Mine is racing in circles inside my brain pan. After a day of malaise, anger, and insight in which I had to put myself to bed for a nap because I couldn't stand myself anymore, I can't sleep. I shied away from pain medicine all day and fought through depressive episodes of mild self loathing because of my mind messages of worthlessness at not accomplishing any thing of note. I had the realization prompted by a friend that I have just played out a life and death struggle eerily reminiscent of my own mothers death 37 years ago. She was 40, had lost about a third of her bodies weight in a relatively short period of time thanks to an operation which bypassed part of her small intestine, the part that absorbs nutrients. I had lost one quarter of my bodies weight in a relatively short period of time changing my diet radically. We both were taking Vitamin B12 shots to replace nutrients, hers from her short circuited guts, mine from my precipitous change to a totally raw vegan diet. Our presenting symptoms were vague and easily dismissed, we both waited for 24 hours until we were seen by medical help. Both of us were not treated seriously went we presented at the hospital until xrays/cat scans showed something very, very wrong. Her guts ruptured where the surgery had been done six months earlier. She died of gangrene of the abdominal cavity, it took five days for her to die. I was diagnosed 7 days after I was admitted to the hospital, my guts had ruptured at my appendix which had probably happened when my pain had started thus inflaming and infecting an already compromised sigmoid colon. She died on a ventilator with most of her gut removed, I lived but have suffered from one mishap after another from not being taken seriously.
While I was in the hospital, every time a new doctor or nurse came into the room I would tell "My mother died this way, I don't want to." Not a one of them even commented. I had at least three occasions where I was so sick and depleted that the thought passed through my head- "I could imagine that this might kill me, what a stupid way to die." And yet I felt utterly powerless to get any better or different type of treatment. I remember the night that Doug and James came in my room, guns a blazing saying that they were going to spring me from the joint and take me to a better hospital. I wished that I had gone with them or allowed them to just take over, but I didn't want to make my negligent captors mad at me because I was afraid for my life. All this is much clearer without the clouding of those lovely narcotics that I had to beg for to stop the pain. I was not once offered any thing for pain, I had to ask for it, never knowing whether or not it was time for it or not and nothing else was offered like a heating,ice or a massage. I wish that I hadn't been so young when my mom was dying, I wish I had been more involved in her care and been there in some potent way to ease her suffering or even to have gotten her the care that may have saved her life, but I wasn't, nobody with any power was, just her scared and too young children who weren't allowed to be part of the discussions or to be privy to the salient facts of her care. That and her sisters who were too busy with their own families to do anything like try to insure that their youngest sibling got good medical care.
So I guess that I will try once more to hit the sheets and try my mantra of prayer and bringing to mind all of those that I love and hate into my minds eye as I recite my prayers 95 times, it usually work though it failed me about an hour and a half ago. Maybe I will toss in a couple prayers for myself and for my mom, see if that does any good.
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