Day of Surgery

In preparation for the surgery this morning I took antibiotics and drank a gallon of some solution we mixed with water to clean me out.  I was on the potty for over three hours over a four hour span starting at 4pm.  Afterwards I felt exhausted not to mention humbled in a way that eating crow would be an appropriate feeling.  It felt as though I'd been slapped in the face several times, called every name in the book and pushed by the bully in the cafeteria.  You know the feeling.  Well, some of you may be able to relate.  So after all that I ate my jello standing up and then afterwards being prompted by my good friend I laid down.  By this time I was humiliated and dizzy, feeling as though I'd been putt through a ringer and had been beaten down.  A feeling of defeat came over me and as I moaned and cried for a few minutes while my friend rubbed my head and breathed warm air onto my body as if to breath for me.  I was shaking uncontrollably.  I went from a sixty year old man to an infant in seconds and a feeling of helplessness came over me.  All I could think of was that this was only the beginning and that what is to come is going to take me to my highest level of tolerance.  

Now I have gotten up three times in the last hour or so.  It is three thirty in the morning and my husband is scheduled to come pick me up at six fifteen.  I have jumped out of bed because I have had two accidents in my pants and a close third call.  To say that I am upset is actually the understatement of the year.  I am furious.  I want to find someone in the lovely health system to blame because they were the ones who placed me on this regimen that kept me up almost all night and took me to the depths of hell.  OK, I said it.  It took me to a pretty low level and it is likely the closet I have been to what feels like hell to me.  All that I can think of is why.  Isn't there a better way to do this over time?  Could I have fasted for three days?  Would there have been a more humane way to prepare me for this surgery?  I cannot help think that there is given the fact that I have fasted for three days and drank healthy juices to supplement and keep myself hydrated.  When is this health system going to embrace the eastern philosophies of good health practices?  I know and you all know the answer to that question and it feels like that would be a "cold day in hell".  Western medicine is just not open to more humane ways of approaching health and wellness, they are just not there yet.  So I must be in a place of understanding, forgiveness and acceptance because any other approach is spinning my wheels and frankly I am spun out.  My final thought is that humiliation looks like an important part of beating patients into submission.  I am now successfully beaten down into submission.  At this point I just want it all to be over with.  

So I await my ceremonial ride to the hospital and I hope that I won't have an accident on the way there.   I cannot go back to sleep because I am afraid I will have an accident.  I am feeling icky from my stomach and hunger is beginning to set in.  I am discouraged and have very little energy if any.  I want to throw up.  I am emotionally a mess to put it mildly.  I am disappointed and discouraged.  I am at what I sense is my lowest point as my iPad slides on my lap and the keyboard floats to the left making it more and mor difficult to type.  I am looking for words that describe how I feel right now but they evade me.  There really are not any words that can describe this feeling of darkness and how difficult this is for me.  I want someone to feel sorry for me yet my own feelings of sorrow for myself are so intense as to overpower any outside compassion.  I want this all to be over with and I want to know that I am going to live a normal life again free of pain when I sit down.  That I will be able to sit down like a normal person and go back to exercising and being healthy again.  That my skin won't be drooping down like I am eighty and that my arms will be strong enough to lift a box when I need to.  I want to be able to be like I was before.  I want to be fixed and yet what I know is that I will never, ever, ever be the same.