More Random Thoughts

To look at the weather outside, you'd never guess that an old-fashioned, mountain-type Winter Stom Watch is in place for the entire state of Hawaii. That means blizzard conditions at the summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. No, they do NOT expect snow levels to drop below about 13,000 feet.

While my brother, who lives on the opposite end of the island both geographically and weather-wise, wakes to early morning rains, it has been dry here. At 7:00 a.m. everything was absolutely still. As soon as the wind kicked up, I did a load of wash to ensure things like clean underwear for the rest of the week. This "solar dryer" stuff may save on electricity, but it means that all your laundry is dependent on Mother Nature and her whims.

Why the long absence of posts? Not enough hands. They have been occupied in a hand-quilting a Christmas gift. The quilting is now done, with binding to be added later today. Then on to another. As a matter of expediency, the second one will be machine quilted! It is impossible to quilt or knit or even crochet while writing....

Last weekend was the annual Fall Festival at my church. I volunteered to help for a portion of a morning with the set-up. As it turns out, it is really a Christmas festival. The ladies who operate the thrift shop save the best of the best, as well as everything that has anything to do with Christmas, all year and then lay them out in the gym for a day of concentrated selling. That gym was built just over 50 years ago while I was in high school. It has aged very gracefully.

Set-up involves a team of custodians setting up the old, heavy folding tables -- with a square of carpet set under each leg to protect the floor; covering the tables first with white and then red or green cloths; then adding merchandise carried up from its storage space below the stage. The photo above shows the space early in the sale day. Try clicking on the image. A larger version should pop up. You can recognize the workers: the uniform of the day was red above, white below. Somewhere in that crowd my mother was browsing. She came home with a few things, and enjoyed herself immensely.

After years of twice-yearly rummage sales at our church in Palo Alto, where we even moved out the day school and took over every available space in the 5-acre complex, this seemed a low-key effort. Nevertheless, the camaraderie that develops among the volunteers is the same. I had several friends in Palo Alto that I saw only during rummage sale week. One was the mother of a well-behaved toddler daughter who actually wore freshly polished leather high-top shoes every day. When her second child, a boy, was about a year old, Ginny said to me, "Sons like ours are punishment for mothers like us who start out with well-behaved daughters and criticize mothers of rowdy boys!" I will never forget her! I don't know which of my co-workers from that set-up day will become friends, but I do know that there were many more friendly greetings in church after the sale.

Give thanks for a specific opportunity taken (be sure to name which one!) to reach out into your own community. Like the Girl Scout song, "Make new friends, but keep the old ..." Pray for friends, far and near. ....

Extremes and Forgiveness

The radio interview was with a New York Times reporter held captive in Afghanistan for seven months by the Taliban. He eventually escaped and has written about his experience. One statement stuck in my brain. "Moderate Muslims cannot cede Islam to the Talibans. ... (The Taliban) should not be allowed to portray themselves as the true defenders of that faith...."

Having spent too many years out of step with my own formerly Episcopalian Bishop, I am all too familiar with one set of views far different from mine portraying itself as the true defenders of my faith. In the case of the very conservative Episcopalians, as with the Taliban, the weapon of choice is knowledge -- knowledge withheld. Without additional knowledge, without exposure to the perspectives of the outside world, the general population takes the word of the leader as absolute, final. There is no basis for opposition, no room for questions. There is no room for independent thought.

Extreme liberals are just as guilty as extreme conservatives. I see the spectrum as an arc rather than a line. Figuratively and in reality, the two ends seem to reach towards each other at least in style if not in belief. "Believe me," they seem to say. "Ignore what the rest of the world tells you. Do it my way, or die." Both ends of the spectrum ultimately resort to shutting out, exclusion, death.

Another recent radio interview focused on a member of the IRA who planted a bomb in a hotel in Brighton, England many years ago -- and the daughter of a man who died in that bombing. Years after the bombing the daughter and the bomber had an opportunity to meet, and are now working together in The Forgiveness Project a UK-based charitable organisation which explores forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict resolution through real-life human experience.

This is not to say that there is no place in religion (or politics, or whatever) for the very liberal and the very conservative. That's why we have so many Christian denominations, so many political parties. But (at least as Episcopalians) we pray, "For all who fear God and believe in you, Lord Christ, that our divisions may cease, and that all may be one as you and the Father are one, we pray to you, O Lord." Those divisions cease, we are able to achieve unity, somewhere along the midline of the arc, not at the ends. There we find our points of agreement, there we focus, there we can come together.

Growth comes as we search for those points of commonality, of shared belief. Growth comes as we struggle towards forgiveness and, ultimately, inner peace.

Give thanks for those who actively work for reconciliation, conflict resolution and forgiveness. What conflict in your own life needs resolution before you can find peace of mind and heart? Don't forget to pray ....

Memory Issues

Katie is working through, and day by day conquering, her memory issues. A difibrillator has been implanted to keep her heart functioning, and she will go home as soon as her doctors release her. She is bored. In this case, bored in good! Really sick people don't get bored.

My dad, on the other had, is loosing his battle with memory. Mother and I picked him up this morning and took him to Kapiolani Park for a picnic lunch. He recognized me, called me by name, and knew that we were going out. He transferred relatively easily from his wheelchair to the car, and then asked me "When did you get in?" As in, when did I arrive from California. He did not remember that I visited him yesterday.

He seemed to enjoy being out, devouring two chicken legs, deviled eggs, potato salad, and his share of olives, tomato wedges, and cucumber sticks.

As our meal ended he asked if we could "drive by the boat to see if it was still there". So I drove to the yacht harbor at the other end of Waikiki. As we drove past the access to his slip it became obvious that "look at" meant "go aboard". I refused to play the game, had to tell him NO in very clear language. He was not happy with me.

Fortunately, by the time we got back to his care home he was in need of a toilet. He barely said good-bye. He was, in his mind, home safely. He had forgotten, at least for a time, that I wouldn't let him walk to the boat. Mother and I were no longer needed. ... His memory fades.

Give thanks for your memories. Enjoy the memories shared by our kupuna, the elders. They are worth preserving. Don't forget to pray.

Miss Katie ...

... is awake and asking coherent questions. She's understanding the answers to her questions. She's already been out of bed. She initially had memory issues, but she's improving hour by hour. Like most other patients who have come through a critical period like this one, she has no memory of what happened or why she is in hospital. One spouse explained it this way -- your brain takes about 2 weeks to make a memory permanent. If the memory hasn't been permanently "posted" in the brain, it is not remembered after a trauma like Katie has been through. It may or may not come back.

The medical team has done the first part of the job. Katie lived through the initial crisis. Now Katie and her family take on the hard work of rediscovering and relearning those skills Katie and her medical team consider essential. The whole family will learn to live with Katie's newly diagnosed condition. Like parents of all teen-agers, Katie's parents need to remember to give her the independence she needs -- so very hard to do under these circumstances. It's a very fine line between responsible care and over-protection.

Just as it is a fine line between responsible care and elder abuse.

Give thanks for the medical team that kept Katie alive (under terrible conditions) without the worst possible effects. Give thanks for the medical teams in your own community who with dedication and caring work similar miracles on a regular basis. Don't forget to pray....

More on Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM)

Rather than my translating from the medical, I refer you to the American Heart Association publication on the disease. Click here to find that document.

Don't forget to pray...!

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

The diagnosis is solid. The cause is likely genetic, likely from her maternal grandfather's maternal line. Interesting. Katie looks very much like that great-grandmother and her family. It appears that some other things came along with what we see from the outside.

Treatment? Too early to tell. Prognosis? To early to tell. Neurological condition? Doctors are doing everything they can to give Katie's body a chance to heal in a way that minimizes neurological effects. But it will be considerable time before anyone knows her condition exactly.

Katie is being treated in a Children's Hospital in a major metropolitan area with lots of experience in treating children with Cardiomyopathy. Without a quick response and a skilled team of specialists at the hospital .... Give thanks for those medical folk, their skill and their caring.

Please continue to pray for Katie, Christie and Meghan ... and for Miriam, the exchange student from Germany who is currently part of their family.

My Granddaughter, Katie

This email just arrived from my daughter in Seattle.

Today is going to rank up there as one of those days you don't want to remember.

I dropped Katie off at school this morning a happy, healthy almost 16-year-old and found her early this afternoon as a patient in the PICU at Seattle's Children's Hospital. I wish I could say she will be fine, but I just don't know yet and we won't know for at least two days.

Katie collapsed during PE today. At first they thought she had had a seizure, but then she didn't have a pulse and went into cardiac arrest. There were several well-trained school staff close at hand and I am told everyone acted quickly and that the medics arrived in short order. Still the doctors are concerned that there may have been neurological damage from the event and have Katie medically paralyzed and sedated for the next two days....
Christie

I did a quick search on cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that affects children and blood flow into the heart.
---It has many many causes, including a virus. Is this an example of H1N1 at work???
---It can be totally debilitating, totally life-threatening, or completely controlled with medications and/or surgical implants. Doctors cannot say which form of treatment, if any, might be successful. There is no real predictor of outcome.
---One variation is sometimes called "Broken Heart Syndrome", a rather dramatic response to stress. That form usually resolves itself within a week. But we're a family with dramatic responses to stress. During the summer that Christie was 14, my own stress response was to try to go blind. ... Fortunately, my vision resolved itself.
---Twice as many children with cardiomyopathy are diagnosed in the first year of life than between the ages of 2 and 18 altogether. What does this say for Katie, who is nearly 16? That hers is not a congenital condition but a response to stress or a virus? That it is more likely to resolve itself than some other forms? That it is congenital, something her doctors have missed for nearly 16 years?
---The website childrenscardiacmyopathy.com says: Search for a cure continues. Unlike other congenital heart conditions, there is no surgical treatment or cure that can repair the damaged heart or the stop the progression of the disease. The first treatment option is usually medication to improve the functioning of the heart and for those with arrhythmia (irregular heart rhythm) an implantable defibrillator may be recommended. For children that fail medical management, a heart transplant may need to be considered. Cardiomyopathy is the top reason for heart transplants in children. More than 80% of children receive a donor organ in time and survival after transplantation is good with an intermediate survival rate of approximately 70%.

Please hold Katie, Christie and Meghan in your prayers.

Give thanks for the quick, competent response and quality medical care Katie has received/is receiving. If this had to happen, there are many places in the world -- even in the US -- where she might not have made it to a hospital. Don't forget to pray. ...