Touching & Technology: A Fugal July

I’ve spent the last two weeks in an intimate dance with modern technology and real life. Four streams went fugal in one week. My Palm Treo stopped working and I decided to convert to an iPhone. Two new client projects launched and one culminated. Susan and my youngest daughter Jerda had her first baby in Phoenix. And we found out Susan had uterine cancer. If there is a limit to what one psyche can deal with, we found it. I went into a kind of shock.

I am happy to say the crashing cymbals part of the piece is over. Everything seems to be going well. But I’m left with lots of questions about the kind of lives we are living.

I started thinking about the dance between technology and our sensate lives when our new Kaiser physician conducted Susan’s and my checkup interviews in front of this little rolling Healthnet console, a new Kaiser system installed about six weeks ago we learned.

My mind was on the spotting Susan was experiencing. We didn’t know what it was yet, but were pretty sure it wasn’t a good thing. Our new doctor is a lovely general practitioner, but spent more time looking at the computer than she did at us. She didn’t actually touch us at all during this first checkup to my surprise. She DID touch us emotionally with her patient coaching about how we could stay healthy, and how we can use the other parts of Kaiser to help us, and did get us right down to OB/gyn for a PAP smear. But my fugal fibrillation between technology and true touching had begun.

Our fears were realized. The spotting was cancer—endometrial carcinoma, Grade 1—occurring in 1 in 40 women we find. The only good news here was it was the most treatable kind.

An amazing Kaiser on-line web site kept us right up to date as we headed into wrapping our mind around the dreaded diagnosis. Information was at our fingertips, literally. Our doctor answered e-mails within a day! Lab reports were on-line for us to research immediately. We stopped reading after a while. They wouldn’t know really what was going on without “going in” as they say.

The music of our lives began to sound like the themes that come on when something dangerous is about to happen in a movie. In and around our dealing with Kaiser’s diagnosis of Susan I was juggling three clients with a broken phone. It wouldn’t receive or make calls. This was serious. To be in consulting I need to be in the information stream, and a broken phone is like losing the kayak paddles under the Golden Gate bridge. I decided to move to the i-Phone that I carried as a traveling portfolio. It had a phone I used to connect with the internet. Cancer in the uterus. Shifting telecommunications platforms. These are hardly the same league, but to my psyche I felt like I had hit black ice.

I felt a little better as I learned that the integration of desktop, i-Phone and its server-based database called “the cloud” by Mobile Me actually worked, and would result in one calendar and one data base my office could see. But that led to some self induced turmoil getting it stable.

I needed my system working with more urgency than usual as I juggled Kaiser appointments, surgery schedules AND clients calls. My three support calls to Apple and several days to figure out how to stabilize e-mail and toggle between wi-fi and 3G and get my data base sorted felt like someone starting up a chain saw in a peaceful forest.

An expansive, hopeful theme quieted the cacophony. Our long planned trip to Phoenix directly overlapped with possible surgery dates. Susan and I had planned to be with our daughter Jerda as she had her first baby, a little girl. We’d seen from ultrasound pictures Skyped to us earlier. We’d gotten our tickets before any of these other events. How could we not do that? Susan was being counted on to be the grandmother support system.

Our doctor encouraged us to go and have the surgery afterward. Apparently Grade 1 cancer is slow growing. This was encouraging. So we went, Susan first on Wednesday and me following on Saturday.

Theme four’s loud brass announced the culmination of one client project in a Wednesday meeting, and the start of two new projects on Thursday and Friday respectively, with the last being in Seattle. I won’t go into this part, except to say that to do my kind of facilitation I need to immerse myself in the client’s reality. Cancer, communications, new baby’s, new clients. My meditation practice took a small hit. I began meditating in snatches all during the day! Can these all really be going together?

Technology became a friend again. Digital cameras allowed me to get work right back to clients. My i-Phone allowed me to check on Kaiser and stay in touch with Susan on the road. Jets took me to Seattle and back. And amazingly, I was in Phoenix the very Saturday little Reilly appeared. She came early in the morning after some hard, induced labor and I arrived by late afternoon. It was a good thing to sink into the energy field of a new life emerging. It’s all-encompassing. Susan was very happy to see me and I her. We didn’t think much about cancer. But I did think about machines. Oh my, we were surrounded by them and so was Jerda.

When Susan and I had Jerda at Kaiser 38 years ago we were Lamaze parents, contemplating natural childbirth at home. I went to the breathing classes with Susan and was part of the team. A big decision was to NOT have wires connected up to Jerda as she emerged, as the docs were already wanting to do at the time. I couldn’t imagine our child coming into the world that way.

Our informally adopted son Eddie Palmer is half Choctaw and his grandfather was Lakota. When his first child came he asked that all artificial lights in the delivery room be turned off and the child’s first experience be the natural light. He wanted this again for his new boy (born July 29). Do these first impressions matter that much? Something says
they do.

Mountain Vista Medical Center in Mesa is state-of-the-art. More computer kiosks. Little Reilly was wired from the start, and every beat of her heart was recorded out on a digital display. Everyone watched the ticker tape. I wasn’t there but Susan was staggered by the amount of technology. One of the nurses explained that birthing has become very challenging for pediatricians because of parents suing for ANYTHING that goes wrong at all. Do we trust the machines more than the doctors? Do doctors know how to work directly with bodies any more? When we met Dr. Guzman, Jerda’s doctor we found out they do. He was extraordinarily caring and patient centered. We could see Jerda and Jamie energized by his presence.

We spent three days in the hospital, since little Reilly had a bit of jaundice. Jamie, Jerda’s husband, works for Go Daddy. We wanted to share pictures and things but found out that the wi-fi didn’t work and no out-going mail or attachments were allowed. We were reduced to texting. I was still trying to get my i-Phone platform tuned, finding critical data missing from my system and needing to reconstruct it from e-mails.  What happens if the net goes down, I wondered? Are we like spiders hanging in the morning sun? Will some hiker/hacker walking through the technological woods rip down our webs? I suspected the cancer issue was operating underground in my psyche to have these kinds of thoughts during such a miraculous birth.

My technology questions were fueled by a first night in which the air conditioner in our hotel room stopped working. It was 114 degrees outside that day! The temperature went to 85+ in our room and was hotter outside. Susan raged. It was clearly fueled by what her body was doing. We had a good lesson at how dependent people are in this hot region on air conditioning equipment, and the electrical system that supplies it. Air conditioners and cars are fundamental here. It is another Los Angeles, built with no economy of scale what so ever. It seems a direct extension of the idea that we can go any where anytime at a fast speed, and be comfortable anywhere, anytime, even in a scorching desert.

Baby Reilly’s energy wiped away all those kinds of thoughts. We all took turns holding her and feeling our hearts crack open. We followed every smile and cry. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of these people I love.

Reilly had a bit of jaundice, a buildup of bilirubin in the blood that needed to be flushed out with fluids and light. While common it can be dangerous, and brought some dissonance to our psyches. But more technology appeared, this time in the form of a blue light bath and neutralized our fears. In a day it had done the job.

What did mothers do before this, I wondered. Sat their kids out in the sun, Susan guessed.

Back in San Francisco on Tuesday to prepare for Thursday’s surgery (in a jet of course), I’m now almost stable on the i-Phone and loving it. The graphical interface is a real jump forward from a regular phone. Jerda and Jamie are ecstatic with Reilly and at home. The milks in. The baby’s nursing. They love all the digital pictures.

We go on-line to check appointments and lab results from a CT scan. Nothing! We are alarmed and call. I start imagining a nightmare challenge of managing Kaiser through the surgery experience, assuming that was necessary in today’s specialized and fragmented healthcare environment. I was wrong. We find the appointment will be on-line when it is finally set. We’ll get a call Wednesday night, and we did. I’d given my new cell number to all relevant parties. I’d mailed family and close friends to alert them of what is happening. I’d e-mailed clients to let them know I’m on support duty. I found myself slowly believing my new phone number was real and that I’m really on the i-Phone. The touching came back in waves of calls and messages of support.

My experience with Susan’s surgery was an experience of BOTH touching and technology. I moved to acceptance. Our oldest daughter Valentine arrived from Philadelphia, and turned the three or four days of navigating through this time into a wonderful connection with her.

Pre-op involved more people at the consoles filling out forms, but everyone was welcoming and friendly. A nurse in pre-op knew Susan as a poet teacher and came in and chatted about the schools. At the same time Susan became a bar code number that was scanned every time anything happened. Meds are scanned. Temperatures are digital. Everything goes into the computers. I was impressed that all this equipment didn’t get in the way of a very personal touch and experience. There was lots of touching going on now.

It was a three and half hour operation. Susan and I had gone on-line the night before to the Kaiser site and watched a wonderful multi-media presentation walking us through the entire procedure, with graphics and very clear explanations. I could visualize everything. But I wasn’t in the room and this wasn’t an intellectual experience. I knew Susan would be under general anesthesia, but I assumed that some part of her could be reached, so I went into a meditation room Kaiser provided and tuned in. For two hours I had the most amazing sensation of following Susan through this experience. Our trust was in the system now, but also in each other. Perhaps our human connection with source and the pulse of life is even more fundamental than technology. As the hours progressed our trust was tested.

Val and my relief was immediate when Dr. Littel came out and explained that the surgery had been very successful and “clean.” Susan would be in her room in a couple of hours. Lab reports would reveal next week if any further treatments were needed. The “probability” is low, Littel said.

Susan finally came up to her room three hours later, beaming, still a bit sedated and very funny. Clearly a cloud has passed. And in with a lovely young student nurse came the computer console, the bar code reader, the softly beeping hydration machine, the electronic thermometer that works in the ear in a second, the machine that automatically massaged the legs with a pulsing air pump to keep clots from forming, and a plastic breathing toy to keep the lungs from collapsing! But it was the holding hands, the soft smiles, and the tucking-Susan-in that overshadowed all this. We were intent on enveloping her in a blanket of love!!!

We came home in one day! This would not have been possible without new laproscopic surgical techniques, where doctors guide tools inserted through tiny cuts in the abdomen. In a debate on the merits of technology this kind of thing would be on the top of my benefits list. At the same time I wonder why there is so much cancer. Why are we finding out that 1 in 40 women have uterine cancer? Our doctor friend Valerie came over and explained that endometrial tissues are responsive to estrogens, and they abound in our environment, along with molecules that mimic estrogen, in plastics and all kinds of substances. This is technology too—biotechnology. It’s hard to assign clear causes to cancer. Susan wasn’t taking estrogen. She’s not heavy (another source), but the stimulus must be there somewhere. “Our bodies constantly fight against deviant DNA all our lives, and when we get old we aren’t as able to do it,” Valerie said. Hmm. What does this explain? Does it matter when WE are the ones involved?

Two weeks of fugue. High notes of touching and holding, and being afraid. The music begins to soften.

“I’d love some black bean soup,” Susan said from the sunny couch in our living room as I finished this piece. I could only find split pea but that worked. Two hours later and a trip to Safeway we did have black bean soup, for a later day. What an amazing time and country we live in. So much change. So much challenge. So many questions.

I want to make sure that love and touching stay central. The rest doesn’t seem to mean much without it. I’m grateful for all the tools that helped us get through these past two weeks. But I could go for a little bit of soft lute music with long rests and pauses right now.