On Vacation

I can feel it!

My life over the last 5 days has been a haze of pain and drugs. A problem tooth in my mouth has reacted rather strongly to the concept of me being on holiday. To the extent that my gums, my top jaw, my lip, my nose, and cheeks have swollen! My top lip got so big at one point that its inside had rolled outside. It even got sunburnt, which is not surprising considering that it has never seen the sun except for the reflections off my teeth!

Right now I feel as if I have the worst head cold ever, have gotten terribly sunburnt on my face, and have been hit in the face with a baseball bat. That’s probably an under exaggeration! I feel much worse than that!

I am very lucky that I do not feel pain...

But this I can feel...

It has however given me time to pause and I am a little surprised at some of the gems of insight that have come to the fore. So instead of writing about my holiday woes, I will beguile you will some of my new hallucinated pearls of wisdom!

1. I have not been able to smile in days. As a result, I have this feeling that I am unhappy. Truth be told, I am rather unhappy. The thing is that smiling often makes a bad situation better somehow, whether it be the hormones released by one’s body or the purely psychological reaction of one’s mind to smiling. I miss smiling; it certainly helps make bad things bearable!

2. Intense pain saps ones inner resources. It must take a super human effort for any cancer, or any other painful disease sufferer to get up every day and work through debilitating pain. This has to be especially difficult when there is no end in sight. For the first time in my life, I have considered how difficult it is to wake every morning, if one slept at all, and face another day of painful life. I have never understood how anyone could chose to die rather than live out the gift of their life. Now I have an inkling of how terrible this kind of life can be. Whilst I still cannot condone ending one’s life, I certainly have a huge respect for those who chose to continue living out each day of pain, and then doing it with a smile! Respect!!

3. Time has become incredibly important for me. Weird considering that I do not wear a watch. I cannot believe how I have hungered for the end of each four hour interval of my day so that I can get my next pain relief fix. At first, the pain medication lasted about an hour, and then the next three hours were spent chewing on ice and dunking my head in the ice machine. At long last, pain medication is now lasting longer than four hours at a time. However, I now have an inkling of how a drug user must feel; how life revolves around that next high. My next high is really just a semblance of normality. For a druggie; I guess the high become their semblance of normality too. How difficult it must be for an addicted person to give up their fix. I won’t have to work too hard to rid myself of these drugs once my tooth issue is resolved. I can think of nothing worse than getting rid of the drugs that give me the grasp on reality that I crave.

4. Life goes on whether you want to be in it or not.

5. I have realised how blessed we are to have life within us. Our very health, the thing we most take for granted, is so fragile, and yet an incredible gift. We should never ever forget this!

6. Two years ago, I set myself a number of tough life goals. One of them was to run 2 half marathons in less than 100 minutes each. I have snagged an invite to the Knysna half marathon on Saturday, my big chance to tick off half a goal and prove myself. This episode has left me with a clear understanding that life has more to offer than the goals I set it. That perhaps the real value of life is in living out each moment, and not meeting the arbitrary measurements that I have set to it. If I run on Saturday or not, I will need to take it as it comes. If I do run, I need to enjoy the race as opposed to my challenge. If I meet my challenge at the same time, well then it was a bonus that was meant to be!

Screaming and screaming

Famous last words!!!

Tuesday night saw me posting a line about having absolutely nothing to do. It did not last long...

Isabella was awake by nine o clock, screaming her head off in pain. She was inconsolable to the point that her whole body was shaking. We managed to get in a couple of ten minute sleeps through the next couple of hours. At around one in the morning, our ears ringing and our concern at an all time high, we decided that we had better get this child to hospital.

But she fell asleep in my arms, apparently exhausted. We tiredly got back into bed expecting another ten minute nap and were surprised to be woken about two hours later, Donna still fully dressed.

Somehow we made it to the morning; all three of us tired and unhappy. This being our third child meant that we had a number of theories as to what was wrong with her. Obviously she was in some serious pain, but from what? Donna had her off to a nurse friend of ours to have her checked out before we spent an extraordinary sum of money to enter the paediatrician’s rooms.

The diagnosis was simple.

Teeth!!!

We did not see that coming...

Anyhow I have learnt my lesson; never will I claim to have absolutely nothing to do again!

Beaten up

Some 24 years ago, I used to model a beautiful judogi on occasion in a competitive environment. Judo, the gentle art, is not that gentle when one is faced with an opponent determined to wipe the floor with your snot. Add in the mothers of those fierce opponents, who are at least six times my size, yelling helpful comments to their children like; ‘kill him’; and you have a recipe for extra chess lessons!

That was a long time ago and yet I managed to earn my stripes on the judo mat. Sometimes I saw many stars and at others I saw many stars but perhaps a couple less than my opponent!

Saturday brought all of that back to me. My father used to avoid judo tournaments as he could not deal with the intensity of the event nor the fact that his son was the object of abuse. Thinking myself well above all of that, I took my children to their first Judo tournament. Both of them have only had a couple of months of experience in the sport but it was a tournament hosted by our own club; and what better way for them to learn and grow in this sport.

I had the joyous job of weighing in all of the male competitors together with Wild Willie, the father of another father and sons combination in the club. Weighing in the men meant that I got to see them all in their jocks, a rather intimidating experience considering the size and muscle definition of those that would be in my weight category. I wondered how I could be afraid to fight yet still support my children in doing the very same thing!

There were only two five year old competitors and one was my son and the other Wild Willie’s. Both of their names were called out and off they went down to the mat; a competitor area only. There Matt was fitted with a blue belt whilst Theo got a white one (in order to clearly identify them to the judges). I could not help imagining what was going through his mind. As a five year old in this strange environment, on centre stage, with heaps of people watching, following the bewildering amount of formality in terms of bows and etiquette, and waiting to have a fight?

As usual this little guy surprised me; nonchalantly managing the formalities and squaring up to his mate with a smile on his face. He then fought hard and was beaten. He then got up, shook Theo’s hand, and walked off most satisfied with his performance. I cannot explain how proud I was just that he had done it at all.

Luke later got onto the mat and faced off against an incredibly skilled chap. Luke held him off for a little while, but was then thrown spectacularly, probably the best throw in the tournament! Unfortunately it hurt and the Lukester was most upset. He sucked up his tears and fought twice more, winning one and drawing one.

Afterwards both my children said that Judo was sore! I wondered if I had sent them in too soon, but they both were keen to fight again! I was quite taken aback as this had been a tough encounter for them, one of life’s really tough lessons!

It now looks like dad is going to have to put himself out on the mat too, risking failure and plenty of pain, because just maybe I will be successful! And if not, my children will see that it is OK to fail if you give it your best!

Falling Apart

My life over the last couple of days has seen me play the role of bumbling idiot in place of my usual graceful self.

Saturday started with a four kilometre run on the beach with Luke as part of his school fun run. He did well and came in seventh in the school, not bad for a grade two. I then ran two kilometres with Matt and came in sixteenth, absolutely brilliant for the tiny tot! Luke and I then went surfing until he was frozen. All well to his point!

Sunday was the day that I had been looking forward to slipping on my running shoes and hitting the road. Instead I spent some time on the half pipe with my youngest. I lost control at the top of the ramp on my last turn, twisted my ankle and dived hip and elbow first into the floor. It was not as funny as Matt thought it was! By now I am so used to twisting my ankle that it was in the pool seconds later and then tightly wrapped in a well used figure eight bandage. Sadly, the run was put on hold!

I hobbled around on Monday trying to practise my throws for my Judo grading that would take place in the evening. I was allowed to skip the exercise section of the session but then it was on to my grading. It went smoothly but in a little light practise fight I sprained one of my toes and wrenched my wrist. Hello, and I was taking it easy?

Tuesday night was the indoor hockey challenge; a parents team against the teachers. I love indoor hockey and could not turn this down. I bandaged my foot so tightly that there was practically no blood flow to my toes, but at least my ankle was safe. One game somehow morphed into four games on the trot. At which point I was the stain on a pool of sweat and barely able to move a muscle. I only picked up a minor injury which was a grazed knuckle and a bruised hand. Of course I could show no pain in front of the rest of the parents. You can be certain that if parents and teachers did not know me, they know me now!

Wednesday night was the toughest Judo session of my short new Judo career. I limped into the dojo and had my children drag me out afterwards. A mental note was made to always ensure short fingernails as I had managed to split most of them down the sides. I said a prayer of thanks for power steering. At home, I shooed the kids out of the car and then summoned a vast amount of mental strength to do the same. I slowly shuffled into the house in about the time that it took my kids to shower and go to bed, normally a process that takes hours! I grabbed a very unlucky Coke which was dispatched in record time. That provided me with sufficient energy to get to the shower. Showering was a painful exercise as by now my body parts had ceased. Cleaning the soles of my feet involved a special contortion that involved the wall and a lot of will, and I barely avoided taking the rest of my shower sitting on the floor. I thought that the hard part was over, but drying myself was next to impossible. Halfway through I accidentally dropped my towel on the floor, which was great as it solved the problem of how to dry my feet. I then spread my jocks on the floor and wiggled my feet into the holes. After bending for about 15 seconds I managed to get a hold of them and pull them up, impressing myself immensely with my innovative dressing techniques. At that point I decided I had put enough clothes on.

Today, I feel like a metal robot that somebody forgot to oil! I am tired, very damaged, and absolutely refuse to let anyone tell me that it is all because I am getting older!!