September 27, 2007

• I have what I need.

  I have pneumonia.  It is atypical pneumonia, from breathing fungal spores out in the woods.  Don’t mistake my title statement, “I have what I need,” for an implication that I think I need pneumonia.  I’m pretty sure I could have lived (at least a little longer) without it.  Medical sources give a more or less pessimistic prognosis for it, but I have not given up.  Live or die, I have what I need right here and now, and there will never be a time that is not now. 

  I am doing what I can to survive and recover.  It is up to my immune system now.  LOL   Yes, that thought about the immune system made me laugh out loud.  It is a crazy immune system.  I have been plagued by immune deficiencies and autoimmune disorders since childhood.  In my infancy the physicians caring for me told my parents that my immune dysfunctions would result in my death before I would have time to grow up.  It’s all in my memoirs, as some of you already know.

  Overhearing my mother telling my aunt about that prognosis when I was about three years old gave me a conscious determination to live as fast and as fully as possible in whatever time I had for living.  Perhaps it also influenced me unconsciously to resist ever being all grown up.  I have never considered myself “finished” in terms of maturation, education, evolution, etc.  I am determined to go on growing.

  A few days ago, laboring to breathe, I asked myself why I was trying so hard to keep breathing.  With no ready answer on the intellectual level, I looked to Spirit for insight.  The knowledge came to me that it is more for others that I’m living now than for myself.  There are ample personal rewards for me in every moment of every day that I survive, but that alone is not enough to keep me breathing when breathing is so difficult and living is so filled with discomfort.

  Last night, Greyfox and I spent over an hour’s worth of cell phone minutes talking and laughing, mostly about death.  As usual, Doug was part of the conversation as I was on the speaker phone.  Once we got past Greyfox’s being creeped out by the topic, it became an easy, fun and loving discussion, jumping around all over the place as our conversations always do.

  I had been set up to bring up the subject, not only by my acute illness, but also by the book I had just finished reading.  It is a battered paperback I had picked up at the library a month or two ago, along with an armload of other paperbacks from the racks that have unlimited checkout time, no due date for return, my favorite kind of library books.

  I was familiar with the author’s name from New Age publications of the 1980s and ’90s, in which I had advertised and received free subscriptions.  I knew Dannion Brinkley’s reputation as a psychic and prophet, but until I read this book I hadn’t been aware of his having died to attain those abilities.  I sat there laboring for breath as I read about him laboring for breath as he recovered from the effects of having been struck by lightning.  In his story about the Light Beings he met and the things he was told during his near death experience, I recognized elements from my own experiences.

  I needed that reinforcement, those reminders.  I am also receiving much needed help from an old reliable source, Dick Sutphen.  As I write, I’m wearing headphones and his voice is repeating healing suggestions in my ears.  I have been doing this for several hours a day, beginning before I had the pneumonia diagnosis.  Dick’s suggestion:  “Mind searches out the cause; mind corrects,” brought pneumonia to mind, and I used MRT to confirm it.  I have also used MRT to determine which herbs from my stock on hand are most useful to me now, and I’m drinking lots of herb tea.  I need great quantities of fluids to increase lung secretions and clear them out, and tea is the most pleasant way to force them down.

  I did some web research of medical sites and learned a lot about pneumonia and the conventional treatments for it.  It came as a relief to learn that there is no drug treatment.  Rest and fluids are the conventional medical treatment for this atypical fungal pneumonia.  It is, I am certain, not mere coincidence that I am constantly thirsty and can move only with great difficulty.  My body urges me to do what I need to do for its recovery.  To help it along, I have begun tapering off the long-acting asthma drugs I have been taking.  Their known side effects match some of my symptoms, and my condition has begun to improve during the three days since I cut down on the drugs and started the intensive natural healing. 

  One important discovery I have made is that although I need lots of rest, sleep sets me back.   It is the horizontal sleep position that is the problem, and the long intervals between snacks and drinks.  I must stay hydrated and keep my blood sugar up to minimize my symptoms and ease my breathing.  I suppose that when I really need sleep I will be able to do it sitting up.  Until then, I read or work at the computer, play solitaire (a lifelong pastime for times of illness), nod and nap a little now and then, moving no more than necessary, and slowly.

  Since I became too ill to go to town and do my shopping, Greyfox has shopped for me.  He has made one supply trip up here and is preparing for another early next week.  Doug does what needs to be done around here and fetches and carries for me during his waking hours.  I have what I need.

  

  • 3:46 pm
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