I’d be so incredibly dead if it wasn’t for modern medicine and a few physicians that seemed part magicians as well as excellent doctors. My gratitude is an understatement, to say the least! 

And yet, from the tenuousness of intermittent chronic health conditions to the fragility of human relationships, as I traverse through the narrowing of life, it all seems ever more fragile. Why? It is inevitable that a sense of security can evaporate in a heartbeat given a crisis. After a number of GI surgeries over the years, scarring has caught up with me, both the literal and metaphoric. 

While I don’t have any sort of actual timeline or expiration date (that I’m aware of at least) I may have used up all the good luck I’ve had to this point. For previous good luck (karma) I am grateful. And in a weird way, knowing there’s a more significant limit lets me see what time remains available can be viewed differently. What do I want to do with it? How do I want to live? Where? In what other circumstances? By what day-part-by-day part calculation? Perennial questions, all.

A Different Kind of Creature

Now I have always been the least conventional personality in my crowded family of origin. Having said that, I have also learned convention and stability don’t have to be dirty words either. When I was just five years old, we had a trapeze in our basement. I loved to swing and stand on it, pumping my little legs for momentum. I’d fantasize about being a famous trapeze artist in a circus with crowds of people cheering me on. It’s as if I’d never gotten completely acclimatized to being in a body. I envisioned myself flying through the air. Wasn’t I supposed to fly?

One such day I was doing this very act, with my mother in the basement loading the washing machine over in the corner. As (bad) luck would have it, I let go of my arms and promptly fell flat on my back with only the thinnest of raggedy rugs on the concrete for a cushion below. Splat!

The fall must have hit a nerve to my lungs because I couldn’t breathe, gasping for air was I! Thank God my mother was close by but as more (bad) luck would have it, she scooped me up and carried me upstairs. (This was before the days ordinary people would have been told not to move a person with certain kinds of falls.) Once there, she laid me flat on her bed. I think the bed was soft!

Perpetually Gasping

Next, she called my dad asking,  “what should I do, Nelson?” He must have told her to take me to the hospital, seven miles into town as we lived on an acreage. Again, she scoops me up, carries me to the car, my younger sister in our wake, and lays me out on the backseat, ultimately driving fast! (I’m still gasping for air, terrified and sobbing between breaths!) How we arrived unscathed is a wonder but once there, ER staff rushed me inside, X-rayed me only to discover I had five small vertebral fractures.

Ultimately, my treatment was to lay flat on my back, as still as possible, (basically rigid) in the bed, in a room with other patients, to let it heal. (They said it should be quick because I’m a child.) I had an excellent view of the ceiling but little else. I was able to see snatches of beds and people out of the corners of my eyes. For some reason, the Docs didn’t want to cast me. BUT, the threat was I had to lay perfectly still otherwise they would. I complied.

A Bit of History

This was my second significant patient do-what-the-doctors-say experience, having eye surgery at two and a half for a small growth pressing on my optic nerve a few years earlier. Bizarrely, I remember shards of the event, particularly being in the OR right before they put me out. I also remember waking up alone, screaming afterwards because I had both eyes covered in gauze, unable to see. I thought they had removed my eyes!! Terrifying for such a small child.

I had other health or moderate accidents along the childhood and young adulthood stages of my life—a few car accidents, illnesses, female issues, anorexia, travel dysentery, blah, blah, blah, recovering from all with minor or no lingering consequences to speak of. Remarkably, or maybe not, I also had years of health and vigor! Still, now that I’m at the narrowing of my life, with the body continuing to slowly break down, it’s impossible to not reflect on some of the incredible gifts though peppered with sorrows that dot my thinking at this time. 

History, Oh History

Unexpectedly, my earlier examples of relative endurance and toughness don’t compare to the “digging deep” throughout bowel resections to remove tumor growth, as well as several hernia repairs, that began in earnest several years ago. I guess you could say that ‘what came before’ prepared me for the now! It almost seems natural, a forgone conclusion, that I would survive it all since that’s my history. And while I had other health and accident issues, none of them compare to the GI surgeries in these more recent years. (And I’ll be honest, after one of them about three surgeries ago, I really wasn’t sure I’d make it!)

Yet, clearly I have made it this far. After eight surgical interventions beginning 20 years ago with a routine colonoscopy, I take it from my surgeon’s “you’re a survivor” comment, I may have surprised even him. And when I review my own history, it seems I can surprise myself. Years ago after a different but serious medical event, as I was recovering a doctor at the time asked me “what is your secret?” I was flummoxed, having no answer to tell him. I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know; aren’t I supposed to just keep going?’

The Slowness of a Sunset 

Clearly, my DNA, while an apparent curse in some respects, is also a blessing and is no small amount of salvation in others. And I have come to know that besides having some amazing doctors over the years, and an exceptional surgeon now, I do have a secret ingredient, I guess, a secret sauce, so to speak. For it has become inescapable to not see what an incredibly strong Will I’ve always had, propelling me forward. Plus, I can also endure discomfort and pain, remarkably well. After all, I’ve had practice! What’s more, I’m slightly fierce on occasion which, in combination, can add up to a lot of grit that is catalyzing.

And there you have it! A tidy little package of me: a bit of grit and a bit of swagger…and aren’t I supposed to just keep going anyway as my history and nature proscribe? Still, I suppose I can’t last forever, though I’m unable to really imagine no “me” at all not walking around the planet. So off I tromp, ever forward.