"I can't" isn't something people hear me say. I can't think of when I might have said it last or even ever. It's more like me to say "I'll figure it out" or "I can do it, just give me a minute".
It's funny how you (or I, at least) think you can push through things. Instead of pushing through, last week it felt like I was being pushed around and runover repeatedly. I'm not an overly dramatic person. I mean what I just said there.
Hitting the highlights (or low lights, real low ones this time)...I may have mentioned that the Boy slipped and fell out of a truck 4 weeks ago and sprained his ankle. Hold that thought. I did all the First Aid things for him that you do for a sprain. RICE for 24 hours, then heat, etc., and helped with practical things he needed done. Even with a sprained ankle he'd still been shoveling snow, doing the things that he does, going places that he goes and only occasionally resorting to strong meds. This one day, well, the pain got to him. Nothing bad happened. It just wore him down. Again...nothing bad happened. He was mainly exhausted from it. Hit the wall type exhausted.
I think it was that night that I developed severe pain in the abdomen or tummy area, that wrapped around to the right side and to the back. I did all the things I knew to do to resolve it but it only got worse. And worse and worse and worse until probably 4 a.m. when I felt like I couldn't take it any more and then I remembered one time last winter I was in Afib/rvr, didn't want to wake up the Boy or go out in the cold, and tried to ride it out, self cardiovert techniques, and then it came to me that maybe I wasn't trusting the Lord. Maybe the Lord had something for me at the ER that I didn't know about. We ended up going out on a winter's night and although I don't recall the exact thing because so much has happened in the past year it's a blur, there WAS something there for me that I didn't know about. I wish I could remember what it was but I can probably locate it if I have time to look through my notes.
This was like a replay of that night.
Here I was again on the tail end of 2-3 days of snow, in the dead of night, trying to avoid the ER with a guy on strong pain meds, sleeping and exhausted himself and reaching the end of myself. I didn't hit the wall, I felt like I got slammed through it. I knew I couldn't drive so I decided to head out on my own with 911 transport. Made the call, then told the Boy I was leaving and why, and just stay in bed. They came, they assessed, and off we went. by the way, my heart was perfectly fine. No flipping around. Just throwing that in. I'm not going to give the exact blow by blow or a ton more detail here. It was hard enough living it and it's not important to this post.
So besides excruiating pain (scale of 1-10...between 9&10.) what also got me out the door was thinking that the Lord might have something for me to learn or know about.
I found out what was at the end of me.
He is. The Lord is.
A bunch of things happened that confirmed that to me. Big things. Little things. Let me say right here and now that some people were jerks to me. Communication in the ER between staff members was substandard. And a bunch of well rehearsed responses that didn't land with me. I'll leave it at that. It was an ordeal, like trying to climb a mountain in a landslide and then...
God showed up: The ER dosed me up with morphine (which I had once before years ago and loved it) that felt like it lifted me out of my body "My God! My God!" (me talking. I guess addicts love that rush but that's not me--watch what happens next) and right after that I had a CT scan whereupon I lost it completely. I **never** lose it completely. The CT scan tech was SO kind to me I cannot even tell you. He kept calling me sweetheart. "It's okay if you can't move to the table (pain), you're small I can move you no problem." "I got you sweetheart, don't worry". He put my sweater over my legs on top of the warming blanket. "Thank you so much, it's my comfort item like a teddy bear". "Do you want me to run to the gift shop and get you a teddy bear? Will that help?" (he meant it, too) "Thank you, no, you don't have to do that. (sobbing) I think I can be okay. (sobbing) It's not like me to fall apart like this. (sobbing) I've been in pain for over a year now (sobbing) and I'm just battle weary." "Now, I can't be right here when the machine scans, but I'll still be right here behind you, sweetheart. I'm not gonna leave you." So reassuring. So kind. So compassionate. So encouraging. I needed that.
John `4:18
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
Oh I better just include this. I was sobbing like a hurt child in the CT room. And even though the Boy tends to aggravate me in the ER, I was wishing he was there with me and then...
God showed up: I have had 2 other CT scans in my whole entire life. The machine talks you through 2 practice runs and then it talks you through the actual scan. Always has a sort of digital voice, right? Like a robot talking to you. Not this time. The machine sounded exactly like the Boy's younger voice so it was as if he was there with me. I didn't have the panic attack that I had last time, I just listened in amazement and did it.
Now you can say it was the morphine. Say whatever you like. I say God showed up and if anyone wants to debate that they can debate it with themselves because I'm not playing.
God showed up: Did the Lord have something to show me that I didn't know about? YES. First I had no obstruction or blockages but a treatable thing that wasn't serious or horrible or fatal, and believe it or not labs were pretty stellar. What else? The CT scan showed something that previously had NOT been discovered or ever mentioned. If it was on the September CT scan I didn't see it, it was never discussed, and I haven't pulled it out because quite frankly, I'm not up to it at the moment and it can wait.
Here is what it is...so on the digestive tract your food/waste travels up the ascending colon, across the transverse colon, and finally, down the descending colon until it leaves your body. So where it makes the turn from the ascending colon on the right to the transverse colon, MY turn makes a SHARP turn.
That's exactly the area of my worst of all pain, the same pain in the ER. Right there on the right side. Again, never discussed and never identified previously. So that could be a contributing factor (correctable or otherwise) or part of an explanation for how I developed SIBO to start with. If stuff gets stuck in there or hangs around for too long (causing slow motility?), bacteria would begin to form. Something to discuss with gastro at the next follow up. I'm not done yet.
Big controversy about my transport home. They were trying to shove me out the door. They wouldn't let me call an UBER because apparently I had to go with a responsible adult and UBER drivers who are responsible for the safe transport of passengers aren't responsible adults. Go figure. I was hardly able to advocate for myself (kept looking at my UBER app and couldn't even think much less could I walk) anyhow long story short, the Boy who was on his way to something important to him to do (a ministry) turned around and came and got me. Walks into the ER with a cane and says he's my UBER driver.
I don't remember getting into the car. He said I fell asleep within seconds and slept the whole way home. Got inside the house, decided to fix a cup of tea when I realized that morphine is NOT propofol, this isn't business as usual, felt like I was going to toss my cookies, sat with my head on the kitchen table, broke out in a cold sweat and tried to fend off hurling into the universe. Sounds funny now, it was absoutely miserable. After all the things I've written about on this thread, trust and believe...the one thing I really can't hack is nausea. That's the one thing that sends me moaning and crying out to God. I know it. The Boy knows it. My whole family knows it. He said he never saw me so sick in our whole entire lives.
Dragged myself upstairs, got my warming thing for the microwave, dragged myself back down warmed it up and then back UP the stairs and collapsed into bed. And I mean collapsed. I slept for 24-36 hours, pretty sure. I still had after affects the next morning when I woke up, had breakfast and off we went to an ortho/surgical appointment to assess the sprained ankle about 40 minutes up the interestate from home. The Boy hates interstate driving. I happen to love it. I slept all the way up there. He got an xray for the sprained ankle which we learned was not sprained. He'd been walking around for 3 weeks on a fracture.
Casted him and then I had to drive home in a vehicle I despise. Drive home with Mr. Interstate Anxiety personified trying to direct my every maneuver. Words were said. No one here wants to know what back and forth between two sick/in pain/at the end of both their ropes Jersey kids trapped in a car truly sounds like. Let's just say that one of us was going to shut up and so he finally did. So for the past week or more (I don't know what day it is half the time right now) I've been trying to recover my own self, assisting him, went through another snow storm, I had to shovel snow several times, drag the humongous trash dumpster out to the curb in the snow felt like I was going to collapse but I still haven't and to my credit I have not killed the Boy.
Kid comes to visit to see how we're doing. Very nice visit and so good to have her all to ourselves. She's an RVT. I mention two symptoms I'm seeing in the cat. She replies "Kidney cat"...he needs a vet check and lab work. So then...I had to make off with the cat in the cold, in a kennel he's never been in before (isn't this all so interesting? feel free to stop reading if you still are.) to get assessed. On the way back I had to load the trash back into the humongous dumpster and manhandle it to the curb through the snow and over the icy hump that the snow blade leaves at the end of the driveway. Pick up delivered packages because they can't drive up our driveway with snow but I can. I was pretty sure the dumpster was winning the fight. It's heavier than I am. At one point I stop with my head against the car and say "Lord I can't do this." Breath. "Yes you can." and I did.
Labs come back from the cat. Early stage kidney disease. He's taking a med to help unlock his digestive tract. He had the same issue that sent me to the ER. Like mother, like son.
Did I mentiont that it's Christmastime? After last night (symptoms for me) when I finally passed out asleep about I dunno...4 a.m? I made a command decision. I'm taking a page out of a book by one of my favorite philopher/authors and simplifying everything. Simplify! Simplify! Simplify! 50 Monopoly bucks to anyone who can identify the author. I am not baking, I am not making a big meal, I am not trying to make everything perfect according to my definition. Christmas is going to be merry and bright, and blessedly simple. Like the first Christmas was.
Started decorating a bit here and there. Almost done and happy with it. He (the philsopher/author) was right. After that it's make a little wrapping station and do it a bit at a time. And after that it's whatever we need to do like rest and enjoy the peace and quiet, focus on gratitude and the Lord making a way for us to get through this season of struggle and the struggles we all have here on Earth-->His Son. He is a God who hears me, who sees me, a God who knows what human suffering and pain is because he experienced it himself. A God who know what it's like to feel temporarily abandoned or that God was distant...because he felt it himself.
Isaiah 53:3
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
What is my life about anyway? Here lately it's been about pain, suffering, exhaustion, reaching the end of myself only to find the Lord waiting for me there. Still showing me what it means to come to him as his child and that I have more to learn. That's what it's about at least for now. I might not feel ready but I'm willing.
(Listen there might be typos in this. I'm not going to fix them. After all, I'm not writing a book. Or...am I?)
Well now we know you're simply a saint!
