Weird night last night. I did some gentle yoga, including a very mild lead-up to a headstand. It was basically a downward dog, but a little steeper.
Felt fine.
Then I had a bath. There was a huge daddy long legs under the windowsill, which was fine, because daddy long legs aren’t spiders.
Then I realized this daddy long legs was a spider – it had seven legs. It was missing a leg. Funny how I was so afraid of her the moment my brain said SPIDER!
She moved her legs a bit, in response to me talking to her, and I’ll cut to the quick of her point – she was here to tell me I need to learn balance. Spiders, she explained, are the masters in balance. Their webs are fragile, beautiful works of art that are mired by prey and their elements. The way they walk, built, hunt and travel – spiders live in and for balance.
She shared the pain of losing her leg, and said she was dying. The leg she lost was a fore-leg, she needed it to catch prey.
She was also renegotiating the deal I’d cut with spiders years earlier – that all spiders would remain outside, unless they were vulnerable young who were smaller than the tip of my finger. She, the seven-legged spider, had come inside to die in peace, and to deliver her message.
I thanked her, and lay down in the tub.
A wave of intense dizziness overtook me. I went from feeling 100% fine, to incapacitated in five seconds. I threw up. I called for help.
Sweetie took care of me. I couldn’t stand up on my own. The nausea climbed, I threw up several more times. I called the ask-a-nurse hotline, 811, and asked about my symptoms. I found I had difficulty focusing, speaking and remembering my address and phone number. They told me to call 911. I handed the phone to Sweetie.
The ambulance came up sirens blaring, lights flashing. The paramedics came into the bathroom and spent some time evaluating my symptoms.
They immediately assured me I had not had a stroke, and ran me through a series of neurological tests which was very reassuring.
I continued to throw up, and the dizziness didn’t improve. After trying to settle me on the couch and discovering the dizziness became worse when I lay down, the paramedics suggested I go to the hospital.
I work at the hospital – I do all the supplies. They handed me a bowl I’d just washed earlier, and hooked me up to an IV pump I’d just cleaned. I was weird being a patient, and some of my favourite nurses were working.
They gave me IV gravol which lifted the nausea away. Then the dizziness was kind of fun, like being on a roller coaster.
They gave me 2.5L of fluids too, tested my urine, and eventually decided that a sinus infection must have suddenly shifted to my inner- ear. The other possibilities include a weird flu, and an adverse reaction to hot bath water.
They got me drinking and eating, sent me home with lots of meds (which I also stock) and our wonderful landlady came to pick us up at 3am.
We are surrounded by wonderful people.
I didn’t catch the irony of a sudden onset if dizziness after talking to a spider about learning balance.
While I was at the hospital, I recognized the spirit of my great aunt Ruth, keeping an eye on me. I didn’t realize she was one if my guardians until that moment.
I should be fine in a few days, until then, please send me your healing thoughts.
I wonder what this is all about.
Kate Sitka 
Weird…… I always have FREAKED out over spiders too.
Sending you lots of Love and Light.
Hope you feel better..
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Thanks Noel. I am feeling a lot better this morning.
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I’m okay with spiders as long as I’m encountering them in their element. (In fact, I quite like them. They’re incredible creatures.) I’m not okay with the ones that like to come in from the cold and perch on the wall over the head of my bed, because they are usually the kind who drop lines rather than spinning webs and they don’t always realize I’m there right below them). But I feel kind of heart broken about the spider who visited you. How do people get past this intensity of emotion in order to be able to communicate with other creatures?
What you went through sounds a lot like what my Dad went through many years ago. He suddenly developed labyrinthitis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinthitis ) while driving home from the city. It causes terrible vertigo and nausea — he ended up in the hospital for a few days but it took a few weeks for him to recover to something approaching normality and he stills experiences the odd inner ear issue. Hope yours clears up much faster. (Funny, an inner ear disorder is all about the balance centre being out of whack — seems more synchronistic than ironic that you should experience a physical balance issue after the message from your spider.)
Any ideas where you’re out of balance?
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That’s exactly what the hospital called it. It was crazy and scary, and sure as hell got my attention.
“How do people get past this intensity of emotion in order to be able to communicate with other creatures?”
This is the heart of resistance a lot of people feel towards animal communication – how can one stand to be open to all the suffering in the animal world?
I’ve got a surprise for you – you’re ALREADY open to it. You already feel it. It doesn’t get worse for talking to them, it actually gets better, because often they experience acceptance in the face of their suffering. For this spider, the loss of her leg was an accident, and it caused her pain, and she came inside to die. I found her body yesterday. I thanked her too, for coming inside to deliver a message in her state, and I understood she was grateful to die in a warm place out of the rain. Spiders appreciate comfort… a lot of insects do.
With animal communication, I find I can see a bigger picture, and it helps me to get past my *resistance* to the pain they experience. I still can’t watch Peta videos or the like, and I have to be very careful what images I am exposed to because I am instantly *there*. I do protect myself. For me, it was always like that, and I don’t know what it’s like to be you, but it sounds like you’re totally empathizing with them anyway, and maybe even projecting your ideas of what they’re experiencing on to them.
It helps to ask for your heart chakra to be “backfilled” with love, because when your “heart goes out” to someone, you feel that strain in your chest that is a lot like grief. This can be relieved and prevented when you’re heart is going out to someone, and heaven is backfilling all the energy into you that’s going out. That way you are not depleted.
Does that make sense?
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