Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee/@geegranny on Twitter
Knees aching in excruciating pain as she tried to stand up. She picked up a book ... oh, how her hands hurt. She began to walk ... placing one hand on her right hip. Oh God, the pain.
Thankfully, she'd be going to the doctor to get injections to enable her to walk, move without the inflammation in her body. Get medicine, not for pain ... that wastes time ... she would get medicine that would help the inflammation, make it heal up.
Her chest began to throb in the 'forever pain' she lived with. Thoracotomy Syndrome. Two thoracotomy surgeries saved her life ... saved her from the non-Hodgkins lymphoma that was on the outside of one lung, resting on her heart. The second surgery was to remove the non-Hodgkins lymphoma that had come back inside her other lung. The surgeon removed a portion of her lung.
She had several more medical conditions that caused her grief but, whichever one hurt her the worse at this very moment ... was the one that was most important.
Sixteen years ago ... all of her medical problems began when she became very ill. It took several months to diagnose non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She couldn't be treated until they knew what to treat her for. She grew weaker, losing all her weight, began to live in a dark world as time went by. She almost died ... the morning of the first surgery she was almost dead.
Sixteen years later ... unknowing to her ... she found out that she shouldn't have been here today ... 98% of the patients with what she had ... didn't make it ... they died. She couldn't forget the doctor rolling his stool up to her, looking her straight in the face, said, "you shouldn't be here today". He went on to explain. Cold chills went over her body. She thought a lot about that moment when he told her.
She was lucky all these sixteen years to get to feel pain ... to hurt, to cry from the terrible pain she suffered every day of her life. Damn ... she wouldn't have to suffer at all if she could be a drug addict. Who is better off ... she or ... someone who is addicted to drugs so they never had to feel pain?
All these ... sixteen ... years she tried to live each day without pain medicine. A lot of times when she was alone ... she cried. When she was around someone ... her cries turned into smiles. She never burdened anyone with her pain. No one really knew about it ...
Not only that ... God, wasn't she lucky to be alive? Lucky all these sixteen years to feel pain? Yes, yes ... she was. That is why she turns her cries into ... smiles.
Author's Note: This is all-too-true in my life ... that's okay, I'm here sixteen years later. In my case, it feels good to ... hurt :)
Photos/article owned, written by Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee/@grannygee
In a way then the pain was a blessing and God was watching from above.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the pain of cancer and all those surgeries that come with it. I do know the pain of losing someone close to me that had all those surgeries and the pain that she had with it. I lost my sister-in-law last week. She fought it hard and was a super duper trooper! She was in great pain the last couple of weeks and she wasn't strong enough to fight it anymore. Since she was laid to rest I consider her cancer free now because in heaven there is no sickness! I hope your pain will lessen with time and may you never be in the pain my sister-in-law was in. I love you Gloria! Love, Ms. Nancy
ReplyDeleteShe was a fighter. She has the best person sticking by her ... that was you. Her death affected me personally ... it hurt me to my soul. I was really pulling for her to make it. Love, Gloria
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