This is a truism, but frequently we forgot how true it is: We don’t know what we don’t know. This is much different from the less problematic condition of knowing what we don’t know.
I know that I don’t know Japanese, aside from a few words. I know that I don’t know any math beyond calculus, and very little of that. I know that I don’t know how to ride a snowboard. I’m confident in stating these sorts of knowledge about my non-knowledge because they’re so obvious to me.
But there’s plenty of things that I don’t know that I don’t know. I can’t provide examples of these, because when I feel that I know something, even if that isn’t true, my feeling of knowing prevents me from knowing that I don’t know.
As I continued my reading in The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson, I started putting question marks in the margins of the Consciousness chapter. My skepticism started with these passages.
Because the subject of consciousness is mired in controversy, we already need to deal with an objection to our way of delineating consciousness, Some philosophers have denied that awareness can be experientially distinguished from the objects of awareness. They say that awareness is transparent, by which they mean that you see right through it to its objects, like seeing through a clear window pane to what lies outside.
For example, when you see a sunset, they claim that you’re aware only of the colors of the sky, which are perceptible qualities of the object, but not of any qualities of your seeing or visual awareness… In general, according to this viewpoint, awareness and attention make no contribution to how experience feels or seems apart from the objects and properties they represent. We think this viewpoint is wrong.
…Awareness doesn’t show up apart from the objects of awareness, yet it’s clearly distinguishable from them.
They believe that it is possible to have a “nonobjectifying kind of meta-awareness…that doesn’t present awareness as an object.” How the heck is it possible to clearly distinguish awareness from the objects of awareness if awareness isn’t made into an object? Meaning, how would someone know that they’re aware of awareness without making awareness into an object that is known by… what? Another form of awareness?
I just can’t understand this whole be aware that you’re aware thing. It seems to me that awareness is indeed transparent, that the only entities we can be aware of are the contents of awareness, not awareness itself. A finger can’t touch itself. An eye can’t see itself. Yet the book states:
From this “witnessing” perspective, there is a clear difference between experiential qualities of awareness, such as stability, tranquility, and alertness, versus experienced qualities of the objects such as color.
I don’t see that clear difference. Stability, tranquility, and alertness aren’t qualities of some sort of pure awareness. They arise in the course of our awareness perceiving contents of awareness both within and without ourselves.
If I’m counting my breaths, and start thinking of what to have for dinner when I get to five, I know that my awareness is distracted not from an experience of pure awareness, but from the content of my awareness suddenly shifting from breathing to yellow curry.
At any rate, I agreed with the next section in the Consciousness chapter, where the authors make the rather obvious claim that everything we know relies on consciousness. They call this the “horizon,” in the sense of a physical horizon where everything beyond it isn’t visible to us.
Consciousness is the horizon for the world’s disclosure. The world appears and is present to us from within the horizon of consciousness. Consciousness is the horizon of anything we can perceive, think about, and investigate, including when we are doing science. We can observe, imagine, and investigate things only within the horizon of consciousness, and anything that we determine to be real or factual gets this determination from within the horizon of consciousness.
I also heartily agreed with the following section, The Primacy of Embodiment. I highlighted every word of this section, my highest reading compliment. I’ll share as much of the section as my typing fingers can tolerate. [Turned out, all of it.]
Earlier we said that your brain doesn’t show up anywhere directly in your experience. We can now turn this point around. There is an undeniable close dependency of states of consciousness on the brain, but this dependency is inscrutable from within the horizon of first-person awareness. Being awake and perceiving things around you, being asleep and dreaming, “just sitting” in open awareness and mere nondistraction: these modes of awareness depend on the brain, but experiencing them from within reveals nothing of this dependence. More generally, horizontal consciousness does not directly reveal from within all that it depends on.
Of course, some philosophical and spiritual traditions deny this. They assert that it’s evident that the inner nature of consciousness, sometimes called “pure consciousness” or “pure awareness” depends on nothing other than itself, and hence constitutes the fundamental ground of being. But if this metaphysics is thought to follow from the experience of pure awareness, the inference is invalid. No matter how basic and self-subsistent awareness may seem to be from the inside, it doesn’t follow that it really is that way.
How something appears doesn’t necessarily reveal how it is, even in the case of consciousness. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t genuine experiences of “pure awareness,” states in which awareness is experienced as having an invariant phenomenal quality distinct from its variable objects. But it does mean that such experiences, by themselves or taken just on their own terms, don’t reveal their origins or sources, or all that they depend on.
We can take this point further. Consciousness, in the sense of your immediate awareness, must have sources outside itself. Anything you can think, including “this finger in pointing to an aware space” or “this is a dream,” is meaningful thanks to concepts you possess and know how to use, and whose meanings don’t originate with you. Anything you do, including even “just sitting” and “nonthinking” in meditation, has meaning, and is possible at all, only given a background of social and cultural practices that extend far beyond you, and that predate and will outlive you.
Even meta-awareness, the ability to mentally attend to and monitor your awareness, originates developmentally from your having internalized an outside perspective on yourself when you were an infant interacting with others. Finally, any attempt to deny that your immediate awareness has outside sources is incoherent, because this denial cannot be thought or stated except through the conceptual and linguistic resources provided to you by your social heritage and your cultural and biological evolution. Even if you were the last surviving person of a universal plague, your mind and your capacity for meta-awareness would be inherently social.
These points describe what we will call the primacy of embodiment. There is no way to step outside embodiment, our living and inherently social and enculturated bodies. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “The body is the vehicle of being in the world.” The body is the medium of the world’s disclosure via consciousness.
So if you think you know that consciousness is separate from the brain and body, think again. Because you’ve failed to realize that you don’t know what you don’t know.
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If you know what you don’t know
Then what is the need to know
Motions creation
Humans can’t live without Curiosity
It pushes the evolution cycle
In addition to science led by West
Spirituality also grew in east
Both joins at Truth and form a circle of Death
Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson write
“Even meta-awareness, the ability to mentally attend to and monitor your awareness, originates developmentally from your having internalized an outside perspective on yourself when you were an infant interacting with others. Finally, any attempt to deny that your immediate awareness has outside sources is incoherent, because this denial cannot be thought or stated except through the conceptual and linguistic resources provided to you by your social heritage and your cultural and biological evolution. Even if you were the last surviving person of a universal plague, your mind and your capacity for meta-awareness would be inherently social.”
They say a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and it feels like these three authors talked this notion into a corner. They conflate cognitive reflection with raw consciousness. Not all experience is channeled through language. In deep meditation, the mind circumvents linguistic filters by quieting the brain networks responsible for the narrative ‘I’ and ‘me.’ This allows internal experience to come through an entirely different channel, where the experience and the experienced become one. Ultimate awareness is biological and experiential, existing long before—and far beyond—our social heritage.
Finally Mr Tepper says something that made sense and so it’s the old adage nothing new under the sun. But once you go inside you aren’t under the Sun anymore. Is your glass half empty or half full? You can’t prove reincarnation but you can sure prove incarnation. That’s what everything is , an incarnation. Soul is nothing but the life force that one minute is there in the body or form and next minute there’s a dead body and the life force or soul is gone. But where does it go? Even trees have soul. Every living thing has soul ( life force). My definition of God is nature in action. But if you’re so against the man with the beard being God and against religion that it’s blinded you against reason then that’s a personal problem. But like John Lennon said and I’m sure he stole this from somewhere. There are no problems, only solutions. Perfect and aware beings are nothing but the reincarnation of the soul. The same life force that’s in everything . And these beings can be sent back time and time again. The difference being that they arrive karmaless and so were the karma that is created during their lifespan is also dispense during that same lifespan. They don’t have to reincarnate but they can be sent back for the good of the rest of the world. You don’t need an intelligent being. You just need a being. Be here now.
Brian Ji,
You return to one of your anti-supernatural themes when you close your essay with:
‘So if you think you know that consciousness is separate from the brain and body, think again. Because you’ve failed to realize that you don’t know what you don’t know.’
LOL. When you comment on the brain—which science still doesn’t fully understand—and its possible connections to the metaphysical—which are entirely unknown, if they even exist—then I’m sorry, but you don’t know what you don’t know.
To dogmatically claim that everything is strictly physical requires a leap of faith that mirrors the arguments for God, and it suffers from the exact same flaw: you cannot logically prove the nature of the whole universe when we can only test a fraction of its parts.
Of course you could just call everything Physical, including what we don’t know, but that is a purely circular argument, because it includes what today we call metaphysical
Spence, I’m not anti-supernatural. I’m pro-reality, pro-facts, pro-evidence. There’s no factual evidence that the supernatural is real. If you can provide it, a Nobel prize awaits you, along with gratitude from the world for markedly advancing scientific knowledge. Since you can’t do that, I stand by my supernatural criticism. I and every other open-minded doubter of the supernatural would happily change our minds if the supernatural was proven to exist. Until that evidence exists, we’ll stick with reality rather than fantasy.
Brian – I don’t know how you do it. “Consciousness” is one of the words I just cannot hear anymore as an ex-RSSB. I don’t want to know. I have really tried to read this post but when I see phrases that were RSSB buzzwords like this my brain just switches off. I see the words but my mind just goes “nope” and refuses to read them. I cannot face any of this content anymore at all after RSSB. I could never go back and listen to someone shout-preaching these words in my face for ages while everyone sits there and soaks it up like sunshine. Consciousness is a word that means nothing to me anymore.
INSERT GSD VOICE HERE:
“Look Brother, when your Consciousness Expands Beyond The Physical and you Merge With The Source, that is when you will experience the Inner Bliss Of The Shabd Within, through Raising Your Consciousness by Doing Simran And Bhajan In Meditation in order to experience that Shabd we can Elevate Our Consciousness, see The Mind Is A Creature Of Habit and we have to Force It To Sit Still, so that we can Raise Our Consciousness when we connect with the Shabd AND THEN we can reap the benefits and consciously enjoy the sound, but until then it is just words, so we have to put this all into practice, and slowly slowly Increase Consciousness through The Practice Of Meditation, by Bringing Our Attention To The Eye Center and Raising Our Consciousness DAILY only then we can Meet The Lord Within and truly achieve God Realisation, by Merging With The Source and Expanding Our Consciousness in the process of meditation to allow ourselves to do so, and Reach Our True Home with the source of our Consciousness, and in doing so beginning to understand who we truly are in our Consciousness, so that Self Realisation Leads To God Realisation and then we Lose Our Identity and no longer need to be conscious of our own individual identity and our Consciousness, in doing so, We Become Consciousness Itself and Become One With The Lord. So, do your Meditation Daily and You Will Reach Your Goals.”
“Thank you Babaji please bless me and my family” 🙂
“Next question please!”
Why are you subjecting the rest of us to this BS then? Have you no empathy? We don’t want to hear this crap either lol. Quit reacting haha
Brian Ji,
Everything was considered supernatural before science established the physical laws of our reality. For all that science has yet to discover is as good as any other label, and better than none, if it reflects a real experience.
When mystics sincerely use terms like God, soul, or spirit, they often do so in allegorical, metaphorical, and poetic ways. Much of the Bible is poetry, but that poetry reflects the human condition and human experience quite beautifully.
It is the best language people have to discuss their internal experience.
We still have so much to learn about how the brain operates, how perception works, and how the boundaries of the ‘body,’ ‘consciousness,’ and the ‘physical’ interact.
So it is a little short-sighted to plead ultimate knowledge of all reality just yet, Brian. Be patient with science. Meanwhile, be generous with people’s poetry. If it weren’t for the bounds of human imagination pushing past existing data, our entire modern understanding of quantum and cosmic reality wouldn’t exist.
Here’s a koan for you, Brian. How could Einstein imagine what it was like to ride a wave of light and then afterwards come up with the math, accurately?
Spooky. Until you can prove where that insight actually came from, and reproduce it in a lab, I’m calling it supernatural.
Ready for my Nobel, Brian Ji!
The world may not sit on a turtle, but I do see a chip on your shoulder.
To be clear, I’m using the word ‘supernatural’ in a narrow, literal way. I don’t mean magical forces that fit an untested assertion. I only mean causes or other terms for some experience that are beyond our current scientific understanding—’super’ as in something beyond, and ‘natural’ as in the reality we commonly understand through established science.
From that definition everything science will discover but hasn’t is currently supernatural.
So yes I can and have proved the supernatural exists today, by definition, because we know science hasn’t mapped everything
And I can prove, by that same definition , that everything used to actually be supernatural!
There. Nobel Committee, here is my bank account information!
Now just in case some joker wants to claim that science does know everything that can be known, and therefore the supernatural doesn’t exist, I just ask you to humbly meet the very condition science establishes as the proof of any law of physics: and that is the ability, in a lab free of the influence of all natural variables, to reproduce people, animals, ideas, planets and my step mom’s poppy seed eggless cake. Do that and you will have your proof, and the thanks of every anti-theist the world over, and of course your own Nobel prize.
Please do not reproduce Adolph Hitler, but if you could bring back Abe Lincoln and Einstein that would be much appreciated. And, just as a personal request while the lab is up and running, Marilyn Monroe.
Dr Frankenstein I presume.
All you have to do is prove these things to yourself and nobody else. You don’t need these fake preachers trying to push their point of view or these fake gurus trying to hold on to power that was never theirs to begin with. And not everybody’s going to see things during meditation which seems to be what people want instant gratification. It’s supernatural enough for me that they’re sending photos back from the space shuttle but I would never want to go up in one. And not everybody will have the opportunity to view the cosmos from that point of view. Finally these awful people that see things during meditation maybe that’s the only chance they have to be good. They open their eyes and they’re back to being Gurinder, or whatever else shady character that they have going. Btw I told you he was never sick. He’s just sick morally. And that lying nature will soon be dead.
Did I say I’ve proven supernatural and supernatural abilities to myself? Maybe Carlos Santana did too. It might be easier for artists and musicians I don’t know. I’m not a scientist and don’t want to be.
Rather than saying “We don’t know what we don’t know”, why can’t we just admit to ourselves, “We just don’t know” and leave it at that? Fair enough if it relates to issues that directly affect our lives like health issues, lack of adequate food and shelter (I’ve nothing against exploration), but for much of our frantic attempts to search for something through religion, the supernatural, meditation, and so forth, it’s just the futile attempt to hope to stumble across (or convince ourselves) that there exists something permanent.
The whole universe, us and everything else we know (and probably don’t know) is impermanent. Just because something is beyond our understanding doesn’t in any way justify calling it supernatural. Supernatural (whichever way it’s dressed up) is, by definition, superior to or greater than nature. This thinking is grounded in the entire mental history of human beings stemming from uncertainty, our fear of non-existence and death.
@ Brian: “I agreed with the next section in the Consciousness chapter, where the authors make the rather obvious claim that everything we know relies on consciousness. They call this the “horizon,” in the sense of a physical horizon where everything beyond it isn’t visible to us.”
Consciousness, then, is the sense that you are experiencing something, that, in a nutshell, is consciousness. The problem would be in the word horizon, as many would (and do) seriously assert that they know, have experience of or are on the track of that which is beyond that horizon.
Such is the lot of us, humans. Desperately searching for something to assuage our fears of annihilation. It’s okay for the rest of the natural world, but we humans believe ourselves to be special. All probably due to the fact that we evolved a brain that could conceive and egotistically believe that we possessed a self (or soul to some) that would transcend death.
I’m transcending death as I text and as I breathe because it’s waiting for me and I’m not there yet. All it takes to transcend death is to live. Maybe you’re trying to transcend your fear of death but some of us aren’t afraid.
Do think it’s egotistical of the astronauts to go up in the space shuttle and we can’t . Senator Kelly seems like a very humble Voyager. Maybe it’s egotistical of him to be a senator though. But that’s another thing. The ego is the last of the deadly to leave the body. You won’t have any supernatural experiences if you have a big ego. I think that’s why Gurinder has such problems . Maybe Mick Jagger is smaller with a bigger ego but some bullies are really small people. You won’t get anywhere being a bully. I hope Babaji made his Will ji Years ago before he became senile and left a woman in the West to take his place. It’s been such a macho Male organization since he took over . But he could live another 10 years. Just as long as he dies before me I’ll be happy
He’s leaving a woman in the West in his Will and just a Gill in the East (for clarification) . Ghee
It has been said by many combat Soldiers after haven been on the battlefields,……”There are no Atheists in Fox holes.”
I can attest to the similarity of watching the love of my life, slowly die ! I will never wish this on any one, Atheist, Naturalist, Agnostic, or Fundamentalist of ANY Sect.
Being 84 year old, and being married to my one and only true love for over 60 plus years, and sharing just about every important event of my life with, …….watching her take her very last breath, after her eyes had been closed for days, and then, suddenly open her bright blue eyes wide open, and stare up towards the Heavens, as if she was seeing some thing magnificent beyond her understanding! I put my face a foot away from her face, so she would see that I was with her to her last breath, but she stared right through me!
She was diagnosed with Stage 4 aggressive Ovarian/Uterus cancer, that showed a 5 inch diameter tumor in her Uterus, entangled with Limp-nodes. That “final” diagnosis, after months of shining us on, while sucking every last dollar the Hospitals could get from Medicare and AARP Supplemental billing they could muster, finally gave us the diagnosis and treatment possibilities of survival, on June 12th, and she died on July 11th.
I have been alone in our apartment now, since June 2nd, when Paramedics were first called, and they took her to the Emergency room, because she could hardily breath, because the cancer had created liquid all around her lungs and heart, causing her left lung to collapse. A German Specialist from Bavaria was called, and he put a Catheter through her side, between her ribs, and left it there a week draining from a suction pump. She laid on her back for a week, while they kept sucking blood out of her like vampires, and HAD to KNOW that she had a HUGE tumor in her uterus, when they surgically went through her stomach, laparoscopically, to get biopsy samples. They said results would take a week, and a day after the biopsies, they pulled out her drain catheter tube, and put a patch over her now 2 open wounds, and DISCHARGED her from the hospital!! Regardless of my advocation, “WTF are you doing?” She is dying!! “ Some how, I managed to get her home alone, and she was in so much pain, because they refused to put her on Narcotics pain Meds, that I had to call Paramedics the following day to have her taken back to ER! After waiting 4 hours in ER waiting room watching her cry and weep in pain, they finally got her in a room, and the Triage began asking her the same old worn out BS questions, as if they had never seen her before. They admitted her to a room in the cancer ward this time, and STILL only had her on Tylenol for her pain! After diagnosing her with cancer June 12th, they did her 1st round of Chemo infusion for 30 minutes, after she signed all the consent documents, that said they wanted to shrink the tumor with 5 more rounds of Chemo infusions, 6 hours at a time, every 3 weeks, then try to surgically remove the tumor.
Lots of torture and horror stories happened between then, June 13 thru July 11, when she died! I watched it all. I was with her 4-8 hours every day during her 13 days in the hospital, than in the nursing home every day watching her slowly fade away, until her last 5 days when they put her in Hospice and finally managed her pain with Oxy and Fentinal patches. She faded away quickly once on Hospice drugs, in addition to her starving, because she had quit eating at least a month prior.
During my 40 days “in the desert” with her, I can’t remember of every praying and meditating so many hours a day, attempting to draw on every SPIRITUAL Asset I had ever been able to retain, up to that time, no one will understand these emotions, unless, and until, they, YOU, each have to go through it watching the Spouse you love best , slowly die, and you watch them take their last worldly breath! I hope you never have to experience what I have, right up to now, as I am sharing this with the only ones I decided to share it with. Presently the only peace to my soul I can acquire any where, is listening to Charan Singh’s Q & As again on Youtube. Now, it’s much more easy for me to detach from Maya, as I look forward and welcome departing my own human body and going to where ever The Lord sends me on my next Mission.
Through my sad time, …..it became easy to determine if I had any real friends . It reveals the truth, that is unpleasant. They have been far and few. I will NOT share this any where else, as it makes me cry , just reliving any of the moments.
My biggest observation through all of this has been to witness how messed up our Medical System presently is. in the U.S. Of course, only Spencer Tepper would really know, as an insider who has made his career in the medical field.
Dear Jim,
Thank you for sharing.
Tears in my eyes..
Condolences Jim. I watched my dad die in much the same fashion except he was a veteran and the bills were paid. And man they just want to milk the insurance companies. I don’t know if these young doctors even know what they’re doing anymore. Condolences Jim
I did a course a few years ago with Landmark Education. One of the messages was: ‘you don’t know that you don’t know that you don’t know”. – the first two ‘don’t know’s together are fairly easy to understand your, but all three together more challenging to understand.
Jim, that’s a …I simply don’t have words!! That’s …
my deepest, …ahh, may god give you strength to bear this …I’m falling back on a cliche, and in my case it’s a figure of speech, but still… It’s always, always a hurt beyond words, and in your case you’ve so often spoken out about her, and …
none of that’s very coherent, but i really don’t have words …just reaching out, is all
Sorry, those comments were incoherent. I hope you can read the sentiment I felt, and wanted to express, via those incoherent words. …If it …helps, at all, to talk, whether of that trying time, or of anything else at all; and whether now, or later: then we’re here, Jim. …Sporadically, and removed by geography and time and not to mention ways of thinking, but still, we’re here, should it help at all…
A few more “observations” during my Wife’s 6 weeks of slowly dying. The first week in the hospital, she was coherent, and hopeful that she could survive a few more years. She was super happy to see me every morning when I arrived every morning between 7:30 -8:00 AM after fighting rush hour traffic in to the city where the hospital is located, and has been obstructed by insane construction all around it for at least the last 5 years. Parking is hard to find any spaces left, even that early, then no matter where I parked, required another 15 minute walk to her room.
Being confined to her bed , with drain tubes sticking out of her along with monitor wires, leg compression gizmos to prevent blood clots, she could NOT get out of bed to use the Pot Chair next to her bed, with out pressing her Call button for an Aide to come help her! And before any one ever came to help her, she usually soiled the bed! When ever any one DID HELP HER DURING THE NIGHT, no one ever showed up to empty the pot in her pot chair until afternoon, when “House keeping” showed up to clean the room. So, I personally emptied the pot every morning as soon as I came in, after harressing any live body to find out when she could get her next dose of pain Meds, which she ALWAYS needed, because they ignored her weeping and pain “until some Doctor OKd it!” Every morning as soon I got there, saw between 9 and 10 AM, some different Doctor showed up, a different one every time, and asked the same ole BS questions,.. .”How are you feeling today? Where does it hurt? It seemed that no one read her Charts, and started all over every time the next “Hospital Physician ” showed up that looked like He/She had just arrived from Tim Buck Two on some Banana boat!
Any way, in spite of her pain, she still wanted to continue living that 1st week, and was anxious to return home!
2nd week, after I had her taken back to the hospital, she still had hope,…..UNTIL the June 12th diagnoses,…( on our Daughter’s Birthday that I had to call in California where she lives, with the sad news), but even then, she still had hope of survival, and personally signed the Consent Forms for Chemo treatment, after being told, that even if they were ever successful of surgically removing the tumor after 6 rounds of Chemo treatment, there would be an 80% chance of the cancer returning! Up to that time, we had both, been against Chemo all of our lives! But once Seniors are faced with Stage 4 aggressive cancer, there isn’t much left to decide!, even after the Oncologist told her to expect loosing most of her beautiful hair she had nourished and been proud of, all of her life, and also to expect sores in her mouth and private parts, and any where on her body that might ooze, and would need daily cleansing! And I was going to be her Home Care Giver, during her next months of Chemo treatment, but my #1 problem, is, we live in a 3rd floor apartment, that has 2 flights of stairs, consisting of 17 steps per flight, and she couldn’t walk!! But I was planning to do what ever necessary to make it happen, which would consist of hiring a private Patient Transport Team to take her to her Chemo appointments from our 3rd floor apartment, to her next 10 pre chemo and Chemo appointments, and bring her back, to a rental hospital bed I had arranged to be delivered and set up for July 2nd, which was to be her 1st appointment,….( which none of it happened, because she died in hospice at the nursing home .)
The 2nd week in the hospital, after diagnosing her, they discharged her AGAIN, refusing my Advocation, pleading, with them, to KEEP her there, in the hospital, in the Cancer ward, but they refused. I over heard an R.N. telling another,….”People think hospitals are Long Term Care Resorts, instead of Life Saving Facilities, which hospitals are. So, they steered me to the hospital Social Worker who told me, if I could not take her home and care for her by my self, after I accused them of wanting to deposit my wife in a wheel chair on the side walk, and wishing me luck,..the Social worker printed out a list of 7 Nursing Homes within a 25 mile radius of our apartment. I obviously picked the closest one, 7 miles away. So, the hospital Patient Transport Team took her on a gurney from the hospital, and brought her to the Nursing home which is called,…..XXXXXX Rehabilitation and Nursing facility. Once there, the REAL HORRORS began!! She shared a room divided only by a thin drape, with a 92 year old bed ridden lady who claimed she had been there 11 years waiting to die! The Boarding cost was $12,000.00 a month , not covered by Medicare after the 1st 20 days, but Hospice was covered by Medicare for 6 months Max. But all Hospice does is administer the Pain Meds, and do a 10 minute visit with a little Pep talk twice a week, same as they would have done at home! Until the Oncologist told us after the 1st Chemo treatment in the hospital, and one week of rehab in the nursing home, she recommended no further chemo, or physical therapy, as my wife had DAYS to 3 weeks Max left to live!! Just put your self in my Sandals and imagine how you would process what I was going through at that time!
One final important horror before I quit sharing. The Nursing home refused to administer ANY pain Meds other than what the hospital had prescribed, which was only Tylenol! So, after 2 weeks at the Nursing home, and arriving in her shared room, with out any privacy, and finding her clutching her abdomen, and weeping in pain every morning, I finally lost my shit completely. I sought out the Nursing Home Administrator, a Male, and tore him a new A-hole, and DEMANDED he call Paramedics to come escort my wife back to the hospital ER AGAIN, because the Nursing home was not managing her pain. That was 9AM, and she was back in ER again, for the day, in Triage, being asked the same old BS questions again, as if she was a brand new Victim! After being there all day, all I was able to accomplish was, they gave me only 8 OXY Pain Meds, that they told me to give the R.N. at the nursing home, as soon as I got her back there. In order to do that, since she could not walk, I had to hire Patient Transport to take her back to the Nursing Home, for $1,000.00 out of pocket Fee! ( I paid it) I followed them back and they put her right back where they took her from. I gave the 8 Oxy Meds to the Nurse, who gave her one right away, that took effect in 30 minutes. From that point, they administered her right away and every 6 hours which helped, from there on, but pain kept getting worse until they added Fentanal patches in hospice. During the 5 last days in Hospice, under the Drugs, she slept most of the time, but the last 2 days, she would suddenly open her eyes, and raise both arms towards the ceiling, as if she was pushing some thing away, or trying to reach some thing. I don’t know which.
That’s all I will share. I hope it makes readers realize that when Charan Singh kept repeating that there is no lasting happiness here, on this planet, and ALL of our Fates are “in The Lord’s Hands, because He knows Best”,… registers in the hearts of believers and unbeliever alike!
What a nightmare. I couldn’t believe the people at the hospital when my dad died 2 years ago either. Much the same situation except he never made it out of the hospital to the nursing facility the second time I took him to the hospital and then they had to starflight him to a neighboring City with better facilities. You don’t want to see anybody go through that and I’m sorry you had to. I just saw this today and one thing I can say is what a pleasant voice Charan Singh had compared to the gruff Gurinder. I don’t know who he thinks he is but I know who Charan Singh was and it doesn’t matter if she was initiated or not. But I assume she was. I just about saw the angel of death myself when It came for my dad because I’m attached to people. I was in a wheelchair for weeks after he died and I’m not sure why but I’m much better now. Stay well.
https://youtu.be/Xe0-v2h7BVc?is=C5vWM5jmOuBaaFr1
Hi Jim
I’m sorry for the pain you and your wife and family have gone through.
Part of it is unavoidable. And part of it is a terribly neglectful Healthcare system.
Death is generally not clean or pain free or welcome.
But you can decide for yourself if your faith gave you and your wife strength and some peace amidst the pain and turmoil, to go through this most recent trial.
Where belief helps is in knowing that God has arranged things to make the best of a bad situation. And that this is a dark chapter, a chapter that always ends in darkness and sadness in a novel that ends in light.
Whatever she went through, once it was done, she was free.
Can’t imagine anything worse than what you and your wife went through Jim. My deepest condolences.
Hey Jim
That was a sobering share and a great example of love in action
Very best wishes