Thursday 16 January 2014

Mortality

I write out a new post an update of my mortality, and I am faced with opening up the truth that I don't want to admit, and so I cowardly delete the post. I go through the christmas season when asked I say "I'm fine", the shared charade continues Surgery comes and passes as christmas comes and passes. The new year comes and the old year becomes memories, when asked I say "I'm recovering but I'm fine". After all isn't that what I'm supposed to say? I've tested the waters and anything different from "I'm fine" people seem either ill equipped to respond to or are unaware of their own expression of recoiling. Sometime's I wonder why? Why, do people recoil when hearing of someone else's lot in life? If I say I've been struggling with infection some recoil, others show concern but then change the subject immediately or walk away, and others are compassionate but don't have words. I wonder if hearing about illness, reminds some of their own mortality. In our culture we can go weeks without running into reminders of mortality.

The nightmare before Christmas has come and pasted leaving me with reminders of how fragile my system is. I went into surgery and the nurses and Dr.'s at Women's Hospital were night and day compared to Abbotsford Hospital they seemed as though they really cared about me and how I was doing, unlike Abbotsford where they asked me to stop crying cause it bothered them. After surgery I awoke to a nurse waiting close to my bed asking how my pain levels were. Going home I didn't realize how much pain I was actually in and how important the whole staying laying down is to recovery after all the pamphlet said I could be up and walking around in a couple of days. However, the pamphlet doesn't know me very well because although I was up and walking around I was also very quickly back to bed throwing up most of the first and second days afterward. The following week we ran to this house for christmas here and to the other house for christmas there and then ran straight back to the nearest emergency centre as I was in too much pain and missed the last christmas because I was having uncomfortable, invasive exams and tests run on my body that was still unusually bleeding. Aside from the bleeding I had contracted a bowel infection and bladder infection. Yah now I talk about these types of things openly...when did that happen....couple years ago when this became my life. It's not awkward, cause really these things just happen to me now. I hadn't realized that I nonchalantly talk about these sorts of infection until it occurred to me that people aren't like "oh no" response anymore they're just like "oh" cause that's normal now....

Acceptance is hard work. Sometimes in life we need to except that we all are asked to walk different paths so maybe when you talk about your life events they will be different from the norm, mine certainly are, but its okay to be different. Coming to a place where that's okay, is a daily thing I'm working on and it doesn't always work. Some days I don't want to accept that my life for the last 6 years has been plagued by a sickness that I don't understand but in spite of a lack of understanding it still controls me. I don't want to accept that I have a different path to walk and some days I just want to give up. But,  I take a step back and get back up and continue going onward. This became my life wether I like it or not but it's okay today my pain has flared so I'll take a time out and live to fight another day. It's important to know when the pains too much and when to take a time out. A "time out" doesn't mean folding in the towel it just means taking a break so that you can get up again later. For me a time out means I go lay down and plot my next moves from bed.

~ElysiaB  


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