tickets per graduate. They also webcast the proceedings for those who wished to view the ceremony remotely. The completely filled grandstands caused me to believe that the administration had overestimated how many people could reasonably be seated. Some wore face masks; most didn't. With the unsettled spring weather, I was grateful that we wore light jackets and gloves.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pRXIglJfguY/YLEGat4IA2I/AAAAAAAAIyo/Lcbwa0GQBnUc_kb5eqBcHo0TPmileSDcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20210524_163317061.PORTRAIT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1188" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pRXIglJfguY/YLEGat4IA2I/AAAAAAAAIyo/Lcbwa0GQBnUc_kb5eqBcHo0TPmileSDcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20210524_163317061.PORTRAIT.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Well over an hour after the gowned and capped graduating seniors had filed onto the field and taken their seats, the talking from the stage was still ongoing, as if anyone would remember the next day what had been said. (Cue the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04" target="_blank">Charlie Brown teacher voice</a>.) It took a while perusing the sea of square headdresses to determine which one adorned our fair offspring. (Why do we wear such weird headgear to an event that is supposed to dignify the value of the pursuit of knowledge?)<p></p><p>Our daughter looked up at us from her seat and gave us the ASL sign for "<a href="https://www.babysignlanguage.com/dictionary/tired/" target="_blank">tired</a>." This was more than typical teen boredom. Late last year we discovered that our daughter has a somewhat rare blood clotting disorder that may be a contributing factor to the unusual fatigue she has experienced throughout her high school years. We are working with professionals to understand and address her health problems.</p><p>Eventually the program moved on to the orderly procession of each graduate filing up to the front and walking across to accept their diploma, each announced by a faculty member with a great speaking voice. Often as a name was called, spontaneous cheers erupted from small groups of people around the stadium. I was gratified that, as requested, revelers refrained from air horns and other noise makers. The process of moving all 645 graduates through that routine took about as long as the talking had.</p><p>I experienced an odd mixture of feelings as I watched my favorite daughter (also our only daughter) accept her diploma and move back to her chair on the football field. For my wife and me, this represented a new chapter. Our fifth and youngest child has completed compulsory education and we move on to the next phase of life, which arguably is much closer to the state of the loved ones whose graves we will visit this Memorial Day weekend than when we started this chapter. And that's OK. It's how life works.</p><p>Graduation means a new chapter for our daughter too. High school has in many ways been a tough slog for her. Besides the continual oppressive fatigue she has experienced, on/off remote learning during the pandemic took its toll socially and academically.</p><p>I take my hat off to teachers and administrators who have struggled to make all of this work during the pandemic. Many of our daughter's teachers have gone out of their way to help their students succeed in this extraordinary environment. Unfortunately, there have been a couple of teachers who have been determined to force our daughter to succeed in spite of them, even with a <a href="https://utahparentcenter.org/resources/section-504/#:~:text=Section%20504%20protects%20students%20from,life%20activities%20that%20impact%20education." target="_blank">504 plan</a>. It's people like that who cause students to hate school.</p><p>Educators like this are typically not bad people. They are often academics who simply do not understand those who are not academically inclined or who face less obvious challenges. From this perspective, nearly all academic deficiencies can look primarily like motivation issues.</p><p>We frequently encountered this same phenomenon with educators who treated our autistic son's limitations as something that could be overcome with more focus and harder work. After all, our son was bright, articulate, and polite. He was never a problem in class. Why shouldn't he simply be able to keep up with the normal workload? Many educators who don't understand those who inconveniently find the traditional schooling model an ill fit for their needs impose lifelong traumas on these students, often with the best of intentions.</p><p>We are very grateful for the teachers in our high school's theater department. Theater has been a bright spot throughout our daughter's high school years, even when it has required hard work. Although our daughter loves singing, and even even spearheaded a monumental effort to help hundreds honor her retiring choir teacher last year (see <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/05/mr-woods-opus-honoring-high-school.html" target="_blank">5/18/2020 post</a>), she found her new choir teacher's approach so chafing that she ended up dropping choir partway through her senior year. That was sad.</p><p>Yes, the high school years have in many ways been tough for our daughter. So, seeing that diploma handed to her brought a strong sense of relief and gratitude. It's over.</p><p>Now, onward!</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-1769601124468437072021-04-22T14:54:00.001-06:002021-04-22T14:54:33.373-06:00Could you be a hero that saves lives?<p>Years ago when I was a member of a young single adult (YSA) congregation of my church, a young man who I will call Mike (not his real name) joined our congregation. Since congregations of <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng" target="_blank">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a> are mostly geographically delineated, it was common for members of our congregation to know each other through school or community associations. Mike was several years younger than me, so I had not attended school with him and didn't really know him.</p><p>Nor did I make much of an effort to get to know Mike. Although he had a job and owned a muscle car, Mike had several noticeable disabilities, including some mild cognitive, mobility, and speech challenges. Although Mike made efforts to attend church meetings, he was painfully socially awkward. Few of us made serious efforts to engage Mike. Most seemed to avoid interacting with him. And if I am to be honest, many, including myself, saw themselves as superior to Mike.</p><p>Those who knew Mike better were aware that he grappled with mental illness. There was less understanding and acceptance of mental illness back then. It was mostly just seen as scary, so people with mental illness were also considered scary.</p><p>Those in leadership positions knew it was socially difficult for Mike to attend church meetings. They assigned people to watch for Mike and invite him to sit with them. Some made outreach efforts outside of church meetings. But none of these well-intentioned approaches evolved into real friendships. Even socially backward people can usually sense when someone truly cares for them as opposed to when they are just another chore to be completed.</p><p>One day Mike drove his muscle car to a canyon a few miles away. In that lonely canyon, Mike ended his mortal life.</p><p>Looking back on this, I am ashamed to admit that, mixed with my confusion and sorrow about Mike's death was a sense of relief that I would no longer need to awkwardly interact with him. Like many of that era, I was very judgmental about those who attempted or completed suicide, seeing it as a very selfish act.</p><p>Another member of our YSA congregation had moved from out of state. Allen (not his real name) was older than most of us but was still unmarried. He was a good-looking, outgoing guy who worked as a first responder. I was more familiar with Allen's brother, who was closer to my age and had lived in our area longer than his brother.</p><p>Frankly, I was a little envious of Allen. He seemed to have a magnetism that I lacked. He had a career as a hero, saving lives. He turned some of the young ladies' heads in ways I knew I never could. Allen seemed to have everything going for him. But I was unaware of the inner demons of depression and anxiety that he had grappled with for his whole life. I was unaware that, before moving to our area, Allen had been seriously suicidal multiple times.</p><p>Then one night when he was once again suicidal, Allen went to a secluded spot and completed his final suicide attempt.</p><p>I felt terrible for Allen's family, especially his brother, who was my friend. But once again, I was very judgmental toward Allen. How could he do something so selfish and so obviously wrong?</p><p>Fast forward a couple of decades, and I found myself stunned when my 11-year-old son confided that he was experiencing suicidal ideation. The past decade has taken us on a journey that has resulted in three crisis hospitalizations. While I can't pretend to completely understand suicide, I know a lot more about it than I did when I was more ignorant and judgmental.</p><p>Research shows that the vast majority of those who attempt suicide don't really want to die. Many are experiencing some type of horrific psychological pain that most of us can't even imagine. Due to their mental state, they feel like they have run out of options. In those moments, they have no hope of life ever getting better. They become convinced that everyone around them would be better off without them here.</p><p>"I didn't want to die," <a href="https://www.health.com/condition/depression/suicide-attempt-survivors" target="_blank">said</a> suicide attempt survivor Cortez Yanez. "I actually wanted to live, but not with the same pain I was going through. That made suicide an option for me." Kevin Hines, who miraculously survived a leap off the Golden Gate Bridge, says much the same thing in this riveting video:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vGPktsXlhTA" width="320" youtube-src-id="vGPktsXlhTA"></iframe></div><p>Today I can look back and see that both Mike and Allen came to our YSA congregation with mental health challenges. Mike never felt like he fit in and saw no hope of ever finding a place to belong and be accepted for who he was. Allen struggled with anxiety and depression while looking great on the outside.</p><p>I don't know if anything any of us in the congregation could have done might have prevented the death of either Mike or Allen. But I do know some things that each of us can and should do to help those we encounter in our lives who might be struggling with suicidal ideation. Good resources for learning what to do can be found at <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/life-help/suicide?lang=eng" target="_blank">the Church's suicide site</a> and <a href="https://www.helpguide.org/articles/suicide-prevention/suicide-prevention.htm" target="_blank">the Suicide Prevention HelpGuide</a>. You can also call the <a href="https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/" target="_blank">National Suicide Prevention Lifeline</a> at 800-273-8255 anytime of the day or night.</p><p>Perhaps the most important thing the average person can do is to be aware of the <a href="https://save.org/about-suicide/warning-signs-risk-factors-protective-factors/" target="_blank">warning signs of someone experiencing suicidal thoughts</a>. Talking about wanting to die or about killing oneself, or looking for ways to kill oneself should be obvious markers. Other signs might include talking about being trapped, hopeless, or a burden to others; increased substance abuse or other self-destructive practices; exhibiting higher levels of anxiety, sleeping too much, withdrawal/isolation, rage, revenge seeking, extreme mood swings, or giving away important personal items.</p><p>Experts agree that the best way to help someone who you suspect might be considering suicide is to ask them forthrightly about it, listen in a caring manner, and help them get the aid they need. Many incorrectly assume that talking about suicide might encourage rather than prevent their death. This has repeatedly been shown to be wrong. Talking about (not advocating for) suicide saves lives.</p><p>Those who are considering suicide are often caught in cyclical thinking from which it is difficult to escape without outside help. Your asking whether a person is thinking about self harm or has a plan to harm themselves can provide the ramp they need to get out of their thinking rut and prevent tragedy.</p><p>An equally important matter is how to help someone once the immediate crisis is past. We have found through our family's experience that once the person who was suicidal is released from the hospital, they are essentially dumped unceremoniously into a mental healthcare wasteland that has far too few providers who accept new clients, many of whom are inaccessible due to insurance quirks. The message too often seems to be, "We kept you from killing yourself. Good luck staying alive. Bye." This probably requires more systemic change than one person can provide, but helping someone connect with a qualified mental health clinician can be immensely helpful.</p><p>The main thing is to really care. That means reaching out to and spending valuable time with people that might not be easy for you to be around. Surrendering ideas of superiority can only help these kinds of relationships. You may not face the kinds of challenges others do, but that does not make you better than them.</p><p>Each soul, no matter how troubled, is a beloved child of God. We have the opportunity to reflect his love to others. Some of the most valuable targets for your compassionate outreach might be found among those who seem the least lovable at the moment.</p><p>I can't say for sure whether following these ideas might have helped Mike and Allen make better choices that could have preserved their lives. But doing these things certainly couldn't have hurt. And regardless of the outcome of any specific case, it is the right thing to do.</p><p>We have come a long way with respect to mental health attitudes and treatments since Mike and Allen left this world. But many things haven't changed. My own son longs to be active in his YSA congregation, but he still struggles to fit and feel accepted, much like Mike did years ago. Few members of my son's congregation likely have any clue how challenging and draining it is for him to attend any of his church meetings, or how much of a difference a little compassion on their part makes for him.</p><p>Having compassion for, reaching out to, and seeking to include those who seem awkward isn't easy. It can be, well, awkward. But again, it's the right thing to do. A little effort can have a large impact.</p><p>Souls like Allen can be harder to detect. They already seem to fit socially. A lot of their pain is hidden in public. Since we can't always detect the pain people are experiencing, compassion toward each soul we encounter is the best way forward. Granting space for others to be their authentic selves in our presence can go a long way. Demonstrating that they are worthy of your care and attention can help. You may not be a first responder hero like Allen was, but perhaps you too can save lives through something as simple as kindness.</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-81211284614476641232021-01-04T15:23:00.000-07:002021-01-04T15:23:53.456-07:00The Puppy Holidays<p> "No. No! NO!" I screamed inside my mind while making a vain attempt to keep the incredulity off my face. "We are not getting another dog," I said flatly. We were looking forward to being pet free within the next few years.</p><p>A relative had acquired an adorable <a href="https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/german-sheprador#:~:text=The%20German%20Sheprador%20is%20a,is%20also%20called%20the%20Labrashepherd." target="_blank">Sheprador</a> puppy (<a href="https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/german-shepherd-dog" target="_blank">German Shepherd</a> / <a href="https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/labrador-retriever" target="_blank">Labrador</a> mix) on Thanksgiving from an owner near our home. Being close by, they dropped in with their new puppy for a visit. We were very surprised that our 9-year-old <a href="https://www.dogbreedinfo.com/imoinu.htm" target="_blank">Imo-Inu</a> (<a href="https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/shiba-inu" target="_blank">Shiba Inu</a> / <a href="https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/american-eskimo-dog" target="_blank">American Eskimo</a> mix) interacted with the puppy with curiosity rather than animosity. He has a long history of being good with humans but not so good with other dogs.</p><p>Later that evening our son who is on the autism spectrum proposed getting one of the remaining puppies from the same large litter. The puppies were only a month old but the mother had stopped giving milk. Caring for multiple puppies that still need milk is challenging, so the owner was looking to sell the puppies at a bargain price.</p><p>The whole idea seemed preposterous to me. But I could tell that my objections were inadequate in dissuading our son. The following day we convened a family council, since the addition of a puppy would significantly impact everyone in the home. Many valid concerns were raised, including:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Cost.</li><li>Noise.</li><li>High care needs.</li><li>Long-term needs.</li><li>Wear and tear on the home.</li><li>Impact on individual and family routines.</li><li>Impact on our existing dog and interactions between dogs.</li><li>Etc.</li></ul>Unfortunately, our son interpreted these concerns as the family ganging up on him. He guaranteed that he would meet all of the puppy's needs, walk both dogs, minimize impact on other family members, and otherwise deal with related issues, or else find a new home for the pup. But I knew he was committing to more than he was capable of actually doing.<p></p><p>After our son left the meeting with the matter unresolved, I realized that he would probably end up bringing a puppy home. Our daughter came to me expressing concerns that everyone in the family would be angry with her brother if he did bring a puppy home. I explained that people would be unhappy, but that it's hard for anyone to remain angry for long when a puppy is involved.</p><p>As I prayed about the matter, I told the Lord all of the burdens that would result from adding a puppy to our household. The message I sensed from the Spirit went something like, "Yeah, I know what it's like to have children make choices that increase burdens. It's kind of what I do all the time. You see, there was this night in Gethsemane and this cross on Golgotha. Then there are the constant problems and prayers. ... Let your son do as he wishes and then deal with the fallout. It will be good for him."</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sBPJ_67Lof8/X_Nr1X0pMCI/AAAAAAAAIL4/M8Gmqj_0AkkZTZ1R6hT8CJSEJiIoA11EQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Charlie%2B%2528Duke%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1777" data-original-width="2048" height="174" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sBPJ_67Lof8/X_Nr1X0pMCI/AAAAAAAAIL4/M8Gmqj_0AkkZTZ1R6hT8CJSEJiIoA11EQCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h174/Charlie%2B%2528Duke%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>So the following day after getting paid, our son brought home an adorable puppy that weighed about 6½ lbs. whom he dubbed Charlie. While everyone loved cuddling with Charlie, the weeks of puppy urine and nighttime forays into the yard soon brought us to reality.<p></p><p>The moniker Charlie gave rise to a variety of nicknames, such as Prince Charles, Chuck, Chucky, Chuckles, Chuckles the Pup, and Lieutenant Chucklebucket.</p><p>The puppy still needed milk for the first couple of weeks. We ended up feeding him unpasteurized goat milk from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SweetDeseret/" target="_blank">Sweet Deseret Farm</a>. But he soon craved solid food. We followed the directions of an expert to soak puppy kibble in goat milk, but Charlie soon made it clear that he disliked soggy kibble. He liked crunchy kibble and he would also go crazy for real meat.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bqt0fJGblLw/X_OBNWf2EiI/AAAAAAAAIMQ/KhXr0gQagcMvjsmkJGz5_y3MJOrStxPEQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Shiranui%2B2021-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1255" data-original-width="2048" height="122" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bqt0fJGblLw/X_OBNWf2EiI/AAAAAAAAIMQ/KhXr0gQagcMvjsmkJGz5_y3MJOrStxPEQCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h122/Shiranui%2B2021-01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Interactions with our senior dog, whom I dubbed the Commodore or King Nui, were relatively safe but less than sanguine. The Lieutenant constantly wanted to engage in playful interaction with the Commodore. The corpulent old man, who suffers with arthritis and currently spends most of his days sleeping, was generally unwelcoming of the Lieutenant's exuberant overtures. Low growls and occasional sharp barks became common.<p></p><p>Prince Charles also wanted to do whatever King Nui was doing. He wanted to play with King Nui's toys, eat King Nui's food, sleep in King Nui's usual haunts, and go outside whenever King Nui went outside—much to the chagrin of the old codger, who tolerated the pup but generally responded with a "Hey you rotten kid, get off my lawn!" attitude.</p><p>Mind you, the Commodore has been our only pet these many years, so he has ruled the roost. The introduction of the Lieutenant into the Commodore's space really shook things up for the old man. He was more than a little jealous. He took opportunities to demonstrate dominance, brusquely telling the pup to keep his distance and often taking toys away from the little tyke.</p><p>Our son tried to keep his puppy promises, but he soon discovered that the critter's needs frequently exceeded his capacity to deliver. The puppy slept in a crate in our son's room, so he was the one to tend to the puppy's needs at night. There was no sleeping in for our son either. He had to get up when the puppy got up.</p><p>It turns out that Shepradors are very active animals. They are also social and crave lots of family interaction. One expert suggested that Shepradors typically need two hours of high activity and close interaction daily or they become bored and destructive. They also need plenty of room.</p><p>Charlie was smart. Shepradors are also pleasers, so he quickly learned his name and he learned several commands such as <i>sit</i>, <i>up</i>, <i>wait</i>, and <i>come</i>. He did OK with <i>go potty</i>. We later worked on <i>off </i>and <i>down</i>. But the puppy was taking a toll on the whole family. Everyone groused about having to puppy-sit, having to take the puppy outside in all kinds of weather, and constantly guarding person and property from playful teeth and claws.</p><p>Finally about a month into the puppy project, our son came to me and admitted that he could not keep his promises concerning his dog. He was feeling defeated when he admitted that he was ready to find a new home for Charlie. I told him that this was perhaps the most mature decision he had ever made. He should see it as a victory rather than a defeat.</p><p>Concerned that selling a puppy a couple of days before Christmas might be more likely to lead to an impulse purchase by someone who isn't really ready to care for a dog, we waited until after Christmas to list Charlie for sale. We found a willing buyer right away who had grown up in a family that bred and raised a certain dog breed. We were relieved that the new owner was well versed in puppy and dog care.</p><p>Due to circumstances, Lieutenant Chucklebucket boarded with us for another week before going home with his new owner. During that week we started calling him by the name selected by the new owner. Throughout the week, our son gradually distanced himself from puppy care duties as he grieved for his dog's departure. When I later asked him what he had learned from the experience, he let me know that it was too soon for him to go there. He needs time to process emotions first.</p><p>Roughly 48 puppy free hours have passed in our home since the Lieutenant's departure. The first afternoon and evening, the Commodore collapsed and spent 4-5 hours lying in one spot. He has since reclaimed many of his former haunts that the Lieutenant had commandeered. The old man seems much more relaxed.</p><p>So do our other family members, for that matter. It's almost like climbing off an exuberant theme park ride and then standing on firm ground in a quiet corner of the park. Part of me keeps expecting the Lieutenant to scramble around the corner and attack my shoelaces. Still, our oldest son echoes what other family members feel when he confides that he misses the puppy, despite the fact that his ear is still bleeding from a puppy scratch.</p><p>We sold the puppy's crate, toys, bowls, playpen, food, and other supplies with him. We still have some temporary fencing to sell that I used to protect outdoor HVAC equipment. So the story isn't quite complete yet.</p><p>While the Commodore was generally uncomfortable during the five weeks of puppymageddon that spanned Thanksgiving through New Years, he does seem to have learned some canine socialization skills that he has lacked until now. King Nui has been regularly prompting me to walk him to the nearby dog park, where he actually chooses to enter and greet other dogs with surprising calmness. He doesn't do much with them other than to simply greet them. And he soon lets me know it's time to leave. But this behavior is so different than it used to be BPE (Before Puppy Era) when the Commodore hated the dog park and didn't know how to behave around other dogs.</p><p>Personally I am very relieved that Lieutenant Chucklebucket has gone to a new home. Pretty much every concern that was raised in our family council weeks ago played out precisely as I had anticipated. But I wouldn't say that the burdens we bore during these weeks have any significant comparison to the Savior's atonement, notwithstanding the Spirit's whispering on the matter.</p><p>Our son has discovered that, while the desire to nurture another being was good, he wasn't in a position to do it very well and it distracted from other goals that he realized were more important at present. He is nursing some natural emotional pain as he moves on. Perhaps his development is the most valuable outcome from the holiday weeks of the puppy.</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-68931273987606030432020-11-25T21:46:00.000-07:002020-11-25T21:46:13.039-07:00Giving thanks, seeing, and serving<p>I always enjoyed nostalgia and tradition as a kid. One Thanksgiving morning when I was about 10, the local <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/si/institute?lang=eng" target="_blank">LDS Institute of Religion</a> presented a nostalgic musical devotional program at a nearby church. Our family got dressed in church clothes and attended the event, probably because Dad was in a church leadership position and leaders were encouraged to support the event.</p><p>That pressure must have diminished by the following year. But by then I had a nostalgic spot in my heart from the year before that said this was now a family tradition. When I excitedly suggested that we go to the program that year, my family (even my parents) responded with little enthusiasm. I think I guilted them into it, because we went. But that was the end of that Thanksgiving tradition. Most family members preferred to ease into the day while Mom preferred to work in the kitchen preparing a feast fit for royalty.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d080eHdMYPg/X78xfUnOM7I/AAAAAAAAHz8/_i-WujS6MsMW8Y7NQ8STO-RxDpCz2oxxwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Pres%2BNelson%2BGiveThanks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d080eHdMYPg/X78xfUnOM7I/AAAAAAAAHz8/_i-WujS6MsMW8Y7NQ8STO-RxDpCz2oxxwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Pres%2BNelson%2BGiveThanks.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>As I have participated in the #GiveThanks social media initiative over this past week, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlcILxGmVrI" target="_blank">as requested by President Russell M. Nelson</a>, I have found myself hoping that, unlike the Thanksgiving devotional of years ago, this gratitude activity becomes an annual social media tradition that sticks around for years to come.</p><p>For months leading up to last Friday, my social media feeds have been filled with anger, divisiveness, fear, politics, misinformation, nastiness, etc. That suddenly all turned around after President Nelson's message was released. For the past week my feeds have been filled with expressions of gratitude and content that is virtuous, lovely, of good report, praiseworthy (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/a-of-f/1.13?lang=eng&clang=eng#p13" target="_blank">Article of Faith 13</a>), and generally uplifting.</p><p>The change has been almost magical. I have found myself scrolling along with a big goofy grin on my face and occasional tears in my eyes. (See <a href="https://latterdaysaintmag.com/9-moving-givethanks-posts-you-dont-want-to-miss-as-thousands-take-prophets-challenge/" target="_blank">this Meridian Magazine article</a> for examples of both.) It isn't lost on me that I have been blessed throughout my life in outsized ways and that there are many people who are struggling in ways that make it extremely difficult for them to express thanks at this season. Some might find looking at others' expressions of gratitude very painful as they compare their own situations.</p><p>President Nelson is correct when he talks about the healing power of gratitude. It is scientifically proven to help, regardless of the situation in which we find ourselves. It won't heal all of our problems, but it will make life better.</p><p>Saying that to people who are desperate straits, however, can be like telling someone grappling with clinical depression to just be happier. Disciples of Christ have covenanted to "mourn with those that mourn" and to "comfort those that stand in need of comfort" (<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/18.9?lang=eng&clang=eng#p9" target="_blank">Mosiah 18:9</a>). As we express gratitude, it might be good to look for ways to mourn with and comfort those who are struggling right now, especially those on the margins of society.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OLMWPZHvXUA/X78xH47IDmI/AAAAAAAAHz0/QIPl5DYtkN0qi5xOPNnrUOjwFgjQ7XJygCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/The-Chosen-Logo-Jesus-Jonathan-Roumie.jp_-1024x683-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OLMWPZHvXUA/X78xH47IDmI/AAAAAAAAHz0/QIPl5DYtkN0qi5xOPNnrUOjwFgjQ7XJygCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/The-Chosen-Logo-Jesus-Jonathan-Roumie.jp_-1024x683-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>A few weeks ago, we binge watched season 1 of <a href="https://studios.vidangel.com/the-chosen" target="_blank">The Chosen</a>. We had seen all of the episodes before but this time I noticed a number of things that had previously escaped my attention. In one scene, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/nicodemus?lang=eng" target="_blank">Nicodemus</a> is admiring a relative's love for the story of <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/hagar?lang=eng" target="_blank">Hagar</a>, wife of <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/abraham?lang=eng" target="_blank">Abraham</a>. Hagar find herself caught up in something complex over which she has no control. Fleeing from abuse, an angel of the Lord comes to her and in essence says in the name of the Lord, "I see you. I see what you are going through. You will be blessed" (see <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/16?lang=eng" target="_blank">Genesis 16</a>).<p></p><p>Later in the series, after <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/peter?lang=eng" target="_blank">Simon Peter</a> and his brother <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/andrew?lang=eng" target="_blank">Andrew</a> have quit fishing to travel around the countryside with Jesus, the Savior visits the home of Simon Peter. In a private moment, Jesus turns to the wife of Simon Peter and says, "I see you." He explains that he sees what she is experiencing and he knows it isn't easy for her to deal with her husband's sudden change of profession.</p><p>We may not be able to perform healing miracles as Jesus does in this instance in the series, but we can do something. Sometimes just listening or being there for someone can help. Still, we can't do anything until we <i>see </i>those who are struggling.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DSUTv29Ni1o/X78y3FrXNsI/AAAAAAAAH0I/aXOs7XWJvkATTzIDg8o5N-IgLqYPNFPTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s626/closeup-hands-with-intravenous-iv-man-patient-hospital-bed_48658-64.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="626" height="133" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DSUTv29Ni1o/X78y3FrXNsI/AAAAAAAAH0I/aXOs7XWJvkATTzIDg8o5N-IgLqYPNFPTgCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h133/closeup-hands-with-intravenous-iv-man-patient-hospital-bed_48658-64.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Years ago I was hospitalized for a week and a half while suffering my first major <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/multiple-sclerosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20350269" target="_blank">Multiple Sclerosis</a> attack. A week and a half may not seem very long, but I assure you that it seemed like forever. We had no idea where this would lead or what life would be like for us. Those who <i>saw</i> my plight and reached out in any fashion were a lifeline through those difficult days.<p></p><p>More than three decades later, I still get choked up as I think about those who visited, those who sent cards, those who helped with yardwork while I was laid up, those who donated leave at work so that I could continue to have a paycheck during the many weeks I couldn't work, and those who simply prayed for us. These acts helped me feel valued, helped me hang on, and helped me find ways to keep plodding ahead when I wasn't sure there was light at the end of the tunnel.</p><p>So while I have endless reasons to #GiveThanks this Thanksgiving, I hope that I will put that gratitude into action to <i>see</i> and <i>serve</i> someone who is struggling. There are ample opportunities all around us.</p>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-14111070156207421532020-10-05T15:35:00.000-06:002020-10-05T15:35:58.351-06:00Adventures in cerebrospinal fluid leakage: part 6 (conclusion?)<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="background-color: white;">Part 6 in a series about my wife's spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak condition. See </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/04/brain-drain-for-real-adventures-in.html" style="background-color: white; color: #818181; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">part 1</a><i style="background-color: white;">, </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html" style="background-color: white; color: #818181; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">part 2</a><i style="background-color: white;">, </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/11/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html" style="background-color: white; color: #818181; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">part 3</a><i style="background-color: white;">, </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/03/" style="background-color: white; color: #818181; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">part 4</a><i style="background-color: white;">, </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html" style="background-color: white; color: #818181; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">part 5</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>TL;DR My wife's central nervous system (CNS) spontaneously sprang a leak two years ago. Nobody knows why. Too little pressure in the CNS causes a raft of persistent problems, including nasty head pain that never goes away, hearing problems, mental fog, etc. We have been on the hunt for successful treatment since then, with some successes and a lot of failures. But now we may be at the end of the story. </i><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">The end of August found us at <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/" target="_blank">Cedars-Sinai Hospital</a> in Los Angeles for the fifth time in 13 months for yet another attempt to resolve the cerebrospinal fluid leak (<a href="https://www.csfleak.info/what-is-a-cerebrospinal-fluid-csf-leak/" target="_blank">CSF leak</a>) my wife had been experiencing for two years. We saw success after a leak was identified and surgically repaired last October (see <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/11/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 3</a>), only to have additional CSF leak symptoms develop a few weeks later.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">We returned to Cedars-Sinai in February (see <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/03/">part 4</a>). The <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/programs/neurology-neurosurgery/clinical/csf-leak/experts.html">CSF Leak Expert Team</a> searched for the leak via digital subtraction myelogram (<a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/digital-subtraction-myelography/#:~:text=A%20Digital%20Subtraction%20Myelogram%20%3D%20myelogram,a%20dynamic%20form%20of%20imaging.">DSM</a>) without success. They hoped that this meant that the leak was small enough that it could be resolved with an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidural_blood_patch">epidural blood patch</a>. When that didn't work, we returned in June for another epidural patch, but using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrin_glue">fibrin glue</a> instead of my wife's own blood (see <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 5</a>). When no improvement resulted, the team scheduled another surgery.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">When we returned in August, the team did three DSMs in an unsuccessful hunt for the leak. Each DSM is a surgical procedure that occurs under general anesthesia in an operating room. Only a portion of one side of the spine can be inspected during a single DSM. That's why they did so many DSMs.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://bio.cedars-sinai.org/schievinkw/index.html" target="_blank"></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://bio.cedars-sinai.org/schievinkw/index.html" target="_blank"></a></span><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VyRhfMXRDJQ/X3tdu-_8CgI/AAAAAAAAHqo/8IaOEavVYSchrK0wmjHHEbtJRaSv2wWkACLcBGAsYHQ/s243/Dr.%2BSchievink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="243" data-original-width="174" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VyRhfMXRDJQ/X3tdu-_8CgI/AAAAAAAAHqo/8IaOEavVYSchrK0wmjHHEbtJRaSv2wWkACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Dr.%2BSchievink.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Dr. Schievink felt certain that the leak existed, despite being unable to find it with the best technology available. He explained that venous fistulas like the one he repaired last October are very small, more like the size of a capillary than a vein. So it is possible for imaging to miss them.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">My wife's spine is riddled with <a href="https://bio.cedars-sinai.org/schievinkw/index.html" target="_blank">perineural cysts</a>. The presence of these cysts is not a problem by itself. Many people have spinal cysts without ever experiencing any kind of problem. But it seems that venous fistulas are more likely to attach to a cyst than to any other part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura_mater" target="_blank">dura mater</a> because the membrane is thinner where cysts bulge out.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">The good doctor offered the option of having him place aneurysm clips on the two cysts that he thought were probably the most problematic, based on his experience as the world's leading expert in this condition and having performed thousands of these surgeries. He couldn't guarantee that this would solve the leak. But he suggested a 70-75% chance of success.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">My wife said that there was no way she was going to just turn around and go home without making some attempt to fix the problem. Going home would certainly leave her with CSF leak problems, while she only might continue to have problems if she had the surgery. So we went ahead with the surgery.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">The surgery occurred late in the day because it was done on the same day as her third DSM. Unlike our first three visits to Cedars-Sinai, the hospital had many COVID-19 restrictions this time around. Only one visitor was allowed and only at certain times for limited periods. But with my wife being one of the final surgery patients of the day, I was able to spend quite a bit of time with her in post-op.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FZKDXcusWTA/X3tj7innMjI/AAAAAAAAHq4/dDfRozs4pC4FniVsNlhETJ73mjSf7NoeACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Judy%2Bin%2BCedars%2BSinai%2BHospital%2Broom%2B2020-08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FZKDXcusWTA/X3tj7innMjI/AAAAAAAAHq4/dDfRozs4pC4FniVsNlhETJ73mjSf7NoeACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Judy%2Bin%2BCedars%2BSinai%2BHospital%2Broom%2B2020-08.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was late night by the time my wife was settled into her in-patient hospital room. It was directly next door to the room where she had stayed last October. By luck of the draw, she ended up with the nicest, largest hospital room I have ever seen. It had its own breakfast nook. We were told that the room had been occupied by many celebrities. But once my wife was settled, they kicked me out. The residential hospital wing was very serious about limits on patient visiting hours.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Being kicked out wasn't a bad thing. I walked a block and a half back to our <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/" target="_blank">Airbnb</a> apartment, which is the nicest Airbnb place we have ever been in. It was a penthouse apartment in a nice, safe building that had a private gated garage and a swimming pool. It featured two bedrooms, two full baths, a nice living room, full (but small) kitchen, nice dining room, and a balcony. I'm guessing that it was reasonably priced due to the pandemic. I crawled into the king size bed and quickly dozed off.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was pleased when I returned to the hospital the following day to find that my wife no longer required caffeine to regulate CSF leak symptoms. Dr. Schievink dropped by to check on my wife. He asked how the surgery had gone for her and then cheerily stated, "I had fun!"</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">The previous surgery was in the lower thoracic portion of the spine that curves in. This surgery was in the mid thoracic section that curves out. So the surgical site is right where the back normally touches against the back of any chair. This means that the recovery has been somewhat more challenging than for the first surgery.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">The great news is that recovery is proceeding well. Following the required four-week wait, my wife recently started prescribed post surgical physical therapy to help rehabilitate the back muscles that were affected by the surgery. So far things look good, so we are optimistic.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Still, the doctor could not guarantee that my wife will never spring another CSF leak. Chances for developing a third spontaneous CSF leak are statistically very low. But the possibility still exists. To me the chance might seem higher for someone who has already developed two leaks, but Dr. Schievink suggested that his experience dictates otherwise.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">So for now we are going forward optimistically. My wife has hope of getting back to life without restrictions following physical therapy. Compared to when the local specialist who told us that my wife would be permanently impaired, this is very welcome news indeed.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">This has been an interesting (and expensive) journey. We started out with many MRIs and hitting dead end after dead end. Local specialists were nice but were ultimately not very helpful. After months of disappointing treatments, we discovered the <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/" target="_blank">Spinal CSF Leak Foundation</a> through an internet search.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/leakweek2019-FB-ad-800x419.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="800" height="168" src="https://spinalcsfleak.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/leakweek2019-FB-ad-800x419.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">This led to my wife tuning into portions of their annual Leak Week symposium online. When she admired Dr. Schievink's presentation, I searched and discovered that he and Cedars-Sinai Hospital where he practices were both preferred providers on our insurance. After months of disappointment, this seemed almost too miraculous to be true.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">We discovered that spontaneous CSF leaks are tricky. The expert team at Cedars Sinai tries to approach each case with care and caution. So far it has required five trips to LA to get to this point. But we kept feeling that we were on the right track.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you or someone you know is dealing with <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/c/cerebrospinal-fluid-leak.html" target="_blank">CFS leak symptoms</a>, please know that help is available. Maybe not locally. It is, after all, classed as a rare disease. But there is hope for once again living a normal life.</span></div></div></div>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-18346570310131887682020-08-04T11:25:00.002-06:002021-03-15T07:19:51.123-06:00Adventures in cerebrospinal fluid leakage: part 5<i>Part 5 in a series about my wife's spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak condition. See </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/04/brain-drain-for-real-adventures-in.html" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">part 1</a><i>, </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">part 2</a><i>, </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/11/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">part 3</a><i>, </i><a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/03/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">part 4</a>.<div><br /><div><i>TL;DR My wife's central nervous system (CNS) spontaneously sprang a leak two years ago. Nobody knows why. Too little pressure in the CNS causes a raft of persistent problems, including nasty head pain that never goes away, hearing problems, mental fog, etc. We have been on the hunt for successful treatment since then, with some successes and a lot of failures. </i><br /><div><br /></div><div>We are almost two years into this interesting and expensive adventure. We have learned a lot about <a href="https://www.csfleak.info/what-is-a-cerebrospinal-fluid-csf-leak/" target="_blank">CSF leaks</a> and how to treat them. Professional resources have independently confirmed that the <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/programs/neurology-neurosurgery/clinical/csf-leak/experts.html" target="_blank">CSF Expert Team at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles</a> is the world's best for this condition. As reported in earlier posts, this team and facility just happened to be preferred providers on our insurance. So the fact that we can use their services seems like something of a miracle.</div><div><br /></div><div>My wife has been treated by this team four times over the past year. She has been helped, but she still has continual CSF leak problems. She constantly has a headache that can only partially be alleviated by taking caffeine and by lying down. She has developed hearing disparity and occasional mental fog. This is certainly survivable, but it seriously impacts life quality.</div><div><br /></div><div>As mentioned in a note at the end of <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/03/" target="_blank">part 4</a>, the imaging and blood patch procedures my wife had in February ended up improving her condition only temporarily. We later learned that during our stay in Los Angeles, COVID-19 was spreading rapidly through the area, although nobody realized this until a few weeks later. Fortunately, we escaped without contracting the virus.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Zquyflsnl4/XymCwL17PnI/AAAAAAAAHX4/8x3z0btlcvsJ9IZPxVOvR6rQMNiLzaanQCLcBGAsYHQ/s259/sirgical%2Bfibrin%2Bglue.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="194" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Zquyflsnl4/XymCwL17PnI/AAAAAAAAHX4/8x3z0btlcvsJ9IZPxVOvR6rQMNiLzaanQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/sirgical%2Bfibrin%2Bglue.jpg" /></a></div>In June we returned to Cedars Sinai for a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrin_glue#:~:text=Fibrin%20glue%20(also%20called%20fibrin,human%20fibrinogen%20and%20human%20thrombin." target="_blank">fibrin glue</a> patch. It's essentially the same thing as an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidural_blood_patch" target="_blank">epidural blood patch</a>, but using fibrin glue instead of the patient's own blood. Fibrin glue is a product that is made from the stickiest part of human blood. They hadn't found noticeable leaks during two <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/digital-subtraction-myelography/#:~:text=A%20Digital%20Subtraction%20Myelogram%20%3D%20myelogram,a%20dynamic%20form%20of%20imaging." target="_blank">digital subtraction myelograms</a> (aka DSM) during our February visit, so specialists surmised that any leak would be small enough for an epidural blood patch to be effective. That turned out not to be the case.</div><div><br /></div><div>Conditions in Los Angeles were bizarrely different when we returned in June. Due to the pandemic, many are understandably reluctant to stay in hotels or Airbnbs, but we figured it was an acceptable risk. The Airbnb apartment we rented was just fine. It was within walking distance of the hospital. But the area, which had been crazily busy during our previous three visits, seemed like a ghost town in comparison.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many businesses were boarded up, although some businesses were taking plywood off their store fronts during our visit. The Target store in the area had closed down permanently. Vehicle and pedestrian traffic was down to about 20%-25% of what it had been during previous visits. Some restaurants had reopened. Every business that was open had face mask and social distancing requirements. Other than the hospital, the one restaurant meal, and a couple of trips to the nearby CVS Pharmacy, we hardly interacted directly with anybody while in LA.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first order of business was for my wife to have a drive-thru COVID-19 test. Cedars Sinai required the procedure to be done at their location within 24 hours of her scheduled surgical procedure. They told us that if we didn't hear anything, it meant that she had tested negative for the virus and we could show up for her procedure the following day. They actually ended up contacting us a few hours later to say that the test was negative. We had dinner at a nearby diner that was taking stringent precautions to prevent viral spread.</div><div><br /></div><div>When we arrived at the hospital for the procedure the following day, we went through the check-in procedure with a few more precautions than usual, such as having temperature taken, answering questions, and wearing face masks at all times. Then we were taken to the same surgical center waiting room where I have spent many hours. Only this time, there were only three other people in the large room instead of 30-40 people. They had already made it clear that I could not come into pre-op or post-op, where I had been welcome during previous procedures. Once my wife went to pre-op, I was required to leave the hospital until they notified me that my wife was ready to be picked up.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C0nuoZVY-MA/XymMTULKuXI/AAAAAAAAHYQ/fNUrpwamYWYZoi8dxArP8lFkilCuupZHgCLcBGAsYHQ/s444/bored-in-hospital.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="400" height="355" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C0nuoZVY-MA/XymMTULKuXI/AAAAAAAAHYQ/fNUrpwamYWYZoi8dxArP8lFkilCuupZHgCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h355/bored-in-hospital.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>It wasn't long before we said our goodbyes as my wife went to pre-op with a nurse and I walked back to our Airbnb apartment to spend the day working. I received some texts from the surgery team notifying me of how things were going. Eventually I received a text from my wife telling me that she wished I was with her in post-op, because she was terribly bored. Cedars Sinai requires patients who have had an epidural procedure to lie still for four hours in post-op. Our local hospital required only one hour.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually it was time to pick my wife up. I drove into the pickup lane in the hospital's parking garage and waited a good 15 minutes before they brought her to the parking garage in a wheelchair. We were soon back in our Airbnb apartment, where my wife was required to rest and avoid bending her spine for two days. More boredom. We don't do much TV watching, so that kind of thing grows old, even with access to various streaming services.</div><div><br /></div><div>On this particular trip, we got up very early one morning and drove straight through to LA from our home, stopping for food, gas, and potty breaks. We did the same thing on the way home. Leaving LA at 5 am during the pandemic made for the lightest traffic I have ever experienced in the area. We made record time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite carefully following post operative instructions and being extra careful with her spine, within a couple of weeks my wife once again began experiencing CSF leak symptoms. The CS expert team has determined that another round of DSMs will be needed. They will apparently look at parts of the spine that have not been scanned in previous imaging, mainly because they almost never find leaks in those regions. The team hopes to discover one or more leak sources so that they have a clear idea of where to do surgery, instead of just working on what appear to be the most egregious <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/perineural-cysts#:~:text=Perineural%20cysts%2C%20which%20are%20also,around%20the%20roots%20of%20nerves." target="_blank">perineural cysts</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>We would like to hope that our upcoming trip to Cedars Sinai in a few weeks will be our last trip for surgical treatment at the facility. But it probably won't be. We still feel like we're on the right track. It seems that sticking with the expert team at CS is our best hope for achieving a permanent resolution to my wife's CSF leak problems. I will report outcomes in a future post.</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/10/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 6</a> for the continuing saga.</i></div>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-75789194850783129092020-05-18T11:49:00.004-06:002020-05-26T16:45:03.780-06:00Mr. Wood's Opus: Our daughter makes sure the retirement of her high school choir teacher didn't get lost in the pandemic morassOne day in February my daughter excitedly reported that the senior class choir officers at the high school had a plan to recruit former students of the school's longtime choir director to join in singing a number at the final concert of the year. Mr. Wood has been teaching music in the school district for 36 years and has taught choir at the high school for 27 years (the same school he attended as a youth). Our daughter recruited two of her brothers to sing for the surprise music number.<br />
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Then the pandemic occurred. Schools were shut down. The school district canceled all springtime events of any kind, including the final choir concert. The plan for a surprise musical number to honor Mr. Wood died too. Almost.<br />
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My daughter kept talking to me about finding a way to honor Mr. Wood. I suggested that she should contact the senior choir officers. But as the weeks passed, it became clear that nothing was happening on that front. One teacher at the high school said that due to the pandemic situation, many seniors, including some of the best students in the school, were struggling to fulfill graduation requirements and complete concurrent enrollment courses. The senior choir officers were probably too swamped to think about much else.<br />
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A few weeks ago my daughter asked me if we could put together a video choir for Mr. Wood. We have all seen video choirs during the pandemic. The way it works is for each performer to listen to a choir track through earbuds or headphones, and take video of themselves singing so that only their voice is heard on the video. A little research revealed that I lacked the necessary equipment, software, and expertise. But my daughter was insistent.<br />
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After making it a matter of prayer, I was prompted to reach out to professional videographer Jason Hadley of <a href="https://mpiphotovideo.com/">Masterpiece Images</a>. Jason was willing to help. He had the equipment and know-how. Besides, he has kids who have studied under Mr. Wood. Jason even provided a drive share where videos could be dropped.<br />
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The next step was to obtain the sheet music, accompaniment track, and choir track for the selected song. Mr. Wood had been teaching students in all of his choirs this year to sing a choir arrangement of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dcbw4IEY5w">the ABBA song <i>Thank You for the Music</i></a>, so we needed music that matched this arrangement. This proved to be difficult to find.<br />
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After praying about it, my wife suggested contacting the school's theater director, Mark Daniels, who knows about digital performance media and related rights. Mark said that the school had coincidentally just purchased the needed materials and performance rights. Mark made arrangements for us to use these materials.<br />
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Then we had to recruit current and former students of Mr. Wood to take video of themselves singing and drop their video in the drive share. Our daughter reached out to current students via email and social media. I put out a post on social media, having no idea where it would go or how it would turn out.<br />
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Thankfully, my social media post soon made its way to some of Mr. Wood's former students, one of whom turned it into a group which quickly added members. Many people liked the idea, but for several days, the only video on the drive was my daughter's. It can be pretty intimidating singing a solo instead of being physically surrounded by fellow choir members being directed by a conductor.<br />
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Little by little, videos started trickling in. Some were family groups, including siblings, parents and children, and extended family, all of whom had taken choir from Mr. Wood. A few days before the deadline I was concerned about the low response. As I prayed one morning, I sensed the Spirit telling me to chill out. This was not my project or even my daughter's project. It was God's project and it was going to work out better than I expected.<br />
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At the same time, the social media group took on a life of its own. People started posting memories of their time in choir with Mr. Wood. Mrs. Wood became a member of the group. She later told us that she spent a lot of time crying in the bathroom after reading wonderful comments about her husband. She wanted to keep it a surprise for him.<br />
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The final two days before the deadline were filled with responding to questions and issues regarding technical difficulties people were experiencing with uploading their videos. I am a software developer, so I am used to troubleshooting technical issues. We were able to successfully resolve many problems. I was pleased with the number of videos that poured in just before the deadline.<br />
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Jason ended up synchronizing 108 voices into the Scott Wood video tribute choir. He said that he was worried about what it would sound like when it all came together but it sounded fantastic. It really sounded like a cohesive choir, despite being spliced together from nearly 100 individual videos. Here is the final product:<br />
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At one point during this project, I wondered aloud why my daughter and I should be doing this. We weren't formally in charge of anything. It's just that our daughter felt strongly that Mr. Wood ought to be honored. She didn't want him to end his distinguished career on a whimper during the pandemic. My wife said that it was clear that God wanted the project to happen. She surmised that our daughter and I were the ones God could get to do something about it. Besides, it was good for us. God pulled in lots of other people, who each did their part.<br />
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Our plan was to present the video to Scott Wood on the day the cancelled choir concert would have been held. Mark Daniels made arrangements for a very small retirement ceremony in the school auditorium that day. Due to pandemic restrictions, only a dozen people attended, including Mrs. Wood and several family members. My daughter and I were privileged to be among the attendees.<br />
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Mr. Wood was completely surprised by the event. He was deeply moved as he watched students spanning 30 years singing for him. The audio of the choir in the auditorium was simply amazing. We captured some of Mr. Wood's reaction in this video:<br />
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As the Spirit had foretold, the event was even better than I had expected. God knows how to do his work. Following the event, we added Scott Wood to the social media group. He was able to read and respond to hundreds of heartwarming and beautiful messages. Our daughter is very pleased that Mr. Wood now knows that his career was very consequential in the lives of many.<br />
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I am so proud of our daughter. This project wouldn't have happened without her. She didn't have to do this, but she felt that it was the right thing to do. Our daughter loves performing arts, although she is not a star performer. The rest of the school experience is kind of rough for her. This project demonstrates the quality of our daughter's character, which is far more important than any academic achievement.<br />
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To Scott Wood I want to say, thank you for your career. Thanks for blessing the lives of our children. May you enjoy many wonderful retirement years.Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-30181313995319643762020-03-13T12:21:00.004-06:002021-03-15T07:18:23.198-06:00Adventures in cerebrospinal fluid leakage: part 4<i>Part 4 in a series about my wife's spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak condition. See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/04/brain-drain-for-real-adventures-in.html">part 1</a>, <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 2</a>, <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/11/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 3</a>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
As the weeks passed following my wife's spinal surgery to close off the veinous fistula that was bleeding cerebrospinal fluid out of her central nervous system, her high pressure headaches abated. But then my wife once again began experiencing low pressure headaches. She didn't want to believe it at first.<br />
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One day after a few weeks of questioning whether she was really having <a href="https://www.csfleak.info/what-is-a-cerebrospinal-fluid-csf-leak/">CSF leak</a> <a href="https://www.csfleak.info/what-is-a-cerebrospinal-fluid-csf-leak/csf-leak-symptoms/">symptoms</a>, I suggested that she take a <a href="https://www.csfleak.info/what-is-a-cerebrospinal-fluid-csf-leak/treatment/">caffeine pill</a> to see what it did. She took the pill and soon experienced the same kind of relief she did before the surgery, as the caffeine caused vasoconstriction, increasing the fluid pressure in the central nervous system. She begrudgingly admitted that she must still be leaking CSF fluid.<br />
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My wife soon began once again working with the <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/programs/neurology-neurosurgery/clinical/csf-leak/experts.html">CSF Leak Expert Team at Cedars Sinai Hospital</a> in Los Angeles, where she had previously been treated. After having yet another MRI done locally and then providing that image to the experts in Los Angeles, the team arranged for us to return to Cedars Sinai for another <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/digital-subtraction-myelography/">digital subtraction myelogram</a> (DSM) and probable surgery. Having resolved a major leak on the left side of the spine, they suspected another leak on the right side that would require surgical treatment.<br />
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We drove to Las Vegas one day, stayed in a very nicely appointed <a href="https://www.motel6.com/#/home">Motel 6</a> away from all the glitz, and left early the following morning, arriving in Los Angeles around noon. We learned from our October 2019 trip that it's a really bad idea to drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on a Sunday afternoon/evening. Apparently more than a few Southern Californians go to Las Vegas for weekend getaways, resulting in very heavy traffic as they drive back home in time to get to work on Monday.<br />
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Mid February found us in a lovely <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/">Airbnb</a> apartment just a couple of blocks from Cedars Sinai in West Hollywood. The weather was quite mild during our eight-day stay. We knew the routine well when we showed up for the DSM on a Monday morning. The DSM is a surgical procedure performed under general anesthesia, where they inject dye into the CSF fluid and do imaging to see where the dye goes. If they see something, they literally stop the patient's breathing for up to 90 seconds at a time to get the best image possible.<br />
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After a number of hours of pre-op and then the procedure, the imaging surgeon came to the waiting room to tell me that they had found no CSF leak. A spinal DSM can only be done on one side of the body at a time. While I was in post-op with my wife, Dr. Wouter Schievink, who is the head of the CSF leak program at Cedars Sinai came and chatted with us. Having found no leak on the right side, he suggested doing another DSM the following day to see if the left side had sprung another leak.<br />
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Tuesday was a repeat of Monday. Once again, when the imaging surgeon reported to me in the waiting room, he said that they found no leak on the left side. But he did say that they confirmed that October's surgery had been very successful. At first I was disappointed. But as I sat there waiting for the time when I could join my wife in post-op, it occurred to me that this likely meant that the leak was too small to see using available technology, small enough to be resolved by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidural_blood_patch">spinal blood patch</a>.<br />
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Over the preceding year and a half, my wife had had a series of spinal blood patch procedures, including a specialized blood patch done at Cedars Sinai last July. Each of these procedures failed quickly. After they found the veinous fistula leak in October, Dr. Schievink explained that the fistula leak was simply too large for the blood patch procedure to work.<br />
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We were not surprised when Dr. Schievink visited us in post-op that Tuesday and recommended another double blood patch procedure. He suspected that the small hole from inserting the dye for the October DSM had failed to seal, although such holes usually seal on their own for most patients. If that was the case, the two new holes from the two DSMs that had just been done would likely present the same problem. From his experience, he felt that the blood patch procedure would most likely remedy all three holes with no problem.<br />
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A couple of days later, my wife was once again wheeled into the operating room for her third surgical procedure of the week using general anesthesia. My wife does not respond well to narcotics, but it is common practice for anesthesiologists to add narcotic to the IV of surgical patients receiving general anesthesia to mitigate surgical pain. Having already been quite nauseous twice that week, my wife prevailed on the anesthesiologist to omit the narcotic.<br />
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My wife was much more alert and happy when I joined her in post-op than she had been on all of her previous surgical procedures. But she soon found her back at the sites of the blood injections to be much more sore than she had imagined. Fortunately, over the counter extra strength Tylenol sufficed in managing that pain.<br />
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The next couple of days my wife experienced a mild high pressure headache, which was helped by drinking dandelion tea, as recommended by the experts at Cedars Sinai. Not wanting to cause any problems with the procedure, my wife carefully followed recommendations to avoid lifting, as well as bending and twisting of the spine. By the end of the weekend, however, my wife had no more headaches, no hearing disparity, and no mental fog. It was clear to her that all of her CSF leaks were gone. It felt like a tremendous miracle after a year and a half of suffering.<br />
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We had to stay the weekend so that we could meet with Dr. Schievink the following Monday. The idea was to allow the spine to settle before doing a final exam. By the time we were meeting with the surgeon, my wife was experiencing some pain and weakness in her lower back and down the backs of her legs. Dr. Schievink said that this is a very common side effect of the spinal blood patch procedure and that it would gradually resolve over the next 2-8 weeks. When my wife wondered why she had never had similar pain with previous blood patch procedures, the answer was that those blood patches had failed, while this one was working.<br />
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Several weeks have now passed since we returned home. My wife is still being very careful about lifting, twisting, and bending. She is following recommendations to gradually increase these activities over a 90-day period. So far, so good. She still has some mild pain in the backs of her legs, but it seems to be getting a little better with each passing day. It seems like a small price to pay to be rid of the CSF leak symptoms.<br />
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As we reflect on the journey that began with a severe nonstop headache in August 2018 and led to three trips to California, we feel very blessed. It has been expensive, but we have been blessed to be able to manage the expense. Last spring we were despondent about the unsuccessful treatment that my wife had received locally, the expense, and the seemingly endless requirement for various types of MRIs. We thought there was no solution and we grimly considered the possibility that my wife would suffer CSF leak symptoms for the rest of her life.<br />
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We had searched the internet for better information for months. But a chance series of links took us to the nonprofit <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/">CSF Leak Foundation</a>. While watching <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/leakweek-2/leakweek-2019/">their annual Leakweek online seminar</a>, my wife found Dr. Schievink and his program at Cedars Sinai. It seemed like an impossible coincidence when I discovered that Dr. Schievink and Cedars Sinai were both preferred providers on our health insurance. What are the chances of that happening?<br />
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Today my wife is free of CSF leak symptoms and we hope she remains that way. Dr. Schievink asked us to visit him again in a year so that they can do some before/after comparison of my wife's brain scans, and consult about her case. So I may post a follow-up at that time.<br />
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While we are very grateful, we also know that there are a number of people out there suffering spontaneous CSF leak symptoms who either don't know what condition they have or else have no idea of how to find solutions. Since this is a rare disease, most doctors and neurologists know little or nothing about it or how to properly treat it. There are many people who feel hopeless, like we did before we discovered the <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/">CSF Leak Foundation</a>.<br />
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Spinal CSF leak symptoms include:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Positional headaches, which feel worse when sitting upright and better when lying down; caused by intracranial hypotension</li>
<li>Nausea and vomiting</li>
<li>Neck pain or stiffness</li>
<li>Change in hearing (muffled, ringing in the ears)</li>
<li>Sense of imbalance</li>
<li>Photophobia (sensitivity to light)</li>
<li>Phonophobia (sensitivity to sound)</li>
<li>Pain between the shoulder blades</li>
</ul>
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Cranial CSF leak symptoms include:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Drainage from the nose (rhinorrhea)</li>
<li>Salty or metallic taste in the mouth</li>
<li>Sense of drainage down back of throat</li>
<li>Drainage from the ear (otorrhea)</li>
<li>Cutaneous sinus tract drainage (CSF leaks into the sinus tract, which then creates a pathway to drain through the skin)</li>
<li>Loss of sense of smell (anosmia)</li>
<li>Change in hearing or ringing in the ears</li>
</ul>
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If you know anyone hopelessly dealing with these issues, point them to the <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/">CSF Leak Foundation</a> and/or <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/programs/neurology-neurosurgery/clinical/csf-leak.html">the CSF Leak program at Cedars Sinai</a> to explore whether they might find answers and perhaps complete healing. We are so happy it worked out that way for us.<br />
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<i>Update 3/28/2020: Well, it was too good to last. My wife is once again experiencing CSF leak symptoms. The last blood patches were only temporarily effective. We are considering our options. So stand by for part 5 at some future point.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 5</a> for the next part of the story.</i></div>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-36907580791393143562020-01-21T10:09:00.000-07:002020-01-31T07:26:09.946-07:00The brother I never knew ... until nowMy parents hardly ever talked about one of my brothers. As far as I knew, my parents had five sons (and no daughters until daughters-in-law and granddaughters came along). I remember Mom once telling me that between my birth and the birth of my brother three years later, she carried to full term a baby boy who was stillborn. I was too young to comprehend the kind of pain Mom and Dad must have experienced as the result of this trial.<br />
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Once as a teenager I asked Mom where the stillborn child was buried. She replied that back in those days nobody did anything like that. The child's body was treated as biowaste. No name or other information was recorded. It was as if the child never happened. I still don't know the date, or even the year of this event. I couldn't understand Mom's seemingly deliberate vagueness surrounding this child until I had my own kids and grasped in some small way the emotional pain Mom still felt.<br />
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Nearly a year after Dad's stroke, he ended up in the intensive care unit when the antibiotic prescribed by his dentist caused a bowel perforation because Dad was also taking blood thinners. Dad wasn't terribly coherent during the first couple of days in the hospital. When he did become more lucid, he kept telling hospital workers that he and Mom had six sons. My brother showed Dad a family photo with only five sons. Dad was befuddled. He was absolutely certain that he had six sons.<br />
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Some years later, Mom confided in me that she had very much appreciated my brother and sister-in-law naming their younger son Matthew. She explained that this was the name she and Dad had picked out for the baby that didn't survive. That was news to me, although I was in my sixth decade of life by then.<br />
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Mom spent the last 2½ years of her life in a small eldercare facility near our home. Although this was a nice facility with caring staff, it was hard to watch Mom decline physically and mentally as she aged and suffered a long series of brain "microbleeds" and small strokes for which the medical industry could do nothing.<br />
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A few weeks before Mom's passing last autumn, I gave Mom a priesthood blessing following yet another small stroke that had left her a little more impaired than before. Suddenly I knew Dad was in the room with us. His presence was strong throughout the blessing. It is difficult to describe this to someone who hasn't had such an experience. I couldn't see Dad, but there is absolutely no question that he was personally present. I felt comforted and I know Mom did too.<br />
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But that wasn't the end of it. Over the next two days, I sensed Dad's presence about eight or nine times. Each episode left me feeling uplifted. I gathered that these visits were part of the preparations for Mom passing through the veil. But there seemed to be something more. Otherwise, why would Dad keep visiting?<br />
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Finally one morning when I again felt Dad in the room, it dawned on me that maybe I should ask whether he had a message for me. As soon as I asked, the words forcefully blasted into my mind, "I love my wife! I love my wife! I love my wife!" Having been raised a stoic northern German under Hitler's reign, Dad could be stiff and curt with Mom and us kids. But in this instance I felt a love that is as wide and as deep as eternity, laced with a tenderness that I can't describe in human terms.<br />
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Suddenly I felt Dad's words cheerily come into my mind saying, "I am here with your brother Matthew." I then sensed a pure being of magnificent brightness. He felt ... familiar. I realized that this person had ministered to me and my family many times in the past. In fact, I sensed that ministering to his siblings and their families was one of his chief duties. I asked whether Matthew's information should be put on our family history records and was told that this was not necessary.<br />
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Not long after that, we visited Mom at the care facility one day and found her unusually lucid. I told Mom about this experience and asked what she thought. She pondered a bit before her facial expression became quite pleasant. Then she said, "I think that's right."<br />
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I didn't feel Dad's presence like that again until my brother, my nephew, and I gave Mom a blessing a few hours before she passed away. We sensed many other loved ones from beyond the veil as well. It was a very tender moment.<br />
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The doctrine surrounding stillborn children is undefined. Perhaps that's because there is a great deal of variability and uniqueness among the cases. So, while I can't say anything about other stillborn children, I can say is that my brother Matthew is very much active in the spirit world. I'm grateful that he ministers to my family and I look forward to someday meeting him in a setting where we can more fully interact.Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-4907609913059261752019-11-18T14:24:00.002-07:002021-03-15T07:17:21.809-06:00Adventures in cerebrospinal fluid leakage: part 3 (hopefully the conclusion)I sat in what had become a familiar waiting room on the eighth floor of <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/locations/cedars-sinai-main-campus-89.html">Cedars-Sinai Hospital</a> in Los Angeles, focused intently on my laptop. I fortunately have a job where I can work remotely. I was getting some work done, but it wasn't easy.<br />
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<i>See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/04/brain-drain-for-real-adventures-in.html">part 1 (4/2/19)</a> and <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html"><span id="goog_1613478112"></span>part 2 (8/7/19)<span id="goog_1613478113"></span></a> for background.</i><br />
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We had arrived at the hospital at 5 am and were pleased to discover that my wife's patient number was the first one listed on the operating room monitor. Other patients and their families had filtered in over the following couple of hours. Eventually they took my wife to pre-op. The variety of small human dramas that played out before me among the room's occupants was distracting. Not just from my work, but also from the fact that my wife was somewhere beyond the nearby double doors preparing for a major surgical operation.</div>
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Thankfully, I wasn't terribly nervous. Two days earlier my wife had undergone an imaging process called a <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/digital-subtraction-myelography/">digital subtraction myelogram</a>, which itself was a serious procedure done in an operating room. They employed general anesthesia and literally stopped my wife's breathing for up to 90 seconds at a time to get images uncorrupted by bodily movement.</div>
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They can only do the myelogram on one side of the spine at a time, so there was a chance that a second myelogram would be needed the following day. But the doctor strongly suspected that the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_cerebrospinal_fluid_leak">CSF leak</a> would be found on the left side and he was correct.</div>
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The myelogram revealed a veinous structure that had attached itself to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura_mater">dura mater</a> in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoracic_vertebrae">T11-T12</a> area of the spine. It was sucking CSF out of what is supposed to be a closed system. This resulted in <a href="http://neurosurgery.ucla.edu/intracranial-hypotension">intracranial hypotension</a>, nonstop severe headaches, hearing disparity, and mental fog; symptoms that had significantly impacted my wife's life quality for more than 14 months.</div>
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The doctor was so thrilled with the myelogram images that he sent them to a colleague in the UK whom he had recently trained, as an example of what to look for. He explained that this image revealed exactly where the problem was. As perhaps the world's foremost expert on this condition, this doctor had performed hundreds (perhaps thousands) of similar surgeries with good results. He said that this was the sole problem and that he could fix it. So we were hopeful.</div>
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Hours passed as I sat in the waiting room working away. I quite enjoyed watching one family that brought six adults and one older teen to accompany their loved one. This family obviously loved each other. Finally, seven hours after arriving, I was guided to the post-op center, where my wife was groggily recovering from the anesthesia. Bit by bit, she became more coherent.</div>
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The doctor dropped by and jauntily explained how he had put an aneurysm clip on the veinous structure, completely stopping the leak. He made it sound like a 30-second procedure. But my wife had been in surgery for hours and ended up spending three days in the hospital following the surgery. This was no minor procedure.</div>
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During the three days my wife was in the hospital, she was given a lot of drugs for pain management. She shifted from having low-pressure headaches to having high-pressure headaches. The doctor explained that it would take time for her body to stop over-manufacturing CSF, which it had been doing to try to compensate for the leak.</div>
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They gave my wife a medication that helped reduce the CSF overproduction. It contained a sulfa derivative. We knew that my wife had a sulfa allergy, but we determined to use the drug anyway. The drug was very helpful, but my wife later developed some histamine responses before she was able to discontinue the drug a week and a half later.</div>
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About a day and a half after being released from the hospital, my wife was finally "herself" again. She never thought she wasn't her normal self. But I knew otherwise. She did much better as she dialed back on the drugs they sent home with us.</div>
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Speaking of home, we were many hundreds of miles away from home. During our July trip to Cedars-Sinai, we stayed in a hotel that was a little over a mile away from the medical center. The room was clean. But it was cramped. We grew to despise being in that puny room. The neighborhood and the facility itself felt unsafe. Sometimes you could find homeless people crashed in the corner of the tiny parking garage or using the tiny restroom across from the little main office. We were so glad to leave.</div>
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This time around, we opted for an <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/">Airbnb</a> apartment a block away from the hospital. For a few dollars more per night than we had spent for a crappy, puny, less-than-safe hotel room, we got an entire apartment with two bedrooms, two full baths, a living room, a dining room, and an equipped kitchen, in a safe building with a gated parking garage. The neighborhood felt relatively safe. We didn't get a free continental breakfast like we did at the scary hotel, but we hardly cared.</div>
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At the apartment, I had a desk to work at, a nice couch, and an entertainment center. I liked the beds so well that I pulled up the mattress to get the info from the tag. I seriously wanted to replace our mattress at home with one like we had at the apartment. This was our first time using Airbnb, and we were very pleased. It really felt like a home away from home. Two thumbs up.</div>
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It's a good thing we had a decent place to stay. We had to remain in LA for several days to await my wife's follow-up appointment with the surgeon. They checked her over pretty carefully and gave us final instructions, before clearing her to go home. We had been told all along that my wife would need to restrict bending, twisting, and lifting for a month following the surgery and that she would then need to do some physical therapy to rehabilitate the surgical site.</div>
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It has been almost a month since my wife's surgery. Her high-pressure headaches have pretty much abated, as the doctor said they would. She has been careful, as prescribed. Unfortunately, she caught a virus that kept her down for awhile. She now thinks this was a boon, because she otherwise would have felt good enough to undertake activities she was supposed to avoid. Physical therapy will begin later this week.</div>
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While my wife is still dealing with the aftermath of the surgery, she says that it was worth it to get rid of the CSF leak. When I asked her to compare how she feels today with how she was feeling before any of this CSF leak mess started, she told me to ask her again in three months when she is fully recovered. But she affirms that the surgery and its aftermath were small prices to pay for the relief she is experiencing.</div>
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The surgeon told us that after my wife fully recovers from the surgery, she should have no restrictions and that her condition should pretty much be as if she never had a CSF leak at all. Well, except for the three-inch incision scar in the middle of her back. I suppose we can consider that a souvenir of this interesting experience. That, and our stack of medical bills.</div>
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Even with good insurance, this CSF leak has cost us a lot of money out of pocket. We count ourselves lucky to have found one of the world's greatest experts in CSF leaks and the facility where he works to be on our insurance preferred provider list. How many people lack such a boon? How many people with CSF leaks are struggling with daily pain like my wife was, but without any knowledge of how to fix it, or even hope that it can be fixed? We have many blessings to count.<br />
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<i>Update 1/21/2020: This story isn't over yet. More problems have ensued. We're headed back to Los Angeles in a few weeks for more invasive surgery. They can't even really tell us what that will look like until they do more imaging the day prior to the surgery. But my wife's hospital stay is slated to be longer. I will write about how it all goes.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2020/03/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 4</a> for more of the story.</i></div>
Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-22925167274472538212019-10-23T20:33:00.001-06:002019-10-23T20:33:43.969-06:00A Tribute to My Magnificent, Flawed MomMom never felt a need to be important. Rather, she was strongly motivated by a need to reach out and serve others, as well as a desire to develop and nourish relationships with others. Mom was always juggling a hundred different things to meet our family's needs and to bless the lives of others. I'm told that this started when she was a little girl who took frequent opportunities to care for nieces and nephews.<br />
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Being the 11th of 12 children and growing up during the Great Depression likely prompted Mom's lifelong obsession with fairness. A few years ago I found a small notebook that included a list of prices under the names of my brothers and me for the Christmas when I was 13 years old. The sums of the columns differed by only a few cents. Dad thought that fairness had more to do with customized individual needs, but Mom's version of fairness seemed to be more a matter of mathematical equality.<br />
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Despite never needing to feel important, appearances <i>were </i>important to Mom. While in high school, she worked three jobs in the summer and then worked at the local drugstore during the school year to earn money. More than a little of that money went toward clothes much nicer than her parents' family economy could afford.<br />
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When I was young, our family's approaches to matters were more than a little bit governed by what the neighbors might think. More than one of my brothers chafed at the idea of being controlled by some nebulous group of "they" out there. I now believe that we sometimes got Mom wrong on this. She was likely more concerned about being charitable to others than about trying to superficially look good.<br />
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Mom was not afraid of difficult things. She might grouse about it along the way. But she would still forge ahead and deal with whatever the path brought. I was around seven years old when I became aware that Mom had suffered her third miscarriage in a row. Years later I learned that following my birth, Mom had carried a son to full term, only to have the child stillborn. I could tell that Mom was a little melancholy following her third miscarriage, but she took all of these things in stride and moved on with the normal duties of life. Only when I was much older did I realize how devastated she might have been.<br />
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Since hard things were not to be avoided, Mom extended this sentiment to her five sons. We tried to grow vegetables in the back yard a couple of years, but Mom had a distaste for the Wyoming farm life of her youth and Dad had grown up as a city boy in Germany. So our agricultural efforts fell flat. But every single time a neighbor called during harvest season to ask if Mom wanted whatever it was they had growing, Mom would say, "I'll send my boys over to pick some." I liked to eat some (but not all) of those things, but I never liked picking any of them.<br />
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My oldest brother got a newspaper route when I was a kid. This was back in the day when news carriers had to go door to door to collect subscription fees each month. They also had to manage the finances for their routes. For the next decade, that route and the neighboring route cycled through the boys in our family. Who do you think was the main support staff for us? You guess it: Mom.<br />
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In a remarkable occurrence, Mom served a two-year mission for <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a> in Germany at the personal invitation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_B._Hinckley">Gordon B. Hinckley</a> when she was two years younger than the minimum age for sister missionaries. Toward the end of her mission, she met a young German man who joined the Church. They corresponded after she returned home. He eventually emigrated to the States, married Mom, and became my dad. So, I guess I owe my very life to Gordon B. Hinckley.<br />
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Mom was not above being manipulative to motivate her sons to do the right thing, or at least what she thought was the right thing. I was scarred for years after Mom told me as a young child that I would sustain a skin crease between my eyes if I didn't stop pouting so much. It took many years before I realized that this was a genetic trait that would be little affected by the faces I pulled as a kid.<br />
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As a young adult I took a break from the rigors of college for a few terms so that I could pursue other opportunities. In her desire to get me to go back to school, Mom once embarrassed me in front of some of my friends who were still in college. That hurt. But it didn't get me to go back to school at that time. Only my wife's gentle persistent encouragement and sustained confidence in me brought that about years later.<br />
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There was no internet during my youth and the TV shows we watched were mostly inane and uninformative. So when we were young, Mom was often our chief source of information. I could always tell when one of us broached a topic that was dicey for Mom to deal with. She would sometimes avoid direct answers, but most of the time she would parse through a children's version using terminology with which we were familiar.<br />
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I still remember the time she responded to my question about what rape was when I was young. Her child-level explanation was roughly factual but was crafted to shield us from the horror of such a violent act. Despite my youth, I can remember thinking about Mom's words and developing a strong sense of revulsion to sexual violence on my own.<br />
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Mom had her own vocabulary for many sensitive things, such as certain body parts and bodily functions. I recall coming to the realization at one point that this was private family jargon that was foreign to my peers. Being boys, we often wrangled these terms into newfangled lingo that was usually intended for comedic or insulting effect. Mom frequently complained about how every family gathering at some point ended up devolving into scatological discourse. Such is one of the problems with living in a house full of boys. My poor mother.<br />
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When I was five years old, Mom took a seasonal swing shift job as a data entry clerk so that she and Dad could save money for a dream trip to visit Dad's family in Germany. They wanted to take their children with them, but they ultimately realized that the kids would be grown before they could save enough money. So when I was eight, Mom and Dad farmed us out to gracious neighbors and spent a month in Germany.<br />
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I hated the seasons when Mom had to work her swing shift job. She would be gone by the time I got home from school. She would get home so late at night that she would still be in bed when I left for school in the morning. After we went to bed on Sunday night, we sometimes wouldn't see Mom until late Saturday morning.<br />
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I liked it better when Mom moved to the day shift. But she didn't, because her part-time seasonal position suddenly shifted to a full-time job. It later became a career, at which she excelled. Dad once told me that the day Mom went to work was a good day for us kids, because prior to that she had a penchant for micromanaging our play and activities. All with the best intent, of course. After going to work, Mom had to leave us to our own devices much more. But that doesn't mean that we left her to her own interests.<br />
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Mom was always there to help with every school project that arose. I was never very good with that stuff, so Mom usually had to provide a lot of ideas and do a lot of work. She would never take over. She would insist that I make the decisions (with her careful guidance) and that I stay in charge every step of the way. My projects never looked as slick as those of other kids who were more creative or whose parents did more work on their projects. But I felt like each project was mine.<br />
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Some of my earliest memories revolve around Mom sewing with her antique Singer sewing machine. In my mind, Mom had a love-hate relationship with sewing. She insisted on making matching shirts for Dad and all of the boys. She sewed book bags for us to use for school and crafted toddler sized boy dolls. In the 70s when bizarre leisure suits were all the rage, Mom literally sewed leisure suits for all of us boys.<br />
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Mom must have loved sewing, because she worked so hard at it, often late into the evening. But she also seemed to hate it because she knew that her projects never quite matched the quality of store bought clothing. It particularly chagrined her when better fitting store bought clothes started becoming much cheaper than lovingly hand sewn items.<br />
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Even after Mom got a swanky newfangled sewing machine, she often pulled out the ancient Singer machine to do certain types of stitches. When my youngest brother married, Mom gave him and his wife her old Singer machine. My sister-in-law didn't sew, so they saw no use for the machine. They donated it to charity, only to later learn that Mom had hoped to sell it for the antique that it was.<br />
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Speaking of machines, Mom was a master of the typewriter. I remember when Mom got her first electric typewriter that had a correcting function. Her typing speed was very high and she rarely needed the correction function. Mom was also an early adopter of the home PC and the word processor, at which she learned to excel.<br />
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When I was a young adult, a family that had a long term relationship with our family invited us to enjoy an evening of swimming at their backyard pool. Mom and Dad had always been quite conservative financially. So it shocked me to the core a week later when a local firm was in our back yard digging a hole and installing a real in-ground swimming pool with a diving board.<br />
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My parents later explained that they had been thinking for years about how to keep drawing the family together as the children got older. They had gone back and forth between getting a pool or getting a boat. After the swim party, they went with the pool. And it really did work. Over the next three decades the family spent many days gathering, swimming, cooking out, and hanging out.<br />
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When grandchildren came along, Mom threw herself into blessing their lives, especially after she and Dad retired. Sometimes this meant spoiling them with more birthday and Christmas gifts than their parents gave them. One of Mom's specialties was making personalized birthday cakes for each grandchild each year. As the number of grandchildren grew, this task started to become overwhelming, although, the grandchildren loved their cakes.<br />
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Several years after they both retired, Mom and Dad served a mission for the Church in Hamburg, Germany, the same city where they had met many years earlier. Mom tried to keep close tabs with family members while they were away, just as she had written each of her sons weekly while they served as missionaries. Upon arriving home, Mom and Dad felt somewhat disoriented, like they had just climbed off a wild carnival ride and were suddenly standing still.<br />
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3½ years later when Dad suffered a debilitating stroke, Mom became Dad's main caregiver, just after having serious surgery on her foot. The next year and a half were nightmarishly overtaxing for Mom, who continued unwaveringly devoted. Dad wasn't always able to express himself and he often behaved irrationally. It wasn't always clear how much of this was due to the stroke damage or the complex array of medications they threw at him.<br />
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Mom made the best of Dad's situation. But in trying to cope with this new reality, she tried to help Dad by putting him on a healthy but miserable diet that might have helped prevent congestive heart failure had it been implemented decades earlier. Following Dad's second stroke, Mom almost never left the hospital until Dad passed away a week and a half later.<br />
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On his deathbed, Dad had me promise that I would get Mom out of the home they had moved into 4½ decades earlier. But Mom wouldn't go. She had difficulty relinquishing anything Dad had touched, including the home, his truck, his clothes, etc. That's one common way that some people deal with grief.<br />
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After several years, aging (both Mom and the house), arthritis, etc., Mom finally relented and allowed us to sell her house. We moved her into a lovely single level home that was more manageable. Mom continually complained to everyone she encountered about the new home's shortcomings. It wasn't really the home that was the problem, it was widowhood and aging. The house was just a scapegoat. She still continued to reach out and serve others as much as possible even as life became increasingly challenging.<br />
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I now realize that Mom was already several years into <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vascular-dementia/symptoms-causes/syc-20378793">vascular dementia</a> by the time Dad had his first stroke. Mom never had significant heart problems, but we later discovered that she had been experiencing regular cerebral microbleeds.<br />
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We were told that doctors have little understanding of the causes and treatments for this condition. They do know that each microbleed results in a small amount of permanent cognitive impairment. While most episodes are hardly noticeable, the cumulative effect can be debilitating. That's how it worked for Mom.<br />
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Over time it became increasingly challenging for Mom to manage her own affairs. We were glad when she admitted that she could no longer safely drive a car. But cognitive impairment also impacted Mom's gait and stability. My wife became Mom's principal caregiver and companion. She also became Mom's service arm, performing many acts of service on behalf of Mom. But my wife couldn't be with Mom all the time.<br />
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After 5½ years in the new home, it became clear that Mom was no longer safe living on her own. Our home is full of stairs and was completely unsuitable to Mom's condition. Mom ended up moving to a nice smaller assisted living center just a few blocks from her home and our home. She again made the best of the situation, although, it bothered her to be there with many people who were obviously more impaired than she was.<br />
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Over the next 2½ years, Mom went from being one of the lesser impaired residents of the facility to being one of the more impaired residents, both physically and cognitively. She eventually moved to the cognitive care unit that provided a higher level of care. Several small strokes resulted in Mom becoming confined to a wheelchair.<br />
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During the final half year of Mom's life, she declined fairly steadily both cognitively and physically. She would have periods where she would stabilize and other periods where she seemed to improve briefly. Following yet another small stroke, which didn't seem much different than previous small strokes, Mom's condition deteriorated rapidly until she passed away peacefully a week later.<br />
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After 87 years of living Mom didn't leave behind any notable things, other than her posterity. She didn't write music or create serious artwork. She hadn't accumulated nice collections of things. If her life could be boiled down to two words, those words would be work and service. Underlying those two words is really one word: love. Her way of showing love might differ from the way others do it, but it's who my mom was and is. I know that she is continuing this pattern. She is busy working and serving even now.Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-26058419971376255212019-09-12T17:28:00.001-06:002019-09-14T16:24:39.347-06:00Our child survives a suicide attempt. Is there a better way to address this issue?I wasn't shocked when I saw the bloody wounds on my son's arm; I was disappointed. And tired. I wondered why my son's crisis moments seem to always come right when we are trying to go to bed. Maybe it's his way of crying out for help when he's at the end of his rope and he realizes that we won't be readily available a few minutes later. Or maybe it's just that he's more likely to reach the end of his rope at the end of the day when his energy is spent. Or maybe it's a combination of many factors. But I was also grateful. My son was, after all, still alive.<br />
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We have struggled for years to understand our son's mental illnesses. And maybe the term 'mental illness' is part of the problem. Neuroscientist and psychiatrist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_R._Insel">Thomas Insel</a> was the director of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Mental_Health">National Institute of Mental Health</a> when he gave a <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_insel_toward_a_new_understanding_of_mental_illness?language=en">famous 2013 TED talk</a> about changing the way we think about and approach disorders of this nature by changing the terminology to more accurately reflect what is going on.<br />
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In the talk, Dr. Insel decries both of the common terms used to describe these conditions: mental illness and behavioral problems. Mental illness means a disease of the mind. This suggests that the issue is mainly a moral failing and that the problem can be fixed simply by changing one's mind. While changing one's mind might help, it cannot fully address issues based in the biological structure and function of the most complex organ in the body.</div>
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Behavioral health approaches the matter from a third party viewpoint rather than describing what is going on with the patient. It essentially says, "The way you act is a problem for others." Another problem with this view is that behavior is a lagging indicator. It is the last thing to show up in the progression of the disease. So we end up treating the disease the wrong way and we don't even recognize the need for treatment until very late in the game.</div>
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Insel contends that disorders such as depression, anxiety, bipolar, ADD, ADHD, schizophrenia, OCD, and Autism are brain disorders. Unlike Huntingtons, Parkinsons, or Alzheimers, "where you have a bombed out part of your cortex," these illnesses involve "traffic jams, or sometimes detours, or sometimes problems with just the way things are connected." He likens these diseases to heart "arrhythmia, where the organ simply isn't functioning because of the communication problems within it" and where you will find no major lesion.<br />
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If we can change the terminology to more accurately reflect disorders of the brain, it will not only affect the way we think culturally about these issues, it will affect the way research and treatment are approached. It will help us find ways to discover the disorders earlier so that early treatment can be undertaken. Insel notes that this same course has been followed with many diseases, so that rates of death and disability have plummeted for the likes heart disease, stroke, AIDS, and Leukemia.</div>
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Despite being tired and disappointed at seeing my son's wounds, I had complete clarity on what needed to happen next. I lean blue with a strong dose of red on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartman_Personality_Profile">Hartman Personality Profile</a>. I crave closure and decisiveness. So knowing what to do next helped take the edge off the horror of the situation.<br />
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I could readily see that the wounds were too superficial to require stitches. Yet I also knew that my son needed to get to an emergency room as soon as possible. While the physical wounds could have been treated at home, the psychological crisis needed more than just a home remedy because my son was still in danger.</div>
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As I thought about spending hours in a busy ER department at the other end of town, I suddenly remembered that a nearby emergency center (not physically attached to a hospital) had opened recently. We hardly spoke a word on the short ride there. The staff quickly showed us to a room. There were other patients in the facility, but it was quiet and free from noticeable drama.</div>
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My feeling of disappointment mainly surrounded my son's relapse. I had hoped that increased maturity and stabilized treatments had gotten him past feelings of self-harm or suicide. Maybe I should have known that this view was overly optimistic. Not long ago he quit a job that proved to be too demanding for him. I underestimated the resultant feeling of failure he felt.</div>
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A smaller portion of my disappointment involved the expense of emergency and in-patient treatment. We've ridden this train before, so we have a fair idea of the thousands of dollars it will cost us out of pocket, despite decent insurance. It will pinch our budget big time. Especially in this medical-bills-R-us year. (See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/04/brain-drain-for-real-adventures-in.html">4/2/19</a> and <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">8/7/19</a> posts regarding my wife's rare condition.)</div>
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I'm not complaining. We will make it all work, even if it involves quite a bit of discomfort. This life comes with zero guarantees of smooth sailing unencumbered by physical and financial challenges. Marriage carries the risk that your partner could develop significant medical issues, as my wife discovered when I was diagnosed with <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/multiple-sclerosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20350269">Multiple Sclerosis</a> two years into our marriage.</div>
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One neighbor quipped that when you choose to become pregnant, you are inviting a new person to join your family, and you have no idea who is coming. It makes no sense to whine that the child that comes differs from what you expected. Among the chief requirements for the job of parent is the task of learning to love the children that come to your family, whatever challenges they might bring. We applied for that job, and now we're trying to do it as best we can.<br />
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I believe that Dr. Insel's suggestion to change terminology surrounding brain disorders is sorely needed, because at present we simply don't know enough about the underlying causes of these disorders to comprehend how to properly treat them. We need better understanding. How well do those who have never struggled with major depression understand how it affects its victims?<br />
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Writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Solomon">Andrew Solomon</a> discusses his own struggle with depression and anxiety in <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share?language=en#t-1745384">this heavily viewed 2013 TED talk</a>. He exclaims how grateful he is that he didn't live 50 years earlier when the available treatment was barbaric by our standards. But he also hopes that 50 years from now, those with brain disorders will be happy that they didn't live in our day because our treatments will seem barbaric by their standards.<br />
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While suffering from depression, Solomon says that you know that your response "is ridiculous while you are experiencing it." You know that others readily deal every day with the factors that discombobulate you, and that it's no big deal to them. "And yet," he exclaims, "you are nonetheless in its grip and you are unable to figure out any way around it." He says that the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality. Those grappling with major depression feel their vitality drain away. It hurts to think that my son has grappled with this kind of thing for years.</div>
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During the four hours we spent at the ER, there was a lot of waiting. They dressed my son's wounds and gave him a tetanus shot. He spoke privately with a physician. They took a lot of blood for a whole battery of tests, mainly to ensure that any outstanding medical issues were addressed before sending my son to an in-patient psychiatric care unit. It takes time to process all of that stuff.</div>
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Finally, my son spoke via a teleconferencing device with a mental health social worker, who ended up making all of the patient transfer arrangements. The closest psychiatric unit with availability was 45 minutes away by ambulance. Pretty much everyone involved in the system knows that mental healthcare needs are dramatically under-served in our area.</div>
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We chatted during the periods of waiting. I read to my son from a book I had on my Kindle. Another son dropped by with some fast food. He shared some videos on his phone. My son calmed down and felt that the crisis might be past. But the healthcare professionals felt that it would be best for his safety and their legal responsibility for him to get in-patient care for a few days. I completely agreed.<br />
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As he rode away in an ambulance, I reflected on the anxiety from which my son suffers, which was actually the proximate cause of this self-injury episode. In his TED talk, Andrew Solomon says that the difficulty of clinical depression did not prepare him for the onset of acute anxiety. "If you told me that I'd have to be depressed for the next month," says Solomon, "I would say, 'As long as I know it'll be over in November, I can do it.' But if you said to me, 'You have to have acute anxiety for the next month,' I would rather slit my wrist than go through it."<br />
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Solomon describes acute anxiety as being "like that feeling you have if you're walking and slip or trip, and the ground is rushing up at you, but instead of lasting half a second the way that does, it lasted for six months. It's a sensation of being afraid all the time but not even knowing what it is that you're afraid of."<br />
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His struggle with acute anxiety caused Solomon "to think that it was just too painful to be alive, and that the only reason not to kill oneself was so as not to hurt other people." It has long been known that those who attempt suicide do so mainly because they feel that they are out of options and have no hope of things ever getting better. It's not that they actually want to die. Researchers also know that many sufferers endure the pain partially due to thoughts of how their death would affect their loved ones.</div>
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Perhaps these grim descriptions can help those who don't personally grapple with depression and/or anxiety to understand a little better those who do. Perhaps understanding these issues as malfunctioning brain tissue can help drive a little compassion, and maybe even better research and treatment.</div>
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My son didn't ask to have Autism, or the kind of depression and anxiety described by Andrew Solomon. His suicide attempt is not a moral failing. It's an unhealthy attempt to address overwhelming psychological pain caused by communication malfunctions in his brain.</div>
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And yet, we need him to be safe. Tolerance of self-harm would be a twisted form of empathy. So I am glad my son went to the hospital, even if our daily visits during the strictly limited one-hour visiting time require a nearly three-hour round trip. Still, I can't help but wonder if there isn't a better way.</div>
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Solomon has traveled the world interviewing people who have or who treat these brain disorders. In doing so, he has seen a very broad variety of treatment approaches that have been successful for various people. In one humorous exchange, Solomon tells of a Rwandan who describes Western mental health practitioners who came to the country after the genocide.</div>
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"They would do this bizarre thing," said the Rwandan, "where they didn't take people out in the sunshine where you begin to feel better. They didn't include drumming or music to get the people's blood going. They didn't involve the whole community. They didn't externalize the depression as an invasive spirit. Instead what they did was they took people one at a time into dingy little rooms and had them talk for an hour about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave the country."</div>
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Too often I have defined my son's condition in terms of how it affects me. Sometimes I audibly tell myself, "He's not giving <i><b>you </b></i>a hard time. He's <b><i>having</i> </b>a hard time." That doesn't mean that it's not incredibly challenging to deal with the occasions where he lashes out at others, or when he tries to manipulate others in a desperate attempt to control his environment when he's feeling out of control.</div>
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Researchers say that most people who have these types of brain disorders get little or no treatment for them. Undertreatment is especially pronounced among the poor, who tend to accept their condition as endemic to their miserable life situation. Our son is one of the lucky ones who has received psychiatric and psychological treatment for years. But he is also among the massive number of those discussed by Thomas Insel and Andrew Solomon for whom treatment has so far been inadequate.</div>
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It's difficult to meet with <i>any </i>psychiatrist in our area. We love our son's therapist, but like pretty much all therapists in our area, his schedule is overloaded. And frankly, I'm not sure if even daily visits with professionals of this nature would fully address our son's conditions. That's why Dr. Insel's discussion about changing terminology so that we can improve the culture, the research, and the treatment surrounding these diseases appeals so strongly to me.</div>
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Since this isn't our first rodeo with in-patient psychiatric treatment, we won't walk around on eggshells when our son returns from the hospital, as much as we did the previous times. We will work to integrate him into normal life as much as possible. We will continue to work to get him the best treatment we can. And we will deal with whatever comes. After all, we love him.</div>
Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-86933974134287244332019-08-07T20:52:00.002-06:002019-11-19T10:56:50.911-07:00Adventures in cerebrospinal fluid leakage: part 2<br />
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In <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/04/brain-drain-for-real-adventures-in.html">an April post</a> I discussed my wife's rare (or at least rarely diagnosed) spinal condition known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_cerebrospinal_fluid_leak">spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak</a>. The resulting <a href="http://neurosurgery.ucla.edu/intracranial-hypotension">intracranial hypotension</a> led to severe headaches, tinnitus, hearing disparity, and mental fog.<br />
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My post described more than half a year of treatments that required many MRIs of various types, a month of bed rest, and two epidural blood patch procedures. Today I am reporting that all of these efforts and the expenses incurred relative to those approaches haven't helped much.<br />
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Curious about what kind of beneficial treatment might be available, my wife undertook some serious research. Eventually she discovered that there are three clinics in the US that specialize in treating CSF leaks: <a href="https://www.dukehealth.org/treatments/cerebrospinal-fluid-leak">Duke University Hospital</a> in North Carolina, <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/programs/neurology-neurosurgery/clinical/csf-leak.html">Cedars-Sinai Medical Center</a> in Los Angeles, and <a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/ian-carroll">Stanford University Medical Center</a> in Stanford, CA.<br />
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<a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/leakweek2019-FB-ad-800x419.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://spinalcsfleak.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/leakweek2019-FB-ad-800x419.png" width="320" /></a>Doctors from each of these clinics participate in the nonprofit <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/">Spinal CSF Leak Foundation</a>. As luck would have it, the foundation was holding its annual <a href="https://spinalcsfleak.org/leakweek-2/leakweek-2019/">LeakWeek conference</a> in early June. My wife took the opportunity to watch many of the online sessions of the conference. She saw a glimmer of hope that there was somebody out there that might be able to help her.<br />
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After research and consideration of various factors (including which clinics and doctors are covered by our insurance), my wife decided to reach out to the clinic at Cedars-Sinai. They requested that we provide every scrap of medical record (including images) of any kind for the past 10 years. It took awhile to pull all of those records together and get them shipped to the clinic. Following extensive reviews of my wife's medical records, the clinic agreed to take my wife's case.<br />
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This led to numerous phone calls and emails. One day my wife answered a call from the clinic, expecting to speak with a member of the clerical staff. She was surprised to find herself speaking with the lead doctor at the clinic, who is perhaps the world's leading expert in spontaneous CSF leaks. They spoke for more than 15 minutes about the details of her case.<br />
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Initially we were told that we could expect to be scheduled for sometime in August for a three-day series of appointments that would include additional imaging, consultation with doctors, and likely surgical treatment. But later the clinic called saying that they had a cancellation in July and asked if my wife wanted to take that spot.<br />
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<a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/content/dam/cedars-sinai/social-media/images/cedars-sinai-fb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for cedars-sinai medical center" border="0" height="168" src="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/content/dam/cedars-sinai/social-media/images/cedars-sinai-fb.jpg" width="320" /></a>Before long we found ourselves winging our way to LA. Can you say, "traffic nightmare"? Why in the world does anyone want to live there? (Apparently, more than 10 million people do want to live there.) Our hotel in West Hollywood was, um, better than a Super 8, I guess, although; it appeared to have been built in the 1930s and probably spent many years as a wino flophouse before being renovated. For the rate we paid you could get very fine lodging where we live.<br />
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The same day we traveled to LA, we spent many hours at the imaging center at Cedar-Sinai for multiple extensive MRIs. I don't know how late that place is open. Patients were still arriving at the imaging center when we left around 9:30 pm. The neighborhood in which our hotel was located, which was only a mile or so from the medical center, felt uninviting at that time of night.<br />
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On our second day in LA we had some time to kill before meeting with the doctor, so we visited the <a href="https://tarpits.org/">La Brea Tar Pits</a>, which was both fascinating and smelly. (The tar pits are still actively bubbling up to the surface.) We also had some time after the doctor appointment, so we visited the <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/details/los-angeles-california-temple?lang=eng">Los Angeles Temple</a>, which was closed for its semi-annual maintenance. But the visitor center was open. Despite these diversions, we weren't in LA for any kind of sightseeing. We only went there for medical treatment.<br />
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When we met with the doctor he explained that doing two blood patches at different locations in the spine was likely to permanently resolve my wife's CSF leak issues. At least, he suggested that it was successful for 90% of patients with similar scan results. If it ended up not working well, she would be among the 10% of patients that would require more invasive imaging and probably more invasive surgical approaches. The doctor was confident that if these initial procedures didn't solve the problem, a second round would do the trick.<br />
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<a href="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/538f007d-e959-4004-8994-3bb23adf8765/da4thot-3a20431d-d80c-4f62-a130-cbc1a6289c73.jpg/v1/fill/w_751,h_1063,q_70,strp/bored_guy_by_espada_nishad_da4thot-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTQ0OSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzUzOGYwMDdkLWU5NTktNDAwNC04OTk0LTNiYjIzYWRmODc2NVwvZGE0dGhvdC0zYTIwNDMxZC1kODBjLTRmNjItYTEzMC1jYmMxYTYyODljNzMuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.v3LosENAo-ucldZLW75s177K75dx2k5GzdZstkrgwqQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for bored guy" border="0" height="200" src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/538f007d-e959-4004-8994-3bb23adf8765/da4thot-3a20431d-d80c-4f62-a130-cbc1a6289c73.jpg/v1/fill/w_751,h_1063,q_70,strp/bored_guy_by_espada_nishad_da4thot-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTQ0OSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzUzOGYwMDdkLWU5NTktNDAwNC04OTk0LTNiYjIzYWRmODc2NVwvZGE0dGhvdC0zYTIwNDMxZC1kODBjLTRmNjItYTEzMC1jYmMxYTYyODljNzMuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.v3LosENAo-ucldZLW75s177K75dx2k5GzdZstkrgwqQ" width="141" /></a>We returned to the medical center on our third day in LA and spent roughly 11 hours there. I was allowed into the operating room until they were ready to begin sedating my wife. This blood patch procedure was much more intensive than my wife's previous blood patches. Following the procedure my wife spent some six hours lying in various positions that were designed to enhance the healing process. My wife was instructed to go directly to bed at the hotel, only getting up to use the restroom for 60 hours.<br />
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That was pretty boring for me. While my main job was to see to my wife's needs, I kept having to escape the room. I walked around the busy neighborhood during daylight hours. Despite the number of homeless guys sleeping against buildings at the edge of the sidewalk as countless people walked and drove by the noisy zone, I was only panhandled twice.<br />
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The next day brought a lot of nausea from the general anesthesia and a nasty headache, which we deduced was now due to high intracranial pressure. They said that the procedure could cause high pressure for a day or so. We called the on-call doctor and received instructions for my wife to drink dandelion tea. Fortunately, there was a swanky organic grocery store just up the block, so the tea was easy to obtain. My wife's condition improved the day after that.<br />
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<a href="https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5cd97a1c021b4c1521386ac7-750-562.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for delta boeing 737" border="0" height="149" src="https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5cd97a1c021b4c1521386ac7-750-562.jpg" width="200" /></a>When my wife got up to get ready to travel back home on our last day in LA, she was doing better. Her hearing disparity was gone. But she wasn't anywhere near 100%. The trip to LAX, the hours in the busy airport, the noisy flight back to SLC (we were seated near the engines), and the drive home in rush hour traffic didn't help her condition. But she was undeniably better than she had been before we undertook the trip.<br />
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Unfortunately, within a week, my wife's condition had pretty much relapsed to where it was before we undertook the trip. My wife is apparently among the 10% for whom the procedures didn't work well. To top it off, the bills for the treatment amount to around $100K. The rate allowed by the insurance is closer to 40% of that. Nobody really pays the exorbitant list price. It's just part of the dumb pricing game played by the medical industry. Our portion of the "allowed amount" is plenty, but I'm glad we have insurance, even if they do play pricing games.<br />
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The clinic has called and spoken with my wife. They want to let things settle for another couple of weeks before checking on progress again. My wife is under orders to take it very easy. No lifting of anything more than 10 lbs. No twisting of the spine. Lots of reclining. Then the clinic will assess next steps. But we have already been told that the recommendation will likely involve another three-day round that will include more invasive imaging and more invasive surgical procedures.<br />
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<a href="https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kmuw/files/styles/x_large/public/201708/Fingers_Crossed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for crossed fingers" border="0" height="160" src="https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kmuw/files/styles/x_large/public/201708/Fingers_Crossed.jpg" width="320" /></a>We have learned a few things from this experience. One is that decent lodging in LA can be expensive. But we have heard that there are some decent <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/">AirBNB</a> places that are reasonably priced. We will consider other options and pay closer attention to the neighborhood next time around. As to whether another round of treatment will be successful or not, we will just have to keep our fingers crossed.<br />
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<i>Update: See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/11/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 3 (11/18/19)</a> for the rest of the story.</i>Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-83647228493756976252019-05-02T16:02:00.002-06:002019-05-28T10:43:58.095-06:00What is awesome?Is anything really awesome anymore? If so, what and why?<br />
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<a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/awe">Dictionary.com defines awe</a> as "an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful." <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/awesome?s=t">Awesome is defined</a> as "causing or inducing awe; inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear."<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammon_Shea">Ammon Shea</a>, author of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammon_Shea">Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation</a>, notes in <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/awesome/">this post</a> that <i>awesome</i> originally "referred to feelings of severe fear or dread." It pretty much paralleled the word <i>awful</i>. Both words come from the root <i>awe</i>.<br />
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Although the word <i>awesome</i> has evolved to a generally positive connotation, most official definitions still suggest that <i>awe </i>is an overwhelming emotion. But Shea notes that today <i>awesome</i> is often "used as a general purpose exclamation of approval."<br />
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When we try to bolster someone's confidence by telling them that they are awesome, we don't usually mean that they are literally astounding or breathtaking. We mean that they're OK. When we use <i>awesome</i> to express mild approval of anything, we leave ourselves with little terminology to apply to true awe.<br />
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That doesn't mean that awe does not actually exist. Pretty much everyone has at some point experienced overwhelming feelings of reverential wonder due to an encounter with something truly "grand, sublime, [and/or] extremely powerful." It may have been a natural wonder such as a spectacular waterfall, an eagle snatching its prey, or even a small complex insect. Maybe you listened to a grand musical concert, were present for the launch of a space rocket, or watched a truly astounding athletic performance.<br />
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<a href="https://www.weber.edu/">Weber State University</a> professors <a href="https://icarus.cs.weber.edu/Faculty_and_Staff_Bio.html?id=235029152">Luke Fernandez</a> and <a href="https://www.weber.edu/History/susanmatt.html">Susan Matt</a> write in <a href="https://www.standard.net/opinion/columnists/weber-state-faculty-the-decline-of-awe/article_cceb242f-184c-5ce3-ba0b-34625e36448d.html">this Standard Examiner op-ed</a> on the topic of the human emotion of awe. After a decade of research, they "find it difficult to say categorically that awe is rising or declining." But they "can say it’s changing shape."<br />
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The professors note that while past generations often found awe in connection with nature and Deity, our modern culture is more often awed by its own inventions and technologies. Comedian (and sexual predator) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cosby">Bill Cosby</a> used to quip that when God created a world and all things on it, he called it "good" (see <a href="https://www.lds.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/1?lang=eng">Genesis 1</a>). But humans create a skyscraper and say, "It's AWESOME!!!!" The extension of this is, "We're AWESOME!!!! I'm AWESOME!!!!"<br />
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In "the raw, surging power and ambition of humanity" where we look mostly within our own human constructs and technologies for inspiration, access to the divine characteristic of humility seems to diminish. We become like the brawny bodybuilder admiring his physique in the mirror at the gym, heedless of his own arrogance and limitations.<br />
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Fernandez and Matt call for us to look to nature, the god of the modern hippie secularist religion, for inspiration. Most who worship God see nature as God's creation rather than as divinity itself. Indeed, all realms of God's creation, whether they be as large as a universe or microscopic "are kingdoms, and any man who hath seen any or the least of these hath seen God moving in his majesty and power" (see <a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/88.41-48?lang=eng#p41">D&C 88:41-48</a>). Nevertheless, nature can inspire awe and wonder. Those who worship God ought to recognize a fiduciary responsibility to care for God's magnificent work.<br />
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But a humble disciple should also be able to see evidence of the divine in the works wrought by humans who they believe are created in God's image, including the technologies, aircraft, buildings, and roadways denigrated by the good professors. I doubt the professors have much real desire for a world that lacks these amenities. Like most who believe in actual Deity, they are likely looking for some kind of balance; although, the definition of balance may differ greatly between viewpoints.<br />
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So, what about awe? Fernandez and Matt suggest that "we are suffering from what one clever psychologist dubbed A.D.D. — Awe Deficit Disorder." Maybe. But it seems to me that humans are designed to seek out the awe inspiring. Why is Yellowstone National Park crammed with visitors from around the globe each summer? Why do people tune into the Olympics or attend grand concerts? Why do tourists go to the top of the highest buildings in the world? Why was the world saddened by the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral? Why do people pray or attend church? Why do we marvel at the tiny fingers and toes of a newborn?<br />
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Perhaps humans seek out these kinds of experiences because their daily lives are so lacking in awe, unlike the earlier generations favorably painted by the professors as living in simpler times and experiencing wonder more often due to their close contact with nature. Or maybe the awe moderns experience isn't as minimal or as awful as the good professors would have us believe. Maybe <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bored-Lonely-Angry-Stupid-Technology/dp/067498370X">the book they are touting</a> amounts to little more than virtue signalling to the like minded.<br />
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Then again, perhaps we are so surrounded by factors our predecessors would have considered truly awesome that it becomes too mundane for us to experience its wonder.<br />
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We cannot dictate to others how they ought to experience awe. What inspires me may not inspire you and vice versa. A hike along the Teton Crest may bring rapture to one and simply rocks and blisters to another. An interpretive dance may inspire awe in one and revulsion in another. Time kneeling at an altar may seem sacred to one but simply boring to another.<br />
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While I am in favor of returning the word <i>awesome</i> to its meaning of inspiring overwhelming awe, I suppose that it will continue to be watered down to mean anything mediocre or better. I am also in favor of individuals regularly experiencing true awe in ways that are meaningful to them. I suppose that some of what people find inspiring will mystify me. But that's their business, not mine.Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-52312845014330294842019-04-02T09:19:00.000-06:002019-11-19T10:55:21.573-07:00Brain drain for real: Adventures in cerebrospinal fluid leakage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few months ago my wife began experiencing a nonstop headache that became increasingly severe over the space of a week and a half. Having experienced tension, sinus, and migraine headaches with some regularity throughout life, my wife is very familiar with headache treatments and their relative effectiveness. But nothing she tried eased the pain at all.<br />
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Eventually my wife began experiencing tinnitus and an odd hearing disparity, along with cognitive fog. My wife visited the local instacare one day when she was at her wits' end. The doctors there said that an MRI was needed but that <i>"they"</i> (whoever that is) don't like it when instacare doctors order MRIs.<br />
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Due to my wife's persistence, an MRI of the brain was ordered anyway. Then she called the imaging center and pestered them. Conveniently, the imaging center had a cancellation so that my wife was able to get her MRI done later that evening. We perused the results as soon as we knew they were available and discovered that the observations were consistent with <a href="http://neurosurgery.ucla.edu/intracranial-hypotension">intracranial hypotension</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RiNDR64e2Oo/XKKYIGC7rWI/AAAAAAAABqg/iJl9kdouNOcCx0ChPGqCmX_0ZN7Qw8lNgCLcBGAs/s1600/mri.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="179" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RiNDR64e2Oo/XKKYIGC7rWI/AAAAAAAABqg/iJl9kdouNOcCx0ChPGqCmX_0ZN7Qw8lNgCLcBGAs/s320/mri.jpg" width="320" /></a>The information we read online about this condition seemed rather alarming. At this point the instacare folks said that this was outside of their area of treatment and that my wife needed to see a neurologist. But due to the way things work in our heavily regulated, insurance focused healthcare industry, my wife would need a referral from her primary care physician.<br />
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The whole reason my wife had gone to instacare was because her primary care doctor was out of town for a couple of weeks. She ended up working with the office staff of one of the doctors who was covering for her doctor. It's a good thing that doctor was not physically within reach when a staffer told my wife that the doctor didn't think the finding was significant. She would have reached through the phone line and throttled the guy.<br />
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In reality this doctor isn't a bad guy. Let's just say that he comes across as more detail oriented than patient oriented. And let's just say that my wife was persistent enough to get that doctor to refer her to a neurologist. It still took several days to see the neurologist after taking the first available cancellation spot.<br />
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During the visit we were pleased that the neurologist had gone to the trouble to personally analyze my wife's MRI. Since intracranial hypotension is generally caused by a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak, the neurologist carefully questioned my wife to try to determine the cause of the leak. Spontaneous CSF leaks are considered very rare (see <a href="https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/spontaneous-intracranial-hypotension/">National Organization for Rare Disorders discussion</a>). But all indications were that this is exactly what my wife was experiencing.<br />
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The neurologist explained that he understood that most spontaneous CSF leaks can heal up on their own. He ordered four weeks of strict bed rest accompanied by relatively high doses of caffeine. It turns out that caffeine's vasoconstriction properties can help alleviate some CSF leak symptoms, as can lying down. Painkillers are completely ineffective for this condition.<br />
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My wife felt somewhat OK while lying down and taking caffeine. She could get up to take care of necessities, but she couldn't stay up for long before the nasty headache returned. That was a terribly boring month for my wife. She isn't much into watching TV. She loves to read but the cognitive fog she was experiencing made that difficult.<br />
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When a month of bed rest yielded no positive results, the neurologist ordered an extensive MRI of the spine. Upon reviewing the results he ordered an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidural_blood_patch">epidural blood patch</a> procedure. In essence, they suck some blood from your arm and inject it into the epidural space of the spine. It is supposed to work like slime in a bicycle tube to form a clot to patch the leak. But it costs $6,000 more than a bike tube repair.<br />
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The blood patch was helpful. My wife was soon functional, but far from 100%. In follow up appointments with the neurologist it seemed clear to us that his expertise in my wife's precise condition was quite limited. Our research suggests that this is common. Very few neurologists have knowingly interacted with anyone experiencing a spontaneous CSF leak.<br />
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The UK-based <a href="https://www.csfleak.info/">CSF Leak Association</a> explains that spontaneous CSF leaks "are not rare, yet are generally under-diagnosed; misdiagnosis of migraine, sinusitis and other headache disorders is common place...." Specialists in the condition believe that it is far more widespread than understood by the medical community and that ignorance of the condition and its treatments is rampant among healthcare professionals.<br />
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A couple of months after the blood patch it became clear that my wife was experiencing more CSF leaking. It seemed obvious that another blood patch was needed but the neurologist wanted more MRIs to get a better idea of what was going on. This chagrined my wife. Even with decent insurance, MRIs are not cheap and she couldn't imagine what benefit additional imaging would provide.<br />
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Hospitals use MRI machines like cash printing presses. Last year <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elliekincaid/2018/04/16/want-fries-with-that-a-brief-history-of-medical-mri-starting-with-a-mcdonalds/#1a0ead73de0e">Forbes reported</a> that "the national median network rate for a scan at a freestanding center is $504—a third of the $1,567 rate in a hospital." Which is why hospitals and their industry compatriots work to squeeze out private imaging centers. Moreover, a full set of MRIs covering the brain and the spine amounts to four images. So multiply that $1,567 by four every time my wife makes a trip to the imaging center. Ouch.<br />
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Thanks in part to the MRIs and the blood patch, for the first time in our lives we were able to take advantage of the medical expense tax deduction for last year and we're shaping up to repeat that performance this year. That's small consolation. Since you can only deduct the amount of qualified medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, any tax benefit covers a tiny pittance of actual out of pocket medical expenses.<br />
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We didn't want to pay for more MRIs but the neurologist would not budge on the requirement for a third round of MRIs. The thinking was that locating the leak source would make the second blood patch procedure more successful; although, the doctor had told us that even with the best imaging they can't find the actual leak location in 80% of cases.<br />
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The third round of MRIs revealed nothing new, which made my wife even less happy about incurring the related expense. Still, the neurologist ordered a second blood patch. But when we went for the procedure a physician's assistant explained that the neuroradiologist who was to perform the procedure wouldn't do it until my wife had yet another set of MRIs that were tuned to look at fluids. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a neuroradiologist until that moment.<br />
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This fourth round of MRIs revealed a number of <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/perineural-cysts">perineural cysts</a> (aka <a href="https://www.aans.org/Patients/Neurosurgical-Conditions-and-Treatments/Tarlov-Cyst">Tarlov cysts</a>) on the spine but there was no clear indication of where the current leaks were. The doctor was especially suspicious of a very large cyst near the base of the spine. When we took my wife in for the rescheduled second blood patch, the doctor took us into an alcove that had three large computer screens. He rotated the images around to show different angles and slices so that we could see what he was seeing. He called my wife's case very unusual.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0kUfr0qJa8s/XKKc1ERnIlI/AAAAAAAABrQ/Jz2hOQfQWXM_7traM4CRUVS_S9DKAiq-gCLcBGAs/s1600/epidural%2Bblood%2Bpatch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1293" data-original-width="1500" height="171" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0kUfr0qJa8s/XKKc1ERnIlI/AAAAAAAABrQ/Jz2hOQfQWXM_7traM4CRUVS_S9DKAiq-gCLcBGAs/s200/epidural%2Bblood%2Bpatch.jpg" width="200" /></a>The second blood patch temporarily caused intracranial hypertension. But after a few days my wife was doing much better and was much more functional. In a follow up appointment the neuroradiologist suggested that no further treatments would be helpful unless significant leakage is once again detected.<br />
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The doctor explained that my wife must appreciably alter her lifestyle so as to prevent rupture of any of the multiple cysts on her spine. She must avoid <i>anything</i> strenuous and any kind of motion that might cause problems. No riding on bumpy roads. No picking up anything heavy, including small children. Only very light yard work or housework. All bending must be undertaken with great care. Etc.<br />
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Even extreme care will not guarantee freedom from problems. It is believed that the large cyst near the base of my wife's spine acts as a CSF reservoir. The longer my wife is upright the more CSF drains into the reservoir, causing brain sagging which results in nasty headache, hearing problems, and cognitive issues. Caffeine can help. But the real thing is a significantly different lifestyle than she has been used to.<br />
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We aren't complaining. Many people deal with far worse conditions. This isn't fatal; just unpleasant. We are learning more about spontaneous CSF leaks, perineural cysts, and other factors surrounding my wife's condition. We will see where this adventure takes us.<br />
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<i>Update: See <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/08/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 2 (8/7/19)</a> and <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/11/adventures-in-cerebrospinal-fluid.html">part 3 (11/18/19)</a> for the rest of the story.</i><br />
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Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-65452556596899747122019-03-19T21:21:00.000-06:002019-03-20T12:50:57.174-06:00Affirming your way to your own goals, not mineIn <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/03/as-man-thinketh-in-his-heart.html">my last post</a> I wrote about how I dropped 70 lbs. to achieve a long-term healthy lifestyle. <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/02/why-typical-person-doesnt-live-healthy.html">Last month I wrote</a> about—and defended—those who choose to follow less healthy lifestyles. On the surface these two posts may seem at odds with each other. Let's see if I can square that circle.<br />
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Let's start by looking past the surface of <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/03/as-man-thinketh-in-his-heart.html">my last post</a>. A quick read might make that article look like a vain self congratulatory promo for health consciousness. In reality, I was writing about ways to achieve goals that are important to you by highlighting my successes in accomplishing objectives that have been important to me.<br />
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The principles I outlined can be applied to your own ambitions, whatever they may be. The beautiful thing is that your aspirations don't have to look anything like mine.<br />
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I know and love a couple of people who like to show their care for others by introducing them to things that they like themselves. The underlying belief is that if they like something, everyone else must like it too. It seems to blow their minds when someone is less enthusiastic about something than they are.<br />
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Like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss">Dr. Seuss</a>'s <a href="https://seuss.fandom.com/wiki/Sam-I-Am">Sam-I-Am</a> from <a href="https://seuss.fandom.com/wiki/Green_Eggs_and_Ham">Green Eggs and Ham</a>, when these folks encounter someone who doesn't care for something they savor, they are certain that dogged (often annoying) persistence is the appropriate response. Those with authoritarian leanings have no problem also considering coercive measures.<br />
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But unlike Seuss's <a href="https://seuss.fandom.com/wiki/Joey">Joey</a> who ultimately discovers his enjoyment of green eggs and ham, people in real life often do not come to love things that they are pestered about trying. People have diverse preferences, and with the exception of the political realm and sports fandom, that's usually just fine.<br />
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So it is in this case. You do not have to be fanatically invested in the worship of carnal fitness to find some benefit in positively changing something about yourself by positively changing your internal picture of yourself. I fully agree that physical fitness isn't the be all and end all of human happiness. Nor is longevity, as I reminded each time I visit my mom's elder care facility.<br />
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What is something you want to change about yourself? Go back and read <a href="https://reachupward.blogspot.com/2019/03/as-man-thinketh-in-his-heart.html">my March 14 post</a> to see if there are any principles there that might be beneficial to you.<br />
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Now, it's entirely possible that the affirmation approach I mentioned in that blog post is nothing more than self delusion. It might include confirmation bias that gets adherents to ignore system failures while paying outsize attention to coincidental successes, much as gambling works for habitual gamblers. Naysayers note that there are no studies that back up the claims of affirmationists; just testimonials, as is often the case with herbal supplements.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert">Dilbert</a> creator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams">Scott Adams</a> once agreed that his brand of affirmation is probably just a form of self hypnosis. But he then noted that the happiness and satisfaction his affirmations have brought him are real enough to keep him doing it. Why should he care if the results might not be scientifically validated when his life is happier?<br />
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#1 New York Times best-selling author <a href="https://pamgrout.com/">Pam Grout</a> has also successfully employed affirmations. In <a href="https://pamgrout.com/2016/07/01/dilbert-doing-affirmations-and-discovering-your-passion/">this July 2016 blog post</a> she writes about Adams' approach to affirmations. She notes that Adams started out being skeptical about affirmations but figured the cost was low enough that he would try it out, only to encounter success after success. A date with a dream girl, investment success with no experience, scoring exceptionally high on the GMAT with no preparation, etc.<br />
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In his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4">How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big</a>, Adams explains how he recovered from the rare (and thought to be incurable) disease of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spasmodic_dysphonia">spasmodic dysphonia</a> by using an affirmation. It's worth reading the book to get this story. In fact, Adams cleverly scatters the story throughout the book, leaving a tantalizing trail that requires you to read the whole book to get the full tale.<br />
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In the end, Adams confesses that a dispassionate observer might conclude that his affirmation played little discernible role in discovering the expensive and unusual treatment that led to his recovery. But in Adams' mind the series of events that led to this result would not have happened without his affirmation.<br />
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I have likewise used affirmations to good effect and I'm far from the only one. <a href="https://medium.com/@julianhierro/affirmations-how-i-tripled-my-income-and-investments-in-4-months-11fb5688de33">This cold thinking atheist says</a> that affirmations helped him triple his income over a four-month period. Writing about the "astonishing" coincidences, he says, "I think that when you write a goal every day 15 times, your brain starts paying attention to the opportunities around you."<br />
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Can affirmations work to help you achieve your goals? There's only one way to find out. Give it a shot. The cost of doing affirmations is pretty meager. You have very little to lose and much to gain. Try it out. Post your results.Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-55839033543646332602019-03-14T21:46:00.000-06:002019-03-15T08:09:40.855-06:00As a man thinketh in his heart...As I type this I am wearing jeans with a 31-inch waist. They fit comfortably and feel good. Why is this significant? Because when I was 27 years old I was wearing jeans with a 43-inch waist. And they were way too tight. That's right, the pants I wear today are a full foot smaller around the waist than the pants I wore back then.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ohztsYpy8as/XIq0lPaL2SI/AAAAAAAABok/jA28j-j7LBMbK15CdpByD9geCxwJj4G4gCEwYBhgL/s1600/Scott%2Bwith%2Bspace%2Bshuttle%2Brocket%2Babout%2B1973%2Bsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="244" height="198" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ohztsYpy8as/XIq0lPaL2SI/AAAAAAAABok/jA28j-j7LBMbK15CdpByD9geCxwJj4G4gCEwYBhgL/s200/Scott%2Bwith%2Bspace%2Bshuttle%2Brocket%2Babout%2B1973%2Bsm.jpg" width="200" /></a><i><b>Growing up chunky</b></i><br />
I grew up somewhat chubby. I was never much interested in athletics or fitness. As a result I was relentlessly teased by peers and loved ones. Mind you, I wasn't obese, just a bit overweight and not very confident. Every day my family members and friends sent me countless overt and subvert messages impugning my corpulence. Even attempts to be nice about the matter often came across as back-handed compliments.<br />
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Incessant messages implying my inferiority due to being somewhat overweight deeply impacted my psyche. I subconsciously assumed that others would like me better, and that I would like myself better, if only I were skinnier. This is a faulty basis for self esteem. Those who love you love <i>you</i>. If they would love a trimmer you better, maybe their brand of love is just a shallow imitation of the real thing.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fat shaming kids</td></tr>
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Besides, <a href="https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2018/09/26/obesity">studies show</a> that fat shaming succeeds in making people feel bad but fails at improving their physical health. In fact, it reinforces the self image of being overweight which results in <i>increased </i>obesity. So fat shaming literally works to harm both the mental and physical health of the victim. What really works is addressing each individual's psychological needs.<br />
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My first serious weight loss regimen occurred when I was 16 years old, the summer I spent planting pineapples in Hawaii. Thanks to the careful coaching of my crew supervisor, Trace Sweeten, and day after day of hard manual labor, I slimmed down five inches around the waist that summer. I came home tan and trim with a mop of sun-bleached hair.<br />
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It didn't last. My next weight loss effort came during my mission to Norway. This was successful thanks to regular encouragement from Elder Jerry Humphreys and Elder Todd Hatch. My next weight loss program began about three years after I returned from my mission when some ladies in my local congregation started an aerobics class. This worked to maintain fitness but it didn't cut much fat.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Well shy of my largest</td></tr>
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<b><i>Getting heavy</i></b><br />
After getting married my weight grew steadily along with my waistline. One Christmas my parents took me to a men's clothing store to buy me a new suit coat, given that none of my suits fit any longer. When the clothier measured me he said that I would need a size 51 jacket. The jackets hanging in my closet back home were size 41.<br />
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I stood in the clothing store thinking about my expanding corpus. The problem was that my girth gain trajectory wasn't slowing down. If I got a size 51 jacket, how long would it be before that coat no longer fit? Something had to change to improve the situation. I worried that if this continued I'd ruin my health and be dead by age 35.<br />
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Not long after that I was watching an infomercial on TV late on a Saturday morning. <i>(Yeah, that's pathetic.)</i> They were hawking a weight loss program billed as The Neuropsychology of Weight Control. It had a 60-day money back guarantee. So for the first — and last — time in my life I bought something from an infomercial.<br />
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<b><i>Changing my mind → changing my body</i></b><br />
I dove into the program full bore. Within 60 days I had lost more than 20 lbs., so I wasn't going to send it back. Within a year I had lost a total of about 60 lbs. One of the features of this program was self imaging to change one's self perception. It taught that becoming permanently trim in body required that you first had to trim that body in your mind.<br />
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This worked for me. It required fanatical devotion to the program, but it worked. Eventually I was able to fit into my old suits and the same clothing I had worn at age 21. With a lot of effort over the years, I dropped another 10 lbs. Then my clothes were too large. But I didn't get new trim fitting clothes because I guess I still envisioned myself just a bit overweight, as I had been through most of my formative years.<br />
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One day last year, my wife and I were wandering around downtown Salt Lake City with my brother and sister-in-law looking for something to do between my nephew's wedding and the wedding luncheon. My brother suggested that we drop into a clothing shop that had a track record of selling nice stuff that was likely out of my price range.<br />
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We were just looking for a diversion. But soon one of the salesmen had me trying on the nicest fitting, best feeling dress shirt I have ever encountered. It was $260—for one shirt! He had me trying on a suit jacket that fit and felt amazing, promising that he could get me into a suit for "just $1,200." He noted that everything I was trying on was "slim fit," made for trim guys. Noting my physique, the man asked, "Why are you wearing full cut clothing?"<br />
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Although we left the shop without buying anything, the experience left me with a new perception of my body shape. I had been a slim fit guy for years; I just hadn't known it in my head. My wife and I have been retooling my wardrobe since then. It turns out that decent slim fit clothing can be had at frugal prices. Maybe these duds aren't as nice as the $260 dress shirt I tried on, but they're good enough at a fraction of the price.<br />
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To be honest, I'm still fighting the battle against fat gain after all of these years. It requires continuous effort. I frequently deny myself fare that tempts me and I work out daily, even when I don't feel like it. But that effort has become part of who I am. It's what I do because that's how I see myself in my mind.<br />
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<b><i>Affirming mind change</i></b><br />
<a href="https://dilbert.com/">Dilbert</a> creator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams">Scott Adams</a> has written about affirmations in several of his books and in blog posts like <a href="http://mindhacks.org/scott-adams-affirmations/135">this one</a>. Although he doesn't believe in magic, Adams writes, "The idea behind affirmations is that you simply write down your goals 15 times a day and somehow, as if by magic, coincidences start to build until you achieve your objective against all odds." He offers several rational potential explanations for how affirmations might work.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rvm0AgP20uQ/XIqaE1ryVwI/AAAAAAAABng/xvpnQfc1EtMpByXpgOMzQ--fMWyc_2cowCLcBGAs/s1600/Dilbert%2Bred%2Bshirt%2Band%2BDogbert.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="740" height="118" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rvm0AgP20uQ/XIqaE1ryVwI/AAAAAAAABng/xvpnQfc1EtMpByXpgOMzQ--fMWyc_2cowCLcBGAs/s200/Dilbert%2Bred%2Bshirt%2Band%2BDogbert.jpeg" width="200" /></a>In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4">other places</a> Adams has said that writing the affirmation isn't completely necessary. It can be verbal or even nonverbal. I have tried written, verbal, and nonverbal affirmations. Like Adams, I have for the most part realized the goals I have repeatedly affirmed to myself. This approach has failed when I have not been fully committed to the goal for one reason or another. One of my affirmations has been, "I will be vibrant, trim, and athletic." And now I am.<br />
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Adams seems to be more a fan of goal oriented affirmations than of simple positive affirmations, such as, "I am amazing!" I too have found that affirmations that are specific and measurable work better for me than ethereal concepts. How do you know when you have achieved amazing? Here is an example how affirmations have worked for me.<br />
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<i><b>Healing my elbow</b></i><br />
Several years ago I injured my right elbow. I never knew how it happened; it just started hurting one day. Nothing I did seemed to help. I even went to a sports medicine doctor without getting much help. After more than a year of pain I started repeating to myself multiple times daily, "My elbow will be healthy, strong, and pain free." I scoured the internet for help and found lots of conflicting advice, even among professionals.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nXD959yaakg/XIqpNB0Gl3I/AAAAAAAABn4/CgbhiMkv40MqIj2DSaPV20wVtY_U4kEpgCLcBGAs/s1600/ElbowInjuriesandDisorders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="230" data-original-width="230" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nXD959yaakg/XIqpNB0Gl3I/AAAAAAAABn4/CgbhiMkv40MqIj2DSaPV20wVtY_U4kEpgCLcBGAs/s200/ElbowInjuriesandDisorders.jpg" width="200" /></a>A few weeks into my elbow affirmation, my wife briefly described my symptoms to a physical therapist while visiting him for a different issue. He sent home a sheet with simple instructions for a couple of exercises I could do. The therapist also told my wife that I needed to avoid picking up anything with my palm facing down until the symptoms cleared up. This included doing anything that mimicked lifting palm down, including cycling. This turned out to be a critical factor for me.<br />
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After implementing the physical therapist's counsel, it still took months for the elbow to heal well, and even longer for it to reach 100%. But after just a couple of weeks I started to see real improvement in my elbow for the first time in more than a year.<br />
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How closely was this related to my affirmation? No clue. But I choose to believe that it played an important role. Perhaps my repeated affirmation caused my brain to notice things, accept information, or create conditions in ways that otherwise would not have occurred.<br />
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<b><i>Change yourself by changing your mind</i></b><br />
What am I trying to say here?<br />
<ul>
<li>The human mind is very powerful, sometimes more powerful than we imagine, sometimes less.</li>
<ul>
<li>No, you can't really do <i>anything </i>you decide to do. Some things are outside the realm of possibilities. In one <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeggieTales">VeggieTales</a> episode, <a href="https://veggietales.fandom.com/wiki/Larry_the_Cucumber">Larry the Cucumber</a> is told that he can't actually become a chicken, no matter how much he desires it. And no matter how much you might want it, your chances of becoming president of the US are pretty low. (Of course, I used to say the same thing about the current occupant of the White House.)</li>
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<li>Each of us has a picture in our head of who we are, what we look like, how we behave, etc.</li>
<li>That picture is influenced by both nature and nurture.</li>
<li>The messages we unthinkingly pass to those closest to us (including ourselves) can have far reaching impact on self image, both positive and negative.</li>
<li>Thus, we need to take care about the messages we send to ourselves and to others.</li>
<li>Sometimes the picture in your head can be inaccurate.</li>
<li>Outside influence can improve this picture when the message seems close enough.</li>
<li>The opposite is also true. Simple messages can damage your self image when the message resonates enough.</li>
<li>You can deliberately send yourself messages to change the picture of you in your mind in positive and healthy ways.</li>
<li>Our mind causes us to work to become the picture of us it believes.</li>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WN43SVA3sPs/XIr6SHySoWI/AAAAAAAABpU/F5Eg1eWr9p4f8f6N9LbuobRwNmRbVosTwCLcBGAs/s1600/Scott%2Bblue%2Bsuit%2Bin%2Bbackyard%2B20190314.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="922" data-original-width="429" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WN43SVA3sPs/XIr6SHySoWI/AAAAAAAABpU/F5Eg1eWr9p4f8f6N9LbuobRwNmRbVosTwCLcBGAs/s320/Scott%2Bblue%2Bsuit%2Bin%2Bbackyard%2B20190314.jpg" width="147" /></a><i><b>Results</b></i><br />
As mentioned earlier, I feel pretty good about my current physique. It is actually quite difficult to even picture myself as the heavy guy I once was. That person is just too far away from the me I see in my head. But it took years of real effort to adjust that picture. As mentioned above, some of that picture wasn't adjusted until after my body had already changed.<br />
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Today I am enjoying slim fit clothes that fit me better than the clothes I was wearing just a few months ago. This is possible because I have finally adjusted the picture in my head accordingly. I feel pretty great for an old guy with <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/multiple-sclerosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20350269">Multiple Sclerosis</a> who used to be quite overweight. And it all started with changing my mind.<br />
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To me this is all a great miracle in which I see the hand of God. I feel immensely blessed, even while grappling with a variety of challenges that I am sure will ultimately be for the best.<br />
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Want to change something about yourself? Change the picture of yourself in your head. There are ways to do that. The rest will follow. Give it a shot. What have you got to lose?</div>
Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10424035.post-53413582658749128932019-03-05T15:46:00.000-07:002019-03-05T15:46:34.313-07:00Four lost words from my patriarchal blessingEver since receiving my <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/patriarchal-blessings?lang=eng">patriarchal blessing</a> as a teenager, I have felt that the blessing was a gift to me from God. For the first few years after receiving my blessing I would occasionally get out a printed copy and study it, so I always had an idea of what the blessing contained, even if months went by without me reading it.<div>
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At one point I determined that I needed to take my patriarchal blessing more seriously. Since it was personal scripture, I typed it up in the same format as my scriptures, divided columns and all. Each paragraph became a verse. I wrote a header that looked very much like section headers from the <a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc?lang=eng">Doctrine and Covenants</a>. I put this page in my scriptures where I could easily refer to it. This helped me study my patriarchal blessing more often.</div>
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I have been granted a gift for memorization. I don't have perfect memory; I have to work at it. And if I go too long without reviewing something I have memorized I tend to lose some or all of it. But one day I realized that I likely had the ability to memorize my patriarchal blessing. Since making that initial effort years ago I have tried to review my blessing about once each week. This usually occurs during showering, since that's a routine task that requires little active thought.</div>
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It should be noted here that <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/patriarchal-blessings?lang=eng">the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints topics website</a> says, "Patriarchal blessings are sacred and personal. They may be shared with immediate family members, but should not be read aloud in public or read or interpreted by others." It is <i>personal</i> scripture that should be kept sacred and shared only under appropriate circumstances. So I'm not going to give many details of mine here.</div>
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Recently I felt prompted to review a printed copy of my patriarchal blessing. The wording includes a brief reference to <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/premortality?lang=eng">our premortal life</a>. As I read these familiar words I was stunned to see four words that had somehow over time dropped out of my weekly recitation of the blessing.</div>
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Those four words that I had been missing were, "The Lord loved you." As I pondered this I thought to myself, "The Lord loved everyone in the premortal world, even Lucifer and his followers." So maybe I had allowed this phrase to lapse because it is true for everyone. It goes without saying.</div>
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Deeper pondering helped me understand that the Lord wanted me to know that he loved <i>me</i> individually in the premortal life. Then I realized that the prompting to go look at my blessing so that I could refamiliarize myself with these four words was the Lord's personal message telling me, "I still love you." He knows <i>me</i> personally and his love for me is intensely personal.</div>
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The same is true for you. The Lord knows you individually on a deeply personal level. He knows you much better than you know yourself. And he loves you intensely. He likely sends love messages customized specifically for you. But they are subtle enough that they might easily be missed without close attention. That kind of subtlety is another marker of his love. He wouldn't want to infringe on your ability to freely choose.</div>
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So look around. Maybe you will notice a divine love message just for you.</div>
Scott Hinrichshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11831447472339880148noreply@blogger.com0