Why I spent Christmas 2023 in the Mayo Clinic Hospital

Due to the amputation of my husband’s foot, we spent Christmas this past year in the Mayo Clinic hospital. This is the twelfth year of a long story.  David has had a pain in his left foot when he walked on it for the last 12 years.  Medical opinion assumed the problem was neurological.  He was referred to countless doctors who referred him for x-rays, CT and MRI scans.  No one could find anything to explain the pain.  One pain clinic installed a nerve stimulator in his back that was controlled by a technician at Abbot Labs who determined the dosage and the frequency of the nerve jolts.  It didn’t work!

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Looking at Marriage: Seeing One’s Own Part

The husband had a way of erupting emotionally that led his wife to call him “the volcano.” He pursued; she distanced; he pursued more rigorously. Her way of retreating, seemingly impervious to his needs, led him to call her “the sphinx.” At times of high stress, this pattern left this truly devoted couple in considerable distress, he feeling shut out, she feeling pressured. They found their own language—volcano, sphinx—as a step to observing their reciprocal functioning and eventually to seeing the absurdity and humor in it.

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