The Lions and the Antelope...

The Lions and the Antelope…

October 12th, Day 24 in the Mission Oaks Hospital.

OK, back to the deep / self discovery type thoughts. I want you to imagine for a minute that you are watching the Discovery Channel. It’s the episode where a pack of lions are stalking a herd of antelope. Now Imagine, a weathered voice with a thick British accent explaining the following;

“The pack of lions sits in prey in the long grass, evaluating the herd of antelope, looking for the weakest antelope, the low hanging fruit. They are spread out and seem to be fully alert to each other’s whereabouts. Once they have identified the weakest of the antelope – on the perimeter of the herd they isolate their prey. The Lions strike and quickly hit top speed. The herd of antelopes take to flight and move almost as one. Through the long grass and across the plains, they are desperate to escape the certain doom that awaits them if captured by the lions. The race is on. Time has taught the antelope that the lions can only sustain top speed for a short distance. If they can just run a little further, a little longer, they can avoid being the lion’s lunch”

Could you hear the accent? It was there right! To return to an early and common metaphor of good vs. evil / pain vs. pleasure, it is easy boil this situation down to extract the example that is useful to daily life. The lions represent the bad guys or evil (if you’re an antelope) and the antelope are the good guys. The lions represent the ultimate pain of death to one or a couple of the antelope. Pleasure equals escape to safety once one of your herd has been caught and it wasn’t you.

Using those assumptions let’s look deeper at the herd of antelope. Imagine that there are 50 antelope. They break in to escape mode when the most alert, maybe only one or a few of them, realize that they are being hunted and therefore register the danger of the situation. They then respond by sprinting. The following, say 6-10 antelope, respond by following the first antelope’s lead and subsequently break in to a run themselves. Finally, the rest of the pack right down to least alert, follow suit and the chase is on. The chase will ensue with the most focused and the most alert leading the herd of antelopes through the plains until one has been caught and the lions are content with the meal they are about to eat.

So, my questions to you are –

Do you want to be the alert, prepared antelope?

Do you want to be the antelope that listens to the environment and to its instincts and is ready to respond at any time?

Once you are on the run with the pack, do you want to be in the group of leaders directing the herd?

*Remember that when this small group decide to change direction, the decision makers become the leading edge of the herd while the slower or less alert antelope take longer to respond, and are left hanging at the back or on the periphery of the herd.

Are you willing to accept the short term pain of running a little further to reach the long term pleasure of safety and another meal, another day, another race?

As to not run on too long, I’ll summarize a couple of points that I plan to expand on later.
1. Listen to your body. Listen to your instincts. Be aware of what is going on around you. Typically we “know” when something feels off, or we are in trouble or conversely when we are on the right track.
2. Once you recognize something in the environment, trust it. We were given “spidey senses” as a gift to protect us and give us the advantage; they are drawing on thousands of years of experience and evolution. Don’t let the world convince you to let them go to sleep.
3. When you find yourself in a race (and if you don’t already know, you are in the race every day) be ready to be in the leading edge. If you are not aware or in touch with your life, you are the trailing edge and you’ll become the low hanging fruit for the lions.
4. Metaphorically speaking, sometime its flight and other times it fight. Are you prepared to be at your best when you have to be?
5. There are always “lions” lurking. (People or situations that are looking to take something from you or affect you in negative way.) Sometimes we put ourselves in harm’s way and usually because we have wandered off the path towards our goals or we have placed our trust in the wrong people’s hands and allowed them to steer us off course and away from our goals.
6. Set Goals. The antelope that had the clearest awareness of it’s surroundings, had the highest chance of survival and in this case were the most likely to achieve their goal. The universe or the angels or anyone else for that matter, cannot help you get where you are going if you don’t have a destination in mind for yourself.

Thanks, more to come. Please comment and pass this blog along to others that you think will enjoy it.

JM

So here is the latest video demonstrating how much improvement I / we have made and in large part due to the tremendous support that we have received. Apparently what I have been utilizing is called Quantum Healing and involves the thousands of hands of those people who have sent their support, lifting me and supporting me to lighten the load of learning to walk again. Just look what 7 days can do in a persons life. If I can do this, just think of what you can do or accomplish in your own life in 7 days if you set your mind to it.

Here is the week before so you can see the difference a week can make in your life. Believe it!!!

Update on progress, hold the deep thoughts......

Sunday, October 10th, 2009


So I haven’t stopped thinking about the “deep” stuff but I thought I’d give a nice simple update outlining how much improvement I have made over the past couple of days.


(I’ll write this at the top of the page in case you don’t make it all the way to the bottom….
Please send me your current phone numbers, email and mailing addresses as I am going to spend some time updating my contacts this week. jimm@stx.com. Thanks)


Friday

1. Started the day with a trip home!!! To check things out and see if any changes to layout etc need to be made to accommodate me in the house.
1. Really exciting and wonderful to walk through my own front door but really hard to have Wyatt say “ No Daddy I no want you go, No Daddy”
2. Good news is that the new apartment is perfect for my present situation
3. Can’t wait to sleep in my own bed, with Jenny and start getting better sleep
2. Worked a lot on balance and was able to balance myself on a BOSU ball alone, started very shaky but with a lot of concentration was able to quiet the muscles
3. Walked for 5 minutes on the treadmill at 1.6 mph trying to improve cadence
4. Did some “squats” down to almost 45 degrees with no support
5. Walked to therapy without a cane (75 feet) and then kicked a soccer ball back to my room at the end of the day with no cane.
6. Got my butt handed to me in the card game UNO by one of the other patients
7. Nerve and Muscle pain is like I was working out full tilt getting ready for the season
8. Woke up at 5 AM for the second day with a low level migraine headache that we couldn’t beat with meds, blood pressure as high as 170 over 108 (needs work)

Saturday

1. Back on the treadmill, this time for 6 minutes, and got going as fast as 2.0 mph
2. Woke up again with Migraine, third day in a row, going to try some new meds to beat it
3. Body is very sore again, low back, neck and all stops in between.
1. Spent a lot of therapy time on trying to fix back and neck
2. Hips and “girdle” seem to fall out of whack and can’t stay in tune all of the muscles learning to operate together again
3. Who thought walking was so hard on the old body?!
4. Missing the UNC vs. Brown Game today which is sad but soon, would have been too much commotion likely
5. In the afternoon we did almost a full lap around the building, about 200 meters
1. Walking speed is almost normal for short bursts in the hallway
2. Still need to get endurance up but they say it will come back quickly now
3. Graduated to no cane!!!! And was given permission to operate in my hospital room with no supervision. Like a 13 year old!!! Woo Hoooo
4. Earned the freedom to walk around the floor with no nurse or therapist as long as Jennifer or my Mom are here
6. BP topped out at 186 over 112 at one point today – good bye salty and fried foods. Time to apply the “short term pain (sacrifice) = long term pleasure (health)” theory on the food front ( starting first thing tomorrow, lol)
7. 
   Coming up...
   
8. Sunday is a day of rest around here, but I’m not resting, try to walk as much as I can with Jennifer and My Mom, rip some push-ups and do some ab work
1. Will try to get some video of walking to update Facebook and the kids back home
9. I have my tentative DD (discharge date) for October 15th – This Thursday!!!!!
1. Maybe even earlier with all of the gains of the past couple days
10. Trip to one of my favorite places, the grocery store, on Monday learn how to function in that environment and get groceries to cook a meal.
11. Tuesday I get to cook a meal for the staff. Is it conceited to say that I miss my own cooking? Have to decide what to make?
12. Wednesday will be spent getting ready to move home Thursday.
13. They are convinced they get me into a very light jog for 10 – 20 yards by Thursday!
14. Drop five LBS through diet control and increased energy spend.
15. DID I MENTION MOVE HOME ON THURSDAY!!!!! WOOOOHOOOO

Thanks you so much to everyone for the continued support and for the cards and gifts that we have received. Very special thanks to Ryan, Kristin, Sahr and Kelly (my therapists) they have been so incredible.


Love you all,
Jim

Pleasure and Pain and Thank you Jennifer

Thursday October 8th, 2009
Day 20 Mission Oaks Rehabilitation Center, Los Gatos, CA

Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Pleasure and Pain

Drawing on the eternal but undeniably true cliché of Good vs. Evil, I find myself seeing the importance of opposing forces in my every day lately.

In my rehabilitation I find the truth in the basic human instinct to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Each day I recognize short term hardships and work to overcome them and see them as temporary in a larger effort to find pleasure. Finding pleasure in the freedom of walking on my own again? Pleasure in the ability to be ability to hold our soon to be newborn and not worry that I might fall with her in my arms. In the recognition that these things would be considered pleasurable I cannot avoid the understanding of how painful it could be to not have them. I picture a graph with two opposing wave lengths where the more pleasurable something is, conversely there should be an absence of pain at the same point. The more pleasure the greater also is the absence of pain, or so it should be at least. And so, because, I place a high value on these pleasures I can’t help but work towards them. If I contemplate them and can visualize the pleasure that they would create for me, I will gravitate towards them. If I were to get caught up in the short term pain of my current hardship or in the daily regime of my therapy and the pain that it causes my muscles and nerves, or in the discomfort of being away from my family, my natural tendency would be to avoid doing those things that cause me discomfort. So it is imperative to have goals that represent a greater net positive than the sum of all the pain that has to be endured to get there.

What a lesson!? Its applications are everywhere, all of the time and in everything. All of the time we lose perspective, we get focused on the unimportant; we place incorrect or illogical value on things. We lose our focus. My three weeks in hospital have given me back focus. I need to reevaluate what I was shooting for in life, what I have to offer, how lucky I am, and then refocus on some short, medium and long term goals that may represent short term discomfort but will undoubtedly lead me and my family and friends toward a greater good. Good decisions, made with good and cognizant intention.

As we go along, I realize that we are victim to the paradigms and patterns that we create in our lives. As we get older we have that feeling that time is flying by. It’s actually not going any faster we are just not stopping to see each second or minute because we model so many days to follow the pattern of previous or upcoming days. We get into a rhythm, good and bad. It’s like when you snap out of a daydream while driving and think to yourself, how long have I been driving and not paying attention? We need to decide to make good decisions and to own each minute in the day. We also need to value those minutes and make sure we aren’t just giving them away.

It really is all about good decision making. Learning to trust the little voice in your head that tells you if you are right or wrong. Net pleasure vs net pain. Each Good decision that we make is compounded by also representing the benefit of not having made a bad decision, not having had to endure the pain that a worse decision might have caused as a result. So the benefit of the good, plus the absence of the potential bad. Or when we make a bad decision we not only suffer the consequences of the poor decision we also miss out on how me might have benefited from the good decision. Double Whammy!

OK so I’m starting to run on and this will take some more time to think about and find applications for and to hone, but let me finish by saying one thing. We don’t get to chose the family we are born to, so I am just lucky to have been born into mine. They have been incredible. We do get to choose our mate and so I am giving myself a high five because my choice has been validated throughout this turmoil as Jennifer has been all any husband could ever want from their spouse in a time of need. I love you, you are the best decision I ever made and the best bad decision that I didn’t make, ever.

JM

Update on Where I am at as of Oct 6th, 2009

Hi All,

Today is Day 18 since being admitted to the hospital with Guillain Barre Syndrome. It has been a bumpy road but we seem to be on the comeback side of it. Slow and focused is the pace. I am still living at the Mission Oaks Rehabilitation hospital. The people have been great, the facility and the treatment is outstanding and the food sucks! Oh and the bed is pretty brutal too but they give me sleeping meds so I don’t notice to badly until the mornings.

In the past few days….
• I have walked on my own with a lot of help and no cane for about 10 yards
• Walked with a cane but on my own otherwise for about 25 yards at a time – 2 x a day but I am exhausted by the end of it to the point where I have to return to bed for a bit
• Walked up 3 pretend stairs with the use of two railings
• Learned how to sit and stand
• Stood on my own for as long as 5 minutes while holding something to support my weight
• Psychologically struggling with commotion and having some increased anxiety but it seems to be in line with the level of stress that this type of event should cause. Otherwise very positive and thankful.
• Suffering from “sea sickness” after expending energy or physically exerting myself

Coming up on the horizon…..
• We have a tentative Discharge date of October 15th, 2009
o We are hopeful that I will be able to operate semi self sufficiently meaning do most in home functions mostly on my home or with some assistance by
o Still we need a cane for some functions in the house and at minimum when operating outside of the home
o Will need a wheelchair to do any activity outside of the home that requires more than 30 minutes of standing or 1000 feet of walking – that should likely last for about 4-6 weeks from the discharge date
• Planning a trip to the Grocery store to understand how difficult regular daily activities really are but also to get some groceries to practice preparing a meal – you know me!
• Hopefully getting out of here on Thursday night for my first reward of going to a sharks game – the home opener
• Hopeful to Confident that I will still regain all functions to 100%
• Confident that I will regain at least 90% of the “normal” abilities of someone my age
• Confident that I can return to athletics at some level
• Limited expectation about high level performance although it is still very much a possibility we are trying to focus on more tangible short term goals

As for how we are doing as a family, we couldn’t be better! Hah LOL!!! I mean to say we are as good or better than you could expect for having to go through this. Jennifer has been a rock star. My parents and Sister and Doug and Sally all went above and beyond and have been incredible. The family and friend support has been awesome and we use it for buoyancy all of the time to help us keep above water.

We are extremely thankful for a long list of things that I won’t bore you with, but know that you if you are reading this, you just made the list! We are so very thankful and aware that this will only make us stronger and that there are positives that we can see already and many more lessons to come as we continue on.

Thanks so much for the continued support,
Jim, Jenny, Wyatt, Jackson and soon to be Olivia James Moss