Not to be too gloomy during this festive time of year, but on January 7 I go under the knife, or the laparoscope, or whatever it is called, for cancer surgery. Didn't quite come out of the blue either, as I have felt low-energy and unwell for a while now, and the 6 hours I spent in Emergency on November 8 is memorable for all the wrong reasons.
But after that, things seemed to move at light speed. Suddenly those cavalier, detached medical technicians got all serious on me, and I knew there was trouble. I was fed into a giant tube with dye flowing through my veins, and the word "malignancy" showed up in the report. Soon it was confirmed by a GI guy, not a veteran but the other kind, and soon the jolly surgeon was drawing little diagrams for me.
I had no idea whatsoever how much prep there is for surgery, and I guess this is considered major, because I'll actually be in the hospital for 2 - 5 days, unless I die on the table. This is about the only place I can express my feelings that I might die. I do notice the family is a lot more matter-of-fact about it all than they were about Bill's far-less-dangerous hernia operation in the fall. And he didn't have cancer, and I do, and I cannot wrap my head around it. Nobody even asked me how I was feeling on Christmas day. Nobody.
I bounce between reassuring myself that they caught it in time (the hope), and being sure this WAS my last Christmas. But how else am I going to feel? They're going to remove a big chunk of my colon, but apparently they have to paint some sort of bullseye on my abdomen, and they told me outright that this is done in case they have to take the entire colon out, gut me, leave me with shit pouring out of a hole in my side and a bag of disgusting whatever flapping around on my body, no doubt leaking all over the place so I have to wear Depends for the rest of my life, or other forms of disability.
I've been dealing with chronic pain for many, many years and barely acknowledged it even to myself, and have had no pain relief whatsoever from doctors, only "take a Tylenol". When I tell them it makes no difference, they say, "Take a Tylenol" several more times, then if I don't give up in despair, they say, "Tylenol is the standard of care." Case closed. The open sesame door has slammed shut, apparently, and now I am not even sure I will get pain meds after major surgery.
It's all so bloody unknown, and except for bipolar I have had few serious health problems, except the arthritis, sciatica and hemorrhoid surgery aftermath which has made my life so miserable for years. But I don't have a heart condition (except arrythmia - hey wait, I DO have a heart condition!) or - what else? I tell myself all sorts of things, but now I realize this is a lifelong pattern and I have been snow-jobbing myself about many, many things for countless years, perhaps all my life. And believing it.
I'm pretty certain no one follows this blog anymore, as if they did in the first place, except for individual posts that are somehow linked elsewhere (they must be!). The odd time, I get TONS of comments, but it's only for 3 or 4 posts out of literally thousands. (God, why do I DO this?) It's an interesting phenomenon, but the rest of it is - what? If no one reads this, why do I keep on feeding it? I haven't posted anything on YouTube for nearly two months, because my views had crashed and burned, so once again I wonder why I bother.
What DOES happen to us when we die? Do we go to hell? Unfortunately, if you were raised in ANY sort of Christian faith, the spectre of going to hell hangs over you all the time. Step out of line, and you fry for all eternity. Us "proddies" (a term for Protestant that appeared, hilariously, in a Dylan song called False Prophet) don't even have a limbo, where you can limbo yourself out of hell if you can squeeze under that impossibly low bar. No, it's a surprise trap-door opening under your feet. Goodbye, proddie!
This stuff does come back to haunt, and though I am very glad I bailed on organized religion fully 20 years ago, it leaves scars. I kind of miss the community, but it had all turned sour years before I left, and was likely causing more stress than it relieved. I suppose some people seek out religion because they feel they're going to get what they deserve sin-wise. I don't know how or why or in exactly what way I've sinned, and like most people I hate the term because it is so finger-wagging and judgemental. Repent, ye sinners!
My "proddie" church kept saying God was all-loving and forgiving, but in the next breath there'd be Jesus saying he was not coming to make peace, but with a sword. Brandishing this lethal weapon, gentle Jesus, meek and mild. I suppose he could have zapped the newly-healed leper and made the leprosy come back, which he seemed to have done to me when I had the biggest bipolar lapse of my life 20 years ago. Why else would he do that? Why did he heal me, as everyone in the church insisted he had, then unheal me because I had somehow stepped out of line - or else just for spite?
Isn't God all-powerful? Omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. That's the line I was sold, and I guess I swallowed it, mainly because I heard my mother say it more than once. My mother, who taught me how to pray: "Make me a good girl, for Jesus' sake, amen." This meant I WAS NOT a "good girl" and had to plead with God every single night of my small life for God to "MAKE" me a good girl. Because I wasn't. Now I may be dying, and what has all this been for?
Sometimes all I can do is go listen to Bob Dylan and his sardonic take on religion:
"I live on a street named after a saint
Where the women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray
I can tell a Proddie from a mile away."
Somehow, that offers more comfort to me than all the "make me a good girl" pleas of my childhood. Thank you, Bob. You've been a greater guide and a greater comfort and a greater inspiration to me for 60 years or so than all the Bible homilies I have ever had the misfortune to believe.
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