I was in Cornwall because I'm taking a class (patting myself on the back) that involves reading something serious, watching the movie inspired from it and then DISCUSSING it! We read Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier. Cornwall was her stomping ground, so the class took a quick trip to visit. It was a pleasure. Great women, beautiful place. It's all been a pleasant challenge to the brain. PLUS, I'm NOT reading about cancer, or a self-help book, or a spiritual book! What a gift.
Turning the clock back even further, and speaking of evoked memories, four weeks ago I found myself, yet agin, crawling into an emergency room, 6:00am on a Friday. Andy, pale, in tow. (Or I was really the one in tow). Once again, I flumoxed the doctors, (hate that) with intense abdominal pain. I'd already had my appendix out during my very first induction, so it couldn't be that. (Although they mentioned that the "stump" could have gotten infected. Goodness!) Maybe it was kidney stones? Bladder infection? Something reproductive? Some nasty bowel blockage (yikes!). One CT-Scan, MRI and sonogram later, they're still flumoxed. They wanted to watch me. They gave me morphine and Andy and I slept for hours.
Not until the next night when the scan-reading guru, a 6"6' doctor named Saeed came in, and worked his magic, did anyone realize that my ovary had actually twisted. Owww! Doesn't that sound awful?! Now, women of the world, don't panic. This is NOT common. I had no fallopian tube on that side (that's another story) and after 50 years, this ovary decides to twist while I'm sleeping...
On Sunday, I had my third abdominal laparoscopic surgery (and that's in additon to two c-sections) and the ovary is out, pain gone, and I'm all good. Except that I'll never have 6-pack abs again (again?). Biggest problem: I was supposed to get on a flight to Israel for Isaac's Bar Mitzvah six days later!!! And although I now had the new pain of recovering from this surgery, there was no way I was not getting on that plane. Everything might have seemed up in the air, but not in my mind. In my mind, I knew I would be up in the air. Eye on the prize!
The next days were spent coming down from the shock of just having had a surgery. Saying bye-bye to "Twisty", slowly packing summer clothes for me and the kids, and trying to get all those hopital feelings and thougths out of my brain. It sucked. And it had to suck for my kids. Mommy's in a hospital again? What do they know from serious or not? What could they have been thinking? Especially that little one. I've been trying so hard to get Ari grounded. I want him to trust my health, and to rely on my permanence as much as the next kid. Needless to say, he gets a lot of cuddles, occasionally all night long in the king size bed, and we explain as much to him as we can so that he feels like he gets it.
With small and big miracles in hand, we made it on to our flight, and landed in a place to spend a week that was more life changing than I ever could have expected. I thanked my body for the good timing and stumbled across this Albert Einstein quote the other day:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
I'm pretty much convinced of column B.
