Subtle Storms
 

 

 

 

Like butterflies, whose flight causes a squall in some other part of the world,
We cause storms of love in the hearts and souls of others.
Everywhere we go, we cause storms of love.
Yes, we are tuned to each other, like wine glasses that vibrate
To a sound at the same frequency, and our hearts resonate
With love, compassion, kindness, and joy.
Our hearts cause subtle storms everywhere we go.
We set off cyclones of sympathy. We cause gales of joy,
Gusts of tenderness. We stir sprinklings of kindness
And downpours of divine love.
Our love can open a heart like the words of a magic spell
Chanted at just the right vibration. I'm sure our resonance
Causes some to fall in love, some to wake filled with joy,
Some to give or forgive, some to shift towards peace.
Our hearts make subtle storms everywhere we go.
We set off cyclones of sympathy. We cause gales of joy,
Gusts of tenderness. We stir sprinklings of kindness
And downpours of divine love.
Yes, we are tuned to each other, like wine glasses that vibrate
To a sound at the same frequency, and our hearts resonate
With love, compassion, kindness, and joy.
Our hearts cause subtle storms everywhere we go.

 

Drops falling on a still pond cause ripples.
Everywhere we go, we cause storms of love.

 

 

 

 

 

Entangled: Part Two
 

 

 

 

icu update

 

 

They think she might have an avm: arterial
Venus malformation? Nate in six feet under
had an avm? Doctors evasive about whether she'll
recover. She has a good chance since she is
young and strong.

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   If the timing had been different--if, for instance, John hadn't gotten home before her stroke, or if he had hesitated to call 911, or if the rupture in her brain had occurred while she was driving home from work by herself, she in all likelihood would have died.
  She was still alert and talking when the EMTs settled her in the ambulance, but John found out later that on the way to the hospital she had become unresponsive, and an EMT was forced to intubate her because she was no longer breathing on her own. (We also found out later that intubation probably gave her pneumonia because when the EMT was sliding the breathing tube down her throat, she vomited, and some of the effusion drained into her lungs. According to a nurse, vomit in the lungs often leads to infection.)

 

icu update

 

Arteriovenous malformation, a tangle of veins
and capillaries where instead the artery and
veins should connect in a smooth web. With an
AVM, blood within the high pressure system
of the artery flows into a malformed low
pressure system of veins. The tangled
connection eventually weakens and ruptures,
often during a bout of high blood pressure.

 

   That night after John called me, I rushed to the hospital, but a security guard in a large booth would not allow me to proceed through the metal detector, an archway between the booth and the emergency room entrance. The security guard asked me to check on Katie's status with a male nurse who was sitting in front of a computer on the other side of the metal detector. I then discovered that the hospital only allows one person at a time to see an emergency room patient. I insisted in a quiet voice, clearly but firmly, "My daughter has an aneurysm. I need to see her right now." The security guard, however, refused to let me through because John was still with her. Suddenly, a large Hispanic man started fighting with a security guard in the emergency waiting room. Several policemen and security guards descended upon the man and shouted commands. The man calmly placed his hands on his head and got down on his knees. (John suggested later that the man might have caused trouble so that he would have a place to stay for awhile. Now, I am not so sure.)
  I could not afford that kind of trouble, so I texted John and paced outside the emergency room for what seemed like ages. John came out after what was probably only a few minutes, and I finally got permission to enter the hospital. I rushed through the metal detector into the emergency waiting room, where I had to obtain a pass from another male nurse before I could go back and search for Katie's room, R14, which I finally found with the help of other nurses on the floor.
  I found Katie unconscious in a hospital bed. Because of the breathing tube and the angle of the bed, I could barely see her face. The doctor showed me x-rays of her brain that revealed a subdural hematoma with a slight mid-line shift, caused by a stroke. The bleeding in her brain, in other words, had forced her brain to shift a little. The doctor admitted that he couldn't say definitively what was causing the bleeding since he wasn't a neurologist. Katie would have to be transported to UCSF Medical Center for diagnosis and treatment. No neurosurgeons in Fresno. I had to ask finally in a faltering voice, "Is she going to make it?"
  The doctor responded, "I am sorry, but I have to be evasive right now. It's too early to tell. She's going to be flown by helicopter to San Francisco in a few minutes, and we will find out more after she gets there."
  I muttered that it would probably be a good idea for John and me to drive up there right away, and he agreed.
  I raced home and grabbed a few items, not realizing that summer in San Francisco is more like winter in Fresno. While I packed, I felt like I was moving slowly and clumsily the whole time, and it suddenly seemed to me that my inability to coordinate my thoughts and movements more quickly and efficiently was a terrible flaw in my character, which had the effect of making it even harder to concentrate. Finally, I drove to their house, and John and I sped up Freeway 99 after midnight, both of us hardly able to speak.
  On the way, John confessed through tears that he was scared. I put my hand on his shoulder as we drove through a void of almond orchards, vineyards and cotton fields, and mumbled with tears in my eyes, "She's going to get through this, and so are we. Just imagine that she is healthy and happy. Send out positive thoughts into the universe. That's the best thing we can do right now. Don't dwell on the negative. That's not good for you or her." After dealing with numerous text messages, John closed his eyes and eventually fell asleep. As I was driving, I got a text message from my son in San Diego. While driving, I wrote my first illegal text message with my right thumb at one thirty in the morning, which read, "sory j a sleep."
  At two-thirty in the morning, while John was sleeping, I encountered road work on 152. A long line of cars remained at a standstill. I waited a minute until I noticed a car turning left onto a rural highway heading west toward Freeway 101. I had never traveled that highway before. All I knew was that it seemed to head in the direction that I needed to go, so I gunned the car and drove in the wrong lane for a hundred feet, then swerved left onto the highway. At first, the bumpy road headed west, but then it started to curve next to a streambed, and soon it seemed to be heading north. Nevertheless, I worried that I had made a bad choice, but I raced ahead in the darkness, suddenly feeling lost and alone. All I had was hope that I might find another road that would lead to 101 North. Suddenly I came upon a gas station near an entrance to Freeway 101 in Gilroy.
  I confess that I almost nodded off more than once while driving the last leg of the journey. I only managed to stay awake by continually shifting in my seat while consumed with worry about Katie. We finally arrived in San Francisco around three-thirty in the morning without any idea where the hospital was located. No one at the hospital in Fresno had been able tell us how to get there. The San Francisco streets were completely deserted; we had the whole city to ourselves but no one to give us directions.
  We eventually found the University of San Francisco campus and parked the car, thinking that the hospital might be nearby. As we stepped out of the car in short-sleeved shirts, we immediately started to freeze. We shivered for several blocks in a chilling breeze until I suggested to John that icicles were about to form on our mustaches, and we should head back to the car. After consulting "googlemaps" again while blasted by the car heater, we eventually found what might be the hospital where Katie was being treated. As we entered the hospital, policemen were shouting at someone outside, and we were met by a suspicious security guard near the front window, who checked to see if Katie was actually in the hospital. No metal detector this time, however. John and I finally were each handed a pass, and with a sigh, we rode the elevator up to the Neuro ICU on the eleventh floor. We had to hang out in a small, air-conditioned waiting room for what seemed like hours while they were stabilizing Katie in bed 4 of the NICU.

 

icu update

 

Katie probably born with avm. Another 29 yr
old in the icu has same problem. So far Katie
has no physical or cognitive deficits. No
impairments, in other words, thank god. No
drooping of the left side of the face. No
paralysis. She can move and talk.

 

   I realize now that I wasn't allowing the seriousness of Katie's condition to sink in at that point, but over the next few weeks, I began to identify medical euphemisms and understand the jargon. I eventually understood, for instance, that "stabilizing" meant finding all the right medications and the right amount of fluids to keep her alive. At one point she had eight different medications and solutions dripping into her body. To this day, I am not sure how many times Katie nearly died, but I could eventually tell when the doctors and nurses were becoming concerned due to their laconic jargon and the increased frequency of their visits. I learned how to read the monitor and could tell when her heart rate was dangerously high and her blood pressure dangerously low. After they took the breathing tube out the first time, I could tell when her oxygen level was getting to the point that she might need to be intubated again, which would start another round of sedation.

 

   At first, John and I weren't allowed to see Katie as the doctors and nurses were stabilizing her. Around four-thirty in the morning, I finally got about ten minutes of sleep in a broken-down recliner in the hospital waiting room. In my dream, I mixed up Katie's ordeal with the musical I was composing. In the story, with an evil spell a witch takes away the ability of people to see the young heroine's physical beauty; instead, they can only see golden spiritual symbols that represent her inner beauty: a crown, an equal-armed cross, and cups and plates on a brilliant white tablecloth. Katie, of course, is not the princess in the story, but some aspects of the musical oddly seemed to me at the time, especially at 4:30 in the morning, to correspond to Katie's ordeal in several ways. Every day in the hospital, as I grew more disoriented and worn out, I continued to recognize those same spiritual qualities within Katie even though her body remained severely disabled, and I struggled to imagine her as happy and healthy with as much positive emotion as I could muster.

 

icu update

 

She's having vasospasms, capillaries
constricting due to blood on the brain.
Arteries narrowing. It is life threatening.

 

   Spoiler alert: In the musical, the princess's suitor, a common man, recognizes his spiritual connection to the princess. He does not abandon her through their ordeal; instead, he does everything he can to break the spell. It seems to me even now that themes in "Entangled" and other songs oddly parallel aspects of our life at the time. One song suggests the inability of the princess, who was invisible to those around her, to express her vivacious spirit; because her body was missing, the hero could only see symbols that reveal the magnificence, harmony and abundance of her spirit. Katie was unconscious most of the time, and for 72 hours after the craniotomy, she was unable to feel anything on the entire left side of her body, nor could she move it, a state that doctors and nurses feared might be permanent.
  When John and I were finally allowed to see Katie that first morning, she seemed only half-asleep, though heavily sedated. I tried to comfort her and to tell her that I love her, but the more conscious she became, the more she grimaced and struggled to remove the breathing tube from her throat. I also noticed that her blood pressure went sky high every time she started to wake up because of the irritation caused by the breathing tube. The nurse said they had to restrain her and keep her sedated so that she wouldn't pull out the tube. I realized then that it was dangerous to try to comfort her or even talk to her. All we could do was wait next to her bed as machines beeped and whirred and nurses and doctors shuffled in and out.

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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.