FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

 

Sometimes  the wisdom that I get from people just equals that which I actually need for the day. And this morning I received an email from my friend the minister who passed along this saying of the Rabbi of Brastlav who taught, "If you won't be better tomorrow than you were today, then what do you need tomorrow for?"

There are many ways to take that plea to heart. One is to state plainly that if you can't see a better tomorrow for yourself then you have wasted your energies today. Another is that if you cannot use your experiences today to envision a better future then you are stuck in too much self pity.

So this morning was a pretty bright day and when I attended my dogs today I was pretty pleased that my oldest, which I just started treating for a flare of Lyme Disease, had started to perk up. She was wagging tail and hardly limping and generally a bit more spritely than the rather limp rag that presented to me yesterday morning, glum, listless and just laying around in her bed most of the day.

And the OD (other dog) who is always a bit more morose, was lying on the couch being pretty floppy when I noticed a big fat juicy tick engorged on her right ear. So I have to watch her for the signs of Lyme Disease now, although this was not the typical tick that carries the disease, it is certainly a sign that there are others casting about that may not be as visible. She remains her usual semi happy self still eager to beggar a treat from me at the drop of a hat just as a reward for returning from the back yard.

And after dutiful attentions to the dogs and a skimpy meal I headed to my normal AA meeting with the sun in my eyes and the Rabbi bouncing around in my mind.

As I arrived at the church I noticed Jeremiah, who joined our group about ten months ago upon the recommendation of Casey, and old friend who had been trying to get him to come into the program for years.  Finally, after suffering some medical  problems he was forced to concede that he needed to stop drinking and for health reasons was going to have to face the fact that alcohol was no longer an option in his life. Now was he going to be able to face the fact that he was an alcoholic?

As luck would have it Jerry (Jeremiah) soon was able to accept the fact that he was an alcoholic and his life was unmanageable. And this became pretty clear when he started coming to meetings and listening to the stories of the other men in the rooms, and finding that he had more in common with them than not. He found that yes he would make more time in the day find time to drink than to do anything else. He would spend more time with his bottle than his work. More time looking and thinking about alcohol than reading, watching TV, speaking with others, in fact doing any other activity in his life.

He finally understood that his life had been run by alcohol, the drinking, the thinking, the searching, the hiding, the stocking, the preparing and then doing it all over again. And when he finally came into the rooms, he realized to his relief how much more time he had to and for himself and for his family.

But for him it may have come too late, or so it seemed. For when he walked in the rooms his belly was distended, his skin was sallow, the whites of his eyes were yellow and he had that kind of skin that looked like the "tan of death" as I have often called it.  It is the kind of skin color that looks like the sickly fake tan that "Man Tan" used to give the user when it was first invented in the 1960's. That  skin coloring that was a poor excuse for a real tan.

That is the look of a failing liver and Jerry had it. And for the first five months he had it as he slowly was treated at the VA for his cirrhosis. 

He said then that he had been placed on a transplant list and was waiting. But as his treatment proceeded, he started to perk up, his skin color started to improve, his stomach started to flatten, his energy perked up and the news soon was that perhaps a transplant was not going to have to be imminent.

So we talked about me being available to him in case he needed company for his visits to the VA or to go to the Pittsburgh VA for tissue typing in case he needed to be set up for a transplant in the near future or perhaps later. But with that on hold for the time being we let that ride.

But today even with the sun as bright as it was, it could not animate Jerry's visage this morning. It really looked gaunt and drawn. He looked downright unhappy.

"What's the matter?", I asked.

"I'll tell you after the meeting," and he limped into the room.

The meeting was a step meeting, Step One, "We were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable". 

Our lives had become unmanageable... well that was surely true now as no doubt it had always been and always would be and I fully expected that that would be what would be forthcoming when I spoke with Jerry after the meeting.

And Jerry met me after in the vestibule and told me that his visit to Yale had been rather grim in that the news was not so good. Sonograms had revealed a couple of liver tumors.

To me this was not such an unusual finding. These could be anything from fatty tumors to hepatomas - benign tumors to cancer, both findings in cirrhosis of the liver.

And I mentioned that these were likely findings in cirrhosis and he nodded because he was well aware of this and I was not telling him anything that he had not been told before.

Then Jerry turned and brightened a bit and said with a bit of a grin "You know what this means? This means, of course, that I'm back on the transplant list... And I go to the head of the line...".  He turned on his heels and jaunted off to his car.

 

The Rabbi would have been proud!

 

©  res  11/9/2012