On two bottles of children's aspirin

The latest thing I've decided to toss for my making space project is two unopened bottles of cherry chewable children's aspirin. These bottles are nearly sacramentals, being the visible sign of a eucatastrophe.

When Thomas was released from Children's Memorial Hospital last year, November 3, he was receiving 22 doses of various oral medications a day. We had a full-page chart just to keep track of which ones he should get when, and plastic bags with the time of day (he had to take them at five different times) with the appropriate syringes inside so we didn't get mixed up, forget one, or give him one twice. One of the medications he was on was aspirin, regimentally, as a blood thinner. He had to take one-half of a chewable children's aspirin tablet once a day, crushed, dissolved in breast milk, and administered with an eyedropper or oral syringe. It was definitely the most time-intensive medicine to administer, although he actually liked the taste, which was something.

At less than $2 a bottle generic, it was definitely his cheapest medication. There are 36 tablets in each bottle, so each one gives 72 doses. 72 days after Thomas got out of the hospital was Sunday, January 14. I went to Walgreens that day to get more aspirin, and bought the three-pack. "He'll be taking these for a long time," I reasoned.

That Friday, January 19, Thomas had a followup with his cardiology team, including a chest x-ray, which they do every January for all their patients, and an echocardiogram. The echo showed heart function just on the low end of normal -- improvement beyond the hopes even of his very optimistic cardiologist. The x-ray tech was a very nice woman; I asked her if I could see the image when she was done (and Thomas was rescued from her chair, which he liked not at all).

When Matt and I saw Thomas's chest x-ray in the emergency room on October 12, we stared at it, silent, stunned and disbelieving. His heart was expanded all the way out to his ribs, and the whole chest cavity was a dull gray cloud.

January 19, though, Thomas's heart was the shapely core of his being, surrounded by a fabulous tree of glowing white blood vessels carrying life out to his whole body. I could hardly be surprised when his cardiologist called me at quarter to ten that night. "I'm sorry to call so late, but I just saw his x-ray," she gushed. "It's so beautiful! Can I put it in my presentation?"

Based on this amazing recovery, Thomas's cardiology team started weaning his drugs, and aspirin was the first to go. Thus, I only used two and a half of the 108 aspirin I bought January 14. Now he's down to two medications and one dietary supplement, some of which they're talking about eliminating at his next visit. And Amy's slide show, to teach the med students at Children's Memorial about cardiology, had a very happy ending.

These two unopened bottles of aspirin are toast. But I'm keeping the open one. I crushed the fourth aspirin in it last week and dissolved it in water to display the first flower Thomas ever brought me. I still have enough in there for 32 more flowers!

Am I making space?

Inspired by Michelle (whose comments here I greatly appreciate), I've been at this throwing-things-away thing for three weeks now. Am I, as I so optimistically named the project, making space?

Externally, probably not so much. It's only five things a week after all. And the number of things I get rid of seems to be inversely proportional to the size of the object under consideration. I threw away a lot of inkless pens, but I could probably have gotten rid of a few dozen more without noticing. On top of that, I'm having a lot of trouble getting things out the door. I've packed up a sizable pile of things to take to SVDP, but haven't managed to get them into the car yet. In the car there's an even larger collection of objects to take somewhere that's been languishing.

I agree with Michelle that the endeavor is symbolic of my spiritual life. And maybe that aspect of it has been the most helpful so far.

At a talk at the conference I attended this week, my advisor advised (ha!) his auditors to get rid of the things in their lives that are "props for an imaginary existence." What kind of an imaginary existence, judging from my rejects, am I (not) living? Well, first of all, it's a scholarly one, but a scholarly life marked by ease. In my imaginary life, I am just about to pick up a bunch of scholarly projects that I've been just about to pick up for the past 6 years of so. Surely this summer is the one in which I'll really become proficient in German. And write 5 papers as well as finishing my dissertation. That'll really be no work at all. In fact, in my spare time, I might just take up a new hobby. One for which I have to purchase plenty of supplies.

I can be scornful of that imaginary life, but perhaps I can only laugh at it because it camouflages the more subtle one I also see in the list: an imaginary life of old fear. All these things on my list are old: old medicines, old tea, old pens; and many of them were also free, or very cheap: the disposable newborn diapers from the hospital, the dollar store picture frames from my apartment when I commuted, the old address labels. And staples? Please, I was saving staples?

These are things that are all easily replaced, but they seem to somehow represent something internal and irreplaceable: confidence in myself and in my reception by others. Maybe, in my perception of my own incompetence, I tend to gather these functional objects around me, in a kind of moat of utility. My own personal horses-and-chariots-of-Egypt. In the same way, I think, I wall myself off in a blaze of projects and activities, a welter of started-never-finished imaginary glories, to keep myself from knowing that there are still some parts of my soul and some relationships in my life that are damaged, and I may never be able to fix them.

But now I have one relationship in my life that I feel I really can't afford to screw up, even for such an imaginary peace. Therefore the five real things I think I should get rid of this week are old fear, old defensiveness, cowed silence, social anxiety, and fearful avoidance.

Can I do it?

Not alone.

"Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help
and who rely on horses,
who trust in chariots because they are many
and in horsemen because they are very strong,
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel
or consult the Lord!" (Isaiah 31)

HOW many fewer?

Browsing through blogs I stumbled on a woman's blog that I am really enjoying reading a bit, Quantum Theology. She has a discipline (oops, Talal Asad again) going on right now where she trashes, recycles, or gives away 50 categories of things in her house every week. Wow. Not just 50 objects (I could do this indefinitely and not notice, I suspect) but 50 categories of things she is keeping that she doesn't need to be keeping. Then, as she says, "Choosing to count "classes" of stuff rather than total items has had the benefit of letting me discern once about the need for an item and then each new encounter doesn't require repeating the process."
I'm not sure I'm ready for 50 a week, but I definitely need this discipline. I'm going to start the process at 5 and see how it goes. (Yes, I'm one of those people that walk into cold water instead of diving right in.) The process depends on keeping a list of the things you're eliminating. Here, I guess, why not.