Mary Louise Fisher! Not to sound funny, but I will be with you in a moment - I am stuck in between tsunamis... Is it me or is God REALLY trying to tell us all something? Between tykes bringing guns to school, kids hiring their punk friends to kill mommy or the current murder-suicide we watch as we calmly eat our evening meal, not to forget the craziness, all these tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes... I feel like I am in the middle of Revelations... Holy ish! OW!Some non-believers laugh at my dramatic notions, as of late. I am not stupid. Far from it. The rapid occurrences of these events, talks of 2012, swine flu, West Nile virus...it's all too much to bear. And you wonder why stupid cartoons and light comedies are constantly getting that number one slot at the box office. Holy cow! I even curl up and take in a Family Guy marathon every now and again. I'll even escape and irk my way through a Dancing with the Stars or as I prefer to call it - Dancing with the NON-Stars...ha!
Call it escape from my daily problems, ills, worries..., and I am fine with it being perceived that way. That's because I know, just outside my door could be some sick S.O.B. ready to snuff me out, or that slight pain in my stomach could be cancer or something. Oh...woe is me ...I am such a doomsayer. The town crier.
Ha!
Just look at the news.
I don't know about you, but I can't keep up anymore.
Wildfires, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes...you know, they all have seemed to blur together. I still think they are speaking of the one three times back half the time anymore. Then there is the war in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan. Troops going here. Troops coming home. No...wait, now they gotta go back. Damn! And I think: are you kidding me? As I roll over in my hospital bed wondering with the holy name above what is wrong with me...NOW?
Yes.
Recently, (like this past weekend) I went to emergency due to an ever-growing fever, nausea, and a pain in my left lower abdomen that had been there ...oh, let's say for about six weeks - give or take a few days. Hell, I have been so busy, it could have been longer than that.
Diverticulitis... where my colon has become a character all his own. I may even name the poor thing. So, my colon and I are in the ER and the doctor runs more blood tests than I think he actually needs (I wonder about that sometimes), gets me a CT scan stat, X-rays and my medical bills pile up... I literally could hear the ca-ching, ca-ching in my head. Next thing I knew, I was being admitted. Had an IV filled with fun antibiotics, fabulous pain meds and goodness knows what else they pumped into me.
My colon enjoyed watching some television, as I fell fast asleep. When I first woke up, I was groggy. Being in a hospital for any length of time more than four hours begins to transform you. That is because you are in a world all it's own. It is like a city within a city. I had no laptop, basic cable, liquid diet, my IV pole and only the phone numbers I had committed to memory - or stuffed in my wallet (which really needs re-organizing). And honey, in this day and age of all things digital - you'd be surprised how many numbers I DIDN'T have committed to memory.
It really got me to thinking.
I watched mostly entertainment. I didn't need 'the news' to bring me down - although I love watching T.J. Holmes and Betty Nguyen on weekend mornings on CNN. Honey, if anybody could make you feel better about these trying times - it is them. Well, Anderson Cooper comes a close second, but when I watch his show I rarely have news on the mind. Anyway, I got to thinking about the state of affairs the world has found itself in - in correlation with my own weary, challenged, rundown body with it's infected colon, upper respiratory fits and starts and stress.
My doctor asked me about that. Stress. Funny little word. Every time he asked me that I actually not only laughed, but threw my head back and guffawed trailing off to a snicker and a slight yelp (from the abdominal pain). So, we talked about stress and the day's events, as the nurse stuck a thermometer in my ear and filled my veins with more pain meds ...ahhhhh, that was nice, give me more.... and my doctor told me the best advice.
He said, "Don't let 'it' get you...you have to get 'it' first...always!"
He went onto say it's okay to escape from reality, rest up, take a look around. He thought maybe I took on too many of the world's problems and that I didn't worry enough about my own - VERY true. So, I will try to not be so stressed out, despite the fact that we are in the "End" days...well, maybe.
Finally, while I was there, as a Catholic by faith - and since it was a Catholic run hospital I was in, the priest came to give me the Anointing of the Sick. I had this for my parents when they were in the hospital back in the day, but had never been on the receiving end of the sacrament myself. At first, I felt unworthy - after all, I wasn't dying, but this wasn't Last Rites either.
Not to get too 'religious,' for the record, I am more Christian than Catholic... For what it is worth, I am a 'believer.' I prefer to say a 'Jesus freak!' because He was so cool and I have a lot of faith in me. It is what keeps me going. So, as the priest prayed over me, I thought to myself - "Wow!" I was so glad to have received this blessing. It was small and simple in the physical sense, but mountainous in the global sense.
And just like my faith and prayers, I will just pray a little bit more; try a little bit harder to be a better person and take better care of myself and try to just beam more prayers out into the universe and hope that something good comes from all of it. And maybe put all this sickness, violence, wars, stress and these natural disasters into perspective.
I know that one day it will, and we will, all be better.
It is, after all, the foundation for which a lot of people's faith is built upon.
I just have to believe it has to be better than this - even if my colon has a different point of view about it.
_
to read up on the anointing I spoke of in this article, check out the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anointing_of_the_Sick
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