Septoplasty and Turbinate Reduction

A lil blog about my journey to better breathing:

I half jokingly say I would like to thank my big brother for all the childhood beat downs that led to my deviated septum an the inevitable corrective surgery I have had this week. Half joking only because it is in fact truely how I have this crooked septum. I would never have thought I would have any surgery in my life (who would). But I definitely could not have guessed my first surgery would be "elective"; seems like a odd thing to elect to do but my breathing situation had just become so aggrevating and increasingly worse over time.

deviated septum & turbinates

After the doc visit determines my surgery worthy deviated septum and enlarged turbinates things move quickly they immediately have you schedule surgery dates and get the ball rolling. eeek! just like that... I had questions...should he exray or something? how does he know after and peek twice up my nostrils that I need surgery?? Seems a bit hasty...I began compiling my question for my pre-opt appointment.

At this point I'm in a bit of a quandary, as most people know about me, I'm a researcher by nature. I often (if not always) want to know why and how of so much in life. So apply that to something that is meant to occur to me and you can imagine how elevated this characteristic had become. The worse thing someone like me can do while researching a procedure that is pending is youtube a medical video of it. I nearly called the whole thing off...lol. It was not pretty and everyone is quick to tell you how you will be under anethesia and won't feel a thing but none-the-less that IS happening to you. Eeek. The next thing you won't want to hear is other people's stories about how they heard the bone being broken or how they had an wicked infection after but "I'm sure that won't happen to you." what?

Pre-op: I asked my list of questions and the doc was able to answer them throughly and humor me in some instances just to make me feel better about the surgery. Mainly about how he knew I needed surgery and was he sure it would not change the shape of my nose. I like my nose, I'm sure it isn't a perfect nose but it's mine and I think the shape and size is distinct to me and my family and I'd like to keep it that way. I left that appointment feeling that surgery was in fact what i needed however, terribly nervous of what was on the horizon but mainly the anethesia. I've never had it and the prospect of taking a drug that puts me in a state that I have no idea what is happening to me was not appealing at all. Reading up on the procedure does not elicit comfort only more concerns over probability and statistics of being within a certain margin where things are not so good.

Surgery Day: The waiting is really the worst part. The anticipation of being stuck with needles and being operated on could be the worse emotional part of the whole ordeal. No eating or drinking (not even water) for 8 or more certainly didnt add to the situation. Finally called back, I was told we're moving you up the surgery before me was a no show...eeek here we go. First IV, first anethesia, first surgery, this was a very long day so far.

tubes/splints/stints

Post Op - I woke up being shaken abruptly by the nurse (I think) was so out of it still. I only remember telling her that my nose ddnt hurt at all but my throat was killing me. I think at this point the anethesiologist mentioned I coughed a bit when they intubated me..i guess this causes you to have a wicked bad sore throat and it must have also bruised the hell out of my chest..because even after 3 days my breast plate is wicked tender and bruised.

Day2 (morning): Healing quickly :) random observations: the worse pain isn't in my nose but still my throat and chest from the intubation. My teeth hurt :-/ also i'm not quite sure why ppl take these kind of pain meds when they don't have to...just makes me sleepy, lethargic and i feel wicked lazy.

>>>Day 2 (night) Too much moving around today plus began irrigation which hurt a bit, The combo created pressure in my sinuses that has given me this nice heaache that does not go away not even with the pain meds. Sweet. Getting set up to be immobile for a while thinking this is the better choice.

Day 3: Rough second half of day 2 led to a very rough morning day 3. Not feeling so spritely at all today. :( Breathing through my mouth only makes for an unrestful sleep. Irrigation hasn't been pleasant but I can breathe through my stints for the moment. progress. Pretty achey today, I think I feel the worst today.

Random observation: two days with no taste buds and i'm starting to become concerned about regaining my sense of taste... that would not be a fair trade off :-/ also i noticed that (while getting intubated??) my front teeth bonding got chipped..to be discussed with doc on monday. no bueno.

Day 4:

Decide to try to endure the discomfort and reduce my pain med intake. I definitely do not enjoy the spaced out feeling it gives me although the sleep has been a welcome result. I am pretty sure I have not slept this much in quite some time.  I have an incredible urge to blow my nose today. My front teeth and gums are still tender and I can periodically breathe through both stints. Since  I cant smell or taste anything eating hasn't really been too much of a priority only intaking food because I meant to with before taking meds. Oddly enough my favorite thing to eat right now is watermelon. It's cool and I like the texture. I can't decide if i can tell it's sweet because I know it is sweet as I have my whole life or if I can really tell that it is sweet. Things that are sweet do feel different as I eat them and the same for salty things, but again I can't decide if that is because I already know it as I eat it. 

  I am so looking forward to Monday's post op appointment, where the stints come out. I expect it will be very uncomfortable but I am excited to get this moving along.

Day 5: Woke feeling very rested today! Made it through the entire day yesterday with no pain meds, but I did take one right before I went to sleep. I slept through the entire night and was breathing out of both stints! No painful dry mouth/tongue today. I was surprised at how painful it has been to wake up with the inside of my mouth completely dried up from only being able to breathe through it. So excited to be free from the stints tomorrow, it seems it will be pretty uncomfortable (if not down right wicked painful) coming out but that will be brief and then I will be able to heal fully and breathe completely! :) So excited to feel the difference!

Day 6: Got my stints out today! Oh my my do i feel amazing! I am able to breathe the most full breaths of my life!

Getch'er geek on...getch'er geek on...

August 12, 13 - Perseids Meteor Shower. The Perseids is one of the best meteor showers to observe, producing up to 60 meteors per hour at their peak. This year's shower should peak on the night of August 12 and the morning of the 13th, but you may be able to see some meteors any time from July 23 - August 22. The radiant point for this shower will be in the constellation Perseus. The thin, crescent moon will be out of the way early, setting the stage for a potentially spectacular show. For best viewing, look to the northeast after midnight.

Discrepant Design Pricing & Eileen Gray

So riding off the high of the procurement of my beloved chair (and to complete the seating area of my living room) I felt the very slick Eileen Gray table would complete the layout. I had seen this table a few years back and liked it very much. So with my lovely chair in place, I began to search for the best possible place to acquire Ms. Gray's iconic table. So I jaunt over to the Design Within Reach site (which is where I had seen the choice table previously) and wouldn't you know...still available....Great! ...but woah $550 for 1 side table...that's a notable price. I decide (as always) to do a bit more research on the price as to get the best price out there. I do this now as a habit regardless of where the chair lives in the US; for example I shipped my chair in from NYC and got a fantastic price. I digress, but what i found next was definitely surprising:

Design Within Reach $550.00USD (+38.50 s&h) ummmm "Within Reach"...Really??
(http://www.dwr.com/product/eileen-gray-side-table.do)

and THE SAME TABLE at another site for...***Drum Roll***.. $120.00 (w/free shipping)!! 
(http://www.lexingtonmodern.com/Eileen-Gray-Side-Table-p/125.htm?gclid=CIzVmcWZyKECFRY75QoduSjUVA)

and another "gray inspired" version somehow available at Target .com (only)...$169.99 (w/free shipping)
(http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/175-5047464-6340623?asin=B00290YU1O&AFID=Froogle_df&LNM)

The moral of this lil purchasing story...do your homework friends and a little leg work goes a long way maybe even $430 or better. Cheers friends!

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In case you were interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Gray 

Things that make you go Hmmmm?

If nothing else this is at least food for thought. It could never hurt to apply a different lens to many (if not all) situations to gain some perspective. Although, I believe that many of the instances cited here are from people that are extreme by nature and not by most, looking at this situation through this lens we can perhaps gain insight.

"Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.


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http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.htmlb
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Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. His latest book is called Between Barack and a Hard Place.

Salt and Peppa's here...

That title is so apropos as it is quite reminiscent of my youth; middle school dance off's and such. It is also a euphemism for graying hair...

Today, after showering, I notice a single grayish-white hair sprouting through my otherwise mahogany coif. After staring at it for several seconds I began to reflect on the cycle of life and how perhaps graying hair is natures way of slowly unveiling the staging of our lives. With each new sprout we should reflect on the progression of our lives and embrace the transition... 

....and then I thought "Uh HEEll no! I'm too young for gray hair!!" and I yanked that MF'r right out.

Reflection still occurs, I'm just going to hang on to my all dark locks for a lil bit longer, thank you.

Keep Calm and Carry On...

Keep Calm and Carry On- Brief History

In the spring of 1939, the German menace loomed large in England. The Nazi plan for European domination was becoming clear and the fear was that Great Britain would be attacked. In an attempt to assuage civilian fears should an invasion occur, a civil servant in England’s Ministry of Information designed a poster featuring an icon of the King’s Crown and the sans serif slogan Keep Calm and Carry On.

At the time, American opinion was divided on whether or not to enter the conflict. Ever since the United States had won its independence from Great Britain, a level of tension and hostility had marked the relationship between the two countries. Still, in a gesture of goodwill, Franklin Roosevelt invited King George VI over to visit. This was the first time a reigning British monarch had ever visited America and the voyage signaled the beginning of a new period of Anglo-American cooperation and alliance. After time spent in Washington DC, the Roosevelts hosted King George and Queen Mary at their family estate in Hyde Park, New York. Eleanor Roosevelt took care in hosting the couple and treated them to an American picnic, complete with hot dogs. Friendships were formed, letters exchanged, and when America’s help became clearly necessary, we sent troops and support.

Despite bombing and close calls, the German invasion didn’t occur, the Allies triumphed and the poster was never released. Still, throughout the war, the Royal Family handled themselves with typical aplomb and one could sense that Keep Calm and Carry On was in their minds throughout the war. The couple maintained official residence at Buckingham Palace during the bombing as a show of solidarity with Londoners. Winning the war would take democratic effort, and the Royal Family was committed to this both in practice and appearance. They even had ration cards.

When a British bookseller discovered a Keep Calm and Carry On poster in 2000, the nearly forgotten design began its rebirth. In a faster-paced world, the slogan took on new meanings while retaining its original grandeur and proved hugely popular with Britons from all walks of life.

It's the pin-up of our age, gracing homes, shops - even a US embassy...the poster we just can't stop buying

Feed Your Head: The Significance of 09/09/09 – What Will You Do?

The Significance of 09/09/09 – What Will You Do?
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2009 has been hailed as the ‘Year of the Enneagram’, or the year of the nine. According to ancient Sufi typology, there are nine personality types and nine primary roles within each type. To discover them all within oneself is tantamount to a spiritual awakening.

Since 09/09/09 only comes around once a century, we figured it would be fun to take a look at the significance of not just today, but the number nine in general. It turns out, the number nine pops up in the coolest, and most unexpected, places. Below are nine facts and superstitions about the number nine:

1. It takes exactly nine minutes for light from the sun to reach the earth.

2. After traveling to the nine corners of the earth, it took Odysseus nine years to get back to Greece.

3. Nine multiplied by any one-digit number always yields a two-digit result. The sum of those two digits is always nine ((for example, 9 × 9 = 81. 8 + 1 = 9). The exception to this rule is 9 × 1, which results in a one-digit answer: 9.

4. Many superstitious people and psychics believe that if you dream about the number nine, a child will soon be brought into your home.

5. According to the Christian angelic hierarchy, there are nine choirs of angels.

6. In Norse Mythololgy, Odin hung himself on an ash tree for nine days, in order to learn the runes.

7. Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and prayer, is the ninth month of the calendar.

8. A nine-pointed star is used to symbolize the Bahá’í Faith, which symbolizes completeness in the religion.

9. Nine monks are involved in almost every important Buddhist ritual.

The good news about the number nine is that nobody considers it to be unlucky. In fact, most superstitious people think it can bring good fortune…making today one of the luckiest days we’ll ever live to see! Here are nine ways that you can take advantage of it:

1. Read Dante’s Divine Comedy, which details the nine circles of hell. Viewed by many as one of the greatest works of world literature, it’s a surprisingly entertaining read (especially considering it was written in the early 1300s).

2. Throw a party of nines. Invite nine friends over and have everyone bring a drink and a dish to try. Nine different cheeses paired with nine different wines? Sounds like a celebration worthy of 09/09/09!

3. Write down nine goals that you want to accomplish in the next nine months (or nine years, or nine weeks, whatever works for you). It’s been proven that people are more likely to accomplish their goals when they write them down. It’s not a very time consuming process, and you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a shot!

4. When you’ve finished writing down your nine goals, write down nine places that you want to see before you die. Even if you write down each of the Seven Wonders of the World, there are still two spots left. Where will you go?

5. Donate $9 to your favorite charity. Even though times are tough, almost everyone can spare an extra nine bucks for a good cause. If you’re too strapped for cash to make a monetary donation, consider cleaning out your closet and donating what you no longer wear. The good feeling you’ll have will be well worth the money spent. (Just make sure to check out where the organization ranks on Charity Navigator first!)

6. Email, call or write nine loved ones and tell them that you’re thinking of them. Sometimes when you’re having a bad day, a simple phone call from a friend or family member can turn things around. If each of them follow suit, you’ll have started a good karma phone tree that can touch hundreds of lives!

7. Take a photo of yourself. What will you be doing at 9:09 on 09/09/09? Post it online for everyone to see.

8. Book a vacation! Lots of places are having 09/09/09 travel deals that you can take advantage of. Traditionally, September is a slow month for travel, and resorts, hotels and cruise lines are pulling out all the stops to get as many vacationers to their destinations as possible. Why not take advantage of some of the greatest deals of the year?

9. Catch up on your numerology. If you’ve never been to a psychic, today is the day. Nine is the number of sympathy, love, sacrifice, selflessness and morality, as well as completion and finality. There are a lot of things going on today, numerology-wise, so there’s no time like the present to tap into the mystic possibilities that await you in the future.

Feed Your Head...2.0

Tell everyone you know: "My happiness depends on me, so you're off the hook." And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they're doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel -- and then, you'll love them all. Because the only reason you don't love them, is because you're using them as your excuse to not feel good.


- Abraham

Buddha & Art...blissful

Like finding out Colonel Sanders didn’t really make the chicken...

Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith By David Van Biema

Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979 

On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive." 

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand." 

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared. 

And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist." 

That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and — except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her." 
The book is hardly the work of some antireligious investigative reporter who Dumpster-dived for Teresa's correspondence. Kolodiejchuk, a senior Missionaries of Charity member, is her postulator, responsible for petitioning for her sainthood and collecting the supporting materials. (Thus far she has been beatified; the next step is canonization.) The letters in the book were gathered as part of that process. 

The church anticipates spiritually fallow periods. Indeed, the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross in the 16th century coined the term the "dark night" of the soul to describe a characteristic stage in the growth of some spiritual masters. Teresa's may be the most extensive such case on record. (The "dark night" of the 18th century mystic St. Paul of the Cross lasted 45 years; he ultimately recovered.) Yet Kolodiejchuk sees it in St. John's context, as darkness within faith. Teresa found ways, starting in the early 1960s, to live with it and abandoned neither her belief nor her work. Kolodiejchuk produced the book as proof of the faith-filled perseverance that he sees as her most spiritually heroic act. 
Two very different Catholics predict that the book will be a landmark. The Rev. Matthew Lamb, chairman of the theology department at the conservative Ave Maria University in Florida, thinks Come Be My Light will eventually rank with St. Augustine's Confessions and Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain as an autobiography of spiritual ascent. Martin of America, a much more liberal institution, calls the book "a new ministry for Mother Teresa, a written ministry of her interior life," and says, "It may be remembered as just as important as her ministry to the poor. It would be a ministry to people who had experienced some doubt, some absence of God in their lives. And you know who that is? Everybody. Atheists, doubters, seekers, believers, everyone." 

Not all atheists and doubters will agree. Both Kolodiejchuk and Martin assume that Teresa's inability to perceive Christ in her life did not mean he wasn't there. In fact, they see his absence as part of the divine gift that enabled her to do great work. But to the U.S.'s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument will seem absurd. They will see the book's Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country-and-western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned. Says Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing polemic on Teresa, and more recently of the atheist manifesto God Is Not Great: "She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself." Meanwhile, some familiar with the smiling mother's extraordinary drive may diagnose her condition less as a gift of God than as a subconscious attempt at the most radical kind of humility: she punished herself with a crippling failure to counterbalance her great successes. 
Come Be My Light is that rare thing, a posthumous autobiography that could cause a wholesale reconsideration of a major public figure — one way or another. It raises questions about God and faith, the engine behind great achievement, and the persistence of love, divine and human. That it does so not in any organized, intentional form but as a hodgepodge of desperate notes not intended for daylight should leave readers only more convinced that it is authentic — and that they are, somewhat shockingly, touching the true inner life of a modern saint. 

Prequel: Near Ecstatic Communion

[Jesus:] Wilt thou refuse to do this for me? ... You have become my Spouse for my love — you have come to India for Me. The thirst you had for souls brought you so far — Are you afraid to take one more step for Your Spouse — for me — for souls? Is your generosity grown cold? Am I a second to you?
[Teresa:] Jesus, my own Jesus — I am only Thine — I am so stupid — I do not know what to say but do with me whatever You wish — as You wish — as long as you wish. [But] why can't I be a perfect Loreto Nun — here — why can't I be like everybody else.
[Jesus:] I want Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children ... You are I know the most incapable person — weak and sinful but just because you are that — I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse?
— in a prayer dialogue recounted to Archbishop Ferdinand Perier, January 1947 
On Sept. 10, 1946, after 17 years as a teacher in Calcutta with the Loreto Sisters (an uncloistered, education-oriented community based in Ireland), Mother Mary Teresa, 36, took the 400-mile (645-km) train trip to Darjeeling. She had been working herself sick, and her superiors ordered her to relax during her annual retreat in the Himalayan foothills. On the ride out, she reported, Christ spoke to her. He called her to abandon teaching and work instead in "the slums" of the city, dealing directly with "the poorest of the poor" — the sick, the dying, beggars and street children. "Come, Come, carry Me into the holes of the poor," he told her. "Come be My light." The goal was to be both material and evangelistic — as Kolodiejchuk puts it, "to help them live their lives with dignity [and so] encounter God's infinite love, and having come to know Him, to love and serve Him in return." 
It was wildly audacious — an unfunded, single-handed crusade (Teresa stipulated that she and her nuns would share their beneficiaries' poverty and started out alone) to provide individualized service to the poorest in a poor city made desperate by riots. The local Archbishop, Ferdinand Périer, was initially skeptical. But her letters to him, preserved, illustrate two linked characteristics — extreme tenacity and a profound personal bond to Christ. When Périer hesitated, Teresa, while calling herself a "little nothing," bombarded him with notes suggesting that he refer the question to an escalating list of authorities — the local apostolic delegation, her Mother General, the Pope. And when she felt all else had failed, she revealed the spiritual topper: a dramatic (melodramatic, really) dialogue with a "Voice" she eventually revealed to be Christ's. It ended with Jesus' emphatic reiteration of his call to her: "You are I know the most incapable person — weak and sinful but just because you are that — I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse?" 
Mother Teresa had visions, including one of herself conversing with Christ on the Cross. Her confessor, Father Celeste Van Exem, was convinced that her mystical experiences were genuine. "[Her] union with Our Lord has been continual and so deep and violent that rapture does not seem very far," he commented. Teresa later wrote simply, "Jesus gave Himself to me." 
Then on Jan. 6, 1948, Périer, after consulting the Vatican, finally gave permission for Teresa to embark on her second calling. And Jesus took himself away again. 
The Onset
Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
— addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated 

In the first half of 1948, Teresa took a basic medical course before launching herself alone onto the streets of Calcutta. She wrote, "My soul at present is in perfect peace and joy." Kolodiejchuk includes her moving description of her first day on the job: "The old man lying on the street — not wanted — all alone just sick and dying — I gave him carborsone and water to drink and the old Man — was so strangely grateful ... Then we went to Taltala Bazaar, and there was a very poor woman dying I think of starvation more than TB ... I gave her something which will help her to sleep. — I wonder how long she will last." But two months later, shortly after her major triumph of locating a space for her headquarters, Kolodiejchuk's files find her troubled. "What tortures of loneliness," she wrote. "I wonder how long will my heart suffer this?" This complaint could be understood as an initial response to solitude and hardship were it not for subsequent letters. The more success Teresa had — and half a year later so many young women had joined her society that she needed to move again — the worse she felt. In March 1953, she wrote Périer, "Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself — for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started 'the work.'" 

Périer may have missed the note of desperation. "God guides you, dear Mother," he answered avuncularly. "You are not so much in the dark as you think ... You have exterior facts enough to see that God blesses your work ... Feelings are not required and often may be misleading." And yet feelings — or rather, their lack — became her life's secret torment. How can you assume the lover's ardor when he no longer grants you his voice, his touch, his very presence? The problem was exacerbated by an inhibition to even describe it. Teresa reported on several occasions inviting a confessor to visit and then being unable to speak. Eventually, one thought to ask her to write the problem down, and she complied. "The more I want him — the less I am wanted," she wrote Périer in 1955. A year later she sounded desolate: "Such deep longing for God — and ... repulsed — empty — no faith — no love — no zeal. — [The saving of] Souls holds no attraction — Heaven means nothing — pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything." 

At the suggestion of a confessor, she wrote the agonized plea that begins this section, in which she explored the theological worst-possible-case implications of her dilemma. That letter and another one from 1959 ("What do I labour for? If there be no God — there can be no soul — if there is no Soul then Jesus — You also are not true") are the only two that sound any note of doubt of God's existence. But she frequently bemoaned an inability to pray: "I utter words of Community prayers — and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give — But my prayer of union is not there any longer — I no longer pray." 

As the Missionaries of Charity flourished and gradually gained the attention of her church and the world at large, Teresa progressed from confessor to confessor the way some patients move through their psychoanalysts. Van Exem gave way to Périer, who gave way in 1959 to the Rev. (later Cardinal) Lawrence Picachy, who was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph Neuner in 1961. By the 1980s the chain included figures such as Bishop William Curlin of Charlotte, N.C. For these confessors, she developed a kind of shorthand of pain, referring almost casually to "my darkness" and to Jesus as "the Absent One." There was one respite. In October 1958, Pope Pius XII died, and requiem Masses were celebrated around the Catholic world. Teresa prayed to the deceased Pope for a "proof that God is pleased with the Society." And "then and there," she rejoiced, "disappeared the long darkness ... that strange suffering of 10 years." Unfortunately, five weeks later she reported being "in the tunnel" once more. And although, as we shall see, she found a way to accept the absence, it never lifted again. Five years after her Nobel, a Jesuit priest in the Calcutta province noted that "Mother came ... to speak about the excruciating night in her soul. It was not a passing phase but had gone on for years." A 1995 letter discussed her "spiritual dryness." She died in 1997. 
Explanations

Tell me, Father, why is there so much pain and darkness in my soul?
— to the Rev. Lawrence Picachy, August 1959 

Why did Teresa's communication with Jesus, so vivid and nourishing in the months before the founding of the Missionaries, evaporate so suddenly? Interestingly, secular and religious explanations travel for a while on parallel tracks. Both understand (although only one celebrates) that identification with Christ's extended suffering on the Cross, undertaken to redeem humanity, is a key aspect of Catholic spirituality. Teresa told her nuns that physical poverty ensured empathy in "giving themselves" to the suffering poor and established a stronger bond with Christ's redemptive agony. She wrote in 1951 that the Passion was the only aspect of Jesus' life that she was interested in sharing: "I want to ... drink ONLY [her emphasis] from His chalice of pain." And so she did, although by all indications not in a way she had expected. 

Kolodiejchuk finds divine purpose in the fact that Teresa's spiritual spigot went dry just as she prevailed over her church's perceived hesitations and saw a successful way to realize Jesus' call for her. "She was a very strong personality," he suggests. "And a strong personality needs stronger purification" as an antidote to pride. As proof that it worked, he cites her written comment after receiving an important prize in the Philippines in the 1960s: "This means nothing to me, because I don't have Him." 
And yet "the question is, Who determined the abandonment she experienced?" says Dr. Richard Gottlieb, a teacher at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute who has written about the church and who was provided a copy of the book by TIME. "Could she have imposed it on herself?" Psychologists have long recognized that people of a certain personality type are conflicted about their high achievement and find ways to punish themselves. Gottlieb notes that Teresa's ambitions for her ministry were tremendous. Both he and Kolodiejchuk are fascinated by her statement, "I want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before." Remarks the priest: "That's a kind of daring thing to say." Yet her letters are full of inner conflict about her accomplishments. Rather than simply giving all credit to God, Gottlieb observes, she agonizes incessantly that "any taking credit for her accomplishments — if only internally — is sinful" and hence, perhaps, requires a price to be paid. A mild secular analog, he says, might be an executive who commits a horrific social gaffe at the instant of a crucial promotion. For Teresa, "an occasion for a modicum of joy initiated a significant quantity of misery," and her subsequent successes led her to perpetuate it. 

Gottlieb also suggests that starting her ministry "may have marked a turning point in her relationship with Jesus," whose urgent claims she was finally in a position to fulfill. Being the active party, he speculates, might have scared her, and in the end, the only way to accomplish great things might have been in the permanent and less risky role of the spurned yet faithful lover. 
The atheist position is simpler. In 1948, Hitchens ventures, Teresa finally woke up, although she could not admit it. He likens her to die-hard Western communists late in the cold war: "There was a huge amount of cognitive dissonance," he says. "They thought, 'Jesus, the Soviet Union is a failure, [but] I'm not supposed to think that. It means my life is meaningless.' They carried on somehow, but the mainspring was gone. And I think once the mainspring is gone, it cannot be repaired." That, he says, was Teresa. 

Most religious readers will reject that explanation, along with any that makes her the author of her own misery — or even defines it as true misery. Martin, responding to the torch-song image of Teresa, counterproposes her as the heroically constant spouse. "Let's say you're married and you fall in love and you believe with all your heart that marriage is a sacrament. And your wife, God forbid, gets a stroke and she's comatose. And you will never experience her love again. It's like loving and caring for a person for 50 years and once in a while you complain to your spiritual director, but you know on the deepest level that she loves you even though she's silent and that what you're doing makes sense. Mother Teresa knew that what she was doing made sense." 

Integration

I can't express in words — the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me — for the first time in ... years — I have come to love the darkness — for I believe now that it is part of a very, very small part of Jesus' darkness & pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a 'spiritual side of your work' as you wrote — Today really I felt a deep joy — that Jesus can't go anymore through the agony — but that He wants to go through it in me.
— to Neuner, Circa 1961 

There are two responses to trauma: to hold onto it in all its vividness and remain its captive, or without necessarily "conquering" it, to gradually integrate it into the day-by-day. After more than a decade of open-wound agony, Teresa seems to have begun regaining her spiritual equilibrium with the help of a particularly perceptive adviser. The Rev. Joseph Neuner, whom she met in the late 1950s and confided in somewhat later, was already a well-known theologian, and when she turned to him with her "darkness," he seems to have told her the three things she needed to hear: that there was no human remedy for it (that is, she should not feel responsible for affecting it); that feeling Jesus is not the only proof of his being there, and her very craving for God was a "sure sign" of his "hidden presence" in her life; and that the absence was in fact part of the "spiritual side" of her work for Jesus. 
This counsel clearly granted Teresa a tremendous sense of release. For all that she had expected and even craved to share in Christ's Passion, she had not anticipated that she might recapitulate the particular moment on the Cross when he asks, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" The idea that rather than a nihilistic vacuum, his felt absence might be the ordeal she had prayed for, that her perseverance in its face might echo his faith unto death on the Cross, that it might indeed be a grace, enhancing the efficacy of her calling, made sense of her pain. Neuner would later write, "It was the redeeming experience of her life when she realized that the night of her heart was the special share she had in Jesus' passion." And she thanked Neuner profusely: "I can't express in words — the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me — for the first time in ... years — I have come to love the darkness. " 

Not that it didn't continue to torment her. Years later, describing the joy in Jesus experienced by some of her nuns, she observed dryly to Neuner, "I just have the joy of having nothing — not even the reality of the Presence of God [in the Eucharist]." She described her soul as like an "ice block." Yet she recognized Neuner's key distinction, writing, "I accept not in my feelings — but with my will, the Will of God — I accept His will." Although she still occasionally worried that she might "turn a Judas to Jesus in this painful darkness," with the passage of years the absence morphed from a potential wrecking ball into a kind of ragged cornerstone. Says Gottlieb, the psychoanalyst: "What is remarkable is that she integrated it in a way that enabled her to make it the organizing center of her personality, the beacon for her ongoing spiritual life." Certainly, she understood it as essential enough to project it into her afterlife. "If I ever become a Saint — I will surely be one of 'darkness.' I will continually be absent from Heaven — to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth," she wrote in 1962. Theologically, this is a bit odd since most orthodox Christianity defines heaven as God's eternal presence and doesn't really provide for regular no-shows at the heavenly feast. But it is, Kolodiejchuk suggests, her most moving statement, since the sacrifice involved is infinite. "When she wrote, 'I am willing to suffer ... for all eternity, if this [is] possible,'" he says, "I said, Wow." 

He contends that the letters reveal her as holier than anyone knew. However formidable her efforts on Christ's behalf, it is even more astounding to realize that she achieved them when he was not available to her — a bit like a person who believes she can't walk winning the Olympic 100 meters. Kolodiejchuk goes even further. Catholic theologians recognize two types of "dark night": the first is purgative, cleansing the contemplative for a "final union" with Christ; the second is "reparative," and continues after such a union, so that he or she may participate in a state of purity even closer to that of Jesus and Mary, who suffered for human salvation despite being without sin. By the end, writes Kolodiejchuk, "by all indications this was the case with Mother Teresa." That puts her in rarefied company. 

A New Ministry
If this brings You glory — if souls are brought to you — with joy I accept all to the end of my life.
— to Jesus, undated 

But for most people, Teresa's ranking among Catholic saints may be less important than a more general implication of Come Be My Light: that if she could carry on for a half-century without God in her head or heart, then perhaps people not quite as saintly can cope with less extreme versions of the same problem. One powerful instance of this may have occurred very early on. In 1968, British writer-turned-filmmaker Malcolm Muggeridge visited Teresa. Muggeridge had been an outspoken agnostic, but by the time he arrived with a film crew in Calcutta he was in full spiritual-search mode. Beyond impressing him with her work and her holiness, she wrote a letter to him in 1970 that addressed his doubts full-bore. "Your longing for God is so deep and yet He keeps Himself away from you," she wrote. "He must be forcing Himself to do so — because he loves you so much — the personal love Christ has for you is infinite — The Small difficulty you have re His Church is finite — Overcome the finite with the infinite." Muggeridge apparently did. He became an outspoken Christian apologist and converted to Catholicism in 1982. His 1969 film, Something Beautiful for God, supported by a 1971 book of the same title, made Teresa an international sensation. 

At the time, Muggeridge was something of a unique case. A child of privilege who became a minor celebrity, he was hardly Teresa's target audience. Now, with the publication of Come Be My Light, we can all play Muggeridge. Kolodiejchuk thinks the book may act as an antidote to a cultural problem. "The tendency in our spiritual life but also in our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on," he says. "And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn't 'feeling' Christ's love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, 'Your happiness is all I want.' That's a powerful example even if you are not talking in exclusively religious terms." 

America's Martin wants to talk precisely in religious terms. "Everything she's experiencing," he says, "is what average believers experience in their spiritual lives writ large. I have known scores of people who have felt abandoned by God and had doubts about God's existence. And this book expresses that in such a stunning way but shows her full of complete trust at the same time." He takes a breath. "Who would have thought that the person who was considered the most faithful woman in the world struggled like that with her faith?" he asks. "And who would have thought that the one thought to be the most ardent of believers could be a saint to the skeptics?" Martin has long used Teresa as an example to parishioners of self-emptying love. Now, he says, he will use her extraordinary faith in the face of overwhelming silence to illustrate how doubt is a natural part of everyone's life, be it an average believer's or a world-famous saint's. 

Into the Light of Day
Please destroy any letters or anything I have written.
— to Picachy, April 1959 

Consistent with her ongoing fight against pride, Teresa's rationale for suppressing her personal correspondence was "I want the work to remain only His." If the letters became public, she explained to Picachy, "people will think more of me — less of Jesus."
The particularly holy are no less prone than the rest of us to misjudge the workings of history — or, if you will, of God's providence. Teresa considered the perceived absence of God in her life as her most shameful secret but eventually learned that it could be seen as a gift abetting her calling. If her worries about publicizing it also turn out to be misplaced — if a book of hasty, troubled notes turns out to ease the spiritual road of thousands of fellow believers, there would be no shame in having been wrong — but happily, even wonderfully wrong — twice.