My body is doing another number on me. It’s one stress symptom after another, it seems. This time: gastric distress. Really, honestly, I’m sure you don’t want to read about this latest development, so you should probably just stop right here.

After the interview in Washington last week, as I was driving back to Portland, I succumbed to hunger pangs late in the evening and took the Cougar, Washington, exit from the freeway and indulged in a McDonald’s fish sandwich. I’ve had lots of these meals in the past, of course, but it seems the combination of the stress of the interview day and this particular fast-food fix were a potent combination. I felt ill almost immediately, but went to work the next morning anyway despite obvious intestinal issues. I only made it a couple hours before I gave up and came home, though. The bathroom here is simply more convenient!

Just when it seemed I had recovered from that episode, I went to San Mateo, California, three days later for another interview. I had been eating only the blandest foods I could find, so my insides made it through that meeting just fine. Afterwards, however, at the San Francisco airport, I needed to eat before flying home later in the evening (I had almost five hours to kill, given how my schedule turned out). I had a chicken-salad sandwich at an eatery I’d had success with on other trips. Well, approximately the same thing happened to my body, only this time instead of a half-hour drive to get home (in my own car), I had an almost two-hour wait plus an hour-and-a-half in the air (sitting in a window seat!).

I honestly didn’t know if I was going to be able to handle the air travel. I was queasy and needed frequent visits to the rest room. How was this possibly going to work?

I had no idea. But, if there was any chance that I was actually going to get on that airplane, there was no way I could cope with a window seat. Luckily, it was possible to get an aisle seat, so I snapped that right up.

I thought about alerting a flight attendant about my unstable condition, but decided against it…I’d keep this little secret to myself unless it became an obvious and disruptive problem. A risky, but, as it turned out, good decision.

Then, the moment I got on the plane (I was alone in my new row!), I put on my headphones, with my iPod set to one of my quieter playlists.

I breathed. And breathed some more. And continued to focus on my breath.

An hour-and-a-half in the air. Can I do this? Yes, one minute of focusing on my breath at a time.

When the flight attendant came by, I asked for a 7-Up, thinking that would calm my stomach a bit. Nope, it didn’t. It had rather the opposite effect, so I drank very little.

When we were doing our initial climb, the pilot indicated we were at 27,000 feet headed for a cruising altitude of 40,000 feet. Ohmygod, I thought: 40,000 feet up, 40,000 feet down. Feeling like this. Oh. My. God.

Somewhere, at some point, when we were likely at that 40,000 foot level, I started sweating a little bit. I actually felt a bit feverish. And, I just could have sworn that I was sweating out chicken salad. I was thinking that if there had been anyone sitting next to me, they would have certainly detected perspiration with the distinct odor of my evening meal.

Oh, but that couldn’t be. Who’s ever heard of such a thing?

Fortunately, the story ends well. I made it through the flight with no major impossible urges. My shuttle was on time, and it rushed me home.

Whew! What a trip…

…and for what? I got the rejection call from San Mateo earlier today.

My colleague Wendall died swiftly of a heart-attack on Thursday evening. A co-worker was able to drive him from campus to the emergency room during the crisis (it’s just down the street), but they were apparently able to do little for him. He was one day short of his 56th birthday, and leaves behind a wife, kids, grandkids, and a large number of stunned colleagues in his department and on the entire campus.

I worked with Wendall for nearly two years. When I accepted this interim job in 2004, I was slated initially to take over the supervision of the Science Division, but by the time I actually got to campus, the president had reorganized things a bit and I found myself leading the “Science & Technology Division.” The technology portion included the Industrial Technology Department (consisting of the Automotive, Machine Tool, and Welding Technologies), of which Wendall was the department chair.

Wendall was a weldor and welding instructor; from my perspective he loved his trade and he had a deep and abiding affection for his students. He was exceptionally dedicated to the mission of the Industrial Technology department, and worked long hours to make sure everything was moving along as it should. Most importantly he was, simply, a very decent human being.

I will miss him.

This event seems to be triggering, for me, overwhelming feelings of loss. Even though I know that loss is integral to our existence, I still am sad. Despite the length of time I’ve lived and how much I’ve learned, I guess I’ve never been able to accept the impermanent nature of the universe. One would think that, by now, I would know that any relationship is temporary. To begin a relationship with anyone, with anything, is to know that it will someday end.

This loss, taken with my other large losses in the last couple years, is serving to keep me, I believe, in a rather deep and prolonged melancholic state. I apparently cling to some kind of ideal that I can, at some point, “get it together.” It’s likely my perfectionist tendencies, and my sense of what’s “fair,” that lead to disappointment and my sense of loss and failure. And, I suppose it’s what keeps me “stuck” in whatever uncomfortable place this is that I am in.

“To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for some lasting security is futile…Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there is anywhere to hide.

Hopelessness means that we no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together…Trying to get lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never try to do it, we never notice that it can’t be done.” (Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, p. 39)

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, TN. Two days later, as the country was experiencing utter turmoil from coast to coast, M and I were married at Trinity Lutheran Church in Eau Claire, WI. If that marriage had lasted, today we would have been celebrating 38 years of married life. Holy smokerinos, do these kinds of thoughts make me feel old!

I now find it interesting that I chose to get married in a year that was one of the most turbulent and definitive ones of the times. M and I went honeymooning when many of the major metropolitan areas of the country were experiencing riots in the aftermath of MLK’s murder. Bobby Kennedy was killed in California just a couple months later; two more months after that was the Democratic National Convention debacle in Chicago. My oh my, the flashbacks I’m having as I write this…

I guess if I can have memories this old, then feeling old, at least at times, isn’t all that surprising.

Lately, the energy I’ve been able to summon to make blog entries (well, actually, just to make it through the day) has waned a tad. Since last week, for sure, I’ve been trying to pace myself even more conscientiously that I usually do. Seeing my life’s blood literally gush from my body in the nosebleed episode had a big impact on me, I think. And, too, I was diagnosed with another eye infection last week. So, I’ve been fighting with that condition, which has led to diminished motivation to stare at a computer screen. Anyway, if you’re out there checking blog entries, you’ll probably have noticed less productivity from ol’ TechnoMonk.

I had a chat with a fellow I work with today. He’s a couple years younger than me, and he disclosed that, physically, he’s been struggling as well. It seems as if his energy level has taken an unexplained, precipitous drop. It wasn’t a gradual thing. Suddenly he’s fatigued all the time. All the medical tests that he’s had so far have turned up nothing; still, this kind of stuff can weigh mightily on one’s mind. I sure know about that firsthand.

It just another example of the fact: we never, really, have any control…

“Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death…[and is] setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later we’re going to have an experience we can’t control: our house will burn down, someone we love is going to die, we’re going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head…to be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s land…” (Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, p. 71).

Postscript for the day ... As I was just putting the finishing touches on this entry, the phone rang. My supervisor, who normally does not call me at home, just did. The news is: one of our colleagues, a good man, and a department chair who reported directly to me, died this evening, apparently of a heart-attack. I don’t have the details. I am in shock. More later...

Currently I’m reading a couple of books that seem, in part, to mirror my life circumstances.
The first I’m actually revisiting. I read it shortly after it came out, during a difficult period for me in 1998. It’s by Pema Chödrön and called When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. The second is a newly-released book by Eugene O’Kelly entitled Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life.

Given that I’m in a period of major transition now, and have been for quite some time, these selections seem particularly appropriate. Since I’ve picked these two up in the last few days, I’m feeling a tad more peaceful.

With the Chödrön book particularly, there is pearl after pearl. I’m keeping my highlighter handy as I go. In just the second chapter, I have rediscovered the words

“Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition…[t]o stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.” (Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, p. 10)

Yes, I love the show “ER” – and I’ve even mentioned it before here. The show has lots of drama, not only because of the variety and intensity of the emergency-room cases they present, but because of the lives of the characters we see developed. However, that’s not what this little essay is about. What I’d like to talk about now is my personal experience of the emergency room. My most recent exposure was just a couple of days ago – and I’ll get to that in a little bit.

First, a little history.

Probably the most interesting emergency-room time I had was the night I passed a kidney stone, but was nonetheless diagnosed with bladder cancer by the young (Doogie-Howser-looking) ER doc and the on-call urologist he consulted with. That episode lasted from dusk till dawn, and the crisis passed a couple of days later when tests showed that I did not have cancer. While I felt mostly well-cared-for that night (Katrina was with me, and she was certainly a great comfort to have around; and I had a wonderful nurse), Doogie's behavior was pretty amazingly terrible, as I recall. As he was initially delivering the bad news to me, he was talking in a soft voice, and walking backwards away from me toward the door, while using medical terminology obviously intended to obfuscate. I believe he just tried to slip that little word “carcinoma” right by me, thinking I might not notice (or know what it meant). Basically, both doctors that night came up far short in terms of getting a good review from me.

A couple of other ER experiences stick out in my mind as well. Neither were quite as bad as the one just described, thank goodness. They were drama-packed in their own right, though. One was an “urgent care” facility that we took Katrina to when she was suffering from a rupturing appendix. Although the tests were not definitive, the surgeon who was called in was right on the money in terms of a diagnosis, and the surgery the next day, I think, went mostly ok (of course, I’m not the one who had to go through it, and there was a tough post-operative period). The other episode was here in Portland four days after I moved up from Eugene in 2004. I took a fall on the pavement while walking the unfamiliar hilly streets in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood, and ended up spending almost another entire night being attended to. That I complained of “chest pain” at the front desk probably got me some special attention, I imagine.

So, now we come to my most recent visit.

I developed an early-morning nosebleed two days ago while I was in the shower. At some point I looked down and the water in the bottom of the tub was curiously pink. After I figured out what was going on, it took me almost a full hour and a half to get the bleeding under control. Given that I have had a history of nosebleeds (for me, they come with allergy territory), I have some experience in this area, so when it took that long to control I was, well, concerned. During the time I was trying to stop the bleeding, I had images of somebody, someday eventually finding me naked and dead on the bathroom floor, bled out from the nose. Not a pretty picture. And, all the while this was going on, the room started to look more and more like a crime scene. Again, rather ugly.

Well, I did get the bleeding to stop. Finally. I called my doctor’s office (it was right about 8:00 a.m. at that time), and they said if I wanted to see somebody, go to the emergency room. I drove myself, of course, all the time hoping I wouldn’t start bleeding again!

OK: I admit. This time when I visited the ER, it wasn’t quite in the category of emergency. It certainly had felt like it earlier in the morning, but by the time I got to the hospital, the situation was fairly tame. And, I guess, from an ER doc’s perspective, well, “this is a pretty uninteresting situation here.”

I had quite some time in the waiting area, and then in the little examination room I was finally shown. The nurse who checked me in was quiet but efficient. I appreciated that. After about a half hour in the examination room (I was passing time reading the morning’s paper), a young woman finally came in, introduced herself as a med student, and said that since no one else was attending to me, she thought she’d keep me company and familiarize herself with my case. She sat down, asked questions, took notes, and listened. She was pretty great, actually. After about five minutes, though, the “real” ER doc came in and took over. At that point, the med student seemed to rush away. I was sorry to see her go; it was about the only time I felt really listened to during the rest of my experience there. Not that I didn’t get attention; my nose was cauterized and packed with gauze and I had the name of a specialist to follow up with. But, during most of my time there, I believe I was an “issue” not a person. I was “the nosebleed in 4” – wow, that was not a great feeling.

Later that same day, my nose started bleeding again…I felt it happen, and, in the mirror, watched the gauze change color from white to pink. I drove to the ER again. I was bleeding when I showed up, but I still had a half-hour to wait before they called my name. During that time, sitting in public view in the waiting room, pinching my nose and swabbing my face with Kleenex, no one at the desk seemed to be overly concerned. Again, I suppose I was “just a nosebleed.” When I finally got in to see the second doc, and since the bleeding had stopped, he did nothing. In fact, was very dismissive (like: why are you here?), and didn’t even really get any of his attention until I said something like, “well, I can see that I’m not being taken seriously here.” As it turned out, all he would do was reinforce the notion that the ER had done what they could (contained the emergency and referred me on). I left with wet bloody gauze in my nose and no hope of getting it looked at again until Monday (four days away).

Well, I knew there was no way that I was going to make it that long with gauze in my nose. I just knew. (A thought validated after a sleepless night that night, not being able to breathe.) Yesterday, I removed the gauze myself, and now I seem to be doing fine.

I don’t think I’ll be remembering this episode too favorably…except for the med student who took some time to listen. Even though I was “just a nosebleed,” she saw me as a person as well...and what a difference that makes!