Today is my 7th "not-dead" day. I feel in many ways this is much more an accomplishment than any old birthday - I mean, *I* wasn't the one who did all the work associated with my Birthday, for that reason I think birthday presents should be given to Moms on their kids birthdays. But not being dead was something that took a hell of alot of bloody-minded determination, I think.
Seven years ago today, sometime between 9 and 10 in the morning, an insignificant and otherwise undetected gallstone made a play for lasting notoriety and took out my pancreas. While pancreatitis is a commonly known complication in middle-aged male alchoholics, usually following advanced cirrhosis and other things, its appearance in an only-slightly-overweight, active, generally healthy 27-year-old woman boggled more than one doctor. During the following weeks of intensive care and months of bed rest, reparative surgery, infections, rehospitalizations and increasingly strange complications, more than one idiot tried to insist I must be an alchoholic or drug user of 10+ years, just to make themselves feel better that they knew the REASON. Laughable given how much more of a "drunk" I seem to be now - my bi-monthly benders of more than one glass of wine in the same weekend NEVER happened before I was 27.
What a trip it has been. The same doctors who couldn't believe I'd live out the week eventually came to be equally astonished by how well I had recovered. I now teach aerobics classes on a semi-regular basis, do yoga weekly, walk or bike whenever I can manage, and work like a fiend at a career that has only gone up since my illness. I remain diabetic (due to the near total ablation of my pancreas), but can't for the life of me convince either of the endocrinologists or the gastroenterologist I've seen that there's anything to be concerned about. I deal with unexplained, recurrent bouts of fatigue, pain, and sometimes fevers, but hell, so do people I know who have all their organs. I think that's actually due to a lingering and determined sinus infection that survived the whole pancreatitis thing along with me. I get heartburn much more easily, probably due to the repeated gastroscopy procedures and the fact that my stomach was impacted by complications... but again, some people suffer worse just for eating a donut.
I think the most profound result of the experience was a realization of my utter mortality, rather earlier in life than most people have to confront it. This is good and bad. I can now present a very morbid side to some people. I am not traumatized by death and loss, though it is still sad when it touches me and mine. I can smile at a funeral and the thought that the next one could ever be mine. The idea of being dead and gone someday, soon or late, doesn't really faze me. I mean, I'm not looking to hasten it along, but it'll happen, and this is the way of things. Don't plan any grand wake for me - I'll be long gone and not there to enjoy it. Take the insurance money, plant a tree if you must, just make sure someone feeds the cats. That's all.
I am anti-materialistic to a point that frustrates some who know me, so ready can I be to discard clutter from my life. Even when the result is a baby going out with the bathwater, I'm more prone to shrug it off than run back to Value Village and dive back into the donation bin. I still hoard food, a relic of the experience of going 5 months without being able to eat, many weeks of that not even being able to drink water while medical science walked the fine line between nutrition and liver toxicity with TPN therapy. For almost a year more I could not eat much without pain. Now, despite that, I also can't seem to lose weight, partly due to the hoarding psychology - eat now, against future famine. VERY hard to deprogram when such trauma has entered the cellular level of one's being.
I've lost my fear of heights. For a few of years, August 22 was "lets do rollercoasters" day, something I had planned to do, for the first time in my life, the very first Day of the Gallstones. It was a year later that I first made it. I had never flown before this happened and had misgivings about it, but since have found myself a fascinated airline passenger, eager to demand a window seat and happy to watch the skies for hours on end.
My sense of humour has changed - I'll leave it to its victims to decide if for better or for worse. It's sharper than ever, but more than a little sarcastic. But I've grown a sense of art, as well, and have realized the vitality of creative endeavour, of some sort, any sort. I've come to seek quality - in lovingly and aestheticly handmade articles filling my home - than quantity and economy.
The days go by quickly still, but always a little more noted than I think they were before this. I love the smell of the air. Noting the rainfall is a small joy, not an excuse to grimace about the weather. The heat is oppressive this summer, but that just makes every small breeze, even the one instigated by the bedroom ceiling fan, a treasure. Email from a friend earns a deserved smile. My insane cats, maddening as they can be, are the loveliest things when the wiggle and purr just to be near me. A new baby (my Endo doc's little girl, actually) beamed a big smile today when I talked to her and held out the bright yellow thing she had been gazing at with fascination. On my lunch hour, I took an enjoyable little drive for 15 minutes and brought back some treats for the team slogging away here.
It is so much more important to me to find these moments in my days, because really, I've learned that moments are all we really get to have.
Happy live-day.
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