Ned Henry January 8, 2021 · (Nedhenry.medium.com)

Its’ 6:25 AM and I have been up all night again. I have only gotten 3 hours of sleep in a week. I just can’t sleep. I am exhausted, spent. I was up late last night as usual and got a text from the “Puzzle Club.” A couple of neices who started it this year to solve puzzles on a tear off calendar each day together. Rosie sent me the calendar for Christmas. Like a word of the day calendar. Evidently there was some error with today’s puzzle. So the three of us were texting — Rosie, Cynthia and me.

Here’s the exchange.

NOT TO ALARM ANYONE, BUT THERE IS AN ERROR ON TOMORROW’S PUZZLE. I am very disappointed in this unprecedented and grievous mistake.

LOL

WHAT is the world coming to?

Terrorists overthrowing the government, Kanye + Kim divorcing, and now Mensa!!

I haven’t gotten to the puzzles yet – it’s been real busy week on the medical front. But the news is good and your moms have all the information from today’s meeting with the oncologist. So I’m doing great. Just very busy. But I WILL get the puzzles soon. Maybe not daily bot soon.

Clearly in ranked order of magnitude

I saw the email! So glad to hear it ❤️

Just don’t hold your breath for January 8th when you get to it

I’m glad to hear it’s good news! You’re in our prayers all the time, for what it’s worth.

I’m not watching any news these days. I just don’t want the distraction from fighting cancer. So ..I’m in the dark. I did hear about the Georgia elections and my candidates won. Adn i did hear that the Capital was under siege but I don’t know any details and don

don’t want to. I can’t DO anything about it anyway.

It’s worth a LOT Cynthia.

That’s probably for the best, honestly. Staying plugged out is a mental health choice.

I’m gonna try to sleep. Sleep has been hard to come by. I love you both. Is that how big this club is – just 3????

Nighty night. It’s 12:30 AM here.

Yep, I think just is for now. Love you too, sleep well!

Shhhh “just”.
It’s called E X C L U S I V I T Y.

Love you-night!!

So I tried to sleep. My feet are cold. had translated that yesterday into Omnipotent Power Flows Through my Being for All Eternity. It was a good translation.

Couldn’t sleep. Oh no my feet are cold again. Go to bed. Get up and get a heating pad. The oncologist had told me tto use Benedryl instead of Ambien and to use an electric blanket for my feet. I took 50 mg of Benedryl as she prescribed. I don’t have an electric blanket. Sue had sent me some info about getting a mattress pad that plugs in and provides heat from underneath the bottom sheet. I didn’t have time yesterday to do research and purchase of what I was going to get on Amazon but I had done a good translation and my feet were not cold at that time. As the night wore on and I just lay there with increasing freezing feet — they felt like frost bite had set in —I decided to get up and go grab some blankets and sit in a recliner and see if I could warm up. I take another 25 mg of benedryl. I cranked the heat from 72 to 78. Nothing changed. I sat there and started crying. I sobbed and sobbed. I was so sleepy I could not bear it and I couldn’t go to sleep. I started practicing the course in miracles lesson from today (well — yesterday) I see only the past. In my mind, I tried to remember all the lesson so far and ruminate on them. These are hard to memorize. But I did my best. Over and over, nothing in this room matters. It should be “means anything” I do not understand what I see in this room — These thougths do not mean anything. I am upset because I see somthing that is not there. Each day’s lesson is a different mantra. Now in the book and in the course I am taking it says do not do these exercises more than 2 or 3 times a day. Well I need a miracle so I am practicing all day long. I did too much to fast. I should take a minute and tell you specifically that all these early lessons so far and I don’t where the rest of the course will go since I’m not there yet — are designed to sabotage the ego. The ego is what gets in our way to creating miracles. We THINK WE are doing something. Well that’s not it at all. WE aren’t doing anything. The ego needs to get out of the way. So I’m in this recliner sobbing my eyes out and my counselor on a crisis call this week had told me to try to label what I was feeling and just feel it. Be open top it. On the call earlier in the week it was Fear. Tonight it was utter despair. I wailed and wailed in the middle of the night in more pain. I became saturated with despair. I gave up. I gave up everything and I started to tell myself You are Nothing. Nothing Nothing Nothing. YOU can’t DO anyhting. I try to just let the feeling happen. My feet felt colder and colder. What the fuck is going on. I am completely exhausted my feet are freezing and I have no clue what to do and I realize that there is NOTHING I can do except to accept the reality I am living, let myself feel and then release. I do my work. I feel the pain the hopelessness. I try to find a memory that I can associate with the feeling but none come. I give up. I just tell myself that if this is my transition to just let it come. To accept it. To go with the flow. I am balling and balling as I do this. I don’t know what to do next. I get up try going back to bed but the sheets are cold as ice. I lay there and cry some more and get up and stumble around. I’m carrying my little weeping buddha. I think well maybe I need to sleep on my feet so the blood flow will go down toward my feet. I try to sleep standing up. Nothing works. I am dying. I try a different chair. Grab the blankets and try to wrap them around my feet. I call out to my mother to tuck me in — I appreciate that feeling of someone tucking you in. My mother didn’t really have time to tuck each of us in every night. And I’ve always thought that was no big deal anyway. But I ask her to come help me tuck myself in. I am in despair and don’t know what to do. The new label I that came to me was abandonment. I fell abandoned – totally and completely abandoned as I lay there sobbing. It’s about 5:30 or so by now. I call my counselor in LA. I get voice mail and leave a message that that I don’t think he can help me as I work through this but that I just needed someone to be with me. Message left. He might call back. I’m sure he’s alseep. There is no blame here. I am OK but I just want to have a presence with me. I reach out to Bob and Jane. Not much comes back. I scan in my mind through all the dead people I have spoken about on this blog. Nobody comes through. I am abandoned and experiencing what that feels like. I think about all the refugees in this world who feel this way every single night of their lives in those refugee camps. They are freezing and hungry and abandoned and hopeless night after night after night. I remember how lucky I am to have a house with a heater and food in the refrigerator. I try to turn the heat up from 78 to 80 and the app on my phone won’t let me go higher than 78. The air is dry and I can’t breath but my feet are still freezing. I am totally lost at this point. Utterly abandoned. I realize that Marianne meant it when she read do not do these exercises more than 2 or 3 times today. I decide that nothing else has worked so far so I will get up and start writing. And here we are. It’s 7 AM. I’m still tired. I’ll get on with my day. I have a Dr. appointment with lymphoma dermatologist at 1:30 this afternoon. I also decided that I would not look at today’s lesson in course of miracles and just slow down in this process of sabatoging my ego. I will continue it but with more care when I do and find reflections that are supportive as well as these that are undermining the ego. It’s a new day and I made it through the night. I’ll try to sleep again tonight but I will tell the doctor about this and see if she can give me something strong to knock me out tonight. I NEED to CRASH FOR 12 or 14 hours straight. I am asleep on my feet. Energized with the work I am doing on cancer but also very tired.

It’s 8:30 now. I put every blanket I own on the bed. I realized the comforter I have on the top of the one blanket I have on the bed has become disheveled and all the down in the comforter has thinned out as the down slipped further and further away from the center of the spreadspread. I think I have it figured out. I’ll put all the blankets under the comforter and see if can take a nap. Doesn’t work My left foot is numb with cold. I sleep on my side with a pillow between my legs. I’m on my left side so the bottom foot is freezing. So I get another pillow and put it underneath my left foot and put another one between my legs and try again. It’s even worse. There is no blood flow to my bottom foot the left one. It continues to be numb. And there is no sleeping. I sleep with that weeping buddha. It is a buddha you hold in your hands rather than put on a shrine. I have the buddha that Liz lent me sitting on this desk as I type so I reflect on that all day long. But I hold the weeping buddha when I’m sitting down someplace or relaxing and listening to music. And I sleep with it. Hold it in my hands as I try to drift off. I know you guys think I’m nuts. Oh well. So I get up realizing that my cancer is a BLOOD cancer. I’m being treated by the hematology dept at Winship. Oh, Light bulbs go off. It is blood flow that is not getting to my foot. Translation works this way — you finish one and it takes you right to the next one. So I’ll work on circulation next. I did refine that conclusion I came to when I translated My feet are cold. This will be my mantra today instead of the one from the course. Power flows through my being all the time. I need a new comforter. A good one that will keep the down in place. I’m exhausted. It’s 9 AM.

You don’t walk this path if you want someone else (Like God)to do the work for you and make it all better. You have to take responsibility for your own awareness. And ALL of it is just awareness. That is the only place my feet exist is in my consciousness. I am AWARE that my feet are cold. Much more work to do on this subject so I can finally get some sleep. It’s been since chemo and I still can’t sleep.

So if I (ego) can’t do anything how do I let God do something. If I think God is outside of me fixing my life, while comforting, is just not the truth to me. I am responsible. So how do I find the God INSIDE me that is not just my ego! That’s who I need to reach. That is my struggle.

11:25 Jack thinks I am having a bad reaction to the chemo. Carey had both of these symptoms in her chemo. Not being able to sleep and being very cold. I called the emergency number — no answer. I sent 2 portal messages and asked for help. The nurse called me back when I was talking to Jack on the phone. I described my symptoms and she put them in a report. Dr. Tarabadkar cannot help me with sleep issues or chemo reactions but the nurse does think I should keep the appt and have her look at the 3 areas of concern that are dermatology related. The cancer in my mouth, the open sore on my leg and the new rash on my back. Friday is clinic day for Dr. Allen. The rest of my chemo will be on Fridays. Now I wait to hear back from them. I had not considered this to be a chemo reaction until Jack pointed that out. I thought I was just fucking myself up with all this far far far out there spitiual work that I have been doing full time. I’m going to just sit and breathe. If Emory calls I’ll answer. And I will keep the 1:30 appt. It will be a humongous effort to drag myself down there but I will do it.

I’m doing the best i can. And this is the only way I know how to process all of it. This blog.

Noonish — no call back yet. Praying to a God out there to come and make me better has never worked for me. I know it does for many of you and that’s your way. It is not my way. The Prosperos techniques have worked for me in the past. If I’m honest I can say there are probably a couple of times when they saved my life. So in this crisis I went back to what has worked in the past. I’m trying. I really don’t know if it’s working or not. All I can do is try to let it by doing my own work. And the course in miracles is something new for me. I’ve had the books for years but never cracked them. So I’m taking this course that came up in my inbox in December where for $50 you get a video reading from the book and a short lesson. About 6 minutes long video every morning. There are 365 lessons in the course. One for each day. I’m at lesson 7. Lesson 8 came today and I have not listened to it yet. So that’s what I am doing. It’s pretty fucking far out there — I know that — but I don’t know what else to do. Oh and meditation. I read 2 days ago in the Path is the goal that in Sanskrit there is no such word as meditate. It not a verb. You do not go meditate. That concept does not exist. Meditation is a noun and that’s all it is. So you don’t meditate – you get yourself in a state of meditation. That’s is huge difference. It is more BEING in a state of mediation than DOING anything. Shit. I feel so fucked up. I am so tired. I’m confused. and I’m afraid. I just need sleep.

COLD FEET — There’s no dictionary definition in my dictionary which is a good one for it under Feet. Let me look under cold.

AH — Cold Feet — Informal) Lack of confidence; Timidity: Fright;

Example of use: “I’ve got some new clothes now…I bought em off a tenderfoot with cold feet.” (Rex Beach) I don’t know that author.

The work goes on and on and on and on. Life was so simple when all I cared about was Fantasy football and the latest episode of Bull and keeping up with the News. You could just skate through it. Cancer has changed all that now. It is a cruel fucking disease. It is forcing me to figure out my life. And I risk losing so many friendships by taking the path I’m on. I’ve always been lonely. My whole life. Maybe it’s time to talk about my girlfriends. I’ll see when I get back from the doctor.

My Cancer Journey 1/8 — #2

OK I am back home from Winship. All good with dermatology. Oncology prescribed some stong sleeping pills. A buddy is picking them up. As soon as I get them I am going to take 1 and crash as long as I can. All good.

At’s almost 2 AM and I have sleeping snce 3 or so. Did get up for a couple of hours, ate, watched PBS Newshour which gave both details and perspective on the events of the week thst consumed you all. I’m not ready to stop sleeping but I’m taking a break from it listening to Brahms. I took another sleeping pill so it will kick in sometime soon and I’ll crash for the rest of the night. So for Peg — it’s OK 1 at 3 PM and 1 at 2 AM is OK. I’m not gonna OD.

The oncologist on Thursday told me this was a marathon not a sprint. I started to write about that yesterday — about being more comfortable with distance running than all out sprints. When you sprint, you get winded. And I got winded last night. I had nothing left. I was spent. When you run a distance you run with pace — I would take breaks -go smell the flowers so to speak. I think I have to learn to do that in this batttle as well. I can’t afford to blow my wad and not get the results I want and have nothing left to keep fighting. So I am going to keep writing, keep listening to beautiful music like this, let John and other friends help me discover more classical music, watch a movie now and then and try to be less obsessive about mantras and translations and all that stuff. Just take a break now and again. I need to relax and breathe as Bob would and did say. This pill is kicking in. I’m gonna turn the Brahms down real low and go back to bed.