In November of 2018 I turned 80. I didn’t realize at the time, but it was a momentous event in my life. I began to encounter serious health issues, both physical and mental/emotional. I entered the valley of the shadow of death and started living in fear for much of the following couple of years. Depression and anxiety caused difficulty sleeping soundly, and I was diagnosed with hypertension, or high blood pressure. The naturopath that I used for minor illnesses and health issues was not able to help me, and she recommended that I see my medical doctor for medication to control the blood pressure.
My physician was someone I loved and trusted; she recommended a mild medication to lower the blood pressure. I resisted primarily because I believed that I could take care of myself without drugs. I had been living with this belief for many years with success. Even though my Buddhist training included his teaching that we must all suffer the effects of “birth, old age, sickness, and death,” I told myself that I could go through aging and even death without the sickness part. Now I found myself facing my mortality with a life-threatening disability.
I bought a wrist gadget to monitor my blood pressure and began a log of daily readings. I noticed that it was higher than normal throughout the day and very high at night. My sleep was interrupted several times in the night with the need to urinate, and when I went back to bed, my heart pounded heavily in my chest—a strong steady rhythm, but pounding. It was uncomfortable and scary, and I found it difficult to get back to sleep. I finally agreed to try the medication and began months of experimentation, while trying to find an effective dosage. I believed my physician knew what she was doing, but it didn’t seem to be working. In June, she went on a three-month sabbatical, and I began to work with another physician in the same office. The experimentation continued, leading to more depression and anxiety.
In addition, additional health issues came to the surface during the beginning of that year, 2019. It was very cold and the sidewalks and streets were icier that usual that winter, and I needed to shovel ice and snow from the sidewalk leading to the street and around my car in order to drive anywhere. I slipped a couple of time on the ice, injuring my left knee and increasing my fear. In late January I moved into my son’s house, (temporarily, I thought) so that I could take advantage of his willingness to shovel out his driveway and my car during those winter months. In mid-March I had an auto accident which totaled my car but fortunately did not cause damage to any of the humans involved. Five days later I slipped on ice again and severely injured my right shoulder. At the end of March, I moved into my son’s house permanently for his help and support. I was feeling more and more dependent and depressed over this turn of events. My body was betraying me, and I was feeling the effects of “old age, and sickness” leading, it seemed to me, to death sooner that I had expected. I was feeling and facing my mortality.
I checked in with my physician regularly and continued to experiment with blood pressure medication dosages. I decided to go to a massage therapist who gave me cranio-sacral therapy as well as deep massage. These sessions were relaxing, but the relief was temporary. In addition, I went to another body work therapist in the office of my naturopath, a wonderful man with healing hands who offered sessions not only of cranio-sacral therapy but also a process called “Body Talk”. These sessions were also relaxing. Both therapists gave me suggestions for what might be going on emotionally as well as physically, and they helped me understand myself better. For example, after one session, the body talk therapist told me that energy in the kidney meridian (an energy flow in Chinese tradition) indicated that I might want to look at my issues with “trust.” When I looked more deeply at that idea, I realized that I had lost trust in myself and in life. I had placed my trust outside myself and into the medical profession. I needed to take back control over my own life as best I could.
I also went to a physical therapist who worked on the damaged left knee with massage, mobilization, and a home exercise program. This helped to decrease the pain in my knee and the worry over the need for surgery. After the fall in March, I returned to the physical therapist I had used for my left knee injury for treatment of a painful, weak right shoulder—I added shoulder exercises to my home exercise program. Gradually the pain of both my knee and my shoulder decreased, and the range of motion, flexibility and strength returned.
Along the way of physical treatments, I began to look at the emotional issues. I realized that I was living in fear. This brought me up short because I had learned during my study and practice of Attitudinal Healing that there are only two ways to deal with life, one is in love and the other is in fear. For the past thirty years I had been working on choosing to live in love instead of fear. For some reason, when I turned 80, I fell from this chosen path and in December—or maybe even earlier—depression and anxiety had surfaced with a vengeance.
A year later, the blood pressure medication dosage seemed to be working, and I began to trust that I could control and mitigate my blood pressure holistically as well as medically. I still had issues sometimes at night for which I took an herbal supplement that calmed the fear reaction, and my blood pressure was mostly within normal limits during the day. I did, however, still have pain in my left knee, and I began to feel fairly severe pain in my right knee as well. I controlled the pain with various supplements and over-the-counter pills. I continued my home exercise program regularly but quit using weight machines in the gym. I pared down and simplified my life, as in, no longer going to the gym to “work out,” no longer bicycling during the summer or hiking up a mountain. During the winter I found myself wanting to stay at home, warm and cozy, reading, putting together jigsaw puzzles, and watching TV. I continued to meditate daily and do other practices to balance and maintain my equilibrium, such as Nick Ortner’s The “Tapping Solution.” My right shoulder was sufficiently improved that I could play my violin again, which I enjoyed. I help my son around the house with cooking and errands and thoroughly enjoyed spending time with my grandchild. A friend reminded me that in India, old age is a stage of life for spending time in contemplation, addressing spiritual end-of-life issues. I believe I am doing that.
As I looked back over that first year of dealing with health issues, I could see progress along the path of love—which is where I want to be as I approach my old age and dying. One of my favorite Buddhist teachers was Steven Levine. Back in 1997 he published a book called, A Year to Live, (AYTL) an investigation into the idea that we can, and must, learn to face our mortality, prepare for our death, and that we can learn to live in peace and tranquility by healing old wounds, facing our fears, and making decisions to live fully and wholly up to the moment we die, no matter what is happening in our lives. I recently took this book from my shelf and began to re-read it. I decided, as Levine wrote, “to commit myself to living a year as though it were my last. To face death. To practice dying. To be fully alive. To investigate the dread of, and resistance to, life and death. To complete my birth before it is over.” (AYTL,pg. 10)
The coming blogs will be a journal I keep for this process. I invite you to join me in reading the book and sharing the discussion of living fully until we die.
Self-Inquiry Questions:
1. How have you faced your own mortality?
2. What do you do when your life challenges you upside with fear?
3. Who do you turn to when you need help with physical and/or emotional health issues?
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