The Spectacle of Me

From the very day that Angela was born as Aaron, it seems like I can never do things the traditional way.  I couldn't just wear my glasses to school, I had to lose them weekly.  I couldn't just ride my bike around the neighborhood, I'd have to scrape myself up every time.  I couldn't be handed an opinion, I had to formulate mine on my own. I couldn't just play the sports my dad wanted, I had to find my own.  I couldn't just be a wrestler, I had to be a state placer. I couldn't just be an actor, I had to be leads. I couldn't just finish high school, I had to graduate college  I could keep going but I think you get the picture.  Everything I do, I have to do it well.  I have to make a show of it.

This unfortunately goes both ways.  I couldn't just get in a fender bender.  I had to total the car.  I couldn't just ride to work on my bike in the dark without a headlight, I had to run into a garbage can and flip over the handles on the way.  Negatively, my spectacular  life affected me hardcore this last week. I couldn't just get gallstones, they had to come accompanied with pancreatitis.

Saturday afternoon I got a text from a friend asking if I wanted to go out to eat with them at Rodizio Grill that night.  I had never been, but had heard amazing things, so I said sure.  Oh my!  You start with an all-you-can-eat salad buffet with a variety of salads so large I had never heard of many of them.  From there, servers come around with various types of Brazilian meats, giving you as many cuts from as many different varieties as you want.  Problem:  When I pay for a buffet, I feel like I should eat my moneys worth.

By the end of the meal, my stomach was in pain.  Of course, I just assumed I had eaten too much, but regardless, as we made our way back to the car, I stopped at the bathroom and threw up almost everything I had just eaten.  In front of the restaurant, I tossed my keys to my friends and had them go get the car.  I could barely walk, there was no way I was driving.  They stopped on the way to get another vehicle, and then dropped me and my car off at home.  Just in time as well, because I barely made it inside before I was hunched over the porcelain again.  Once cleaned up, I crashed into my bed.  I couldn't get comfortable because the pain would not subside.  I moved to the couch.  Nothing.  I tried taking a hot bath to loosen things up.  Honestly, as long as I soaked, and the water stayed hot, it helped, but eventually, hot water runs out.  No luck in my bed again, nor the couch, nor the bed.

Finally, at 2 a.m., I decided I needed to get checked out.  Six hours was way too long for an overeating pain, especially considering it had only gotten worse with time, so I did what any grown man would do in this situation... I called my mommy....

We started with an Urgent Care because I was thinking they were 24 hours.  When that failed, she asked me what I wanted to do.  There was no choice.  It was to the Emergency Room.

"On a scale of 1-10, what's your pain at?  A ten, oh, I see.  Fill out this paperwork and we'll get you admitted."

Seriously?  Paperwork.  I can hardly see straight and you want to write, legibly.  Okay....

Now for some tests.  Blood pressure.  Temperature. Pulse.

 "Let me poke you  Does it hurt if I do this?"  I don't think I gave an a distinguishable response, but my wail of agony answered all I needed to say.

It seemed like ages before they finally gave me something to take the edge off.  Drugs are a funny thing.  I know morphine makes some people sick.  I know some people who hallucinate from it.  I know others that it doesn't seem to affect at all.  My reaction to it was unexpected.  Remember, on a scale of 1-10, my pain was already at a 15.  For about 3 seconds the morphine doubled that before it took affect.  The pain certainly wasn't gone, but it was at least below 10 at this point.

The next step they tell me is to see if I was pregnant.  Okay, not really, but I did go in for an ultrasound.  From this, they could tell me that I was going to have to be admitted into the hospital with gallstones.  The kicker was to follow though, when they described why my pain had been so much more than the average stones.  Apparently, one of the stones had made it's way out of the gallbladder and into the pancreas, inflaming my pancreas, and giving me the double whopper of gallstones and pancreatitis.

Though the gallstones were the underlying cause, the pancreatitis actually became the bigger issue.  I had to spend four days with no food or water apart from my IV drip, waiting for the infection in the pancreas to go down so we could perform the surgery.  Five days in, I finally had the surgery, and because a couple of my counts remained high, it was still another three days before I was finally released from the hospital.

This was the first time I had been admitted into the hospital since I was born, if that even counts.  Prior to this I had never even had stitches.  Regardless, here we are, minus a gall bladder, still working a bit on recovery, and figuring out what life means without a gallbladder.  Apparently I just have to be a little more careful about  what I eat, which I've been trying to do, so now I just have a real motivation.

There is one real big happy that I pulled away from all of this.  Listen to the song.  Focus on the lyrics, and then continue reading.

In my mid-twenties, I had a certain mental struggle going on.  I had been in college more than four years and still had no degree.  My life seemed to have no direction.  Less than a year after the release of this song, my dad died, and it really made me start to question what I was doing.  If I were to die tomorrow, will I have made any kind of difference on this world?  How many people will care that I'm gone?  Would I really be missed?  This song took a strong hold of me. 
After my dreaming, I woke with this fear: What am I leaving, when I'm done here? So if you're asking me, I want you to know When my time comes, forget the wrongs that I've done, Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed.
For the sake of arguments, we'll call gallstones mixed with an attack of the pancreas a brush with death, even though really, it probably just felt that way.  This brush with death has filled my heart.  I cannot believe the outpouring of support that came to me in that hospital bed.  From the minute I called in to school to tell then I was going to have to miss the last week, immediately, without a drip of hesitation, the response was to not worry about a thing.  My classroom was a disaster, I had nothing really "planned" for the week, and still, I was told don't even think about it.  
I had countless visitors, some of which are to be expected but a lot weren't.  I received phone calls, and e-mails, flowers, and cards, and letters.  There was so much love and so many well wishes pouring into that room, that there was no doubt that in the past five years of my life, I have changed things around.  I have a huge conglomerate of people who care.  I had students in tears they were so worried.  (Not that I'm happy they were crying, but that I've made that big of an impact.) The first time I see people after release, they rush to hug me they're so happy to see that I'm out. It's just...overwhelming.  I am leaving my footprint on this world.  People do care.  I will be missed.  That fear never again has to sink into my brain.

Not that I plan on leaving this world anytime soon, but this is still a comforting feeling.
With that being said, I just want to wrap it up by saying thank you.  Thank you to my mom, thank you my brother and his family, to my grandma, to my friends.... the list could on and on, so just thank you everyone!  I really do appreciate all the warmth and love, support, and well wishes that were sent my way during this trial.  It means more to me than I ever would have known!