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Make yourself at home. Put your feet up. Grab your favorite beverage and prepare to enjoy the reads.
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Showing posts with label patient. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patient. Show all posts

Friday

Must Cancer Patients Be Positive?

When we come into this world we act out as freely as we want to. As time goes by, we get messages from others that to freely express ourselves is not okay. Whoever said one must be a "good" (insert name of disease here), patient? What the hell is that anyways? If we are "good" does that mean we get to stay on this planet longer?

I know that there is a LOT of rhetoric about "keeping a positive attitude" and not "being negative" will help one to have good health and survival. Oh and don't forget organic vegan lifestyle. If you didn't eat it before how is it going to take over and heal you? Maybe you like that style of food. But, wouldn't a hot fudge sundae be nice?

If it's true that not thinking positive, having a negative attitude, not eating certain foods, then I would have been gone a long time ago, because I was a very "bad" cancer patient.

My inner child was pissed off. I went against the rules every chance I got, kicking and screaming and swearing at nurses (well, some of them deserved it) and telling people out loud that I had the forbidden "C" word and I was going to die.

Whoa! But those doctors were wrong. Maybe I was close to dying (had two Near Death Experiences), but no one can predict your future, really. Not even a doctor.

I was obsessed and talked about the "D" word to whoever I could get to listen. Most would get out of it, but some were cornered and I probably scared them to death. That was a time when the C word or D word was not discussed.

I wrote out my will, I don't know how many times. Well, that is, every time I had a recurrence. I really didn't have much to leave, some books, some artwork, some poems, some favorite things. I wrote it out with pencil and paper from a 3 ring notebook; one time leaving my art to my sis, next time to my brother. There was something cathartic in it for me.

Realizing I didn't want a "funeral", just a "wake", a party maybe, where people would play all my favorite music, (wrote that in the will, too) and I went around making people feel uncomfortable when I told them, "Don't buy flowers for me after I am dead, Give them to me now, so I can appreciate them." What a bad girl I was. I can laugh at it now, but I was pretty indignant back then. Why put hundreds, maybe thousands of flowers on a casket that is put into the ground the day they are arranged? It seemed so selfish to me. Love me now, not when I'm dead!

So, when we come into this world and we are cute little babies, we can get pissed off and scream our heads off and let everybody know just how unhappy we are. And we get away with it. We know what we want and when we want it, like, I want that milk, NOW! and yummy that is really good!! and then we are happy for a while, and then later we are miserable again, or sleepy, or giggly, or sad.... yet free to express whatever we feel. And people love you and care for you and for your feelings.

All I am saying is, I hope you will give yourself the right to feel however you want to feel and don't let anyone else pass judgment on you, and most of all, don't pass judgment on yourself for not being a "good" patient. Be whoever you are!

If it is true that your time on this planet is coming to a close, then why not do what you want? Well, maybe, not use that bludgeon you were thinking of. But, maybe take a stick and beat up the sofa. Listen to the music you want, eat popsicles and pizza or cereal for dinner and pudding for breakfast, wear all mismatched clothes or draw tattoos on your arm or get out your old Barbies and dress Ken in Drag or your old Legos and build castles. And, yes, protect yourself from those who are still stuck in their old ways, if you need to. You have no obligation to keep them in your life. It's your life after all, whatever is left of it, even if it goes long term. Clear out all the things that do not matter to you. It's very freeing to let go.

Take care of that little baby you once were who expressed yourself so freely. And in the meantime grab up all the love you can get for that which is inside you feeling empty and let it fill your heart until it is overflowing. You will be very surprised as the overflow floods those around you, and whether or not you get healed of the disease which might kill you, your heart will be healed with the fullness of love as it grows like a jungle garden. Your love and others intertwined in the leaves healing each other.

Wednesday

MY PROTECTOR

MY PROTECTOR
(1968)

Dr. Mindell, tall, slender, well-composed, did not behave like a normal orthopedic Surgeon.  The one’s I had met before were all too high and mighty to be human, to look you in the eyes as if you were an equal.  They were accustomed to everyone idolizing them and took it for granted they were Gods.  I did notice that when he made rounds, he carried a little bit of that remote untouchable aura, probably for the sake of his entourage, but when he arrived in my room, he did not stand at the farthest corner nor at the foot of my bed like other physicians.  he came right up beside me and leaned against the mattress as he taught his students about the rare condition being treated.  Rare condition or not, in the presence of Dr. Mindell, I still felt like a human being, instead of a “case”.

Even though’ he hacked away  a large part of my body over several years of surgery to save my life, I don’t necessarily think of him as my protector for the reason of his medical expertise. Just one incident clings to my memory making me grateful for his existence.

After many weeks languishing in the hospital bed, I became well enough to be placed in a wheel-chair instead of a gurney to be transported to other departments for tests or treatments. One day, after a long wait in the radiology dept.  a staff-person wheeled me in for a set of x-rays.  And when all the required pictures had been taken, I was wheeled back and parted in the long empty hallway.

 “Aren’t you taking me back to my room?” I asked.

  “No.” I was told, “Someone else will take you up shortly.”

I sat there in the cold corridor until my butt became numb and the pain in my legs screamed for release.  At which point, I unlatched the lock on the wheels and began to impel myself toward the main hallway.  My arms were weak from having been abed for so long.  The chair, at least a hundred years old, was made of wood, with a very high backrest and huge wheels.  It was very unwieldy to operate, but, struggling mightily, my determination drove me further and further away from Radiology.  It surprised me that no paid any attention to me.  Dressed only in a short backless gown with hair splayed about my head, it was obvious I was a patient making her way alone in the busy hallways.  Visitors passed me by giving wide berth.  Hospital personnel bustled by sometimes blindly brushed up against me
as they passed.

I grew resentful.  Not only had I been forgotten, left to rot in the drafty bowels of the Hospital basement, but I was for all purposes, invisible to the very people employed to watch after my health.  What if something should happen to me?  I would be ignored.  Fearful of my invisibility, I strained harder to reach my goal;  the huge main elevator that could take me up the many floors to my room. By the time I arrived, I was weak, cold and perspiring profusely.  The hospital, as ancient as my wheelchair had an old-fashioned elevator.  Every time I had been taken to it by a staffperson, they had hurriedly forced the wheelchair through the open doors racing against time to get me inside, before the doors clenched shut.

There were no safety features as there are today, no magic eye to bounce the elevator door back open should someone or something attempt to pass through while it closed.  So, when the doors opened, people traipsed in as I struggled to wheel my cumbersome chair through.  Needless to say, the doors clamped shut on me just as I pulled my arms out of the way.  I looked at the people inside, who would not meet my eyes. It didn’t occur to me that this was serious, until the floor raised up beneath me and the wheelchair tilted precariously.

Not able to move my lower body in any way to save myself, I sat there helpless, as the chair began to crunch.  The only view I had at this point was the ceiling.  My last thought was, “after being heroically saved from the bone cancer and surviving, I am going to go by way of an elevator! Oh, well!” There was nothing I could do. I just resigned myself to my fate as I awaited my demise.

Just then, Dr. Mindell scooped me up in his big arms and carried me down the hall and placed me on the nearest gurney and personally returned me to my room. I don’t know what happened to the wheelchair or the people in the elevator. At the time I was too tired and sick to even care.  I was just glad that my protector, my body guard was there to save me.