Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Warped, Skewed, Jacked Up...Whatever

life's a polyp

Chronic illness and near death experiences have a tendency of messing with your mind, self-image, and philosophy to the point that "healthy" individuals don't understand our line of thinking, humor, and philosophies very well.

For instance, I prefer my short bowel syndrome to only having 1-3 bowel movements a day (which would be constipation for me and is extremely painful at times) or perhaps my daily goal to not each anything for as long as I can so that my stomach doesn't become upset.
I don't think any healthy person understands how one can come to such a conclusion, and at times I'm not even sure if there's even another living person that understands my perspective just because I have yet to meet or talk to someone with the same daily issues I have.

My philosophy about life and death is very warped from my health experiences. I've been surrounded by death since I was an infant and so it has become part of my life. I look forward to the day I die and I have done so since I was 10 years old because I've experienced the peacefulness that death provides. I am saddened each time I lose someone but I remember that they are now experiencing the same peace I have longed to have again and so it helps me cope. I am absolutely terrified of outliving my support system - my parents and my spouse and the mere thought of it is extremely anxiety provoking and heart breaking for me. In college my mother and I traveled overseas and I told her it would be awesome if our plane crashed into our house and killed myself, her and my father at the same time instantaneously so that we wouldn't have to live without each other. She didn't like that statement, but there's how jacked up chronic illness can make your life philosophy.

Even our humor becomes twisted and is best understood by others in the same toilet bowl as the rest of us. Other than those working in the medical field, I don't know another group of people that can make jokes about and find something as humorous as bodily functions, disorders, and health issues.  When we toil through the same issues and become surrounded by pain and sickness, we have to find something to make us laugh or we become consumed. And at least others can laugh with us. It becomes a coping mechanism for many of us and as my grandmother said, it's better to laugh than cry.
And she'd laugh at you while you were crying and in pain!

Enjoy your warped perception of life and laugh at those that give you peculiar looks for it, because  there's a large group of us thinking the exact same thing as you and you just beat us to saying it outloud.
To those healthy ones, take a swim in our community toilet bowel and you'll start to become twisted too.

P.S.  I recently had my follow up appointment after my B-12 experiment leaving my B-12 at 234 or so. During the two months waiting for my follow up appointment, I was successful on having 3 rounds of B-12 shots. A round for me is 2 cc's of B-12 and I'm supposed to have two rounds each week, so I didn't very well especially since I had 2 of the 3 rounds I completed the week before my appointment! But my B-12 was 405 this time around. My experiment also landed me back in the schedule of having an appointment every 2 months instead of the 6 month I got to enjoy the time before I completed my experiment.
One day I'll learn....right???

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