The Amazing Gift That Is The Fresh Chance
The Amazing Gift That Is The Fresh
Chance
Another new moon, another first of the month, another
Monday.
All traditionally associated with a new opportunity.
A chance for a fresh start – and don’t we all need
those from time to time…
Today is also my eldest son’s 32nd
birthday.
I haven’t seen him for many years. The rift between
us is huge, and I hope not unbreachable. One day we
will both need to take a big breath, place trust in
other and try for a new start. I hope that day comes.
This morning I am sitting in the gym car park waiting
for the place to open. I have a session with my
personal trainer then an hour in the pool. Having
felt stale for a couple of weeks I am giving the
training a shake up. Hence Craig the PT who is
whipping me into shape.
I have also stopped using my Ironman coach as I have
been very irritating to teach lately. So caught up
with work and training and making my relationship
whole that I haven’t reported to him as agreed. Silly
of me to waste my money, his skills and experience at
a time when I simply can’t make any more time to
report on what I am up to. So I am going to have to
slow down, reflect, decide whether or not to patch
the coach relationship – which is far less important
than the one with my son and my partner. Meantime
make the best of my new start.
It’s cold this morning; would have been nice to stay
snuggled in bed, but new beginnings don’t happen
without effort and commitment and imagination.
So I will take a big breath, clear my mind of recent
past experiences and plunge anew into the amazing
gift that is the fresh chance.
My Gift of Wakefulness
My Gift of Wakefulness
It’s three in the morning – the alarm is due to ring
in an hour and a quarter but my body clock is running
ahead of time. Over the past three weeks I
consistently waken well before I need to and can’t
get back to sleep. What to do with this gift of
wakefulness? Yesterday I drove to a local beach with
the intention of running for an hour before going to
my regular gym training session. I’d never been to
this beach in the dark. It was high tide and the sea
lapped at the base of the grassy bank that edged it.
The footpath was irregular and the light not good
enough to allow me to feel sure-footed and safe. I
drove instead to the gym and spent forty minutes in
the car park with my laptop watching a DVD on how to
swim more efficiently.
Staying in bed and struggling to sleep again is not
an option. My restlessness disturbs my partner who
then lies awake next to me. If I stay in the house my
toy poodle wakes and cries to come inside and start
her day. The only way to make useful my time is to
leave home and get some exercise or writing done.
This morning I am again in the car park of the gym,
writing some blogs and updating my training diary.
This afternoon I pick up my bike from the shop where
it is being serviced, so tomorrow in the early hours
I will ride. The streets feel safer in the early morn
as traffic is minimal.
Ironman training doesn’t allow polite, normal hours.
My day starts well before the alarm goes off. Todaymy
training is:
0400 update training diary, plan the next week.
Drive 30 minutes to gym.
0500 plyometrics 30 minutes
0530 lower body weights and resistance exercises 30
minutes
0600 RPM class (exercise bike) 50 minutes
0650 Core exercises 15 minutes
0705 leave for work.
1300 (lunch break) to pool or beach for an hour swim.
At 1800 – 2030h there is specific triathlon training
with club. I’m usually too tired for this as the very
early starts mean I need to go to bed early.
Tomorrow it’s plyometrics, stretching, lower body
weights and a ninety minute swim with an hour on the
bike either on the road or the stationary trainer.
This is fit around a 60-70 hour working week with
every night and weekend on call at the moment. Add in
a relatively new relationship with a man with
children and it’s obvious I’m busy…
Life’s busy, rewarding, and at times demands more
than I feel I can give, but I wouldn’t have it any
other way. I might not make the podium in Ironman,
palliative care doctoring or relationships, but I
will work hard at all of them, and reap the rewards
of dedication, commitment and endurance.
And one day I’ll sleep all the way until the alarm
rings and wake rested.
Deed to Reacclimatise
As many of you know, I am training to do my second
Ironman race.
I
completed Ironman New Zealand in 2007, and finished
fourth to last. At the time I became inspired to do
the race (early 2006) I couldn’t swim, hadn’t been on
a bike for 22 years and had hip pain when I tried to
run. However these small issues did not get me down…
I got up at 4 almost every morning, swam, cycled and
ran for 16 months and got fit enough to line up with
the big guys (and small women) on race day.
All that training on a minimal base meant that when
the race was over I had had enough endurance training
to last a lifetime… Completely ‘over’ exercise, I
sold my bike and wet-suit, hung up the running shoes
and went back to being an armchair athlete.
Now four and a half years later I have to start all
over again. Or so I thought. I had forgotten about
muscle memory, and about the neurological pathways
that develop when a body is trained. Remember how to
ride a bike? Of course… We can walk away from our
bicycle for thirty years, but still recall how to
balance on two wheels, how to circle those pedals,
and (especially if we have been ‘over the bars’) how
to feather the brakes.
Our brains have stored those memories, and it takes
little to reactivate those nerve pathways. A few
sessions on the bike, and though we have to work to
get aerobic fitness and endurance back, the basic
movement patterns are working fully again.
The same in the gym. Weight training gives much
faster results in someone whose body has once been
well muscled. The body ‘remembers’ how to build those
muscles, and does so faster than expected. Yoga
poses, running drills, bilateral breathing, Bulgarian
split squats – if you’ve mastered them once before
your body will remember the way to performing them
again even after a long lay-off.
So I’m back to 04:15 wake up calls, back to gym
workouts, 90 minute swim sessions and long hours on
the bike. The muscles remember, the pathways are
being etched deeper. I can now recall the deep
fatigue but paradoxically energised feeling after
mega-workouts. My shape is changing, as are my
appetites. And back is the sense that despite the
horrors of constant on-call work, non-collegial
colleagues, and world disasters, that there is an
area of my life where I have control. The life of tri
– of try, try, try.
There is such joy in having a plan, in working
towards it, and in knowing that my body knows what it
needs to do, is remembering what comes next, and if I
care for it will take me stepwise to my goal.
Swim, bike, run, rest, eat well, relax. That is the
plan. Fun on Ironman day and during the journey to
the day is the goal. Training and recovery are the
steps that will take me there.
Now I just need to reacclimatise my butt to hours in
the saddle. Sadly that pathway seems to have been
erased…
People Who Listen
People who Listen, who Encourage, who
Challenge
Isn’t
it magic to have friends? People who listen, who
encourage, who challenge us and keep us true.
Vaughan and I had several friends over for dinner
last night – two nurses, a police inspector, a
director of television documentaries and an art
teacher at a local high school.
We drank wine, ate beef stew with garden salad – not
a common combination but in tune with the changing
season. After a very warm start to autumn the cold is
beginning to bite.
We broke bread together, supped wine and listened to
one another. All left the table full of food and
emptied of stress. In a world of fear and disaster
and want we can each find peace one table-full at a
time.
Let’s eat.
Enjoy The Changes
Progression Enjoy The Changes
One
of the things I find most difficult about training is
the lack of linear progression. Even without
overtraining it is in the nature of physical change
that improvement happens faster some times and slower
others.
Swimming is where I notice it most. One day I
can swim easy for 2000 metres then do some short
sharp bursts, speed drills and kicking before leaving
the pool refreshed and very pleased with my
progress. Other days I leave feeling
demoralised because a kilometre swim felt just too
hard, and my rotation didn’t feel right, and I
struggled with coordination while the other swimmers
seemed to be having a far easier time of it.
Keeping a training diary helps keep these blips in
perspective. Often after a period of slow gain
there comes a burst of improvement where gains made
seem enormous. When I first started swimming
again after a gap of four years I could barely swim
25 metres without feeling like my lungs would burst.
Three weeks later I diairised my great delight at
swimming 400 metres without stopping.
Wow! Being able to return to my training log
and recall the feeling that I could do ANYTHING
having made such a great improvement helps me keep
things in perspective when my performance seems
stagnant.
Evolution of fitness, shape and ability in all fields
comes in leaps and bounds, and is not the steady,
ever- forward progression that we would like to see.
To work through the hard times takes courage,
commitment and the ability to see the big picture.
Keep a diary.
Review it often.
See how far you have come.
And
enjoy the changes. They make all the hard work
worthwhile.
Fuelling better
It got me to work as a doctor, and puttered up hills under duress. As we were often the slowest vehicle on the road I spent a lot of time hugging the kerb, pulling as far left as I could (I live in New Zealand) to let the stronger, bigger, faster cars go by. Having owned dogs I recognised the position we took as subservient, non threatening, docile. I didn’t want to be on the wrong end of road rage.
Now I drive a Mercedes, sleek and powerful. We drive confidently, quickly, the bigger engine purrs rather than putters, and I don’t hug the kerbs any more. It feels good...
In my other life, as a triathlete, I am returning to training after a four year hiatus. Four years ago I swam confidently, back and forth in the lanes, keeping up with most of the other athletes. My engine, well trained and maintained meant I didn’t have to pull over to let the fast kids past.
Four years of minimal body maintenance have taken their toll. I swim in the slow lane, to the far left, sometimes banging into the wall in my willingness to let the fast people go by. My aerobic (engine) capacity is far lower, hence the training much slower than I wish it to be.
But things are changing. I am fuelling better, and slowly creeping the kilometres and speed up. This time with my newly rehauled engine I will continue to train. Meantime, I will slowly ease my way from the left of the slow lane to the middle. From the slow lane to the medium one, and stepwise I will get myself to the place I want to be ... crossing the finish line of Ironman New Zealand in a better time than I managed in 2012.
Say ‘hi’ if you see me creeping along in the pool or on the road one day. And wish me well on my way to success.
Moderation
Moderation
To
many, total abstinence is easier than perfect
moderation. Saint Augustine
I must say, I agree with Augustine. Moderation is
hard.
I have got where I have in life by sustaining a
single focus, often over long periods, and often at
the expense of other, competing interests. It may not
surprise that I have been married more than once –
lost the same 20 kg over and over again. When the
focus on daily life is subsumed to the newest
obsession, life might fall by the wayside.
In 2012, I line up for my second Ironman race. The
race is 343 days away today, but already I am out the
door at 4.30 each morning to swim, bike, run and gym
my way to the start line. The focus, dedication and
hard work are essential – without them I may as well
withdraw my entry fee and sit on the couch. This time
though I will be kinder to my workmates, kinder to my
partner, and kinder to myself.
Somewhere, deep inside, I must find moderation, take
a broader outlook and keep the rest of my life on
track as I pursue my dream.
Moderate does not mean mediocre – it means excelling
in more than one area at once.
That is my aim for the rest of my life.
How do the rest of you cope with moderation?
Keepsakes
Keepsakes
I had the strangest phone call a month ago.
A cousin phoned ... I hadn’t heard from him in years
... to tell me that a woman I’d never met had found
my mother’s headstone under weeds in her garden.
The woman (Carol) had gone through the
telephone book looking for anyone with the surname
Roche so she could return the stone to someone who
knew the person commemorated on it.
Mum ... Pamela Joan Roche died in 1976, leaving 10,
12 and 14 year old daughters. Her ashes were buried
in a cemetery fifty kilometres from Carol’s house. As
far as I knew, her grave had not been violated.
A funny thing, while it was just a headstone it felt
like a piece of my mother. My sisters and I have no
material keepsakes of mum. She is in us in varying
degrees. My sister Tracey has her ability to see the
good in everyone, to forgive and forget. Shelley
looks physically the most like mum, who left nothing
but her genes to us. No letters, few photographs. No
clothes, furniture, house, vehicles. No jewellery, no
books. I am not much like her at all, except in a
reckless early life and a tendency to try all the
things I was warned away from at least once. These
corporeal reminders are all we have. On her
death she was otherwise effectively erased from the
physical world.
And now this, a concrete reminder, something to hold
onto, was found in a stranger’s garden. Bizarre…
I phoned Carol. Some detective work showed the
headstone hadn’t been stolen, but forgotten by mum’s
sister who had it removed and a new, less weathered
version made. When she moved house she forgot to take
the old headstone with her, and it remained, lost in
the overgrowth till a gardener found it and tracked
down someone who would retrieve it and love it again.
Now I have something tangible, solid, which has both
my mother’s, sisters’ and my name on it. It will sit
for a while in my garden and then travel to stay with
each of my sisters in turn.
Long bereft we will have something solid, tangible
that brings her back, in the smallest and strangest
of ways to us.
People Power
How powerless we can feel when we stand alone.
How rare it is to see one person prevail against alone against a bully, a despot, a corrupt corporation or an unjust law. So rare, in fact, that we write books and movies about their success, and turn them into folk heroes.
The true power of people is best seen through cooperation, working together. Recent events in the Middle East have shown what concentrated people power can achieve. Regimes that seemed unending have wavered; some have fallen while others teeter on the brink.
When one person cries aloud about injustice their voice can be shouted down. When a hundred, a thousand, a million people stand together even high powered weapons cannot still their voice. The world stops and listens. Change shuffles in.
When we see injustice let us find our communal voice.
Let us stand together.
Let us make our world a better place for all.
Let people power reign.
Living Each Moment
Without these dreams, these goals I may not have achieved the many things I have: studying to become a doctor, publishing a couple of books, finishing an Ironman. The goal somewhere out in the future became the thing to focus upon, to strive towards, to hold like a beacon before me. I wanted children, then I wanted them grown up.
I yearned for marriage, then later divorce – more than once. As the mirage future took up my time I forgot to truly live in the present – the only real moments in a life.
My books were autobiographical – while writing and promoting them my gaze turned back in time. The long-cold past, unchangeable, unforgiving, stared back. Old hurts were reopened, long forgotten slights recalled and rekindled. The present took on the stain of long ago. It became difficult to feel the heat of the sun, as yesterday’s cloud enveloped me. The past is no place to waste our days.
Now I work in Hospice, caring for the dying. There’s nothing quite like a terminal diagnosis to focus the mind. Through this work I am learning to live each moment, to savour every second, each sacred sensation, to truly be present to the only time that should matter – the here and now.
This doesn’t mean abandoning dreams, looking forward to a hoped-for future. Nor does it mean abandoning memory, recalling our stories, assessing our past experience. It simply means really living each moment, paying attention to the here and now.
The fluffy toy poodle is licking my arm and face as I write this blog; her breath smells of old bones. I can hear my partner’s children watching the Three Amigos on television, there is a cool salt breeze off the sea that flicks the bedroom curtain across my line of sight.
This is now. This is true sensation. THIS is living.
Vicarious Trauma
Vicarious trauma is a condition mostly affecting humanitarian workers who empathise with the plight of people who are hurting, and who feel a commitment or responsibility to help them.
Nurses, doctors, counsellors, trauma workers are at risk of vicarious trauma. Global media cover natural disasters, war and suffering round the clock these days, with continuous reporting from the front line of each new horror. With this saturation coverage many others will begin to suffer the trauma of daily exposure to the agonies and suffering in the world.
When the twin towers burned, then fell, millions across the globe watched in horror and despair. In Hurricane Katrina who can forget the open anguish of the displaced, bereaved population. Haiti, the BP oil spill, the Queensland and Pakistan floods. Civil war in Port-au-Prince, massacre in Libya broadcast 24/7, beamed into our homes as we sit and worry, and suffer as well. Our suffering nowhere near as great as those affected, but multiplied by every other disaster we are fed, night after night.
The Christchurch earthquake brought the image of two teens who had just been told their mother was unlikely to be rescued from a collapsed and smouldering building. The raw pain, overwhelming emotion and despair caught on film made its way round the world. We who could do nothing cried with the kids. Our pain burned, we were unable to ease their suffering at all, but somehow that image on our retinas made us feel we should try.
Now Japan. A horrendous earthquake and tsunami, live-coveraged on TV sets and monitors world wide. Compelling, compulsive, wall-to-wall reporting of the suffering, the suffering.Earthquakes, tsunami, hurricanes and floods have always been a part of life on our small blue planet. What differs now is our increasing exposure to live feeds of traumatic events as they happen, in corners of the world our forebears would never have heard of, let alone grieved for.
One of the effects of vicarious trauma is to stop caring, to build protective barriers of indifference to the plight of others. Much better than this is to find ways to cope.
To address the effects of vicarious trauma we need to remember to get away from the trauma. Turn the TV off, or switch channels from the constant newscasts. Play with a child, pat a pet, dig in the garden, remember what we can control and what hurts are within our power to heal, and start there. Reassure our children and ourselves that there are also great joys and triumphs in the world, but that these are rarely given the coverage that tragedy gets.
Seek out joy, renewal and life, and always remember that it’s still a beautiful world.
Importance of Resilience
Resilience is the ability to bounce forward when the unexpected happens, to see hope in spite of extreme difficulty, and to keep moving, a millimetre, a microsecond, one pedal stroke or shuffling step at a time.
On February 22nd a deadly earthquake struck Christchurch in the middle of the working day. Two fairly modern buildings, weakened by an earlier earthquake crumbled in on themselves entombing hundreds. Our resilience enables us to move forwards, even if it’s on our hands and knees, even if we weep all the way, knowing that somehow we will get through. Read More...
Dealing With Depression
Battling the black bear
No facile definition can convey the wretchedness that is clinical depression. Those who have not fled screaming down the dark caverns of the mind find it hard to comprehend the despair and seeming impossibility of overcoming these terrifying and numbing feelings by sheer force of will.
There is no other serious illness whose sufferers are expected to heal by ‘looking on the bright side.’ Part of what makes depression so dispiriting is the inability of other people to understand the pain it causes. To family and friends (and even some doctors) it is something that the sufferer needs to ‘snap out of.’ I wonder how many patients with epilepsy or high blood pressure are told they should snap out of their condition and get on with life.
After publishing Bent Not Broken, my own struggles became well known and a large number of people sought me out to discuss and seek treatment for this mental illness.
I have been on both sides of the prescription pad; this doctor has been, and is still, a patient - a sensible one at times, but at other times unwise. One thing I know first-hand is the singular determination that grips someone bent on suicide, and the paradoxical euphoria and calm that accompanies the decision to find a final refuge from everything.
Such euphoria can make it difficult to recognise that a person is depressed by outward signs alone - that’s why listening closely to them is so vital. Earlier in the book I mentioned the death of my friend Cookie. A talented young rugby player, he hanged himself one night after a party. His death, and our too-late awareness of his unhappiness, was a dumbfounding blow.
What is perhaps a universal by-product of depression is shame. For me it went further, and was a source of my urge to self-destruct. My suicide attempt and my addiction to sleeping pills indicated my desire to find in sleep a kind of death.
My depression, the black bear, visits in cycles, growling in winter and when the wind unsettles it, at times quiescent as if in hibernation. But depression can be overcome.
One thing I have learnt is that it is important to acknowledge the patterns of behaviour that keep us depressed. When I recognized that I had, like my mother, fallen into the trap of addiction, I learnt an important lesson. When I acknowledged my habit of hanging on (at work, in relationships) until things reached breaking point, I began to understand that my behaviour was lessening my chances of finding happiness.
Depression is a battle and I am still learning to climb back up when it drags me down. The love of my son Paulie has made it easier, as has the love of friends and family. If only love alone could keep the black bear at bay.
Depression must be one of the least understood and most under-rated illnesses of our time. It’s a word bandied about by many people. “Oh, I was so depressed when Shortland Street went off air for summer.” “I can’t fit my size 16 jeans any more. How depressing.” So many people use the word as a substitute for ‘sad’, ‘annoyed’ or ‘disappointed’, that the condition itself is viewed less seriously than it should be.
Depression is not a fleeting sense of sadness or annoyance, nor just a bad-hair day. It’s a serious illness and can be as life-threatening as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Depression kills people through suicide: so-called accidents at work, home, or on the roads; self-neglect; and increased risk-taking. It lowers quality of life by destroying self-esteem, motivation, energy levels and the ability to have fun. We have become used to shaking our heads over horrifying youth suicide statistics - well, a great many of these casualties are caused by depression.
I’ve had depression for most of my life. At its most severe it is among the worst illnesses I have come across in my experience as a GP seeing sick people every day. There’s no blood test, no plaster cast or wheelchair, no x-ray or scar that can show just how badly depressed someone is. People seriously ill with other conditions may be admitted to hospital, where they’re connected to tubes and monitors. Cards and flowers, hushed visitors and medical attendants all show that these people are ill; that they need our support and care.
Someone with severe depression doesn’t get this attention. They lug their hidden sickness around with them, trying to be happy and well for the sake of others, who just don’t understand what it’s like to try to get through a day full of mental pain and negativity. William Styron in his eloquent book Darkness Visible describes depression as a bed of nails, which its sufferers carry everywhere.
Depression has many physical symptoms, and has been called ‘the great mimicker’, as it can resemble lots of serious physical disorders. Some of the most distressing features to the person with depression, though, are the sense of failure and self-hatred that the illness brings. Just as its symptoms merge and dance with the symptoms of many other complaints (making depression and its sidekicks hard to diagnose), its treatments vary in their effectiveness.
An earlier version of part of these notes appeared in an article I wrote for my column in Bella magazine. The column evidently struck a chord with readers; many wrote and commented about it. One correspondent asked about depression as suppressed anger and the relationship between depression and violence. Another wanted to know the role of marijuana in depression: did it help short-term, long-term, not at all, or perhaps exacerbate it?
Some therapists believe that depression is related to repressed or internalised anger; that people who become depressed do so because they turn their anger at the world in on themselves. I think this is a valid analysis. Suicide, the end of depression for too many people, is the ultimate expression of violence directed at oneself. One of the signs of depression can be an increasingly short temper, and violence - especially towards children - can be a sign of depression in a parent.
Marijuana is used by a lot of people as an antidote to stress and depression. Some people find it helpful short-term, especially as a stress-buster. Long-term though, it tends to reinforce the lethargy and lack of motivation that are so common among people who are depressed. Marijuana may also unmask more serious mental illness in someone who is already predisposed to it. If you use it, do so with caution.
Getting my story down on paper has been a significant part of my salvation. I have found writing extremely therapeutic. It enables me to put thoughts and memories that are jangling around in my brain, out of my head and onto the page. When they’re out of my head I can get a new perspective on them, and can walk away from them if I choose. My mind is cleared and has space for more enjoyable thoughts.
Writing enables me to define my own reality and exercise some control over it. Through writing down my past, I have sifted through deeply buried memories and feelings, reliving my history. Through putting it on paper, my attitude toward my past has changed from one of helplessness to one of power. It’s mine, I own it. Writing has been an effective therapy for me because it’s constantly available and needs no one else to make it happen other than me. Through writing and then publishing my story, I have been able to accept the past and move forward.
When my first book came out I was terrified, laid bare, open, raw, my most painful secrets available for public scrutiny. But as people began to read the book I received more and more positive feedback. People have expressed admiration for my courage and honesty as they related to different aspects of the story. There is a saying by poet Muriel Rukeyser I like, “The world is made up of stories, not atoms.” I told my story and so far have witnessed reactions from empathy and admiration through to scepticism and scorn, but other people’s reactions have not changed the truth I have told.
I’m not cured or ‘over it’. I write it all down and, when necessary, seek additional help through counselling and anti-depressants. My anger is a fuel for action. I can’t pretend that everything is wonderful now. But I am changed, stronger than ever, and know which tools to use to help my healing.
Serenity
As a hospice doctor my week is spent comforting others, giving energy and love and compassion to all who need it. This sometimes means colleagues as well as patients and their families. And it should be no other way. I exist to bring comfort to others. However when the traffic feels all one-way, when its give and give, without quiet time to refill, my spiritual well can slowly dry, and parch.
The signs of this are snappiness, finding certain people I just can’t feel genuine compassion for, yet over-relating to others. Another sign is the black humour of those who work close to death surfacing more often.
This weekend alone was just what the doctor ordered. I’m replete, ready to write and love and enter the world again.
I often wonder why I – an introvert - chose medicine, ministry and public speaking. All things that require close and frequent scrutiny and interaction with others – often many people at a time. Not a good recipe for one who loses energy to others and gains peace and recharged batteries only when alone.
I wonder if the jobs chose me?
Today I worked on a quilt I am sewing for a dear friend, and wandered in the garden, savoring the quiet, observing how raindrops trembled on buds just about to burst with life. It’s spring – in my busyness I had barely noticed the signs of new life all around me.
I was overjoyed to see my known world suspended upside down in each shimmering droplet . I am here – this is where I belong, my Turangawaewae – my place where I can stand.
The land, the birds, the lake, the sky – they will remain after the new owner and I are well gone. They know me and accept me here. I can stand proud in these gardens I have cared for – and will continue to do so.
The quilt is bright, spring colors – the purple of irises, the yellow of daffodils, the blue of a sky new-washed with warm rain. I will fill it with wool from a young lamb, and give away my gift of springtime love and new growth.
Because I once again have hope and love to give away.
Thank you, God for solitude - and the many other blessings that have crept up while I hid in my cave. Thanks for poodles, fresh brown eggs, and this lake and garden.
Thanks for the joy my work gives to me, and the love and care I can give to others.
Special, special thanks for solitude though. I’d forgotten how much I need it.
Lauren