Angry at the world, I am home after our meeting with the surgeon. I am laying in my recliner with a blanket over me.  I am mad.  I am itching. The medicine I was given to relieve the itching hasn’t taken full effect yet. I am pretty introverted to begin with, so I have started shutting down.  I don’t want to get up to do anything. 

In the two to three years prior to this diagnosis, I thought I was doing all the right things to keep my body free from sickness or disease. I have been involved in a well-known exercise program where I was averaging cardio three days a week. I was also eating clean, which involved grocery shopping based on food plans, recipes and cooking most of our meals. Within the last ten years I had been improving my eating habits and researching about supplements, current food quality issues and standards. I was doing my best to purchase non-GMO and organic foods. I have been relatively healthy for most of my life. I drifted in and out of several at-home physical fitness programs while Jim and I raised our kids. In high school I was on the table tennis and varsity fast pitch softball team. I tried out for the swim team in middle school until I realized that the daily practices before and after school were far too intense for me. Going further back, I was very active trying to keep up with my eight brothers as a child. To name a few of our activities: acorn fights, frisbee fights, kick the can, ditch, and capture the flag.

Thinking back to multiple conversations in recent months. I hear myself saying that I plan to be like my Grandma Blanche, who was born in the early 1900’s. She lived to 99 years of age, taking care of most of her own needs up until she was 98. Grandma’s daily meds consisted of a baby aspirin and sometimes ibuprofen. However, the situation I currently find myself in seems incomprehensible. Would I make 55? Let alone 99.

Up until this time, my experience with the medical system seemed to reveal to me that good care doesn’t necessarily come from a system where doctors are paid based on the number of patients they treat. I have never had a surgery.  My three children were born naturally.  I did not have meds or an epidural during their births.  I am not normally sick with colds or flu.  I would say that all of these circumstances contributed to the fact that I hadn’t yet formed a strong trust in doctors or the healthcare system.

My mind returns to the room. I have not perceived that Jim has entered multiple times on a mission to tell me that I need to move forward. I am still in shock, angry and oblivious to what Jim is attempting to do. On his last entrance, he tells me that I need to get up and go for a walk. He says it will be good for me.  I snark back with, “Why?!”  After days of being subjected to my behavior, I am sure that his patience is done being tested. To begin with, he is not known to start in-your-face confrontational conversations. He is however good at asking questions to lead people to a solution, as long as they are willing to follow. I don’t want to listen to anyone after receiving the news from the surgeon. I don’t want this to be me. I don’t want to be a patient. I want this to be a bad dream.

Finally, I listen and take that walk down the block in our neighborhood.  Plodding along, I am pleading with God, sobbing and asking, “Why?  What did I do wrong?  Why is this happening to me?  Can’t you take care of this?”.  Distracted by my pleadings with God, I thought I was alone. Then, I look over and see there is a neighbor that I have never met that is sitting about 100 yards away. He must have heard my sobbing and close to a yelling conversation with God.  How embarrassing. I act like I don’t see him and keep walking by.  The walk helped.  Jim was right.  The momentum of my walk helped me to release some of that anger so that I could move forward on my journey to seek God on what my next steps should be.