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Kids•Life

The Waiting Place

14/10/2020 by Alison Asher No Comments

Dr. Seuss knew didn’t he? In Oh The Places You’ll Go he describes how the waiting place is the worst. How nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing will ever happen. Or at least that’s how it feels when you park your wagon out front of the waiting place. You can’t go in and get a refreshing ale- no that’s not for the waiters. And you can’t leave, because one of the conditions of the waiting place is that once you agree to the wait, you have to wait it out. Sounds a bit like Hotel California.

Earworm right there for you Boomers and Xers. #sorrynotsorry

Moving on.

We are currently in a waiting place. Surgery has been sort of scheduled for Coco, but there are still many little moving parts that need to line up, so nothing is quite set yet. We don’t know precisely where to go, or when, but we do know a general direction and an approximate day. Plus or minus.

The funny part is: this is the same as it ever was. Because that is what life is like. We run our circus with apps for productivity and calendars to show where we will be at any given time, but it’s really all just a promise on the wisp of a dandelion. All of the appointments and work meetings and party acceptances are just a semblance of a life well organised. Which can change on a dime.

We trick our brains to believe that those colour-coded blocks of betrothed time will anchor us to something real and solid. It’s how we make sense of the world. Which is what makes the waiting place such a challenge to sit within. Whether it’s waiting for surgery or waiting to get out of lockdown or waiting for the phone call from the oncologist, the waiting can be worse than the actuality.

Part of the discombobulation of the waiting place is the the tickle of activity that goes on all around. People go and come and go as you sit and watch. They make dinner plans and break arrangements. They buy shoes and groceries. They live. They play as if all of the things they are doing have meaning, and all things will come to pass.

The most interesting thing about the waiting place is coming to the understanding that we live much of our lives by a pact. We agree that we can exchange a pineapple (fifty dollars) for about twelve actual juicy pineapples (giving us about six times our RDA of Vitamin C into the bargain), even though no one can eat a plastic promise. We tell the bank we’ll pay back the loan no matter how often they change the rules and bend us over. We tell the kids to get the parchment to get a job, to earn more pineapples.

The pact sounds a bit like the theme song to Trainspotting if you let your mind get all PF Project.

Which is why the waiting place is no place for anyone to stay too long. Sanity darts away as we look at the farce of pineapple collection, where people are born and pass away, and no pineapples were harmed in the making of this movie.

The waiting place. Just stay for a moment.

Not for the faint of heart

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Creativity•Life•Writing

Wowsers

12/10/2020 by Alison Asher No Comments
Here's me. Shame about the contour map on my face, but I am one happy camper right now.
Well hello there!

So it looks like blog might be back.

When the lovely young fellow from the hosting service managed to free things up and I could have a little peep behind the curtain here, for a moment I thought I’d turned into a virus or something. FIVE HUNDRED and ninety four comments. The most I’ve ever had. To be honest peeps, for one magical moment back there at 4.32pm, I thought I was a proper author.

So much lovely from BrandonWang and KeithNob. Beautiful suggestions for some shemale action from SlappingLesbian. And the alluring offer of various medications to make things bigger, harder, longer or just more healthy (yep you can get antibiotics with your authentix (sic) Nike Airs) from most of Russia and half of Germany.

The joys of the interwebz.

Anyway, this is just a little warm up to get my phalanges pumping (no, don’t send me a pill) and my synapses singing.

See y’all soon.

PS Feel free to comment. But don’t worry too much about the myrrh next time (or merkins for that matter).


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Life

Mike Bloody Robinson

13/12/2019 by Alison Asher 2 Comments

I heard about Mike Robinson well before I ever met him. 

As is the way with certain personalities, his reputation preceded him. 

I’d heard about him from Rick and Hayls, and they painted him on a big canvas, as daughters are sometimes wont to do. I think that when a fella has a presence like Mike, children can forget they are all grown up, and that they can be almost equal with their fathers. Part of them remains ever childlike, and they see themselves through the eyes of a man who thinks they still have pigtails and matching gingham ribbons. 

So when I imagined the man who I would later, much later, hold in my arms whilst he sobbed into my pointy shoulder, I thought he would be six foot tall and made of Kevlar. 

When I first met Mike Robinson I was surprised by his build. He was shorter than I had expected, but he had the stance of someone who was always on the balls of his feet. 

Ready, like a boxer. 

And I suppose he was. 

I never knew Mike before his girls, first the youngest and then the oldest, were diagnosed with cancer. I only met him after world had punched him, making him poised to fight. And I only ever really got to know him after his girls were picked off, first the oldest then the youngest. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I sometimes felt like he never really dropped his shoulders after that. As if a part of his brainstem was always on alert, alternating between prayer and parley, hoping that his sunshiney middle daughter would be safe. 

Willing it to be so.

When I first loved Mike Robinson it was during one of his regular Chiro checks, back when Rick was on the wrong side of lean, and almost hysterically grabbing at potions and procedures and promises that could take the cancer away. We were discussing things that were beyond our control (his strong-headed daughters) and our respective roles in their healing. All of a sudden Mike Robinson jumped up, almost giving me a Liverpool Kiss as he scarpered from the office, saying, “I can’t do this.” I ran after him and somehow scooped him up in the carpark. He accepted my remedial hug and we both softened a little. 

It was nice have someone strong with me for the next part. 

When I first really listened to Mike Robinson it was when I was a new Mum, and everyone else seemed to offer wash-off advice that contradicted itself and disappeared like those tail-eating snakes as it puffed out of their mouths. Not Mike. Those eyes pierced right inside me with adviceorders and made sure I minded him. He spoke directly, that easy smile belying the intensity beneath. I carry with me so many Mike-isms, from “You can’t assume- every day is a new day with kids,” through to “You have to sell a lot of coffees to make rent.”

I learned lot more from you than you will ever know Mike Robinson, you funny, raw, truthful, stubborn, vulnerable, tenacious bugger. 

Thanks for allowing me in. 

I made you a list, mate. I think you’ll like it.

 

Mike-isms to Live By:

Don’t serve up visible onion.

Look after your family first.

Hug your kids more than you think they need

Choose your battles and then bloody battle.

Life is shorter than you think.

Don’t be afraid to tell people you love ‘em

Live loud, laugh loud.

Have the courage to say what you mean.

Love well.

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Chiropractic

Popping All Over The Joint

17/04/2019 by Alison Asher No Comments

Popcorn.

It’s tasty, isn’t it? In fact, I would probably have to say that no movie experience is complete without it. That strange salty-sweet smell sends messages jumping and hustling right along the first cranial nerve, to hit your olfactory bulb with a thump, and in less than a heartbeat you find yourself way back in that Art Deco cinema of slightly musty red velvet seats, crackling film reels, and the tap tap tapping of the floorboards from the usher with his torch, as he shows latecomers to their seats.

Popcorn.

At our house we don’t buy it from the cinema any more, for even though the smell of it is still able to transport us back to a time of stolen jaffa-flavoured kisses, and magical worlds far from our familiar suburban streets, popcorn just ain’t what it used to be. 

So these days, we pop at home.  And we find it embarrassingly thrilling. 

I’m not sure if it’s the slight danger of that hot, smoking oil, or the anticipation, as we watch and wait for that first spinning kernel to build up pressure (it’s the moisture content inside, that causes internal steam to build and build, forcing that little seed embryo to bust out of the pericarp) getting so hot and bothered, and uncomfortable, until it bursts forth in a rush of heat and transformation. Perhaps it’s a little of each. Then of course we have the satisfying ting-ting-ting on the lid of the saucepan, as the remaining kernels follow the leader and join the wave of change. 

For those hard, virtually impenetrable seeds, times really are a changin’.

A bit like life, and music, really.

(You knew I couldn’t let an opportunity go by without Bob having a say, didn’t you?)

“The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

Your old road is

Rapidly fadin’.

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’.”

What response do those words elicit in you? 

Do you rub your hands together, thinking of the opportunities that change could bring, or do you shift to a more protective posture: cervical flexion, sacrum in counternutation, waiting for the onslaught? 

Do you relish or perish?

I would venture to say that at this very moment in time there is more change in the world, and in our profession than I have seen in my twenty years of practice. 

Changes to legislation and leadership, to terminology and techniques. 

We can see these changes from an outside-in perspective, as stressors if you will, and attempt to thicken our collective epidermes in an effort to stave off the storm unscathed and most likely unchanged, staying safe within our kernels. Or we can see the rising heat as an opportunity to jiggle around with energy and verve, and…transform.

Psychologist Bruce McEwen  tells us that stress is often labelled as either “good” or “bad” as a result of prior programming, and perhaps that might be true of us in chiropractic. Our chiropractic history books are lousy with examples of Chiropractors vilified and even gaoled for practicing their craft, so it may be that we as a profession have been inculcated to view stress negatively.

When actually, the opposite can be true. In her book The Upside Of Stress health psychologist Kelly McGonigal tells us that it is the very perception of stress that determines what the effect will be. She tells us that it is how we think about the stress, that is of paramount importance. It turns out, that if we decide that the increased heart and respiratory rate that we experience when we are anxious is deleterious, then it will be likely to cause us damage. However, if we choose to view this stress response as helpful, or even necessary, to face a new challenge, then although we still may notice precisely the same increases, they will occur without the same blood vessel constriction, producing a response that is not only not at all harmful, but one that physiologically, looks just like courage.

And then we find that our Innate Intelligence just keeps on giving. 

For not only does this type of positively-interpreted stress make us more courageous, it stimulates our pituitary gland to secrete oxytocin. You’ve gotta love that. Literally. As of course this huggy hormone is our cuddle chemical, the neuropeptide that creates trust, empathy, compassion and caring. It motivates us to seek support and surround ourselves with people who care about us.

In fact, I like to think of oxytocin as the little chemical that orchestrated the building of communities, as I imagine our Neolithic ancestors, returning from a long day of chasing down protein, settling down by the fire, positively surging with oxy, (and possibly other chemicals that might not bear mentioning in this forum) with a desire to make joyous and meaningful connections with other humans.

In the context of our profession, it would seem that this type of favourable stress may well be the very thing we require, to do as Joseph Strauss once proposed: to be refined by fire. To utilise the effects of stressors to enable us to take action, with the knowledge that we can trust ourselves to handle challenges, whilst realising that we don’t have to face them alone. To define and then refine the rules of who we are right now, and how we want to play this game in the future.

In the practice setting, we may find that positively-interpreted stress gives us greater access to our hearts, hence allowing us to be more compassionate, and caring and able to find meaning in our connections with others. In the words of social researcher Brene Brown, the ability to establish human connections may very well be the reason we are here.

Irrespective of this, we do know that challenge aimed at a level significant enough to induce stress, results in increased strength and resilience. Creating more power around our ideas, our values and beliefs, our communities, our level of protection and our work, and ultimately; our politics.

So just as the parents who come to us report that their children reach new levels of development following the apparent stress of a fever, 

and just as the pupa requires the struggle of emergence from the chrysalis to give those delicate wings the strength to take flight, 

so too, must we absorb the heat and the energy and the apparent adversity, to allow us to reconstruct our experience, and jump up to the next level. 

Or not. 

For it is at this very moment that we have a choice. 

To sit in the heat, or turn it down.

To perceive the heat as irritating or even dangerous and something to resist, or to acknowledge the sensations, work with them, and choose to persist.

We can choose to turn down the temperature, step away from the discomfort and contract to our previous selves, essentially allowing us to remain the same, abeit slightly scalded. As sometimes, the very choice that would liberate and open us up to a whole new way of seeing and being, seems scary and lonely and hard. Sometimes it might be useful to harness all that oxytocin, to recruit others to help us on the shifting path: friends, family, mentors or coaches who will listen to the honest conversation of our hearts, to hold us accountable, and keep the fire burning.

However we do it, we always have the choice to utilise that fire, to bravely, even courageously take it within, and allow ourselves to be refined and changed. To transform. To shed the hardened carapace of our previous selves, and pop and pop and pop. 

Just like popcorn.

And so, only one question remains: what delicious flavour will you be?

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Life•Travel

Three Billboards

01/03/2018 by Alison Asher 2 Comments

Last night we were sitting on the couch, The Silverback and I, and I was saying that I want to see that new movie with all the nominations. Someone had seen it and said that I would love it. Let’s be clear: this is not a movie review site. I found the movie to be disturbing (why so many guns, America?), superficial (why don’t we actually get to know even one character properly?) and *spoiler alert* it had a shitty cop-out of an ending. I tried to like it, really I did, what with Woody Harrelson and Napoleon Dynamite’s Nanna, but it was insipid. Too sad and too bleak in a pathetic, relentless way. Two wrung-out stars.

But that’s not the point of this blog. The point is something different. Of doing something different.

On Tuesdays when I finish work, dinner is cooked and the kids are in bed. We eat, then sit on the couch together and scroll through the book of faces (that’s true love, right there, no?) and I watch that show with the doctor who does Asperger’s. His voice prickles me like blowing across the top of a pen lid (arghhh), but I do like the dramatic medical events that unfold. It’s good to know that hospital admissions aren’t all strung out meth-heads and people with complications from the stupid amounts of medications they are mixing in their cells. This is proper emergencies from causes other than the stupid.

The medical drama was about to get going, and I was settling in for some good old blood letting, when Nath said, “Why don’t you go then?”

What?

An unplanned movie trip on a school night that starts in six minutes and I haven’t even made popcorn? Surely that can’t work? Or is the plan so simple that it just might?

So before anyone had a chance to call it off, I grabbed a Stella from the fridge, dug out a coat that would be suitable for Antarctica, and ran out.

And I cannot tell you how good it felt. I think twenty years flew off and out onto Sunshine Beach Road between home and the cinema, and when I took my seat (far enough from the weird old guy on the far left wing so that I couldn’t see what he was up to. Nothing, I’m sure he was up to nothing), and close enough to the screen so that I could be encased in the vista without getting a neck extension injury, I’m pretty sure another six years fell into the aisle and rolled to the front like Jaffas. I lost another two when I surreptitiously opened the Stella and it made a little sigh as the house lights went down, when for some reason I was convinced that the man-child usher would come and scold me in front of the pod of teenagers in the back row. (Funny how, even at this advanced age, I wanted to hold up my stubby of bootleg beer and show them I was cooler than them.)

It was nice losing all those years. Nice feeling the responsibility of a school night, and the heaviness of the incomplete To-Do List, shrink to a pinprick as the curtains drew back, and I got lost in someone else’s world.

Going to the movies is better than going on holidays. It’s far easier, it’s more comfortable and if I don’t like it I can leave at any time. Or fall asleep in a hug of red velvet. As long as that weird guy doesn’t come too close.

When the shitty movie ended and the lights came on, everyone hurried to evacuate, but I stayed a moment more. Savouring the smell of freedom that was masquerading as popped corn and fake butter, and the perfume of the last person whose arms rested underneath mine. I breathed in that smell and I breathed in that feeling. And I tried not to breathe it out.

 

…From The Ashers

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Family•Kids•Life

Cheers

23/02/2018 by Alison Asher 2 Comments

Do you remember that show? With Norm and the other guy sitting at the bar? I can’t remember the other guy’s name right now, and I know that’s not right, because Cheers was all about having a place where “everybody knows your name”. Anyway, if you know Cheers, then you are screaming the Other Guy’s name out right now. (I’m pretty sure he was in Toy Story as well. Just call me IMBD.)

Moving on. I have had a couple of places like that in my life. And like my list of friends, I guard them closely. I don’t have too many (I don’t like to spread myself thin), and I choose them carefully. The Morning Star Hotel in Willi was one. Taco Bill’s in Clifton Hill another. I’d like to say Cocktails and Dreams on The Goldy as well, but I think that was more about NOT welcoming me in (another bar, another life). These days it’s Village Bicycle and Bistro C. And here.

The first two are by choice. The third, not so much.

And yet when we arrived here today, at a place that I don’t want to come to, to do a thing that I don’t like doing, I realised that this place is a part of me and I am a part of it. I have a favourite room (27), a favourite carpark area (mezzanine, part e, because: Me… I can always remember where I’ve parked), and even a favourite mug in the parents’ room.

Fave mug. Insta worthy hospital flat lay. Yes I used Mayfair.

 

Smiling nurses greeted us by name and made a fuss of the kid as if she was Suri Cruise. Doctors who I’m now on patient advocate boards with, popped in for a chat. Other trainee doctors came in to feel the kid’s excellent hepatosplenomegaly and marvel and the lowness of her haemoglobin (everyone’s gotta have a talent, right?). We feel comfortable enough to put our faces right in close to the camera at the entry, and make stupid faces to make Margie on the front desk laugh. We know the order of things, and we are close enough with the guy at Merlo to raise our eyebrows in conciliation when the idiots don’t understand the discount system for bringing their own cup. We never say a word to each other, Merlo Guy and I, our wiggling brows say it all. Today he was almost a seagull, as he step-by-excruciating-step explained the difference between cup sizes (why are they in ounces?) and the store pricing policy to an irate lady dressed in KT-26ers and leggings-as-pants, who was arguing over 30cents and her card being declined. Usually I would’ve just said to pop it on my order, but it would’ve felt like a betrayal to Merlo Guy, and us stalwarts have to stick together in here.

In here.

A funny thing happens to the kid when we get in here. I try to speak in the language of hospitality instead of hospitals. I call it “checking in”, and we run to the bathroom to see if we are getting L-Occitane toiletries (we aren’t). We look at the “room service” menu, and talk about how yummy the Mango Chicken will be (it isn’t). And yet, still, she becomes a ‘patient’. She lays in the bed all day, even though she could easily sit on the couch with me, and is as quiet and compliant as a lamb. It’s like the institution does something to her, as it does to me. She goes docile, I go to war.

Today I decided to play it a little different. I made a decision to treat this funny, mushy-pea walled place as my Cheers. I chose to see Margie as Sam Malone, and Penny as Diane Chambers. Kevin was Norm, and Stu was the Other Guy. (I tried not to call anyone Carla, but my brain accidentally might have. I told it to hush now, we don’t have to be that mean.)

In some weird way, after so much stretched-out time together, this soft, speckled lino and the sweet-prickly smell of chlorhexidine has gotten into my nostrils and into my being. I didn’t choose it, wouldn’t have chosen it in a million years, and yet here we are. If I love my life (and I do) and I love my kid (and I mostly do, can I be “barley” during tantrums?) then I must also love the experiences and the laughcries and the learning I have done in this place. It has tested me more than any other location (yes, even more than the Cricketer’s Arms in 1992, may I never get a stomach bug like that again), and it has shown me more about myself than I ever thought I wanted to know. I’ve had some of my biggest moments here, both fair and foul.

And so now, just like the blankets. A part of me is the property of Queensland Health.

Cheers.

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