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I am a ping-pong ball being played between fear and hope. I am bouncing around on so many levels I have become dizzy and warren.

Hope and Fear, The Future

Things have been a little more than a bucket full of drab lately. My Dad has been having one complication after another throughout his bone marrow transplant procedure. Last Thursday he had a heart attach. He has an a-fibrillation rhythm of his heart. As I write this he sits in the cardiac intensive care unit at OHSU. The only thing that improved with his move was the view from his room, though all he can see is the nurse’s station and the hallway. So that was last Thursday and today is Saturday. With each day we have little specks of hope balanced by set back. Today it looked as if he has a bowel obstruction, but on the up side his white blood cell count is up .1%. To me he seems to be better today but as I look at the faces of my family of doctors I get the sense that I’m missing something. I was able to hear him speak form the other side of the room. This is a marked improvement. We try and talk about the baby as much as we can. He is excited for Sydney's arrival. What a strange mix of emotions. Each day leaves me exhausted. I stand poised between two precipices of utter joy and consuming fear. In times like these all I can do is pray.

Threshhold

Throughout my life I have always had an innate awareness of the moment. I think about it constantly. In life there are moments that reality as you know it shifts with no hope of return. It is in these surreal times that I see the tale of my life being played out in slow motion. At this moment I am nervously anticipating a life-changing event. I stand poised before this threshold and I feel the same as ever, with all the same hopes, fears and goals. However I know that there is this moment that I am careening towards in which my life will forever change and there are no breaks on this ride. With each advancing second I feel the waves of nervous anticipation rising. The reality of Sydney's birth is pressing on my mind. To stand before a moment like this is so rare and precious. At times I wonder if colors will look brighter and food taste richer after she is born. As of now I feel comfortable with the way I view the world but change is coming and for the first time I’m scared for it. In the end I think what I will experience is a new form of love. As the moment draws near I am excited to awaken this sense, this love, which I have never known. It all comes down one moment. With such a momentous event one might expect a flash or boom to go off at the start of her life. But like all things, I’m sure this imperceptible moment will swiftly move into the past and I will be left on the other side of the threshold looking back, forever changed.

DAD

As I write this I am sitting in my dads hospital room. He is swollen all over. I hate to say it but he looks like hell. It looks like he has aged 20 years in the last three weeks. I didn’t know what to expect coming in here. I knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, as expected it is never easy to see family in physical pain. My Dad is on a morphine drip which I’m sure will keep him pretty well knocked out. His body is swollen and twitching, it is clear to see he is having trouble breathing. From time to time he turns his head and notices my presence. Surprised and startled he tries to make conversation. I tell him just to rest and I am here merely to be near him. It is amazing that this is what we call medicine. I remember going on hospital rounds with my father on the weekends. Whenever my Dad would go in and see a patient I would try and grab a quick glimpse of their face and I wondered about their condition. Sometimes as we would walk down the hall I would see people lying there as if mummies wrapped in white linen attached to machines. I always felt for those people but I was always detached from the situation. Through this process I am learning to relate to only the patients but also the families. Some have equated this treatment to torture. I keep thinking of the show 24 and how they cut off a pinkie here and there. It seems to me that that the loss of a pinkie would be easier to handle that this. I feel for him. I wonder how a docotor came to the conclusion that this could possibly help some one who is already sick. I love him with all my heart and pray for his health and comfort. I hope that if I ever find my self in a similar situation I will be able to face this hell with as much strength and resolve as my father.

Viloence permeates our culture

So I know this is not necessarily an astute observation but isn’t it the truth? I just watched the first segment of channel 12 news. It consisted of a man who jumped out of a car shooting at a Trader Joes on 39th and Holgate The police now have a 15-block radius under lock down one mile from mike. A woman was shot on her front porch on Mississippi two years ago one mile from Gabe. This was all topped off with a body that was found charred from the neck down with his guts removed and his hands chopped off. The body and a pair of latex gloves were found at a campground in the cost rang left in plain sight. Six miles from the road I dive to the cost. I don’t know what worse; the actual events, or the way we sensationalize it with out hesitation on the nightly news.

T.V.

What a trap. When I get tubed in I get pulled between two worlds two worlds. The TV world takes me for such a ride, from horse betting to sex in two seconds. This is sadly followed by 3 minutes and 55 seconds of commercial solicitation. It is in this I time I can break away to either pee, eat,or even type this blog post. The TV kills my life and this is killing me. As I said earlier there are two types of people in this world. There are the people who live their lives through the TV and those who make "TV" with there lives. It is the latter that con troll the prior. I realize that for every minute I spend staring at a glass box with flickering lights there are a minimum of of a thousand man hours spent in attempt to keep me tuned in to the subsequent minute. The longer I stay tuned the richer I make some one else. Hell most of us pay for this service. This makes me feel manipulated. So if there are two types of people in this world, I will choose to exist in the latter. Well after this show is over.