Liisa: the story continues

This happened in 2005, in India.

Liisa: a strange story

I'm sitting in a shop looking at some malas when a group of people comes in. Two women and one man. They ask to see some jewelley, one of the women sits down, browsing the ware on the counter. 

Something makes me look up, and ask: You must be from somewhere in Scandinavia, right? She turns to me, with a smile of slight wonder on her face, and says: Yes, actually, we are from Finland. 

I smile back at her and suddenly, the strangest thing: I'm focussing on her eyes, which are bright blue and have an expression of childish awe and wonderment in them. My focus broadens, and it seems as if the rest of her is gradually building up around those eyes. 

A face lined with age but still with such gentleness and sweetness as to take your breath away. Long luxurious hair, wavy and streaked with grey, hands tanned and gnarled with old age, a spectacular sparkling yellow stone on her finger. To my utter amazement I realise that I know this woman. "Liisa," I say. "Liisa L ."

She looks at me with an almost blank expression. Then she realises who I am, it's coming back to her. She had a little Tibetan Buddhist shop in downtown Helsinki, and I used to spend many happy hours there, talking and feeling so much at home. It's safe to say that she's one of the sweetest persons I have ever had the privilege to meet. And now, after 10 years, we meet here in India like that! What are the odds of something like this happening? 

We agree to get together the next day and as we meet, I immediately get to the point. She used to be Tibetan Buddhist, right? So how come she's here in this town where Westerners (except myself!) usually come to get a darshan with this Great Guru? 

This is what she told me:

When she was a young woman, she was living in a very unhappy marriage. Her husband was a quiet man but quite partial to drink and when he did get into the bottle, it was hard for him to get out again. She felt trapped as they had two children and she didn't have enough money to leave. 

Then, one day, a friend passed by her house and said: Look, Liisa, I think you should come to India with us. There's a big group of people going and when there, we are getting a bus and just driving around, visiting every holy place and meeting every holy man we can find. 

Right there and then she decided that she would go, no matter what, she had to do it. She had had a habit of buying books every time her paycheck came in (she was an elementary school teacher) and by that time, her collection was already considerable. So she called a second-hand bookstore and they came and bought all her books. In order to move this load, they had to bring a truck! 

So now she had the money for her trip to India. She arranged for a babysitter and off she went, knowing that something, a solution must be waiting for her in that faraway land. Curiously enough, her husband, who usually showed no emotion, except when drunken, was now pleading with her not to go and promising to reform himself if she only would stay home. But Liisa did not yield to his pleas. 

The trip to India was everything she had hoped for. For a month, they cruised the country, stopping at historical sites, visiting temples and getting darshans from gurus. The last stop would be the very same little town. 

This town is famous for a great guru who, back in the 70ies when Liisa visited, was only beginning to gather fame. Liisa was sceptical, she had no great love for the guru business, all this kow-towing, alleged miracles, what not. 

But when they finally got there, she felt as if that was the place she was meant to be. Her heart filled with peace, she plopped down in the dust and thought: I'm not moving from this place. They'll have to drag me out first. The rest of the group went to raid the shops for saris as the guru was rumoured to be very conservative when it came to ladies' dressing code. Liisa remained seated in the darshan area. By and by, people started coming back and soon it was darshan time. The guru appeared. 

What happened next is in Liisa's words. "As soon as I saw him, my heart filled with indescribable love, my eyes were brimming over with tears. I sprang up and as if carried by some force greater than myself, I moved towards him. Before I knew what was happening, I found myself on the ground, prostrating myself before him and trying to kiss his feet. 

At the same time a part of my consciousness was witnessing the scene, horrified. I'm not the kind of person to demonastrate emotion like that, I was mortified of what my friends would think of it all. I felt I would have to stay in that position because, for sure, I wouldn't have the nerve to face anybody after shaming myself like that! 

The guru gently put his hand on top of my head, then under my chin and forced me to look up. So, he said. You are the one who doesn't believe in miracles? Look, he said. And suddenly his palm filled with holy ash, vibhuti. Eat it up, he ordered. I licked, and it was sweet. 

Now, said the guru. What do you want?

Sobbing, I repeated just one sentence, over and over again: Please, heal my husband.

He looked at me and asked: Just this? But surely, you must want something for yourself, too?

No, no, I said, if you could just make him well, that's enough for me.

All right, the guru said, so be it." 

After that, there's really not much left to tell. Regardless of what Liisa felt in the beginning about not wanting to leave, she now didn't have a problem with that. She felt that she had found the thing she had come for. 

The hole that she had carried in her heart had been healed and filled with this wonderful guru. The father he had lost in war when she was a child, the emotional cripple of a husband, the god she had never believed in - for her, the guru took the place of all that. 

She stepped out of the plane in Helsinki, a different woman. Before, she almost always dressed in black, wanting to shield herself from the rest of the world. Now she was wearing a bright yellow dress, with bare feet and flowers is her hair. She had been set free.

When she reached home, her husband had some news for her. He was to go on a business trip to Tallinn (which incidentally is my home town, across the Gulf of Finland, and Helsinki where Liisa was living) the very next day. So, he packed his bags and went. Liisa spent the day at home with the children. 

The next morning the telephone rang. It was from her husband's office. They informed her, that sadly, her husband had been found dead in his hotel room in Tallinn. While they were filling her in for details, she could only think of the guru and her wish. So he had done what he promised, he had taken him, she thought, not knowing whether to be glad or to feel guilty. 

What was even more interesting about all of this was that her husband had been found, fully dressed, in the bathtub of his hotel room. There was no obvious reason why he should have died, as confirmed by the coroner. A post mortem was carried out and repeated in Helsinki, and the result was still inconclusive. 

Still numb with it all, Liisa collected a considerable amount in insurance money, immediately sold her apartment in Helsinki and bought a farm house nearby. A place away from city life, a place where she could have animals and where the children could run free.

A little while after that, she accidentally met a Tibetan Buddhist who had a propsal for her. Liisa, as you now have this place in the country, wouldn't you want to occasionally rent it out to us for yoga classes, meditation courses and such, he asked. Needless to say, Liisa agreed. 

She was soon able to quit her day job and throw herself fully into this exiting new world of spirituality. She studied yoga and become an instructor herself, and after a some years they pooled their resources and opened a Tibetan Buddhist shop-cum-center in Helsinki. After that, she travelled to Nepal on a yearly basis, held classes in Buddhist philosophy etc. Her children grew up, married happily and had children of their own. 

As for Liisa ... through all of this, she has remained the same: the gentle, unassuming, humble and incredibly beautiful woman whose life, in a curious way, had been turned around back then in India.

She's an old age pensioner now and free to come to this town every year. The guru is still alive, and she usually spends three months here to be near him.

She says that here, she feels happy, calm and content and that everything is just as it's supposed to be. 

And seeing her shining and carefree face, I feel happy for her.

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I guess a disclaimer is in order here: the author - that's me - does not have a positive or negative opinion on any of this. I myself wouldn't want a guru, though.

But ... in India, things are different than in a Western country. Strange things do happen there on a daily basis, people don't even pay much attention to this. It is as if the mindset of people, who believe that miracles are possible, facilitates the manifestation of thought into reality. My Tibetan friend once lauged and said: You Westerners ... you want miracles. You are so hung up on them but where I come from, what you call miracles ARE the ordinary reality.

So when in India, I take this in account, and do not scoff on such "superstition".

Many years have passed and the guru, Sai Baba, has died. I have had no contact with Liisa, and have not even remembered her often. Until today, when I reposted this story on my new facebook page. I wondered if she is still alive. Then suddenly, looking at her picture, I realized that I had seen her just recently. She was the "anesthesist" I was telling you about. An angel in this life, and in the other. I hardly cannot believe it myself ...

And now the other story, to refresh your memory:

I was taken down to the operating block, comfortably dozy. They had wrapped me in warmed green sheets and I was feeling quite content and at peace.

An older lady, about 65, appeared by my bedside. She was wearing surgical greens and had some kind of cap, a bit like a bath cap, that covered her hair. She looked faintly Nordic in her appearance: bright blue eyes, tanned, as if from spending most of her time outdoors, lots of wrinkles, and the kindest, most comforting smile. 

She took my hand in both of hers and held them. I thought: how very very kind of her, to take a moment to reassure the person in such manner. She said: "Hello, I am your anesthesist."

After that, I don't remember a thing, only that my last though had been that it is a bit unusual, she's quite old but I'm happy that it will be her taking care of me.

Next day we were swapping stories of our experiences with my room-mate and I asked her, what about the wonderful anesthesist that we had? She said no, hers had been a young man. 

I was still curious, so I proceeded to ask several nurses, also older, if they knew the anesthesists and in particular, if they knew an older lady doctor like that.

And what do you think? 

All of them said that there was no such person. And, shaking their heads, they said that I had probably dreamt it all.

But I know that I didn't dream, and that my anesthesist had, in fact, been an angel. 

A friend came to visit and when I told ger the story, she asked me if I remembered in which language the woman had spoken. English? Letzeburgesh? French? Estonian? 

No, I was certain: none of the above. My friend said that for her, that was the biggest proof that something not out if this world had happened ... that there was no actual language that I could spot.

Post op depression

This is unbelievable! This article describes the feelings I have been having down to a t! And how did I find it? It's 5 o'clock in the morning and I'm awake again ... 

By Lynn Beisner

April 17, 2013

30

Countless people suffer from post-surgical depression for months on end, so why aren't more people talking about it?

I have lost count of how many surgeries I've had in the wake of an accident that left me with internal injuries and scores of broken bones. I know the drill, how to prepare, and what to expect during recovery. 

There are two fairly predictable but distressing things that I go through nearly every time. And even though I know about them, they catch me by surprise every time.

The first is that I usually experience a very intense spike in pain the evening of the second or third day post-surgery. It usually hits at the end of first day that I am starting to feel like the worst has passed. I have showered or dressed, begun the process of returning to some form of normalcy. There is no gradual build-up of pain. Instead, it feels like a tsunami of pain, utterly unexpected and devastating.

What makes the pain-spike devastating is that it is an expert liar. It tells me that something has gone terribly wrong, that my doctor has truly screwed it up, and it berates me for having given my consent. Above all, it tells me that I will never get out of pain. Every damn time, I fail to realize that this is that pain spike, believe the lies it tells me, and have a mini-meltdown.

The second thing that I can never seem to remember is that I am very susceptible to post-surgical depression. And like the invariable pain-spike, I never recognize it when I am dealing with it, and believe the lies it tells me.  

Doctors have long been aware that many patients experience some form of post-surgical depression during the six months following an invasive procedure. But many physicians believe that being depressed after surgery is "understandable" and "unworthy of diagnosis or treatment." Since most people with post-surgical depression emerge from depression after about six months, many doctors considered post-surgical depression either benign or even helpful since it keeps people inactive. 

As a result, most people do not know that post-operative depression is a common complication of surgery. If it were as benign as many surgeons have assumed it was, perhaps this would not be such a problem. But researchers have discovered thatdepressed patients are more likely to have other complications.They are less able to cooperate in their after-care particularly in rehabilitative therapy. And for people like me who have an existing history of depression and anxiety, the recovery from post-surgical depression is neither guaranteed nor as straight-forward as some surgeons expect.

No one knows exactly why there is such a strong link between surgery and depression. Some researchers have hypothesized that many people experience post-surgical depression because it forces them to confront their own mortality. A theory that matches my own experience is that the length of time spent under anesthesia seems to be related to the likelihood and severity of depression.

Last summer I had a series of surgeries, and in the days following each I was hit by the infamous pain wave. Fortunately, my husband identified them and helped me through them. 

But we both missed the signs of one of the most serious post-surgical depressions I have ever had. What made it especially difficult and dangerous is that I never felt depressed or sad. 

The only time that I had overt depression symptoms was in the weeks before my final surgery. My family worried for a couple of weeks because of how desperate I felt. My pain had been poorly controlled and I could not bear the thought of another recovery in agony. Once I found a way of controlling pain, the desperation faded, and we assumed any depression had gone with it.

Instead, what followed was a growing belief that I had finally come to accept the truth of my life specifically and the nature of human existence in general. To put it in cliched terms, I was confronting my own mortality. But for me, it wasn’t death that I grappled with. Instead, I began giving a lot of thought to the fact that aging bodies are more vulnerable and that combined with our culture’s ageism, getting older is the steady and irreversible dwindling of options.

I believed the lies of depression when it told me that what I was capable of four months after a series of major surgeries was where I would be two years later. I gave away my bicycle and told my husband to sell our camping equipment. 

When my doctor told me that I would need at least one more major surgery in the next couple of years, I did not obsess about it. Instead, I became obsessed with what might happen to my husband. The idea of him going through what I had endured was intolerable to me. 

Yet it was all I could think about. I began to research the life-threatening illnesses I thought he might face. In graphic details, I imagined him grim-faced and stoic after open-heart surgery or anxious about learning how to orgasm again after prostate removal. At night while he slept, I checked his naked body for suspicious moles or growths comparing anything I found to online pictures.

My husband seemed incredibly fragile to me. I began to worry about how long he would be able to keep working in his chosen field of information technology. I thought of how he would suffer if he was unable to find a job. The poverty we might face paled in comparison to the sadness I anticipated him going through. 

I stopped even hoping for a future filled with joy and meaningful work. Life began to look like one long, painful, and sad slog into the grave. I wondered every day how I could just “opt out” without hurting my kids. 

Fortunately, my family knows about post-surgical depression. And although it took them a long while to recognize it, they were able to intervene before I fell over the edge. I began a new medication almost exactly six months after my last surgery. It was like a light came on, and suddenly I saw just how bad it had been. 

The thing that truly frightens me in retrospect was how normal I believed my thoughts were. Somehow I thought that everyone spent time anticipating the worst, that everyone thought about suicide every day. I did not recognize the symptoms.

What also concerns me is how few people know about this common and dangerous complication of surgery. It worries me that people suffer without understanding why and that their families are not alert to the signs of serious danger.

We need to bring to post-surgical depression the kind of awareness that we have brought to postpartum depression. People going into surgery need to know that it is a possibility, and they need to have a plan in place in the event that they begin experiencing symptoms. I think that this is especially true for people with mental health histories. They need to know that there are additional treatments available in times of crisis. We also need to talk about post-surgical depression more widely so that the family members and friends of post-surgical patients can keep an eye out as my family did. And people who serve as the support system for post-operative patients should know how they can help the person recover. 

Lynn Beisner is the pseudonym for a mother, a writer, and a feminist living somewhere East of the Mississippi. She is a regular contributor to Role/Reboot. You can find her on Facebook 

Road to recovery

The road to recovery is not straight nor narrow. It was only few days ago when I thought that everything was going South. Instead of getting better, I was hobbling more with each day. Then my therapist came back from his vacation and turned it around. Just one seance and I was walking without pain and limp. Apparently my trouble has to do with the muscle of the leg getting weak. Now all I have to do is to get it strong again. He made me do exercises and after the first day it was improved 80%! I was out walking with my aunt and forgot to lean on the crutches, was just carrying them like an umbrella. For about 200 meters! Tomorrow he will talk to the doctor to get me some gym time. Now I can really say that the operation was a success and recovery is possible! Finally, peace of mind.

Money matters!

I'm doing something I thought I would never do. Write about money. The first bills from the hospital are coming in and frankly, I'm scared shitless. As well as angry, angry as a wasp!

An example: the bill from the pre-op visit to the policlinic, which included a simple blood analysis and EKG. Altogether 360 euros, 79 of which laboratory costs and the rest: policlinic fees. 288 euros !!! 

Thing is that our sickness insurance will cover 80%. The hospital bed per day was 450 eur, seven days, and that only for staying there. Everything else will be billed separately. The doctors' fees, including for the operation were not so high: 1700 euros. Apparently everything that goes on in the hospital is the most expensive. And this is just for us, the hospitals are adding a hefty per cent to the euroworkers' bills. 

And we must not forget about the rehabilitation. I must thank the powers that be for the fact that I didn't choose to stay there, as was planned initially. Three weeks at close to 600 euros for the room! 

The next time something like this happens, I will just ask to be put to sleep and be done with it ... apparently, going to a hospital is not something that I can afford! So be it! Euthanize the eurotrash!