What to do in the times of trouble? When everything looks like falling apart. Certainly everyone has to face this question now or then at certain point of life. Job loss, the worries about the member of the family, relationship troubles, money issues and bankruptcy, marriage breakdowns and so on… This question is so common and in my modest opinion completely underestimated. Even when we are facing the simultaneous crossfire of the misfortunate series of the events the main thing to keep in mind should be awareness of the fact that anxiety or self-destructive behavior would not contribute a bit to the solution of the problem.
Sounds familiar? But it’s never enough to repeat it. In my case now when my son is going to face an open heart surgery, regarding the given circumstance I would probably have one thousand and one excuses for such deeds. Is everything going to be all right? How will he recover and how much time it will take? One thing is sure - his surgery is going to be difficult and complex. I am sure that I am not the only parent that has to face such a thing, but… It’s not easy. My son Davud is very strong and together we are going to make it through this.
To detach myself from unfailing worries I find it enormously helpful and revealing just to practice 5 or 10 minutes of meditation. I am not a meditation expert, and I am not trying to promote such practices in relation with any religion or structure of beliefs. At the times when my head becomes filed up with the questions that I do not have an answer to I just sit, on the sofa, on the bed or anywhere convenient, just sit. And that’s all. In this 5 to 10 minutes process I am not trying to reach nirvana or enlightenment - only to refocus. This word is maybe crucial - refocusing. What are we doing when we are lost in a heavy storm of preoccupations? When we are reaching for another glass or for another hot dog although we have just finished one? Simply, and obviously - we are losing focus. When situation like this tends to prevail I find it revealing just to sit for 5 or 10 minutes and listen to the chaos in my head. And by finding the way to hear it I could finally make it quieter. I could make its unpleasant rumble less harmful only by becoming aware of it. I am not trying here to establish a new religion or to claim myself legitimate for prophecy. Only to emphasize what I have found useful in my case. Great writer Jorge Luis Borges once said that all that one man must go through the all people have to as well. “Everything has been figured out, except how to live.” - Jean-Paul Sartre said. Whatever strife is being given to us that doesn’t mean that somebody was not there before and already tasted the very same fishbone that is in our throat now.
This is my first time ever to try the blog form of expression. Some of my friends don’t like it at all. I could somewhat agree with the ones saying that blogging is pretty much a read not. But I think that they also have never tried it. And that the statement is also often derived from the people who never actually had to try it. There is a significant difference laying in it. What I mean by that is simply that there are certain things that you sometimes just have to do, and the same things are actually driving the person involved and not the other way around. The person is being chosen like in some kind of lottery and he or she is not the one who has ability to choose.
I am going to give it a shot anyway, yes, there is nothing to lose except my time witch is relative anyway, like Einstein had said a long time ago. I do not have any pretensions. The main intention is for me the therapeutic one. I am relieving myself a good deal of the heavy burden and that’s it basically.
First of all I must warn everybody with even the slightest intention to read this blog that this is going to be a very difficult and not really - easy to swallow pill. Reason why is because of the outrageous condition and a very thick consternation of my private life disasters , which is currently in a never harder and never more confused and chaotic state ever since the end of the Bosnian war throughout witch I had to get by back in my teenage days, as a greenhorn comic and basketball lover. Probably one will say - o heck this Balkanians are always so sad and tragically dramatic and everything about them is just tears and blood. Well, that ’s maybe true but is also far away from the reasons I am trying to put this words on the paper, ops on the screen actually.
The reason I am trying to do that in my very limited English skills is not self explicable even to me, right now, it’s a very late time at night and my insomnia never got any better. It is not easy also, like I have said previously, to write in a language that is not my first, but this typing program has a spelling correction option so I think it could curtail a lesser part of a much bigger mess. So right now I am going to say what the thing that is torturing me so much is, and I will provide prologue in the history of my recent troubles. So if anyone was reading this up to this point it is time for you to leave if you do not want to hear a really depressive and - nip tuck- kind of straightforward story of the misfortunate series of events. This story could be compared to high dramatic Latin soap operas which is just fine if you are just watching it on TV, and something completely else is you are actually living it.
Very soon I am going to post another blog about the pictures that I am painting recently. The painting itself was of lot of help to me. Similarly like this blogging stuff. It is making me feel better, occupied and sometimes even fulfilled.
Also I will post some short stories of mine, I have only a few that are translated in English, and if anyone is enjoying that you are highly welcome. I will give the links soon. Also I would like to hear the comments and my e-mail will be open for everyone nestosimple@gmail.com
What I would like to hear from the hypothetical reader of this blog it will be the opinion about the pictures that are mostly oils, and the stories. I am going to continue with the story and it is going to be updated with more details. Anyone having any questions please feel free to email me. The questions will be my direction on how to and where to lead this blogging.
Me and my Davud
The one that I am breathing for is my son Davud, which is a Bosnian way for David. He is ok too doing not to worry; he is doing excellent now, now he is almost six months old and absolutely the most adorable kind in the world. But he was born with severe congenital heart deficiency problem, and that was discovered only about one month ago. His problem is of that seriousness that is not possible for him like the doctor in Sarajevo has said - to get his problem corrected in our country, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Instead he will have to check in for one or two foundations, one is from Sweden and other from Austria, and than - to get approved for the surgery. My son was born with multiple congenital heart defects - TGA, VSD and pulmonary stenosis. TGA means transposition of the grand arteries of the heart, VSD means ventricular septal defect, and pulmonary stenosis is the one that is actually saving him now from the other two. Pulmonary stenosis is actually preventing the other two defects from doing serious harm and keeping him alive. It means narrowing of the pulmonary artery.
It is going to be a hard process I know, right now I am, actually we are - still far away - tomorrow morning I am going with his medical papers to apply for another examination in Sarajevo, which is the standard procedure. So, only after that we will go again to Sarajevo and there, hopefully we are going to move from the dead point. As the doctors have said to us, it s necessary to pay a visit again so that Davud could be examined by the lady chief doctor on the children cardiology department in Sarajevo. Only she could make apply for Davud to be checked for a foundation surgery. I would like to use this chance also to express my endless gratitude to Dr. Begic, a very fine lady cardiologist from Bihac, who has instructed us and has given a lot of useful advices. Dr. Begic was actually the first one who noted Davud’s condition. That was a very soon after he was born.. I was in that time working for a big cruise line company as a waiter. Me and my wife went separate ways two months before he was born. By the way, my wife still does not know who Davud’s father is. She is not sure. At least she was honest. Her affair with the high school acquaintance happened only one week or two before my arrival from the cruise job. On that trip I have bought tanzanite earrings for her, it would be a disgrace to say how much I have paid for it, so I will skip that part.
Probably if anyone is reading this so far you might ask what I have done after finding out of deceit, did I do something bad, like jellying or something even worse… Luckily, none of that. First I had intention of not saying anything to her because she was in the late pregnancy, and at first I did not want to risk with her health or baby’s. The first thing was for me to get out of the house and make a few circles around the town in my car. Than I stopped and called the good friend of mine, maybe the only one really sincere friend of mine, and ask for his advice and consolation. He was shocked, he could not believe. Nobody later would. But in the end they all will have to. There was no other truth except that the truth did not exist, it disappeared, and what we have previously considered by it, was only a construction fabricated in the depths of our illusion system. Something that we have believed in before so blindly has disintegrated and become another proof in our incriminating collection of deception.
From the infinite to the infinitesimal. The process started to go in reverse, like a tennis ball hit against the wall, coming rapidly in the other direction. Our lives suddenly have changed their directions, without even bother to ask us do we have something to say about it. I knew that the gap that had suddenly appeared between us become so wide in a blink of a second that both of us will never reach the place where we have been before. We will not even get close. We could try to snoop or wander on the distant outskirts of that place but the ticket to approach it a little bit closer again will always be denied.
Today I finally took care about the documents that are needed for Davud’s another exam in Sarajevo’s clinic. I was a little bit late but somehow I have managed to get it done. At Thursday the papers will be ready and after that we will think about the best possible way to get there. Before that I must call one more time the doctors from Sarajevo in order to schedule the appointment.
Also, today I have heard the story of one man whose child had similar problem. The cost for the treatment of his kind was around 40 000 Euros. But he met some guy, the musician who had organized the concert for his child and collected in that way a very significant amount of 30 000 thousand Euros. The man somehow managed to take care for the rest and his kid had his surgery secured. Good thing is that the kid is feeling fine now. And than, after finishing the listening of this story I realized- oh my, that is going to happened also for me, and I will also have to search the best way to collect the money witch is so terrifying for me. In Bosnia it happens a lot that the money for the kids in serious life threatening situations is being collected in that way. So many times on TV or on web I have seen the stories about the kids like that and I have never participated. It never had touched me in that way so to pick up a phone and contribute somehow in some way. And now is happening to me.
Another thing that I am worried even more, as a matter of fact, maybe thousand times more is the Davud’s surgery. Luckily, one beautiful person has helped us and hid name is Dr. Zijad Begic and he is the Doctor on Sarajevo’s pediatric clinic. Thanks to the kindness of this great man Davud will have his surgery in about one month from now in Austria. Doctor was the first one to reveal to me the possibility of applying for foundation that is run by government witch is providing necessary money for the kids in need of urgent and extremely challenging medical treatment. At that time I did not even know for a foundation and I was having sleepless nights trying to figure out how to arrange an amount of 40 000 Euros that was needed for surgery. The informations that I had been provided with at that time of the Davud’s first examination in Sarajevo had been very scarce and ambiguous. I wrote an e-mail to my previous employer - an enormously big and wealthy cruise line company asking if they would be able to help anyhow. I wrote a short and a concise letter explaining them fundamental facts about the situation that I and my kid are into. After a couple days I have got an answer for them saying that their company will not be able to help. That was a fair enough. I was not expecting, to be honest, something more than that.
Other crazy thing that has come on my mind was to apply to few wealthiest auction houses and to offer them my paintings, together with the paintings of good friend of mine Harry. He had his work presented in more than one country abroad, in Slovenia, Austria, Germany and Italy I think. And I was a complete anonymous. I did not even get the answer. Maybe they have considered my mail to be one of those junks that they are receiving every day. Or maybe they have considered it to be truth but junk anyway. That same night I send e-mails, for both, cruise company and the auction houses.
Those are the thinkings of a typical Bosnian man. Like somebody had said, maybe Cioran - people of thre Balkans area are all preoccupied with destiny and with endless lament about the bad luck. It’s simply because for the greater part of their history they were not able to change anything. Things were happening to them by pure chance throughout the times and changing them how they pleased - but for a process to go vice -versa - that was so seldom and rarely that nobody could remember and nobody is even aware when was the time that such a thing took place.
I remember one girl that I have used to have coffee with back in the begging of my college days. She was studying German I think. One time we had a coffee and suddenly as I was talking about something and trying to explain to her about the subject, I had pronounced a few sentences in English. She was very surprised and I have seen the wonder in her eyes. She had told me that my voice sounds so much better speaking English, the foreign language. I was little astonished and in question, but than I have realized that she was right one hundred percent. She was right; my voice indeed sounded terrible when speaking Bosnian, which is the same language as Croatian and Serbian.
Why was it so, I started to dwell suddenly. Because after all the bad things that had happened in Bosnia and Croatia, after all the suffer and after having to admit the reality of the war crimes, illiterate political leaders, corruption, refocusing on the medieval issues and enormous amount of strife that an ordinary man had to swallow back in that days, my voice have mutated and suddenly appeared to be unpleasant and false, like there was nothing more to say, and everything that was said sounded like in vain and actually unnecessary. That happened in fresh years after the dismay and shock of the ending the war in Bosnia, why was that a dismay and shock someone might wonder, is it not that it should be opposite, that people should be happy that war is over.
Because only after it stopped, people realized what was it actually and what an enormous gap has suddenly opened in front of their eyes. The gap was like an edge of the cliff so outrageously steep and deep. To look down it takes the strength that they do not have any more. That little strength that they have left they are going to need it, just to get by somehow. So my voice sounded like a voice of a man that was standing next to that abyss and who was trying to speak silently and awkwardly in attempt of trying not to hear his own words because the abyss was there, next to him, and it could intensify and in loud everything and it could became obvious that his whisper is actually a scream.
Did my voice get any better after a couple years? Well I do not know for sure. The most certain is that I will be never accepted by some singing company.
As I have said the biggest expectation for me is the day of Davud’s surgery. How everything is going to be all right? How will he recover and how much time it will take? One thing is sure - his surgery is going to be difficult and complex. Very hard one. I must believe. I am wishing him all the best, and I know that he is going to be brave. He is not going to give in without a fight. And I will be there, standing, next to him.
What is actually the TGA? I had to face that question after my son was diagnosed with this congenital heart defect. It was horrifying to see and to realize all complexity of the problem. And after all - now when my 8 month old son is in the Austrian hospital not realizing that he will be undergoing one of the most complicated surgeries on the open heart , now everything else is fading in comparison to that maybe the most important moment in our lives.
I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart to all people that have helped us in providing my son with the right treatment and for making it possible for my son’s surgery to be performed. His surgery will take place a very soon from now, maybe in a week or so. And there is no words that could possibly describe my enormous gratitude for the Austrian doctors and especially to Dr. Gregor Wollonek, a very fine gentleman who has already helped numerous kids from Bosnia by visiting the Sarajevo’s Hospital right after the turmoil years after the war and also establishing a huge network of support from his clinic in Austria to so many kids in a need for his help. Numerous resources about the TGA could be find on net and here is a short explanation. The “great arteries” in this anomaly refer to the Aorta and the Pulmonary Artery, the two major arteries carrying blood away from the heart:
In cases of Transposition of the Great Arteries, these vessels arise from the wrong ventricle. They are “transposed” from their normal position so that the aorta arises from the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery from the left ventricle. Other heart defects may occur along with Transposition of the Great Arteries. About 25 percent of children with Transposition will also have a VSD. In nearly a third, the branching pattern of the coronary arteries as they leave the transposed aorta is unusual. Infants may also have narrowing below the pulmonary valve which blocks blood flow from the left ventricle to the lungs. Transposition creates a situation where the systemic (to the body) and pulmonary (to the lungs) circulations are in parallel rather than in series. This means the oxygen-poor (”blue”) blood returning from the body to the right atrium and right ventricle is pumped out to the aorta and to the body, while the oxygen-rich (”red”) blood returning from the lungs to the left atrium and ventricle is sent back to the lungs via the pulmonary artery. Unless there is some place in the circulation where the oxygenated and unoxygenated blood can mix, all of the organs of the body will be deprived of necessary oxygen.
I am sure that I am not the only parent that has to face such a thing, but… It is not easy. My son Davud is very strong and together we are going to make it through this.
There is a big and tragic story behind this painting. I named it “Red Horse”. Beside the fact that it was my first ever oil, and that I have painted it when I was only 14-15 years old, the more important is that the canvas and the small amount of paints for the picture were given to me by one gracious person who died a couple years later after that, during the turmoil years in nineties, in Bosnia.
More about that wonderful person and the painter from the famous artistic family Hoshic- I will say some other time. The painting was also at my friends for a couple of years, because I had given it to him as a present when he was getting married, but when his marriage started to fall apart, (he was even worst husband than I ever was) he was keeping it among some stuff of his in a very unappropriated way for ages, in a garage with a bulk of other dusty stuff that he was collecting during his marriage dissolution.
He was not caring for anything any more (and he is still in that condition, a one decade later), and my first oil in his possession did not have much chance). Seeing that I had to respond immediately by saying that I would like to borrow it for some group presentation (which was actually true), and after the presentation took place and after I saw him again we had made a deal and the picture is with me again waiting for the decent owner sometimes maybe.
