#0045 🎵And you may find yourself...🎵

Practicing Mindfulness In-Between

When last week’s newsletter on self-compassionate letter writing (#0044) posted, I’d already booked a flight to be at my brother’s hospital bedside. Modern medicine and tremendous timing kept his septic infection within a months’-old surgery location rather than spreading systemically.

Thank you SCIENCE.

Sepsis kills without quick medical treatment. (Source: Sepsis Alliance)

Since we didn’t know when my brother would be released, I left my return open. Optimistically thought I’d write about mindfulness as another one of the ways to nullify imposter syndrome (#0040). Instead, I practiced some techniques during the in-between moments.

I got my brother home late Wednesday and helped him set up systems. This afternoon I caught a flight to my home, hence this evening post.

My brother is settling into two months of daily self-administered IV antibiotics (two of them), weekly at-home nurse visits for PIC-line dressing changes and blood draws, once- or twice-a-week at-home physical therapy visits, and biweekly clinic appointments with the infectious disease specialist. Then three to six months of daily oral antibiotics before getting the all-clear.

Though he’s got a long road of recovery ahead of him, my brother has his partner, their Bernese mountain dog, and their two rescue cats to love and support him.

“And you may find yourself…,” come from the song “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads, which I first encountered while watching the concert film Stop Making Sense, praised by many as the best concert movie ever. (Source: wikipedia)

Soon my brother — and you, dear reader! — will have some (or some more) mindfulness techniques in your toolbox.

Next time: Create mindfulness breaks