The Last Stop on the Chronic Journey

KOA Kampin Kabin in Saulte Ste Marie, Ontario where we spent the night
before this part of the adventure

Entering Bear Country

We now begin the last segment of this narrative which involves a double narrative - actually a triple narrative if you include the photographs: the narrative of our travels along with the narrative of the increasing chronic affects/symptoms.

I find it fascinating that this last segment is in bear country as I've always identified myself as a bear such as calling myself mama bear when my children were young and inneundos about the "den" such as not being the youngest bear in the den, etc.

Killbear Provincial Park

However, here we're talking about real life, flesh and blood, growling bears.  Right in our campground.  But fortunately not in our campsite - that we know of.

We're well familiar with the practices involved in clean camping as we did canoe camping prior to this adventure.  Everything that has any smell to it, not just food but deodorant, soap, etc., goes in the locked car or up a tree if you're in the back country with no access to your car.  All coolers, stoves, etc. are also locked in the car.

We'd camped at Killbear Provincial Park years ago when our children were still young.  We saw a bear cub scampering around which was removed.  We never saw a bear that time.

However, this time was different.  Things had changed in the intervening years since that camping trip in the 90s and this one in 2011.

Bear Spray
We've never had to use it so don't
know if it works

As I mentioned, we never saw a bear ourselves this time but nightly we heard the air horns go off meant to scare the bear away.  We talked to people who had been involved in bear encounters in the park.  One man told us that the bear was at the back of his truck ignoring him completely and trying to pry the cover on the bed of the truck loose to get at the goodies underneath it.  Here we were camping in a small tent which a bear could easily rip apart.  There was nothing solid between us and the wildlife. 

Our Camp Site At
Killbear Provincial Park

Scary.

I did what I always do in such situations: i did everything I knew to do and then asked God to take care of the rest.  It's worked in the past; it worked in this instance as well.

We slept and awoke safely in the morning.  There was a camper on the site next to us so they had solid walls between them and any wildlife.  The woman told me in the morning that she'd wondered how we were doing in our little tent.  I told her about doing what I knew to do and then asking God to do the rest.  But she didn't understand what I was saying.

Waiting for the Sunset

You can probably sense a theme in my ramblings about this trip in that we were largely revisiting places we'd been before.  Places that provided at least a semblance of a comfort zone.  Being in our small canoe camping tent rather than our larger one as it created a sense of comfort and safety.  During that time, small became better than large.  Isolated better than crowded.  Nature better than cities.

Tandem Kyack

I could tolerate people in small doses and large distances.  For example, in the next campsite or further along the beach.  But close up and personal, such as in the washroom ... NOOOOOOO.  Hypervigilence, anxiety, fear.  They all came crowding in.  At that point, as these were still in their infancy in my chronic experience, I didn't have the coping skills I've developed since.

Kyacking Georgian Bay

As long as hubby was with me, I was more or less OK.  However, hubbies aren't allowed in the women's wash room.  That I had to figure out how to handle on my own.

Fatigue was also getting increasingly worrisome.  I went to sleep early.  Very early.  And woke up as tired as if I hadn't slept at all.  I often had to lay down mid down unable to move.

Interesting Rock Formation

Yet, contrasting the physical affects was the incredibly rugged yet peaceful scenery we were surrounded by.

Hubby had been wanting to try a tandem kyack, so we did.  It was a beautifully calm day, the day we rented it.  But the weather changed drastically over night and the wind came up.  So the day we took it out at Snug Harbour, the weather and the water were anything but calm.

Sunset

But we went out anyway.  I loved it!  In a kyack, you're down low close to the water and your lower half is enclosed.  The kyack rolled with the waves.  I found it exhilarating.  Like being in a down low, roller coaster with no fear of running off the tracks.

Hubby found it too enclosing for his longer legs.

But what an experience!

Even though that was probably the last of my limited energy for a while to come, I have that memory and those pictures to look back on.  To enjoy.  To remember that even in the bad times, there is something good, something enjoyable.

We left and went to nearby Parry Sound, again another "comfort zone" for me and checked into a motel we'd been to several times before.  By that time, I was so fatigued that I had to rest for several hours lying prostrate and unmoving on the bed before I could even contemplate going out for a meal.

My best purchase ever: a rope hammock so that I could lie down outside rather than in the tent when I couldn't do anything else.

The rugged landscape of that area

Our tent site which while not frequented by a bear during our time there, was visited by deer.

Ready to capture the sunset.  Each day was different.  A final farewell to our adventure.

While this post is the ending of that particular trip, that short segment of my life where the chronic symptoms began, it is not an ending, but rather a beginning.

A beginning of the real journey post workplace abuse towards recovery both physical and psychological.

I hope you will continue with me on the journey.

Surviving Workplace Abuse: Stuck in the chronic

If I'm not mistaken, my 11 year old granddaughter took this picture a couple of weeks ago.  It shows the me people don't always see.  The me excited by my creations.  The me who is finally re-emerging after a long desert of very dry places following my latest experience with workplace abuse.

*******

Last week I wrote about an unlikely friendship, one that has developed over a period of months based on our common bond of being marginalized:  me by trauma; my friend by schizophrenia.

I've been thinking a lot about friends, friendships and how they form.

What makes them last.  What makes them fade away.

Like workplace bullying, I think that friendship is complicated.  There's no one pat answer.  No one size fits all.   Except that you meet a person and they seem to click with you from the start. Then you work on it - one conversation, one shared experience, one laugh at a time.  For a very long time.

Friendships don't just happen.  They're something you work at over a period of time.  They grow (at least the good, lasting ones do) as you grow.  They survive adversity.  They survive chronic autoimmune diseases.  They survive cancer.  They survive trauma.

In short, they survive.

As I've gone through my journey re: workplace abuse, trauma and the long road to recovery, I've noticed that the greatest disadvantage or problem I face in my journey back is the lack of understanding among "regular" people.  At first, they listen and then they shut down and start to offer advice.  They want to fix the problem.  And when it can't be fixed, they walk away.

Why?

Because they simply don't understand what it's like to have something that doesn't go away whether it be an autoimmune disease, trauma, depression ... whatever.

People are usually there - at least temporarily - for what I call the acute phase.  The critical part.  The life or death part.  But I've learned that after the acute comes the chronic.

For example, I learned a few years ago about a little girl who had been born with unexplained bone marrow failure.  At 14 months, she had a bone marrow transplant.  For months, her life hung in the balance as she had fevers, etc.  She was rushed to hospital by helicopter several times and she and her family became very well acquainted with that unit in the hospital.

Many people followed her ups and down via postings on the Caring Bridge website.  We could understand the acute, the critical phase.  But can we understand the present?  The chronic?  She is now five; alive, but not completely well.  The transplant only took partially and there are long-term implications.

I also learned earlier this year about a mother who was going shopping with her two young children when she was broad-sided at an intersection by a driver who failed to stop at a stop sign.  The youngest, ironically a girl, 14 months as well, was critically injured and sustained traumatic brain injury.  Again, myself and many people have followed this story, this time via Facebook, as it unfolds.  The child lived and is home now.  BUT ... again as with the first example, there are long-term implications.  An unending round of various therapies, blood work, eeg's,   The mother lost her job because she has to constantly work with her little girl to help her regain the functioning she lost in the accident.  Recently, she posted an explanation about why she's not working because apparently people are coming to her and giving her a hard time.  The idea being:  "your child is well now, why aren't you able to just get up and move on?"  They're confusing life-threatening with being completely well.  They're forgetting there's a middle ground.  A very long middle ground.  The chronic phase in which this little girl is relearning how to do everything including eat, make sounds and eventually form words.  All the things the accident took away from her.

For me, I've discovered through this journey that the people I bond with the most are people who have something sort of in common with me.  These are the one who have autoimmune diseases - of which there is a whole grocery list from TTP, to Adult Onset Stills, to fibromyalgia, lupus, etc. and or other "invisible" diseases such as heart disease, depression, trauma, etc.

These are the people who understand.  Intimately.  Because they're stuck in the chronic themselves.

Each one has a common thread.  We're all stuck in something we can't get out of.  For people who develop most of these diseases, it's a life time sentence.  For some, such as TTP, there is the possibility of remission but even then there are many affects such as constant migraines that continue to plague the person forever.

As I walk through the valley of trauma and work through towards recovery - whatever it may look like, I've discovered that I have the most in common and receive the most understanding from those who are going through a journey with diseases, circumstances such as those noted above.

Why?

Because they've been there, done that, and they don't like the fit of the t-shirt they're forced to wear due to their chronic disease.

In short, because most of us look like the picture of health, there is no way the uninformed observer can know the challenges we face on a daily basis.  And so "they" tend to judge us ....  Just like people have been judging this mom whose child sustained traumatic brain injury in the accident.  There's no way a person looking at the picture at the start of this post can realize that I'm going through a lot of junk, have been for a very long time.

They. Just. Don't. Get. It.

They confuse the acute with the chronic.  Acute is one thing.  Chronic is another.

Acute people seem to be able to understand.  Chronic, they don't.

Until tomorrow....