My very first memory in life is being at my grandfather’s funeral visitation, which was two days after my fifth birthday. My grandfather – my mother’s father - was 48 when he died. Just three years older than I am right now. I can still see him in his coffin. I can see my grandmother having a meltdown and my mother, trying to comfort her, telling me to go find my grandmother’s doctor in the crowd. I can see the crowd as I move through it in search of the good doctor.
I have been obsessed with death for as long as I can remember….maybe ever since that day. Maybe I was already obsessed with death before that but I don’t remember anything before that.
After that, I hated being in the dark as a kid…I was afraid of the
dark. I thought Death would come and get
me in the dark. I had dreams of bodies
rotting in the ground…bugs crawling in and out of empty eye sockets. Long hair and finger nails and ratty clothes hanging
off corpses. Sometimes the body was my
grandfather, sometimes it was me, sometimes it was someone else I knew. I would wake up screaming in the night with
leg cramps because the nightmares were so intense and my dad would come and give me a leg rub until
I calmed down and went back to sleep.
I actually had a very sheltered childhood. Yes, I was at my grandfather’s funeral but my
parents did not talk to me about the details of death. How I knew about rotting bodies, I don’t
know. But at a very young age, I figured
out that everyone – including me, including my parents, including my baby
brother – everyone, would die someday, and that terrified me. I
could not understand why anyone would want to have kids if they were just going
to die someday….born to die, how cruel!
My mom’s explanation that we would all be with God someday did nothing
to make me feel better….it just led to more questions and if you read my
previous posts, you know how that turned out.
When I got a bit older, I started reading the obituaries in the
newspaper. My favourite ones were the
ones with a picture of the person and a write up that talked about who the
person was, who their family is, what they did for a living, the important
things they did with their lives, the things they cared about. I still always go to that part of the paper
first if I read a newspaper. My roommates
in college thought I did this just to be morbid or as a pretentious show of appreciation
for the goth/alternative lifestyle we were all entrenched in, but no….I was
really curious and interested who these people were and felt compelled to
honour them in death.
Since I was a kid, my mom always told me I trust too much, let
people in too easily, reveal myself and get close to people too quickly. That’s just naturally the way I am. I’m a good listener…and most people like to
talk about themselves if given the chance, so I let them. Pretty soon they’re telling me their secrets
and they feel close to me, I feel close to them, and a connection is
formed. My obsession with death has
always made it difficult for me to let go of people once that connection
happens. I feel like I need to know where everyone is….my friends, my family,
people I talked to once, people I dislike….everyone. I just need to know where everyone is all the
time….because otherwise, what if they die and I never find out? What if I never see them again? It’s not logical, I know this.
I’ve lost a lot of people in my life…I’ve been to a lot of
funerals and have been present when several people died. But they were always older people. Even the ones who were young were still older
than me and although it was very sad and triggered my death obsession, it never
really hit close to home. It wasn’t
someone my age who could have been me.
Until 2009, when an amazing woman, a co-worker and great friend, only a
couple years older than me, died rather suddenly. She had a larger than life personality that could
not be stifled. We bonded over our love
of cats, good food, bawdy jokes, our lifelong battles with obesity and our
freedom loving single lives. During a
work fitness challenge two years earlier, we went to the YMCA together and
gossiped and laughed while we walked on treadmills. (Rather, she gossiped and I laughed until I
couldn’t walk anymore.) She had a way of
creating a pop-up, chaotic, loud party everywhere she went. She was full of life.
Then one day she died. Just like that. Out of the blue. On a day in January just like any other,
except on this day, my friend died. Her
sister told me afterwards it was from a pulmonary embolism.
I remember when she died, I struggled to make
sense of her sudden death. At the time I
worked a steady midnight shift…I spent the majority of my time – at work and
otherwise - alone and in darkness. I was
terrified it would happen to me too. At this point, I had started to re-gain
the weight I had lost with the lap band.
I wasn’t the heaviest I had ever been but still, she was a comparable
size to me and I felt incredibly guilty that it happened to her and not
me. It should have been me – she was so
well loved and, I thought her life had more value than mine. Suddenly death seemed a very real possibility
and I worried constantly.
During my next visit with my doctor, I asked him
what a pulmonary embolism was, if it has anything to do with a person’s weight
and if it could happen to me.
Dr. Rivers, my PCP before I moved to the US, was
amazing. I had become his patient when I
returned to the Niagara area after my disastrous decade (the 90’s). He was just out of medical school and had
just started a practice. I did not want
to go back to the family doctor I had grown up with so I went to him as one of
his first patients. On this visit, he listened to my concerns and answered my questions. He told me a pulmonary embolism can happen to anyone, regardless of their weight. He also reminded me how healthy I was, in spite of my obesity. He was working towards becoming a body builder and had a really low body fat percentage and was extremely fit, but my blood test results were still better than his and every time he tested me, he’d be amazed by that. He told me if he had to choose between being me and being a thin smoker, he’d pick being me because I was super healthy.
He was always very empathetic but firm and supportive regarding obesity. He was the only doctor – one of the only people - I had met up until then who didn’t “fat shame” me for my weight. He didn’t say it was ok, and encouraged me to lose weight but supported me in whatever weight loss methods I wanted to try and he knew, better than me, that losing weight was not just about diet and exercise for me. He didn’t automatically jump on the “you’re obese so of course you could get a blood clot and die” bandwagon. I felt reassured. I trusted Dr. Rivers, maybe because he told me what I wanted to hear.
The blood clot possibility came up again last year when I was at my heaviest ever. My new PCP’s reaction was a sharp contrast to the reaction I got from Dr. Rivers. My new PCP positively flipped out when I went to see him in March about a swollen foot/leg. I told him the foot/leg had been bothering me for about 6 months on and off. He asked me, in a near hysterical voice, why I waited so long to see him about it……did I want to die from pulmonary embolism? He sent me for 3 rather invasive tests immediately (as in, “get in your car and go get these blood tests done and then go immediately to ACM and have your X-ray, MRI and CT Scan….I’ll be waiting right here for the results…..GO!”) Trashed another entire work day. I was annoyed at him for being such a drama queen…there is no way I could have a blood clot….I’m perfectly healthy! At the same time, I left his office hiding my tears, my worry, my fear.
The next time I went to see Dr. DiBenedetto, he asked/told me in a very nonchalant way during our consultation that he’d like to implant a vena cava filter in me during my lap band removal to keep me safe from blood clots during surgery. Dr. D has a very mellow, but direct, confident way about him. He spoke in a soft voice, looking over his glasses at the end of his nose, and did not in any way, except that he asked the question/made the statement, give me a sense that he was really all that concerned about my getting a blood clot. The fact that he even mentioned it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
After I left his office, I was curious about this mysterious filter so I looked it up on Wikipedia and what I read really kind of worried me….the process of implanting it in the groin, the process of removing it. It sounds silly, but part of me was happy to be ridding my body of a foreign object – the lap band. My white blood cell count has been escalating for years since I got the band and I was anxious to see if removing it would resolve that issue. I wasn’t all that excited to have another device implanted into me.
So I called Dr. D’s office and spoke with one of his lovely and talented assistants who explained more about the filter to me and told me it was really no big deal…that it is usually implanted using local anesthesia and it was perfectly safe to leave it in. The filter basically “catches” any large blood clots if one does form and starts to travel to the heart or lungs, which can kill…...a pulmonary embolism. The filter is designed to stay in the body, like a pacemaker, so having it removed would be my choice in years to come, but if I did want it removed, it would be fished through the body and removed through the carotid artery.
Gross. I decided I didn’t want to know any more and put my trust in Dr. D. It really ended up being no big deal. I still have the filter in me and I don’t know it’s there. And it turned out I didn't have a blot clot but I do feel safer knowing the filter is there.
Death still terrifies me. Not a single day goes by that I don’t think about dying at least once. I obsess about my death and what it will be like, how it will feel, not just to die, but to be dead. Will I live to be an old woman? Will I have any impact on the world at all or will it be as though I was never here? Will I be afraid when the time comes? And, most terrifyingly, will I have regrets? Will I just simply run out of time like my friend did? Will my consciousness really be gone or is there something else? I can’t fathom the world going on and me not in it or even aware of it. Or will I be aware of it? Will I live long enough to be a role model for my niece? I have more questions than answers.
A palm reader once told me I would live a lot longer than I wanted to. She meant this to be reassuring but ever since she told me that, I worry even more. Will I be in a horrible accident and in pain for hours before my body finally dies, or some other equally gruesome scenario?
I’m not embarrassed to say that if vampires were real, I would trade my mortality in a second for an eternity of blood drinking. I don’t want to die…ever. What’s more is I don’t want anyone I know to die either. I just cannot handle the cycle of life. I know that is an extremely immature point of view, but there it is.
I have no control over death and I don't have answers to my questions. The only thing I know for sure is I do not want to regret anything when that moment comes and that is all on me. I have been living under a rock of fear for way too long. So fuck fear! Fuck doubt! I've got my life and confidence back, and I’m not holding anything back. It’s full steam ahead….adventure, pleasure, and passion on the horizon for as long as I have this life. I’m not waiting for it to come to me….I’m going to get it!
Random stuff:
·
I love variety in all things except pizza. I always get/make thin crust with mushrooms,
onions, bacon (or sausage) and cheese. And I'd rather make my own with homemade sauce 'cos I can't stand tomato sauce from a jar (thank you, Italian Grandma!)
·
I will be a roller derby girl, even if just
for one season
·
My top travel destinations before I
die: Italy, Britain, Africa, China,
Hawaii
·
I spent a Christmas Eve once on an
empty beach in West Florida and it was glorious
·
I have been whale watching twice and I
want to do it again
·
I love boats
·
I hate mountains. I spent a week in the Poconos once and felt
nauseous the entire time
No comments:
Post a Comment