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Update on Dad

Thanks to everyone who left prayers for Dad on my Facebook page yesterday, and thanks to my sister-in-law Robin for dropping everything to watch the kids so Erin and I could go to the hospital last night.

Mood music:

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Dad had emergency surgery last night for a malfunctioning heart. In the end, it turned out the heart was pumping fine, but that the blood has nowhere to go. All but one artery is blocked, as it was explained to me. There’s not much they can do about that because of his overall health right now, so once he’s up and about the doctors will manage it as best they can with medication.

Dad’s a stubborn one, and I can see how it’s rubbed off on me over the years. He’ll overdo an activity when his doctors tell him to take it easy. He’ll eat things he knows he shouldn’t eat. He’ll get schemes in his head and won’t listen to anyone once he sets his mind on something. Like father, like son.

When you’ve had two or more strokes like he has, that behavior is all the riskier.

As infuriating as it can be, I have to give the man credit: He’s not willing to let physical disabilities keep him down. He keeps pushing, and that’s admirable.

With everyone’s continued prayers and good vibes, I think he’ll be back on his feet before long.

Heart Pinata

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A Bittersweet Birthday

I felt very loved yesterday as we celebrated my 42nd birthday. Erin and the kids got me a guitar and practice amp, and we had an afternoon of grilling and enjoying the sun with some of my closest friends. My father was there too, but he wasn’t looking well.

Mood music:

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Dad sat on the deck with his eyes mostly closed and kept dropping his water glass. When I was helping him out of his seat, he almost fell back. This morning my sister and stepmom called to tell me he’s now in the cardiac care unit of a hospital in Boston, with lungs filled with fluid and a heart with beat way out of tune from where it should be.

This is life in one’s 40s. You’re still young enough to lap up all the life around you, but you also have to watch your parents turn into the constantly sick people your grandparents were.

That’s not the universal way of things, obviously. But when I talk to other friends who are now in their 40s, you hear a lot of the same stories.

I don’t see it as something to be pitied for. It’s a part of life. My father hasn’t always taken taken care of himself, and he had a couple vicious strokes last year, which means life is spinning a little faster and more erratically these days.

I think Dad will come out of this all right, and frankly I think this is better than if he’d had a stroke. Dad has worked hard to regain his ability to walk, see and swallow, and he has made significant progress. Another stroke could have wiped out all that work.

I think he’s simply been pushing himself too hard. He doesn’t like sitting around at home all the time — a trait I inherited — so he’s been pushing himself into projects that require more energy than he has many days.

It sucked seeing him that way. But I’m glad he was here for my birthday. He got to see his grandkids and get a break from the monotony of therapy and limited movement. As shitty as he felt, I think that was good for his soul.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes yesterday. It was a real ego boost, which we all need from time to time.

As sad as it made me to see my father hurting, it was a very good day.

Please say a little prayer for the man.

Dad and Duncan

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Empire State Shootings Bring Back Old Fears, Timeless Lessons

The shooting spree outside the Empire State Building this morning reminds me of the mind-numbing fear I used to carry inside me every day — the feelings of dread that kept me indoors, away from the life I should have been living. It also reminds me of some critical lessons I’ve learned from my experiences.

Mood music:

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As CNN reported news that Jeffrey Johnson, 58, had opened fire on a former co-worker and police outside the NYC landmark, I remembered:

The latter is what apparently happened today. According to reports, Johnson was apparently fired from his job as a designer of women’s accessories at Hazan Imports last year, and the 41-year-old man he shot to death may have been his former boss. Several people were injured in the crossfire before police shot Johnson dead.

Big crowds used to scare me senseless. I’d worry that if some crazy bastard came around the corner with a knife or a shotgun, I’d be trapped in the human traffic jam. I’d really freak out if I got lost in the crowd with no clue as to where I was or how to get back to familiar roads and neighborhoods. These feelings intensified after 9/11.

I also used to carry around a lot of bottled-up rage, especially over work situations. In one job I was trapped under a micro-managing viper who would blame you for everything that went wrong and take all the credit for things that went right. I can’t say I ever daydreamed about killing the man. I’ve always been either too law-abiding or too chicken for that. But I definitely dreamed up scenarios where I got to administer the beating I felt he so richly deserved.

Fortunately, I outgrew those emotions. Therapy and medication helped, but my deepening faith in God was the real game changer. I choose to worry less about other people’s motives and attitudes and focus on keeping my own in check instead.

I think the bad wiring that sent Johnson on the warpath is in all of us. It lies dormant until traumatic experiences, like getting fired, bring it to the surface and severs the rest of the brain from the part that powers our self-control.

I’m thankful that I have my own self-awareness today. I pray that you have your own awareness and that it keeps you from a tragic loss of control in the future.

Finally, I pray for those who got hurt today. Specifically, I pray this experience doesn’t send them into hiding, afraid to live their lives over the bad things that might happen.

Photo by SEAN SENATORE, New York Daily News

 

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Older But More Alive

Sunday is my 42nd birthday, which happens near a bunch of other birthdays in the family and at work. Inevitably, when discussing this, someone admits they’re depressed about being a year older.

Mood music:

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I have a different outlook, which is that when you reach another year without having dropped dead, that’s cause to celebrate.

When I was sick with the Crohn’s Disease as a kid, I lost a lot of blood and developed several side ailments. I’m told by my father that the doctors were going to remove the colon more than once. It didn’t happen. I felt close to death a few times, though I doubt it was ever that serious. Either way, here I am.

When the OCD was burning out of control, I often felt I’d die young. I was never suicidal, but I had a fatalistic view of things. I just assumed I wasn’t long for this world, and I didn’t care. I certainly did a lot to slowly help the dying process along. That’s what addicts do. We feed the addiction compulsively knowing full well what the consequences will be.

When I was a prisoner to fear and anxiety, I really didn’t want to live long. I had isolated myself. Fortunately, I never had the guts to do anything about it. And, like I said, suicide was never really an option.

I spent much of my 30s on the couch with a shattered back and escaped with the TV. I was breathing, but I was also as good as dead some of the time.

I’ve watched others go before me at a young age. Michael. Sean. Even Peter. Lose the young people in your life often enough, and you’ll start assuming you’re next.

When you live for yourself and don’t put faith in God, you’re not really living. When it’s all about you, there’s no room to let all the other life in. So the soul shrivels and hardens. I’ve been there.

I also had a strange fear of current events and was convinced at one point that the world would burn in a nuclear holocaust before I hit 30. That hasn’t happened yet.

So now I’m 42, and it’s almost comical that I’m still here.

I’m more grateful than you could imagine for the turn of events my life has taken in the last six years.

I’ve learned to stop over-thinking and to manage the OCD. When you learn to stop over-thinking, a lot of things that used to be daunting become a lot easier. You also find yourself in a lot of precious moments that were always there, but you didn’t notice them because you were sick with worry.

I notice them now, and I am blessed far beyond what I probably deserve. I have a career that I love. I have the best wife on Earth and two boys that teach me something new every day. I have many, many friends who have helped me along in more ways than they’ll ever know.

Most importantly, I have God in my life. When you put your faith in Him, there’s a lot less to be afraid of. Aging is one of the first things you stop worrying about.

These days, I fell a lot better about myself than I did a decade ago. In fact, 32 kind of sucked.

I’d be in denial if I told you everything was perfect. I wouldn’t tell you that anyway, because I’ve always thought that perfection was a bullshit concept. That makes it all the more ironic and comical that OCD would be the life-long thorn in my side.

In recovery, I have good days and not-so-good days when I’ve come close to relapsing. I’ve had to work harder at being a good man. All of that is OK.

I’m still very much the work in progress, just like everyone else. The scars are merely the scaffolding and newly inserted steel beams propping me up.

I don’t know what comes next, but I have much less fear about the unknown.

And so I think will have a happy birthday.

Birthday Cake on Fire

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What I Learned On My Summer Vacation

The headline is a bit misleading. The kids had the summer off, but Erin and I were as busy with work as ever. Still, we did a lot of summery stuff and, with the kids back in school next week, I thought a recap of our experiences and what I learned from them might be useful.

Mood music:

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We escaped to the coast three times for camping, using one of my father-in-law’s campers. We started local, in Salisbury, Mass., then went to Old Orchard Beach in Maine twice.

Camping was a learning experience for me. I wouldn’t have done it six years ago, when everything scared me, and I’d freak out over every mosquito bite and every speck of dirt. There’s a lot of dirt on your average campground. It turned out well, though. I described the mental health lessons in “Camping? Don’t Let Fear and Anxiety Ruin It for You.”

Duncan broke his arm — again. He and Sean were horsing around on my bed and, as the saying goes, shit happened. The damage was less than his previous break, and he was out of the cast after three weeks.

The day I took Duncan to get the cast off, we were told that because of a scheduling snafu he had to come back the next day. I talked them into doing it that day anyway, but we had to go from Waltham to Boston to get it done. The route was jammed with traffic. That would have melted my brain and sent me into a fit of rage in the past, but instead I kept calm, turned up the rock ’n’ roll and got it done.

Sean went away to Boy Scouts camp for a week, which was a mind-bending experience for all of us. It was weird having only Duncan around, but we made the best of it, and Sean had a good time at camp. We could tell because of the dirt on his legs, the debris in his hair and the smell wafting from his sleeping bag. A few years ago I would have been a panicked mess, worrying about him getting injured or worse when I wasn’t with him. But thanks to years of therapy and the boost provided by a couple of antidepressants, I got through the week just fine, and got some great one-on-one time with Duncan in the process.

Erin got a few days off here and there, but her writing and editing business kept humming along. She’s got a much better handle on the work-life balance than she had in the beginning, thanks in part to a great therapist, and we’re very proud of her.

Erin and I got in some good quality time this summer, too, seeing a couple plays and getting some alone time in Newburyport, Portsmouth and Gloucester. We’ve also been religious about taking evening walks together, which has become one of my favorite parts of the day. After 14 years of marriage, we decided earlier in the year to take stock in where we were at and improve upon the things that needed improving. Like any marriage, ours is a work in progress. But, boy, do I love the work.

As for me, I had an eventful trip to Las Vegas for a hacker conference, struggled a bit with my recovery program and got a renewed hunger for making music. Despite getting badgered by my addictive impulses, I’d say it’s been a good couple of months. I made it through Vegas without binging, and have at least realized that I have to get over my rebellious feelings toward OA and get back with the program.

Life will always have its ups and downs, but if you can learn from it and change for the better, it’s well worth it.

Bill & the Boys

Erin & the Boys

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Lost in the Overeaters Anonymous Wilderness

I’ve explained how food is my addiction — an uncool addiction at that. I’ve written about how Overeaters Anonymous (OA) was my salvation from that addiction. And I’ve told you I’ve been living the 12 Steps of Recovery.

Now it’s time to tell you about my summer of going astray, and how I don’t completely regret it.

Mood music:

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I’ve kept my eating clean most of the time, though I’ve gotten sloppy in spots. I’ve eaten many meals outside the home and away from the little scale I use to weigh out my portions. I’m sure some of those meals have exceeded the limit I’m supposed to be living by. Meanwhile, all the vegetables in my diet have left my Crohn’s Disease–scarred insides irritable.

My bigger failure, though, is that I haven’t gone to an OA meeting or spoken to my sponsor in months. For all I know, he decided he was no longer my sponsor a long time ago.

This turn of events isn’t about laziness and a broken will. It’s about discontent.

A while ago, I started to get annoyed by parts of the program. I didn’t feel like I was getting much use from calling a sponsor every day at the same time. That’s probably because I wasn’t being honest about the number of meetings I was attending or what I was eating. I was eating cleanly, but not according to the exact menu I gave the sponsor each morning. That’s technically a no-no.

I got sick of the meetings because it would be the same people saying the same things, over and over.

It started to feel like a cult to me. So I rebelled.

I’ve thought about calling my sponsor and asking for another chance, but I never get around to it. Part of me doesn’t want the second chance. Sponsorship is an important tool of recovery, a guide to coach you along and get you past moments of weakness. But some sponsors seem to let their role go to their heads and demand a lot more control over your life than they should be entitled to. Or so I’ve told myself.

And OA has its fiefdoms, just like any other group. There are the newbies, the people who can’t get it together, and the gurus who seem to have figured it all out. Or so I’ve told myself.

You know how it is when you’re frustrated with something: You zero in on all the negative elements and develop memory loss when it comes to all the things that worked.

So here I am, frustrated. But I’m also making excuses not to do the things I really need to be doing for real recovery. Maybe that’s really what this post is about — coming clean about my sins and resolving to get over myself and get my program back on track.

I don’t totally regret any of this. Four years after attending my first OA meeting and trying to do the program exactly as instructed by others, I’m still in a much better place than when I was sneaking around every day binging on everything in sight. Life is good. I’ve simply reached a point where my program needs a big overhaul.

Maybe I’ll call the sponsor today.

Food Coma

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Time to Make Music Again

When asked what I want for my birthday, I usually say nothing. I don’t want people spending money on me, and I don’t want to be greedy. But this time, with my 42nd birthday only days away, I asked the family for something specific: an acoustic-electric guitar.

Mood music:

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I used to play guitar, though I was never very good at it. When I had a band and was writing music, I sang and wrote lyrics. I couldn’t really sing, mind you, but I could write lyrics, and that’s all that mattered. With the guitar, I’d stand in the middle of the basement in the old house in Revere and make noise — out of tune, no attention whatsoever to proper technique. I just made sounds that spoke to what I was feeling. I had an Ibanez strat model Sean Marley gave me one Christmas. Desperate for money to pay bills one year, I sold it. That remains one of the biggest regrets of my life.

So here I am, 20 years later, about to turn 42, and I want to play again. This time I want to learn how to play the instrument properly and write music that goes with the written words I hammer out daily.

There are several reasons the desire has returned. The biggest is that one day a few months ago, my therapist told me that no man should die with his music still inside of him. That line hit me more than anything he’s said to me in the last year, because unlike his suggestions that I quit coffee and do yoga every morning, something deep within me knew he was right on this one.

Though I stopped being in a band and singing in the mid-1990s, my passion for music has never abated. I write a lot about my love of metal music, but I like a lot of folk, too. That’s Erin’s influence for sure. On our wedding anniversary three years ago, we went to the Newport Folks Festival, and I walked away as a fan of the Avett Brothers, The Decemberists and Gillian Welch. It was one of those life-changing days.

I also approach the posts in this blog like songs. They’re meant to be timeless and stike an emotional chord. I put older posts on my Facebook and Twitter streams every day because to me it’s kind of like being a DJ. I’m playing a collection of songs repeatedly, like any good DJ does.

I also think making music would be another effective tool to fight my addictive behavior. If a guitar were lying around, there are many days where I’d pick it up instead of my laptop.

Call it a midlife crisis urge, if you will. To me, it’s just part of my never-ending push to become a better man than I am now.

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Oh, The Guilt

I’ve always been driven by guilt. I used to hide it because with guilt comes shame and with shame comes deceit. In more recent years, however, I’ve tried to use it to become a better man. Results are mixed.

 

My inability to process guilt started at an early age. Growing up Jewish, I’d get Hanukkah gelt (Yiddish for “money”) during the Festival of Lights. Not understanding Yiddish, I thought it was called Hanukkah guilt. “Why the fuck am I being handed guilt as a present?” I’d ask myself. Only in adulthood would I realize how a simple misunderstanding of language would shape my thinking.

Since then, guilt has been the gift that keeps on giving.

Guilt over not talking to my mom for six years. I have it in spades. Not because she’s blameless, but because I know that some of what’s gone wrong is my fault. And while I’ve written about things in childhood that made me unhappy, I haven’t given her credit for what she did right. But that’s a subject for another post.

Guilt over binge eating and other addictive behaviors. There’s been plenty of that over the years. After spending $30 at McDonald’s and another $20 at Dunkin’ Donuts on what used to be a typical binge on the drive home from work, I’d stuff the empty bags under the seats. Erin called them guilt bags, and she would eventually find them. (For more on that, see “The Most Uncool Addiction” and “Anatomy of a Binge.”)

Guilt over being a bad pet owner. In my early 20s, I had two pet rats. They were very loving and gentle. I went on a trip to California and forgot to ask someone to look after them. When I got back, I found them both dead. To this day I feel horrible about that. One lesson I learned from that: Don’t leave the tank you keep your pets in on the floor of your closet, because you could forget they’re in there.

Guilt over money. Guilt has also weighed me down when I’ve mishandled money (math was never one of my stronger traits) or lied to my wife over things I was ashamed of.

Guilt from letting some relationships languish over the years. In some cases, people are difficult and I need to keep my distance for self-preservation. Other times, though, I’m just too lazy to pick up the phone.

Parenthood guilt. I always try to be the parent who’s always gentle, listens carefully to my children’s every word and helps them deal with life’s big issues. I sometimes fail because I’m too tired or too lost behind a computer screen.

They say guilt is a useless emotion, that it causes you to waste all your time worrying about things you can’t control or change. That’s true to a point. But I’ve learned the value of guilt over the years as a tool to make me a better man.

For example, these days I’m trying to spend less time online and more time playing Monopoly and other games with the kids. It’s only a start, but it’s something.

Remembering food guilt has definitely kept me from further binges. And while my money-management skills still leave much to be desired, I don’t spend like I used to.

As for the stuff about my mother, another attempt at reconciling is not out of the question.

In its proper place, guilt is a good awareness tool.

Definition of guilt

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Exeter Hospital: Stop Making Excuses and Test Employees for Hepatitis C

An open letter to New Hampshire’s Exeter Hospital.

To Whom It May Concern:

You may find the outrage I’m about to unleash unfair. But the Hepatitis C scare caused by your lax security has threatened someone I love and thousands of others. I spent my childhood in and out of the hospital, getting stuck with needles weekly and sometimes daily. I had a blood transfusion in the 1970s, before blood was tested for AIDS contamination, so I know the fear many of your patients feel right now.

Mood music:

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I just read about your clash with state health officials over whether some of your employees should be tested for Hepatitis C along with thousands of your patients. The state is worried that more than one employee was involved in your outbreak because another patient contracted Hep C even though that patient had a procedure at the hospital prior to David Kwiatkowski working there.

State officials are practicing the due diligence you failed to practice when your lax procedures made it easier for Kwiatkowski to steal drugs and leave contaminated needles behind — needles that were then used on your patients. You cite your employees’ right to privacy, which is pathetic. Your first responsibility is to your patients and employees, protecting both from being infected and taking care of them if they become so.

You’re probably thinking, “Who is this jerk to criticize us? We’re the hospital that blew the whistle on Kwiatkowski when hospitals across the country had failed to contact the police after he was caught doing the same thing in their facilities.”

I do give you credit for blowing the whistle, and I agree this isn’t just about your hospital. The entire system failed to protect the public from this monster. Hopefully, this will lead to better reporting in and more cooperation between all states.

That doesn’t absolve you of all responsibility. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services found that you “failed to follow standard procedures for preventing the abuse of powerful narcotics administered by staff,” according to an Exeter Patch article. Their investigation found that drugs were not secured to prevent theft by employees who should not have had access to them, among other violations. Your president and CEO, Kevin J. Callahan, failed to apologize for this when he was busy writing a letter to the editor about how proud he was of his institution’s response to the crisis.

Now you balk at the state’s plan to test other employees because of their right to privacy? Give me a break. What about their health?

As I sit here waiting to learn if my relative has Hepatitis C or not, the last thing on my mind is the privacy of your employees. Do I think most of them are excellent at what they do and free of blame here? Absolutely.

But when there’s a danger of Hepatitis C spreading further, you have to stop complaining and roll up your sleeves.

For the sake of your patients and your employees, let state health officials do their job.

Sincerely,

Bill Brenner

Kwiatkowski Exeter Hospital Mashup

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Bill Maher: Bomb Thrower from the Left

We hear a lot about conservative pundits and how their rhetoric often crosses the lines of decency and civility. I made an example of Ann Coulter a couple days ago to illustrate the point. But there are also plenty of bomb throwers on the left who paint large segments of the population with the same big brush they use to attack individuals who may deserve it. Take Bill Maher, for example.

Maher is a comedian and political commentator. His stock-in-trade has always been to bait people with over-the-top insults. That’s what Politically Incorrect was all about. As Coulter does against liberals, Maher makes a lot of valid observations about conservative stupidity but ruins it by resorting to hate talk and rhetoric that borders on racist.

Mychal Denzel Smith, a writer, social commentator and mental health advocate, offers an example in an NPR article, “The Root: Bill Maher’s Off-Color Jokes Go Too Far“:

Lately he has come to depend on this style of joke to bring home laughs in a way that distracts from the insightful sociopolitical commentary he has to offer. Moreover, he has forgotten the first rule of comedy: Be funny. It simply wasn’t funny when Maher suggested that he wanted President Obama to act like a “real black president” in his handling of the BP oil spill last summer by flashing a gun in the face of its CEO and asking, “We got a motherf – – – ing problem here?!”

Maher is no racist. But, as I wrote in another post a few months ago, the language you use still says something about the kind of person you are.

That aside, what really burns me up about Maher these days is his attack on religion. I’ve written plenty about the crazies who attach themselves to religion and distort reality for their own gain, usually burying the truthful, illuminating aspects of faith beneath the rubble of hooey dumped on us by a minority of nuts like evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, both of whom suggested 9/11 was God’s punishment upon society for homosexuality, feminism, paganism and groups like the ACLU.

With comments like that and their constant penchant for blaming everything bad in this world on homosexuals, liberals and judges who don’t share their worldview, Robertson, Falwell and other like-minded souls are legitimate targets for someone like Maher. But it’s not enough for Maher to go after the individuals who give conservatism a bad name. He denounces all religion and everyone who believes in it. In his book, if you have faith, you’re delusional. He made a whole movie on the subject, Religulous.

As someone who practices Catholicism, I find that insulting.

I’m the first to admit there are a lot of buffoons in the Catholic Church, as evidenced by “Screw You, Cardinal Egan” and “A Rebellious Catholic’s Analysis of Rick Santorum.” But as I’ve said many times before, I believe in Jesus Christ and the Sacriments of the Catholic Church. People often lose their faith because they spend too much time getting angry with church officials and not enough time on the main point of their faith. I also reject the idea that God will send you to Hell because you’re gay, liberal or a devotee of some other religion.

Maher’s worldview is that if you have faith, you’re a racist, conservative, homophobic sheep.

I’ve heard that despite their political and religious differences, Maher and Coulter are actually good friends. Given their tactics, I’m not surprised.

Bill Maher