How much can one soul withstand… Part 10 Of 22 My life in the short form telling… hold tight… it gets bumpy! What’s coming is the hardest part of my journey to date. I had already broken once in my life and the only thing that has kept me from breaking again is my family. Just the knowledge that everyone was okay gave me the strength to keep walking forward through this nightmare that I was living. I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t forgotten, I was needed and I was loved; but Satan in his maniacal way decided that it was time to up the stakes in this game that we call life. This is where I learned that everything up to this point had been child’s play and the final battle lines had been drawn and the time for the final showdown would be at dawn. I have already spoken of the migraines that my sister suffered while growing up (Doctors back then kept telling my mom that she was just seeking attention). In her early 20’s she had fluid backing up in her brain for some unknown reason, so they sent her to a specialist in Baltimore MD who drilled holes in her skull to relieve the pressure. Looking back I wonder why they didn’t see it then? It was right there in front of them! During her pregnancy with my oldest niece she suffered a fall that caused the placenta to rip and toxemia in her body. When my oldest niece was born she was so small that she came home in “Cabbage Patch” doll clothes that were too big. Home and safe but not for long… they let my sister go too soon and she had congestive heart failure at the age of 23! One year later along comes niece number 2 with slightly less problems at birth but still a wear and tear on a body already weakened to great degree. My sister’s migraines were there, and the fluid levels were still rising and causing unbearable pain and weakening her further; the doctor’s research, MRI’s and Cat Scans, searching deep within to find the problem that keeps trying to kill her. At this time in my life when the whole world is against me and everything that I touch disintegrates right in front of me, I get a phone call from my sister and my mom telling me that they FINALLY figured out what was wrong! It seems through all of the MRI’s and Cat Scans they missed what was right in front of their eyes! My sister was born without the back plate to her skull and since the problem hadn’t been fixed her brain was now trying to slide towards her exposed spine! Stunned is a mild word for what I felt, they had to explain everything in such detail like I was a small child that couldn’t understand… and I couldn’t! All I could think was “Oh God! Not this! Come after me! I’m here… leave them alone and come for me! I will submit to anything… just leave my family alone!” My sister is the one person in this world that I hate just as much as I love. She is the flip side to me in every way. She is my “Poncho” and I am her “Sysco”! She has been there through everything since I first drew breath. She knows me through every single awkward stage of my life. She is the connection from who I am now to who I was way back when. What this diagnosis means in the simplest terms is brain surgery that in the doctor’s opinion if it doesn’t kill her it will leave her a vegetable with no memories to offer comfort and no recognition to who we are. What they will do is Crack her open, scrape the lining from her skull to make a hammock for her brain and secure it so that it will stay in place and then fuse the top two vertebrae in her spine so that when she turns her head she will not puncture her brain. I’m sure there is more, but that is all I heard, the human brain was not meant to be handled in such a way and the human heart can only take so much before it crumbles and turns to dust. I travel back and forth from my sister in laws home in PA to my mom and sister’s place in VA several times over the coming weeks. (My sister and her husband are separated at this time for a demon that sits heavy on his back whose name is Cocaine.) There is part of me relieved that daddy has already been called home… I shudder to think what that would have been like with his heart so weak. Yet I tend to be selfish in my needs and wishes, we all could’ve really used his strong arms through this. Life that was unbearably hard has now found a way to become harder still. The days pass in such a pain induced haze that only the emotion remains clear and undiminished by time the memories themselves are one single blur etched into my brain. The surgery is scheduled for just after Thanksgiving… I am really starting to cringe at just the thought of another holiday… for me they bring only pain and we must once again set aside all that we are in to celebrate when we are in no fit shape… but tradition must be observed for the little ones and unity must be felt to find the strength to keep moving forward when all we want to do is sleep in that forever kind of peace. To be continued…
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 23:00:00 +0000
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