Days fell into a bleak routine. Hero Hottie would typically leave early for work, dark shadows under his eyes and a haggard expression on his face. Did he smile at all during this time? I don't recall. Joy was one thing missing from our household. It had left on some midnight train, and we didn't know if it had a return ticket.
I would sleep in. Deep bone fatigue filled me and I knew as soon as I pulled myself from the bed the pain of the day would start. If I hadn't had two small children I would have curled up in a ball under the covers and never got out of bed.
As it was, I had a four year old Bean and a two year old Abu to take care of. And if you can imagine any more stress in this situation, three months before my first fistula surgery, Abu had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
Four to six shots a day. 8-10 blood sugar checks a day. The heart wrenching agony I felt as I watched my bright and beautiful toddler skipping around the house without a care in the world; her eyes innocent and clear...
And then with each shot, with each blood sugar poke, watching an awareness cloud that innocence as she realized that life wasn't as carefree as she assumed. I would cry at night, watching her sleep. Snuggle her close and wonder why in this 'advance' age of medicine that our best cure for a malfunctioning pancreas was numerous, violent invasions into the skin. Insulin can't be swallowed or inhaled; it has to be injected.
So many times a day I had to hurt my daughter. It killed me emotionally. To look at my baby, Abu who was the kindest and gentlest soul I had ever met; and have to cause her physical pain every few hours.
She was so brave too. Right from the start. This child didn't hardly complain, she didn't fight me; I didn't have to hold her down to give her the shots. No, she would stand still, like a little soldier in attendance, offer me her arm and stare into space.
At the age of two.
How could she be so strong? But there was something I started to realize about Abu; her inner faith is far more solid than mine. She doesn't struggle with it as much; she simply believes in good and that everything works out. And there is a bit naivete with that but she feels it in her soul.
At night she is the one who reminds us that we have to remember to say grace. She is the one who always offers forgiveness. And perhaps even at the age of two; that inner strength is what kept her from turning angry and bitter over the hand she had been given.
Perhaps it's her faith. And that's something I admire greatly. To have such a deep faith at her age...
Her diabetes is also one of the reasons I would drag myself from the bed. I wasn't going to let her down and not take care of her needs. She needed shots and she needed them on time so they would give her the best control over her blood sugars.
We would have breakfast, but not at the table like before. The girls took to eating it on little trays while they watched television.
Suddenly, they were watching a lot of television. We didn't have cable, so PBS was the only channel that offered us anything with kid stuff on it.
That and I would watch court tv. What the hell? Me, who didn't hardly watch television ever. I was now addicted to shows that featured people arguing and fighting and were in general miserable.
Then the fun part of the day would start. My Mom would come over to pack my bottom. And this gets a bit graphic; but the cotton gauze that went in the night before would have to be pulled out. This wasn't quite as painful but I would go into the bathroom and cry while I pulled and pulled. Then I would feel like throwing up because it was always trying to get infected- it was nasty.
Then a bath to soak the raw tissues. And sometimes I would stay in there for longer than the fifteen or twenty minutes I was told I needed because I knew what was coming as soon as I stepped from the tub.
Mom would play with the girls while I did this and then we would get them busy with something and I would lay on the bed and close the door. I hate to think how much they heard, even though I would bury my face deep into my pillow to muffle the pain. But they weren't stupid, they knew their Mom was in a lot of pain.
And it changed their life. It would take years for them to heal from this horrible experience of watching their Mom suffer with so much pain.
The first two months after the surgery things slowly started looking up. Like little tiny shoots of hope pushing bravely through the spring snow. I started feeling better in small, barely measurable inches but it was there. The wound was healing in equally slow measures but it was trying to heal. As the wound healed, the inches of cotton gauze I needed shrunk.
--And then the middle of this; zombies attacked and ate the whole town. We blasted any that came to the door with shotguns and then took off in the biggest kick butt pick up truck we could steal. It was awesome....No, that's not what happened. But I was getting too emotional writing this and zombies always make me feel better...
For the first two months I was taking a narcotic painkiller for the pain. This settled well with my stomach and didn't cause me problems with my Crohn's. But after two months the doctor was worried I might become addicted to it and switched me to Ultram.
It took ten seconds to write that prescription. Ten damn seconds. I can still remember his surgeon hands, under the fluorescent lighting of the doctor's office, pictures of muscles on the wall, barely taking a moment from his life to write it. The handwriting was atrocious, it was more scribble than penmanship but the pharmacy filled it.
And I started taking it.
Who knew I was actually taking pills that led straight to hell.
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