They don't call you-Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Waking up the next morning was a strange experience. For one thing, I wasn’t even really sure if I would wake up. When I did, it took me a while to figure out exactly where I was, and what was going on. A few hours later, after dealing with an endless parade of doctors, and an even more endless regimen of tests, I was very ready to go home and just crawl into a hole and cry. It was starting to sink in that I was very sick, and that we didn’t know what was going to happen. I could die, and I was only 20.

This was not the first time I had dealt with those thoughts, but the last time it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t handle it well. The last time was three years earlier, when I was 17. After having a horrible headache for two weeks, I went to my eye doctor, who took one look into my eyes and promptly sent me to the emergency room. Apparently when you have no color in your eyes because your eyes are dilated so much, and your retinas and optic nerves are hemorrhaging because of the pressure in your head, you have a problem. When I got to the ER in Kansas City, they did some scans on me, then my very first MRI, and by that night, I was in emergency brain surgery for a bad case of acquired adult-onset hydrocephalus. After the surgery, I had brand-new brain plumbing-a shunt. When I got to the ER, I guess I was pretty close to a coma, but I don’t remember much about it. Just the pain.

After the whirlwind of surgery and recovery was over, it hit me that at 17, I had almost died, and never even lived. I'd been the good little church girl my whole life and I had missed out on so MUCH! So, I determined that I was going to go out and do all the things I missed out on. And I did. And it REALLY wasn’t pretty. I spent most of the summer either in a drunken stupor, or sleeping off the drunken stupor from the night before. The levels of stupidity that can be achieved by a rebellious technically-an-adult-but-still-a-stupid-kid are amazing! I did it all-druken benders, marathon dating, near-anonymous sex, at one point I even worked in a strip bar. I must have had a trail of guardian angels lying exhausted behind me.

It took two years of downward spiraling for me to hit rock bottom and get through that bout of insanity. I really had no desire to repeat the experience. Mostly I was just angry though. Why was this happening to me NOW, when I was doing things RIGHT? I was a Sunday school teacher, for Pete’s sake! A year ago, I could have understood, because I was in total flagrant rebellion against all authority figures, and that included God. But now, things had changed. I had pulled my head out of my anal orifice, and I was doing what I knew was right.

It was a pretty rough time for me and my parents. We all knew that God was going to take care of me, and that this whole deal was part of his plan. After all, nothing surprises God, right? So that knowledge was the source of comfort and strength for my parents, but I have to confess, I was still scared to death. I wasn't afraid of dying, but the period of time between me sitting at home relatively healthy, and me dying scared me. There was a lot of stuff that would have to happen, and I didn't want anything to do with it. Little did we know the worst was still to come.

Three days later, I was sent home. The doctors had scheduled my first round of surgeries-a biopsy and a shunt revision, and there was really no point in me staying in the hospital. My mom was an ICU nurse, so she could take care of me just as well at home. They sent home plenty of meds for me: pain pills, anti-seizure meds and other fun stuff. My mom and grandma also put their heads together for an extra homeopathic regimen when they got home. Did you know shark cartilage is supposed to shrink tumors? Yeah, it doesn't work! All told, I was taking about 40 pills a day. Plus the IV steroids to try to fix my eyes-yeah, loved the nice body rash! (Did I mention I went blind for about a week? Truly a fate worse then death for a girl who loves to read.)

That first week home, I think I slept 20 hours a day. I would sleep, then wake up long enough to get the next batch of pills poked down my throat, then go to sleep again. I spent most of that week at my grandma’s house, because my mom had to work, and since grandma used to be a nurse too, she could take care of me.

When I finally got past the constant sleeping phase, then I went into the depression phase. I would lay on my bed in my room playing Guns-N-Roses “Knocking on Heaven’s door” for hours on end. My poor mom got so tired of hearing that song! She always knew when an especially bad bout of depression hit. The song got louder, and I started wailing along with it! The only high point of my day was talking to Chad. I called him in the morning, just to let him know I was doing ok, and still at home. He called me in the evening, just to talk, and to see how I was doing, and to tell me all about his day. And most days there would be a third call later at night. Usually after I had taken one of my really good pain pills. I am still getting made fun of about those phone calls! Apparently, one night, after we had been together for about a week, I called him looped out of my gourd on my pain meds, and told him that bunny-a gift from Chad on our first date-had told me he was going to marry me, and why didn't he just tell me this stuff himself, instead of having bunny do it. Then I started giggling, and hung up. Let's just say I was not myself those nights!

After about a week or two of this routine, it was time for my first two surgeries. The first was to biopsy the tumor, and the second was a shunt revision, because I was still blind, and the doctors thought that my shunt might be the problem. So, on the appointed morning, I packed my clothes, and bunny, because there was no way I was going to have surgery without him! Call me silly, but for some reason I felt like nothing could go wrong as long as I had bunny. Bright and early, we loaded up to go. Off we go on our first grand adventure! Yeah. They could have left me at home for this one!