Hello darlings. How is everyone?
How was the long Easter weekend for you all?
I trust that for some it was all about eating the chocolate, for me Easter is always associated with chocolate (ha ha). For others it was about getting dressed up in your Easter colours of pink, orange, white and yellow and heading out with loved ones. Others I am sure hit the beach and soaked up the smouldering hot sun. However you spent it, I hope that all my readers spent it with people you love doing fun and memorable things! Most of all I hope you did it all with a thankful heart.
If the tone of this blog seems a bit sombre then you're on the right track right off the bat.
Let me tell you about how I spent my Easter weekend: it was interesting and scary to say the least. While everyone was either out liming it up, or in church or simply at home doing nothing, on Good Friday I was in emergency surgery. I kid you not, totally serious- that’s how I spent my day, and the long weekend also. To put it simply, because I know the following questions are around the lines of ‘what happened’ and ‘why?’ it involved my tummy. All is well now as I type (obviously!), recovery mode in full effect for those who are concerned.
In retro-spec, because thankfully I can look back on it now and analyze, remember and sift through the thoughts, emotions and feelings of that crazy day and the days after- that was a TRIP! I went to the doctor just thinking it was either a simple bug, or gas (chucking everything up to gas clearly isn’t a smart plan. Ha). Only to find out that it was rather something much more complicated and serious than what I thought. Hearing a doctor tell you ‘Well I think we’ll need to operate soon to fix this’ knocks the wind right out of you. Whatever I was thinking at that point was suddenly gone, and at that instant, fear checked in and in a BIG WAY. In situations of uncertainty, if you know me at all, you know that I instantly panic, and this is what happened. While family was being contacted (because this blogger is anaemic and needed to get blood donated before the surgery), and everyone was giving hopeful ‘you’re going to be okay’ sentiments to me, all my mind was processing was ‘IS THIS SERIOUSLY HAPPENING TO ME AGAIN!?!?’.
When I was sixteen I had major surgery to prevent colon cancer (genetics has a funny sense of humour), and now to go through the surgical experience seven years later was just mind blowing. All of the same thoughts, fears, emotions and feelings found themselves present within me once again, sitting comfortably as though they never left. I thought and feared the obvious ultimate worry of someone going into surgery ‘Will I die?’, followed by ‘I SERIOUSLY don’t want to die though!’. Then the fear kicked in and the emotions kicked in; I instantly felt scared till I was numb. I mean numb as in nurses are preparing me for surgery and I am feeling NOTHING; the I.V obviously, but it was as though nothing else registered. All the movement and activity, excitement and what not around me and I just sat there (eventually laid there) and was numb. The fear then just gave way oddly enough to sadness, I felt sad at the negative outcome of the day, fearing the worst. I felt fearfully sad that when they put me under anaesthesia, and told me to close my eyes, that I would never open them again. I started to look at my family and loved ones in a different light, with a different lens in a way. I took them in as though it was the last time I got to see them. Fearing this could be the last time I saw them, I just couldn’t get enough of watching them. And then the tears came, cue the crying. Fear is a ‘baddist’ emotion- enough said.
I can’t believe I’m going to say the following, but surgery is one experience I think everybody should go through at least once in your life. Hold up before you right me off as crazy, or a masochist. Surgery gives you a sudden emotional and mental PURGE, ALL you think and feel come flooding into your system all at once, and never in your life will you feel and think all that at one point in time. That is not unless you’re near death, or at least that’s what they tell you- the whole ‘life flashes before your eyes’ thing. Anyhow, back to my previous thought- about surgery being on your bucket list. Speaking as a somewhat veteran (ha ha) it makes you instantly re-evaluate and appreciate everything and everyone in your life. You sift through every relationship you have with people in your life, instantly re-think every word you have ever said or not said to people and go through a check list of things you’ve either done or not done thus far in life. Surgery makes you, well no let me rephrase this- surgery made me evaluate life, and though it shouldn’t take this incident to do that, I’m grateful it happened.
So to throw you back into my re-memory and post ‘I am so glad to be alive after that scary experience’ analysis of the Easter weekend surgery- I’m now laying down in the room waiting to be wheeled into either the rest of or the end of my life. At that point in time the only two people with me were my mother and my boyfriend, bless their hearts for somehow keeping me from bursting into a huge panic attack, and like I said before, I was just looking at them, really LOOKING. I looked at my boyfriend, who was trying to reassure both myself and him at the same time that this was going to work out, talk about faith huh? He smiled at me and said that it was all going to be ok, and there are very few people in my life that I believe when they utter that sentence to me, him included, and on some level- I hoped he was right. I was grateful to have met him, thankful that the Lord blessed my life by placing him in it, and just happy that I loved him, and that he loved me. He smiled and I smiled back, holding back tears of course! And then I shifted my gaze to the other person there with me. I looked at my mother and thought ‘I LOVE THIS WOMAN’; I felt such pride and yet such sadness at the same time. I was thankful to God that he picked this woman to be my mother, thankful that he made such a wonderful choice, and grateful for the relationship we’ve had thus far. Somewhere in my mind, I thought while looking at her ‘If this is it for me, I’ve been blessed to have her as my mother’. And at that point, while she was looking at me with a smile, and because I know my mother I can tell you that she was smiling and holding back the most epic cry of her life, I smiled back at her-grateful for her.
Then they came to wheel me into the operating theatre, and the tears were pushing to come out, the flood gates were so about to buss! Pardon the dialect. Ha.
All at once I thought of so many other precious people in my life. I thought of my father, who was at that point in time, on his way home from Barbados to meet up with me. I imagined how positively frightened he must be, and the kind of enormous nerves he was feeling. Unsure of whether when he got here, there would even still be a daughter to see. That made my mood even worse; the fear I was feeling for myself and everyone I knew. I hoped and prayed, because at this moment you have to believe me when I tell you that I was praying so loud in my mind and with such fervency in my heart that the Lord must have heard me LOUD and CLEAR- that when he arrived, I was awake and well for him to see me. Similarly I thought thankfully for having him as my dad, and was so grateful that God made such a top notch choice on joining us as dad and dautz (abbreviation of daughter- it’s a thing my mum and I always say). My mind then jumped to my little sister, and I REALLY started to physically try to hold back tears at this point. I just prayed that the Lord brought me through this because I knew I was not done knowing my sister, and that she was not done knowing me. There is so much I want to teach her, and so many things I want to experience with her. I ALWAYS wanted a little sister and I thanked God for giving her to me and begged God all at once to bring me back to her.
At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering the same thing I am as I type ‘WOW! For someone going into surgery, she is thinking A LOT!’ HA.
To shorten things up a bit; in the few minutes before they knocked me out, few special people crossed my mind, and I asked that I get another chance to come back to all of them.
OKAY- laying on the table now, and I see the anaesthesiologist about to place the mask above my nose. He says ‘Ok Gabby close your eyes and take deep breaths in for me’, and I think (screaming in my mind)‘PLEASE LET ME WAKE BACK UP! PLEASE DON’T TAKE ME YET LORD! PLEASE LET ME OPEN MY EYES’! And I take those breaths, and out I go.
People, waking back up from surgery feels like you’ve been under water for a longer time period than you took enough breaths for. GASP! And I’m awake again, ALIVE still! Instantly I am elated, ecstatic that I am still here, thankful so thankful that the Big Guy decided to leave me down here a bit longer. Of course because I am still HEAVILY drugged up (Oh sweet morphine or similar drug! How wonderful does thou make me feel!. LOL) I can’t see a thing, for nothing would my eyes stay open! I hear voices, trying to recognize who’s around me; I hear my mother, my uncle and traces of other family members. I’m thinking ‘OPEN EYES’ and nothing like that is happening... I’m just wiped out with medication. Eventually I open my eyes long enough to look around, and I see orange (my Uncle’s brightly coloured t-shirt, but a glorious colour as the first I see after I wake up, grateful to be alive!)) And then I see my mum, and I am filled with gratitude and happiness.
I am still here (I think to myself). ‘THANK YOU’ I say a million times in my mind.
So everybody I see after waking up is seen in a new light, a thankful, appreciative and even more loving light. My dad arrived, and I think ‘Thank you that he’s here, that I am still here’, my mother, aunts, cousins, grandmother, and my boyfriend all make me feel as though life just got two million times sweeter.
So while still recovering, I end my Easter weekend recap to all of you.
As usual, I like to leave these blogs with something that we should think about, something that I think about.
It should never take a life threatening experience for us to be appreciative of the lives we are blessed to have, and make no mistake about it people, it is a BLESSING. The mere fact that we can go at any point in time should strike us so hard that we ultimately wish to live life to its fullest, enjoying and living each day to the MAX. Spend it with people you love, avoid things and people and situations that make you unhappy, because every minute you spend unhappy is one LESS minute you spend living the life you are blessed to have.
LIVE. LOOK. LOVE.
Live life to the fullest- it’s only one we get to have!
Look at it all with the lens that is appreciative and happy to be blessed with the people that are in your life and make it sweeter.
Love. It makes life better. Love yourself (by taking care of yourself first of course), and love those around you that enrich, rather than deplete your life.
