Of course they were there when we got there. Of course they were every bit as beautiful as my first granddaughter, my daughter and my son. God wouldn't make anything that wasn't beautiful. Looking at my glorious family, I suddenly felt my life was a huge success. All of those paths I had taken along my way were just ways to keep me entertained. Places for me to pick up tools to help me build. So this is what I had been building.
With all this joy surrounding me, I still felt like I had missed something. Maybe I was just now beginning to feel the pain from all the battle scars I had picked up through the years. You see, every time I had felt defeated (all the way back to that silly little musical), an emotional scar had manifested itself as an actual injury on my body.
It started with hay fever. Every summer my eyes would swell completely shut. Later, I developed scoliosis. Then, I was hit by an automobile. That put me out of school for six months. I was just a pedestrian, but I blamed myself for the accident. The impact caused my pelvis to shift, and from then on, one of my legs was shorter than the other.
Maybe it was my feeling of worthlessness as a teenager that caused my body to reject many foods. Tomatoes, oranges, pineapples, strawberries, lemons, limes and foods containing any trace of them caused painful ulcers inside my mouth. My lips would swell to three times their normal size, and I would break out in a rash, all over my body. Chocolate (which I dearly love) became my body’s next enemy.
The pain from menstruation was so severe, doctors wanted to give me a hysterectomy when I was nineteen. If I had let them, my son would have turned out to be a casualty of the procedure. I made them wait until I was twenty-two.
Next came vertigo. “You're not squirting that in my ears!” I exclaimed, when a nurse approached me carrying a giant syringe filled with ice-water!
"This test should tell us why you appear to be so dizzy," she explained, "We need to see how your eyes react with ice-water in your ears."
They put ice water in each ear and watched to see what my eyes would do. Water in one ear made my eyes dodge back and forth, water in the other ear, did nothing. They said I was born with something missing. Really? Maybe that was what I had been searching for!
For several years, I was in and out of hospitals, suffering with kidney problems. Sometimes, it would be an infection and a very high fever, sometimes, it was excruciating shooting pains that jolted me every five or ten minutes. They put dye in my veins and took pictures of my kidneys. No stones were found, but they discovered I wasn't quite normal. Where most people have a single collecting system in each kidney, one of mine had two. They didn’t know why I was hurting.
Later, I was in another car accident and injured one of my knees. At first, I was told all I needed was a little physical therapy. After the therapy caused my knee to swell, I was sent to an orthopedist for a second opinion. He ended up removing a piece of cartilage that had broken off of my kneecap.
During the follow-up, we noticed some abnormal lumps under my skin. I was sent to a cancer specialist next door. She was concerned about the lumps, my lack of appetite, weight loss, history of kidney infections and the fact that I got sick every time I was in the sun. She asked if I had ever heard of Lupus. I hadn't. She gave me a preliminary test. It came back positive. She said I needed more tests and a specialist. Unable to afford either, I simply tossed the Lupus in with the rest of my baggage.
During my "successful career" in middle management, I had done a lot of lifting. One day, as I was putting a box up onto a shelf over my head, I twisted and pulled something in my back. The pain was just under my shoulder blade. I tried to ignore it but it kept getting worse. I couldn't lift my arm and it was difficult to breathe. The doctors and therapists did the things they were supposed to do. They gave me plenty of drugs and told me to rest for a while, and sooner or later, the pain would go away. I ended up giving up my job because it never went away.
While living in Tennessee, I got what I thought was a chest cold, with a nagging cough that just wouldn't go away. Not only was it keeping me awake at night, but my husband was getting dark circles under his eyes! The doctor I saw for that couldn't cure me, so he sent me to an allergist. There, I was stuck with countless needles that were dipped into a variety of samples from different weeds, trees and grass.
You know you’re in trouble when a trained professional walks into a room, looks at you and exclaims, "Oh my God!"
It was official. I was allergic to everything in the state of Tennessee. I also had allergy-induced asthma.
My most severe injury came a few months before the twins were born. From time to time, I liked to join my husband in some of his ventures. I happened to be a huge racing fan. The skills I picked up here and there made me certain I could make a valuable contribution to a race team. It wasn't enough for me to do something simple. I never gave up that old habit of trying to prove my self-worth. Taking pictures of the team wasn't enough. Fixing something for the guys to eat after a hard day's work would probably have been much appreciated, but for me, that wasn't enough to earn my keep.
I needed to make myself as useful as three men. I worked very hard and seldom, if ever, let anyone help me. Everyone at the track knew who I was. Comments were often made about how I was the only one on the team, ever seen doing any work! I wasn't, of course, but I was one of the hardest workers. It made me kind of proud. I started with the idea to earn my way in so I could take pictures at the track. Maybe get into a position to sing the National Anthem at the opening festivities of one of the races. I lost sight once again.
I was important, though. Kind of a novelty. I was the team tire specialist and the catch-can person. The day before a race, I would take all of our old tires and rims and have new tires put on. Then, I would set them up with different air pressures and keep records of the performance for each set of tires during the practice sessions.
During the race, I would arrange the tires into sets and put all the air pressures at whatever the crew chief had decided was best. If he decided to make a change during the race, he would tell me and I would see to it that all the pressures were correct.
During the pit stop, I would put on a fireproof apron, gloves and a pair of goggles. Then, I would grab my can, jump over the pit wall and stick the spout of the can into the overflow check valve. This would allow the gas to flow from the gas man's can into the car. When the tank in the car was full, I would reach over and hit the gas man on the head. All the while, I would have one hand raised in the air. The jack man wasn't allowed to put the car down until I dropped my hand. Once I did, I would jump back over the wall and grab the tires that just came off the car. Then, I would take the pressures and write them on the tires, before stacking them, four high. I said all of that to get to this.
Those tires were sixty pounds apiece. I weigh one hundred and thirty-five pounds. What was I trying to prove? That I was the only tire-toting, gas-catching, picture-taking, guitar-playing, songwriting grandmother, stupid enough to think she could lift sixty-pound tires by herself, for two days every weekend, all summer long!?
Something had to give. Unfortunately, this time, it was my lower back. In an instant, I went from being an able-bodied, strong-willed crew member, into a scared, practically paralysed woman. I couldn't move and it hurt just to exist.
I spent six months doing everything the doctors told me to do. The chiropractor was able to help me stand up straight, but the treatments were causing more pain in other areas. He sent me to an orthopedist. He had his suspicions but wanted to try every option he could think of other than surgery. I was sent for an MRI, which showed a bulging disc and possible damage to another. It also showed that I had an unusual connection in the nerves coming from between my discs. Just another little trait that made me special, I guess! He sent me to a physical therapist, who sent me back to him. I was then sent to a pain management clinic. There, I was given B-12 injections, followed by three epidurals. They sent me back to the orthopedist. I wasn't getting better.
The last thing to do before surgery was a diagnostic procedure. This would show the extent of my injury. The doctor was fairly confident this would allow him to identify the offending discs, remove them, and thus . . . bring my pain to an end. The procedure was called a discogram.
They said the procedure would be painful. I was prepared. I had to be awake while they stuck me with needles that went from my side, all the way into my discs. Then, they injected dye, reproduced my pain and took pictures of the disc.
I wasn't prepared for the pain that came after the procedure. I thought I had been run over by a truck! From the middle of my back, all the way down to my hip, I was black and blue. I was so dizzy, I needed to keep one foot on the floor at all times, to keep the room from spinning. Eating was out of the question because there was no way my stomach would allow anything to reside in it.
"This will pass" I thought.
The idea of surgery was scary, but the alternative was even more frightening. My little dog had just had two discs removed, and she was already walking again! When I went to the doctor's office for the follow-up, I was prepared to set the date for my operation. Waiting for the doctor was hard, because sitting was now more painful than ever. Soon, there would be some relief!
"Bad news," he said, with a solemn look on his face, "there are too many discs involved . . . we can't do the surgery." I kept looking at him, waiting for him to tell me my options. He never did.
"We have no more options," he said. I thought about how my husband must have felt, when he was on his back and didn't know what was next. He got through it, maybe I could too.
The soreness from the discogram began to wear off, only to be replaced by what felt like a hot poker with a high voltage electrical cord attached to an outlet. Each time I was stabbed by the poker the pain would go from my lower back, all the way down to my toes. I wouldn't be able to move or speak. It would last about a minute each time. Following each episode, my toes would cramp and curl under.
Maybe it would have been easier to deal with my fate, if other things weren’t occupying my mind. I had two new grandchildren that I couldn't even pick up. Not being able to hold those two angels in my arms was tearing me up inside. How could this have happened? What had I done to deserve such punishment? How and why had I become so . . .
. . . wounded?