Well, it is day one of my 55 days until Christmas. I have dismissed the Milking Maids and the dancing lords, I sold the 5 gold rings to pay for a few more months of domain privileges, the swans got out of the water to nest and the Partridge realizing pear season is over, flew off to find another fruit suitable for eating. That just leaves us. You, me and a few thousand of our closest friends.
The purpose of the UPPEE ( Universal Pity Prevention Epidural Experiment) is to show humanity that nothing is devoid of humor. We may opt not to look at it that way, and we have been trained to view life in a duality paradeigm. That is to say, if we have up we have to have down, if there is anything, real or emotional it has to be balanced with a polar opposite.
What if that thought process was actually a mis-thought or a state of mental confusion we have been raised to accept? What if there was something besides Science vs Religion? What if there never was any versus at all? If there was only truth and reality was a delusion we created so we could walk out of any pain, suffering and sadness simply by changing our perspective and finding the humor in our seemingly perpetual insanity? I am here to assure you there is a simple Truth to which we are all intimately connected. Each one of us is an invaluable component of the completion, even those we imagine are total soup sandwiches.
My goal is to tell a funny story every day from now until December 24th. On December 24th I will provide a link to a Youtube video that is a hypnosis session you can opt to view and participate in if you choose. I will make it available on my face book page and here on this website. It iwll be a quantum physics/mechanics adventure on how to capture thought and select our emotions as easily as we can walk down the grocery store aisle selecting what we will ingest to sustain our physical bodies.
Each week I will feature a "download or spiritual message" that is a foothold into walking out of the confusion. This may slightly repulse those that have discovered agnosticism/atheism as the path of light and frighten those who have clung to religion as the one true path. Both are OK, and have some merit. But the actual Truth is so much better than the fractured guesses I hope when you finish this maze with me, you will realize you have never needed anyone or anything to take you where you need to go. You have never not been there in sheer perfection and suffering. loss and need are the myths that drive the delusion.
This weeks humorous adventure is about when I was diagnosed with Cancer in my thirties. I had uterine first, because I am certain the Universe could see that I was exhausted with the bizarre female cycles my body had adopted as normal. Having my uterus removed, I was told might make me feel sad or less like "a woman" is what one of the male gynecologists I first consulted shared with me. I assured him I had not tied my value as a woman to being able to shoot babies out of my womb and through an opening more comfortable with insertion of objects a few inches in length and much smaller around than a human cranium.
I decided to find a female gyno and I did find one I really liked. Several people felt compelled to warn me that she was a lesbian and that should make me uncomfortable.This was about 22 years ago. I could not for the life of me see how that was any different than a straight male OB/GYN. I figured it was perfect, she not only appreciated the feminine sexuality she had all the same parts and personal experience. Win/win. She was fantastic. Fast forward about 5 years and and my second experience with the condition we call cancer.
I had issues with my voice, I sounded very raspy, I was seriously impacted when I consumed anything citrus and my energy levels were very low, in comparison to my past states. I was trying to raise three children and found it was becomeing increasingly difficult to stay invested. For a few years I had been seeing an endocrinologist at TMCE who shall remain nameless. In part because he was a moron and proof that Jethro Bodine Clampett could in fact be a Brain Surgeon or a Double naught spy, and in part because I actually can't remember his name.
I had started doing my own research realizing I had something going on with my thyroid. One day, following a rather contentious Dr.'s Appt where I told my endocrinologist that the only way I woud consent to being unconscious in a room where he held a sharp object would be immediately following a lobotomy. One of the nurses, pulled me aside and gave me the name of the TMC endocrinologist and told me if I requested/demanded to be transferred I could be switched. She also told me she shared my questions of competency for Dr. Nameless, and we were not on a short list.
I made an appt. with Dr. Isley and he was light hears ahead in practicing medicine. Unfortunately he was only aroused by diabetics as he had been granted great sums of financial support to tackle diabetes and I was a tiny girl with some thyroid issue. I went through a year of being seen, and very short quick visits with pat answers.When he asked if I had any questions, it was his coattails at the door I could speak to, his face was already in route to the next exam room. I had been granted a couple of FNA adventures and had been diagnosed with Hasimoto's Thyroiditis. It is a auto-immune issue that is a low thyroid function and I had been given synthetic hormone made to mimic what mine was not producing and so I should have been content.
For those of you who have not had the pleasure of an FNA, they have you set in a awkward position with your head tilted back, you can't move and they jab a rather large bore needle in and out of your neck, plunging it into your thyroid. Sort of like when you take a straw and jam it over and over into a cup with ice to get ice into the straw. Along the way they often hit a nerve here or there or capture blood which makes true samples inconclusive for conditions beyond the Hashimoto's I can proudly say I trained two interns on the procedure. Not all that fun, especially in the hands of amatures.
But I knew what I had was more than that and that this synthetic hormone was not doing anything more than showing up in my blood stream when roll was called and shouting "Present". It was not really doing any of the class work or taking any tests. It was failing but being given full credit just for showing up. I was beyond frustrated and so I wrote my Dr. a long letter. I asked him if he thought I was ill or just crazy? I could live with crazy but the illness part was weighing heavily on my mind. I had three small children and they were not easy to rehome in case I had to exit stage left.
I mentioned that while I had been sitting in the exam room, waiting for my 10 minute audience I had enjoyed the family photos he had on display. I noticed that he had been trained in the military and that he and his wife had adopted an Asian child. I just happened to have three children, all of whom were half Thai and would be perfect additions to his family. I was no longer willing to drive downtown to sit and wait and get no real answers. I was convinced I had one of three types of thyroid cancer and needed to take the necessary steps to halt its advance. So what I would do was mail my questions to him, he could answer them at his leisure and would not waste gas and time driving down town. I was going to make a will appointing him legal guardian for my three children who would benefit greatly from the financial and educational opportunities he could provide.
I do not think a Dr. has ever responded faster to the threat of legal guardianship, but he called me over the weekend. I had suggested I would be open to another FNA but only if he was going to be doing the procedure. I had trained my last intern. He called me at home on a Sunday afternoon and I had an appt for the next week. I had asked him if he thought all of his patients were tiptoing a line between illness and hypochondria. I had the procedure the week following my second marriage. When the results were in I was called to the hospital for the results.
I knew it was going to be what I thought because he moved in close to catch me. I remember thinking it was like one of those wild evangilistic experiences where they generate a lot of emotional energy and then compel the random participants to pass out and be caught by the handy little helpers. In this case he was prepared to do his own catching. He told me about 10 signals that it was cancer. If they found 3-5 they assumed it was malignant. I had 7 of the 10, possibly 8.
He was fixed on my face as he told me this and I simply said,"so I was not wrong. " It should be noted that at one of my appts. when I was telling my Dr. I had all the symptoms of this particular cancer he said rather haughtily "Do you think you are a Dr. now? And prepared to practice medicine?" I said, " Well, one of should be and as a non-diabetic I don't rate very high on your priority list, but I am the only one on mine! I am trying to find answers inspite of the medical profession and your limited scope. So please humor me, I intend to find out what is going on, with or without your help."
I am certain this conversation was playing in his mind at this point and I had known what he now knew, over a year ago. There was a bit of guilt that I did feel I could use to my advantage. I said "well it kind of sucks but I told you over a year ago I had this and you asked me if I was a Dr. I feel like I might like to try on a white lab coat" and I smiled. He said, "You're taking this news very well!" I looked him in the eye and asked him if there was imperical data showing that if I cried I would live longer. He responded that there was no proof, in fact just the opposite. I said I would just go ahead then with my current state of mind. To which he nodded and proceded to detail his treatment plan. I let him talk then I began to modify the dates and procedures.
He said it could not be put off and time was of the essences. I smiled again and said, "es, well a year ago I was crazy, now I am to believe I am standing at the edge of extinction. You know those three beautiful children you declined to parent? They are in the middle of summer ball, practice and games and I am the only one who is driving them to practice, washing uniforms, sitting in the sun cheering from a lawn chair and keeping the team score. Are you willing to guarantee me I will not die in surgery, and if I do could he pick up the slack."
He laughed and said he did not think he could manage that so he relented and allowed me to pick the dates and times for my procedures.
Obviously I lived. Others like my father walk off the Earth. I remember how odd he thought I was, sitting in the exam room making jokes and ordering my treatment plan instead of accepting what he first suggested as the Gold Standard of treatment plans. How funny that today, knowing what I know, it is even more funny. And I understand how those facing cancer or having been through it think it is the worst thing one can hear when being diagnosed.
I just want to add, I had it twice and lived, my father did not. I have lost 5 babies in the process of pregnancy, I have had a friend choke to death, a couple that died from being t-boned in a car, one who was killed at the lake when a boat struck her boat and hit her in the head, relatives who died being drug behind a mule while plowing, heart attacks, gun shots, strokes, and an assortment of other strange things, accidental and medical. And as I look back I can't really tell who is more dead. It seems you are either here or you are not here and how you leave only seems to matter to those left standing behind in the dust. At least with cancer you get a warning shot and some hope of survival. Oncoming traffic is pretty unforgiving... Just saying.
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