Coping with the Rollercoaster

Karin Szivacsek
May 30
3 min read

That’s what life is right now — a rollercoaster.

Turmoil.

Not-knowing.

My dad is severely ill.

He was admitted to the hospital after months of recurring bladder infections.

Suddenly: bouts of fever. Antibiotics didn’t work anymore (like for too many others before him who get them inflationary often — the bacteria had become multi-resistant).

He was transferred to the AKH, the largest hospital in Austria, with its adjoining medical university.

CT scan.

Emergency surgery late at night. The appendix and part of his intestine had to be removed. Pus and inflammation everywhere.

I won’t go into more detail. Just this: it keeps going. It feels like a vicious cycle.

My dad — and all of us close to him — are again and again shattered. Exhausted. Worried. Sad. Hoping. Freaking out. Sleepless.

The intensity of not knowing, of having no clear solution, of watching a weakened body fight — it takes up all the space. It is beyond words.

I tried to write, as I did when writing Rebelleheart — from within emotional turmoil.

But this time, it’s impossible.

Most of the time I am swallowed by speechlessness, spitting out fear and fury.

I explode over tiny things. My nerves lie raw, like a tiger under my skin.

Even now, words get stuck. It’s too big. Too consuming.

Or maybe this confrontation with our mortality — the powerlessness in the face of death slowly sharpening its knife — is too existential, too pre-verbal.The words drown in the sea of the unknown.

I’ve known it differently. When I accompanied my old dog Lenny, the words came by themselves. But maybe it’s because my dad isn’t that old. Just 73.

Or maybe it’s because we are never the same, even while something inside us remains eternal.

Because that’s here too.

A quiet, underlying force.

A surrender.

A pulse that allows me to stay present — right here, with this. It helps me cope.It doesn’t make me write much. But it lets me observe. It lets me create videos of my little dog Ben.

Ben — my external generator of joy at the moment — brings lightness into the room without even trying. Joy that springs from him lands with ease, even in heavy hearts.

And though this despair is welcomed too — as part of what is — it remains heavy.

Everything is draining. For everyone. And I feel that.

I believe it’s a gift not to be rigid in how we cope.

If I were fixed on having to write, I’d have one more thing to worry about — my supposed incapacity to write “enough.” One more stressor.

Instead, there is this all-embracing love that leads me.

It allows me to find other ways — ways that simply appear, and somehow help me… and sometimes even others.

Massaging my dad’s feet.

Listening — to body, to soul.

Creating joyful Ben videos.

Creating an Animal Mandala Coloring Book.

Resting. Resting. Resting.

Being absorbed by the endless flowers in a nearby, naturally tended park.