Things I Wish I Didn't Know So Much About

1. Penile Cancer
2. Spinal Cord Injury
3. Disseminating Intravasacular Coagulation
4. Drug Addiction
5. Depression
6. Religion
7. Alcoholism

If you had penile cancer, you'd shoot up Demerol too, and you would NOT want them to remove it.
If your spinal cord were smashed at C7, you'd curse, scream, and cry all the goddamned time too.
If you woke up 5 days later from giving birth, in restraints, on a respirator, unable to do ANYthing, with a big gash where your uterus & tubes & shit used to be- not an incision, but a GASH!, and you're informed you came ~ this close to death, and your baby boy is fine & perfect & all, but he's at your in-laws, where you will all spend the upcoming several weeks, but right now you just have to get strong & LIVE, and you're lucky you don't really remember that day, but you are SO STRONG, well, you'd freak out too.
I don't know how to take it when people tell me I'm strong. I don't think I'm strong at all. I turn to drugs or alcohol to help me be strong. I've been taught that that's the worst thing in the world to do. But it works for me (moderation is the key!)
I used to turn to God to be strong for me. That's what I was taught to do. I can't do that anymore. I just have to live my life.
I'm glad I don't really remember the pain & weakness of the winter of '98-'99. I do remember being constantly overwhelmed at what my body had done; it had forced me to experience new levels of discomfort - physical, mental, emotional, and most of all, spiritual.
During the failing of my body, which included massive blood loss & transfusions, emergency hysterectomy, and a couple of hours of no blood pressure (I have a copy of those charts!), then a helicopter ride to a major trauma hospital and several more hours of more surgeries, followed by about 5 1/2 days of total darkness, I feel that God, who I'd been seeking for most of my 37 years, had a perfect opportunity to show himself. Instead I realized almost immediately (well, it took several days for all this near-death shit to sink in!) that there was nothing on the other side.
Maybe this is why some dying men, even in horrible pain & suffering, will beg for life. They've seen the great nothing.
For me, it was kind of comforting. The nothing was just that-nothing. The recovering, however, was extremely difficult, and seems to be ongoing...
It won't be long til Monday...wah wah wah