"Explorer" (scanned greeting card) by Anahata Joy Katkin
What do you think T.S. Eliot meant when he said this?
It makes me think mostly of this mysterious year of two thousand and ten. A year which I began full of so much hope for movement of my Chariot. A year which I would deeply explore self-care, so that my well-being would equal the priority of my various duties. For once.
I suffer from distress at learning lessons the hard way...again and again until eventually, the experiences begin to rewire my thinking and my living. But the process can be so gradual with some things that I hardly feel the shift. And so disappointment comes and goes easily, clacking the screen door of my emotions behind him every time.
I hear my inner talk going from desperate questions to patient encouragement all day long, and on a long day of painting, as it was today, I caught myself mumbling my fears and questions out loud. My looming fear of the day is:
What if I take these medications for several more weeks or longer and my symptoms don't change or worsen? (The main symptom is a persistent, usually non-productive, cough, worse at night, with inflamed, narrowed airways that spasm dramatically during coughing fits...the meds are Fluticasone nasal mist and Qvar, an inhaled steroid).
I should share with you that I agreed to take the medications because it's now been six weeks of coughing, and the children are also suffering this. Presumably, this kind of cough-variant asthma can follow a bad bout with sinusitis/bronchitis, which plagued us from January through March. My idea is that I will be able to find out if prescription asthma medications are the best remedy by being the guinea pig, while treating the children homeopathically, with herbs, massage, and lots of fluids and rest. If it truly is asthma, it may only respond to the meds, but if it is a virus mimicking the symptoms of asthma, well, then, it will work it's way out of our systems eventually anyway.
In the meantime, I'm feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable and wide open to hearing all of your favorite immunity-building tips and products, as well as about your experiences with asthma and any other encouragement you may be able to scatter lovingly.
I'm hoping to know this place once and for all.
Thank you all for your support so far...it really does mean so much.
