My life has been saved five times

 Over the past several weeks I have experienced continuous severe pain. The simple common term would be sciatica. I’ve heard it many times in my life but up until now I had no concept of how crippling, how all consuming and how personally devastating that seemingly innocuous condition can be. As it was, apparently stemming from a rough bike ride, I thought it was muscular, then perhaps tendon strain but was told it was my nerves. I still feel it in my leg and foot. Little electric shocks. Penetrating and drill like. They strike but now they fade away. It’s all because I had a life saving surgery called a laminectomy. Was this sciatica fatal like terminal cancer? No, or at least not in the same way but I think it would have driven me insane with the constant and relentless pain that was driving me to the brink of insanity and consideration of an escape to the peace inherent in death. Surgery saved me. Anesthesia, a kind of artificial, temporary death while the surgeon performed his skills, kept me quiet and secreted away, no longer captive to this world until it was safe to return, my nerves rattled but unimpinged and the scar from the blade the only reminder of the battle that raged within me. Today, just 16 days after the procedure, I am starting, once agin to feel like myself. To embrace the present and look agin to a future.

This was my most recent encounter but my life was saved with a surgery that evacuated my appendix over 60 years ago when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I woke up with severe pain. This time in my lower stomach. I couldn’t sit up but I could barely lie down. My mom was in a panic and took me to Doctor Heller, our family doctor. He still made house calls but somehow I think I remember going to the office although all I really remember was being in a bed where he inserted his finger in me and made a decision with my mother that we should meet my father at the hospital. I remember saying now I lay me down to sleep as they put a rubber mask over my face and I could smell something very very sweet and I was gone… when I awoke I was in a strange bed in a strange place and my stomach and my private parts hurt. Apparently they decided to do another procedure they had neglected when I was born. I was in the hospital for the next few days. For the most part I was sad and lonely and entertained a fantasy that my parents would rescue me from this scary place and I would wave to people as they carried me home. Much the way dad would catty me home after Christmas at grand moms. I do remember the candy stripers however and I do remember that they were nice to me and I liked them.

So that was my appendix that I had removed. And that is how I have referred to it over the years although now it seems like ancient history. It did come up recently when I just had a double inguinal hernia repair, something that I was told my father had in his 20’s while working for his father in home construction. My doctor said that surgery in those days was like the wild Wild West and that my laparoscopic would be a pice of cake… which it was… I’m not quite sure if I count that as life saving but Yes, had it strangulated it would have been much more serious, so yes.

Nolan was born on November 30,  2012. I had already packed the car to go home to be with Mom and Linda. But I was here to share in the joy of his birth. Mom passed away 47 days later on January 16, 2013. The single most saddest event in my life. I came home to a stressed marriage and went to counseling with hospice. 56 days later Eric took his own life on March 13, 2013. I moved that to my counseling forefront. Linda needed help in closing the house but I had gone to Dr. Esce because of numbness in my fingers. He showed me this MRI and scheduled surgery. He said I could go to New Jersey but if I had a fender bender it could paralyze me from the neck down. I thought about that while on the parkway in the fog and turned around. This ACDF surgery on June 20, 2013 saved my life.

So in summary; appendix, anterior cervical disk fusion, thyroidectomy, bilateral inguinal hernia repair and laminectomy. That’s five times that surgery changed and saved my life. Then there are my vaccinations, antibiotics and simply wearing a mask. From the most profound and advanced science to the simple quarantines practiced in the Bible, medical science and common sense interventions have saved and prolonged my life. I have been blessed in many, many, many ways. Not living in fear but dutifully taking precautions and thankfully accepting the gifts that modern medicine has provided. From the incubator that nurtured me from birth to the cesarean that delivered our own baby girl, life has been one miracle after another. Modern miracles we often take for granted.