The baby woke me up an hour and half before my alarm this morning. ⏰ That's
okay, I'll get an earlier start on the work day and have an opportunity to
reflect on my life on my drive to work. 🚙 Even though I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination,
my early days usually end up being a good thing. Heck, I couldn't be with my sweet baby boy
all Father 's Day weekend, so I happily woke up and fed, rocked and loved on
him before getting ready for work this morning. 💕 No matter how much my body
fought with me, I was going to spend the very first minutes of my day with the
new love of my life. 💞 I was more than a little under the weather this
past weekend hence, not being able to
spend it with my baby boy. 👶🍼 I slept as much as possible, powered down
antibiotics, allergy medicines and fulfilled my sober recovery duties to the
best of my ability. 💊 I didn't have one iota of extra energy for anything else.
My family didn't return home until late Monday evening but I managed a long
overdue doctor's visit, a wonderful anniversary lunch with my co-workers and a
full day of work, all while running on fumes. ⛽ I thought I'd just been working
myself too much without enough rest. However, my early Monday morning doctor's
visit assigned a more medically accurate reason for the low energy. 😴 Actually,
while telling my co-workers this morning about a recent, comedic 911 incident with our
new baby boy, I was reminded of this memory I’m about to write about.
See, my
life seems to go into familiar, what I call, Pain Cycles. ♻ I'm just starting
to realize this thanks to my penchant for story-telling and those damned 'On This Day' Facebook memories. 💻 I'm not a complainer by nature. I don't do it and I don't want to hear anyone
else do it. I simply don't let constant complaining be a part of my world. 🚫🌎 So, I sometimes hate to get answers that solidify exactly why things
aren't going the way I want them to health-wise. I prefer to stiffen my upper
lip and push through, all the way through to absolute collapse. I hate hearing
that I shouldn't or can't do something due to a physical limitation. I prefer
to be lazy because it's a personal choice, not a medical determination. ⛨ I hadn’t had blood work for a
while and I knew the results were in. While my doctor applauded me with great
cholesterol numbers, liver function and blood pressure since beginning my road
to recovery, I could feel the proverbial BUT coming. ☝ I'm not a fan of
getting weighed but I deal with it. Needles and blood don’t really phase me
either but it’s part of the medical game. Que Sera Sera. 😑 It’s THE News that upsets me every time.
Medically, THE News usually means for me, either surgery or overnight hospitalization
or some other medical treatment that includes IV fluids. 💉 So, she gives me The
News and I don’t mutter a word. I don’t blink. I don't show any signs of
distress. See, I've been here before, EXACTLY 10 years ago (which I remembered just
moments ago). It was with another
doctor, at another time but the same situation, kind of. Hell, I'm a medical mystery
because of my past. 📋 🔬My doctor (now) asks, so you hadn't been feeling
tired and unable to move? I tell her I have but I thought I just needed to work
a little less and rest a little more. 👍
To give a little background, 10 years ago (in September), I was essentially bleeding to death (from the inside) but
I had no idea. 😨 Yeah, I didn’t know that was possible either. Before my near demise, I'd go to work early and use the stairs, not
elevator, because I could feel my body giving out on me and I had to MAKE myself
do something to physically prove that I could. Never mind that I had
to take a break after reaching each landing of the stairs. I didn't tell
anyone, I just quietly pushed on through. ✋ In fact, I flirted, partied, drank and even traveled through it. 💃🍸✈ I didn't know I was at death's door. ☠ The story goes
like this; I woke up early for work one morning in 2007. I could hardly walk
but I made it the bathroom but had a hard time getting off the toilet. 🚽 Every
time I tried to stand up, I'd fall back down, break into a cold sweat and get
sick to my stomach. I grabbed the bathroom trash can and barfed my brains out.
I look in it and think to myself; 'What is that?' ❓🔍 I pick up the can and
almost stick my face inside to try identify the purged contents. Is that...wait,
what is that? 🔎❔ With only the bathroom nightlight as illumination, I deduced that it was probably
the red wine I'd consumed before bedtime. 🍷 No biggie. I managed to get up the
strength to get up, wipe, wash my hands and head back to my bedroom then,
THUMP! ❗😵❕ Luckily, Sis was home and heard me. I remember her trying to talk
to me but I couldn’t answer. I don’t remember walking to the hallway but I
remember being on the hallway floor and unable to lift my head.
I could hear my sister getting frantic but I couldn't do my big sisterly duty
of reassuring her. I couldn't talk or walk. 😶 I hear her hysterically talking to
someone on the phone but couldn’t tell who. 📱 She manages to get me to our front
room and into a chair. She's standing right in front of me and I can feel my
forehead buried in her stomach, unable to use my neck muscles at all. I was
like a lump of skin in a chair, just there, waiting to see if I could figure
out what's going on with me and what’s going on around me. Its then that I
realize that Sis is talking to a 911 operator. Minutes later, maybe seconds
because my time perception is a little muddled around this time, about four
huge, gorgeous firemen are in my living room staring at me and my sister,
while she is still taking direction from the 911 operator. 📲 I'm assuming the operator
tells her to hang up and explain to the First Responders. 🚑 I can hear one of the
firemen yelling to the others from the hallway I'd collapsed in earlier, that
there was a lot of blood on the hallway floor. I guess I'd been laying there
bleeding and didn't know and couldn't feel it. Though I don’t have the strength
to show it, I’m concerned and I do the only thing I can think to do at that
time. Still buried in Sis' stomach, still unable to move on my own, I whisper
her name. She says "What, Belle?" (her nickname for me.) I repeat her
name and she leans down and puts her ear to my mouth. 👂👄 With every bit of
strength I can muster, I gently mutter in her ear, "Get me a bra." 👙 Hey, being on death's door is no excuse to be sloppy. 😬
I've told this story before but it seems strangely pertinent again. My family,
friends and the people I worked with rallied around me in frighted fervor. My dad drove up from Baytown (my hometown), a 4 hour drive, in about 2. 🚘 My brother took off work
and spent every morning in the hospital room with me so that Sis could get some
rest at home. I felt bad and told him that he didn’t have to do that but he
assured me that he needed his own assurances that I would survive what was supposedly
the un-survivable. I think also because there was, once upon a time, four of us
close, very loving siblings and now there are only three. ⛬ I think in his own way, he wanted to make sure
he wouldn’t have to live through another unforeseen tragedy like when we lost
my brother, who was closest in age to him. 👥 My job sent beautiful flowers and balloons and my best girlfriend
coworkers came to visit me in the hospital. I guess I didn’t and never really
did, grasp the severity of my situation. To me, it was the way my life was.
To everyone else, my life was almost a wasn’t. Suffice it to say that my little
blood excursion resulted in a blood transfusion, several days in the Intensive
Care Unit and several medical professionals telling me that my blood level/hemoglobin count was
"Not compatible with life." 📉 I knew it had to be something they taught
in medical and/or nursing school because several nurses and doctors used that
exact same collection of words in that exact order. 🔁 Turns out, that I had
developed an ulcer on an artery and had been bleeding out, from the inside, for
Lord knows how long. I was somehow walking, talking and surviving with less
than half of the amount of blood a body needs to function. None of the ER
doctors could figure out how I was still conscience and talking. 😮 The hotshot hematologist, which happened also
to be hot-looking, asked me, "Had you not been feeling severe pain and chronic
fatigue?" 🙍 I told him I hadn't because in my mind I hadn't. Aside from
having a high tolerance for pain, my internal Drill Sargent’s voice constantly
yelled in my head that "Giving up is NOT an option!" ⛔ So, like a good
superhero, I just pushed through. However, recalling this scary story reminds
me that pushing through at all costs is not always a good thing. I seem to have
a penchant for ignoring pain and treating fatigue as the little wimpy pipsqueak you
don't want to lose to in an arm wrestling match. 💪 But even with the pain I
didn’t process, the fatigue I wouldn’t admit to and the “close call” I respect
but didn’t want to define me, in 2007 or 2017, I see a blessing. I call it
my Blood Blessing and I’m glad I had it. I’m also glad baby boy woke up an hour
and a half before my alarm this morning. I’m glad I could regale my co-workers
with stories of 911 and humorous infant ignorance. I’m glad I recall all the
ugly stuff that makes me the woman I am today.
As I continue to let my Forever Female⚢ Pride flag fly high🚩, I must admit
that I think that Independent Superwoman shtick may have outlived its
usefulness. I couldn’t dig myself out of depression and an onslaught of suicidal
thoughts & actions on my own. I couldn't stop drinking, drugging and other unhealthy
addictive behaviors on my own. I couldn’t even get myself out of the cruel, Groundhog
Day of Terror on my own, no matter how many times I woke up to find it wasn’t
just a nightmare. 👾 What in the hell makes me think that I can push my way
through another Blood Blessing on my own? It used to hurt to say but as I get
more mature and less selfish, I can admit that I need people. I have to be
willing and able to reach out my hand and admit that I need help sometimes. And
truly, there is a tremendous amount of relief that comes when a self-appointed
strong, independent woman admits she needs a hand up.🙋 If I intend to
restore myself to my former glory, or some semblance of it, I need to ask for
assistance every once and a while. Sometimes admitting you need help and you can't
do it by yourself is the strongest, most courageous thing you can do. Or at
least, it's one of the most liberating things you can do. Hard but healing?
I can do that all day long and twice on Sunday. No sweat. 👍Liberation without perspiration is a
strong, independent girl’s best friend.
💍💋💎
https://chaunybaby.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/blood-blessing-babe/
