Four in the fire and That's Ex-Ms Independent to you

This started out as two separate post, but then I realized that they belong together and its gonna be a looooong one. So get something to drink and sit in the comfy chair. Don't get me wrong, I'm not even putting myself in the same category as the young Hebrew men cast into the fire in the Old Testament story, but I can only imagine how they must have felt when they realized they were not going through it alone and there was someone who was there for them in their time of need. The weekend before my surgery, I think it was clear to anyone reading this blog I was freaking out. I was trying to process what I knew at that point and get myself psyched. For weeks friends had been offering their support and the promise to be present on "D" day. Well as the day drew near one friend and I got so far off the same page I was wondering "can this friendship be saved?" Thank God for mom and another very good friend. In their own way they provided input as to why we were not on the same page and how to handle it. Day of the surgery, everyone that should have been was on the same page. Family and friends gathered and waited while I went under the knife or rather the scope and tools. I've said that if you met my friends all at one time you would walk away thinking they run the spectrum from very normal to "why haven't they locked you up or at least heavily sedated you", but you won't say, "boy can you believe how stuck up they were?" Apparently the bunch that came together that day fit that description to a "T". That's based on the stories they've all shared with me. Sounds like I missed quite a bit of fun, but of course I was having my own. I remember saying bye to the ones there at the time, but can't even recall making it to the OR, next thing I know they're waking me up in recovery. Wow! Even part of that had escaped me, just remembered a classmate was there in recovery and walked me to my room. I got to the room and there were all these lovely faces who kept their word to be there for me. I don't think I cried, but from that moment to this I've shared numerous tears of thanksgiving for those seven folks. There were jokes, hugs, and such. As I got settled in, each prepared to leave and head home or on to a few errands and one sweet soul had to go home and sleep since he came straight from working 12 hours to the hospital and stayed till late in the afternoon. I then found out that they had worked out who would stay with me at night for as long as I might be there! It NEVER occurred to me that I might need someone to stay or to even plan for that. I've done it before, but it just blows my mind that these people with lives of their own were willing to put it on hold and stay with me.
I made up my mind prior to the surgery that I would require minimum recovery time and support. When I finally woke up and had some semblance of "sense", I felt absolutely giddy. I was excited and thrilled primarily to have survived...no, seriously in the back of my mind I wondered if this would be the day I met my maker. I was whistling like the tough kid I always pretend to be, but I was quaking in my boots. Lets face it, you plan, cross every t and dot all the i-s, but then Providence can still throw a curve ball. So I was ecstatic to be in the land of the living (as the old folks say). Secondly was I hocked up on some wonderful drugs. I didn't realize that at the moment, but apparently they spared nothing to make sure the big girl felt nothing and I mean nothing (said with either a heavy Italian or Latino accent). Well since I was feeling so wonderful I assessed the situation and decided this would be a walk in the park. I had slept much of the day and when I woke at 3am, I was on GO! for the rest of the night, unfortunately for my sister who drew the short straw of staying with me that night. We washed me. I washed as far as possible and then my sister washed "possible". That's a quote borrowed from my granny on her sick bed. She told my aunts "you wash as far as possible, and I'll wash possible". So I decided one day of someone else washing possible was enough and the next day I would be to do it myself. Sure enough I got up the next day and I won't even tell you what all I did. My friend who stayed let me do it, but insisted I leave the bathroom door open in case I needed her. I was insulted but obeyed. She actually had a little base in her voice. I lifted a pan of water, moved some things around in the bathroom. Oh by the way, I highly recommend Western Wake Medical in Cary NC for weight loss surgery. They were absolutely on point. I've heard horror stories about professionals who have fat biases and treat big patients with disdain and disrespect. In the three visits I've made there, never I have felt anything other than they had my best interest at heart. I did report a jerk tech whose sole responsibility is to roll people back and forth from radiology to their room, and he did a poor job of that. But that was it. They kept me laughing in the lab even when they couldn't find a vein and it took 45 mins for my body to cooperate. The second time, the phlebotomist who had to give me to a more experienced person had studied up, and advised me she was ready for me...and she was, hitting it on the first prick. Day Surgery took good care of prepping me for surgery, and so on. Then I got a huge room with a queen fold out couch! Flat screen TV, Dang! We meant to bring the couch and TV home, oh well. So there I was being Ms. Independent, oh yeah forgot to tell yah, my drain site started leaking the night before on one of my "independent" trips to the bathroom. It happened several more time and then I became nauseous. I got medicine and it went away...for a while. Then it came back and I was tired to my shock and surprise, but by the end of the day, they were sending me home. I was thrilled cause I was still on schedule. Back to work in a week, yep I would make it. One of my sisters and the folks I call my second set of parents brought me home. When I got home I began to plot my recovery and how it would go. I thanked everyone and crawled in bed for a quick nap. I began to move around, but was not finding this liquid thing easy to deal with. I was uncomfortable in bed and kept sliding down. I couldn't lay on my sides, I was feeling nauseous every time I drank water, but I had a schedule and didn't want to be a bother. The next day I ran water in the tub and bent over to wash myself. By the end of the day I was exhausted, draining at my site and feeling utterly defeated in my recovery schedule. I went to the bathroom, and while sitting there I began to talk with God about how overwhelmed I was feeling and how I just didn't understand what was going wrong. It hit me like a lightening bolt that I, Ms. Independent needed HELP. That went over like a lead balloon. I kid you now I sat in the bathroom and cried trying to accept the fact that I needed someone else, I would have to ask for help and I would have to wait for others to either be there or not. Now here's the kicker, every single one of those seven people had made it clear that it was ok to ask them for help. One told me not to ask for anything, but I know him well enough to know that if I needed it he would have gotten it for me. So I get myself together, splash water on my face and proceed to ask for help. I advise my immediate family of my situation and then call my "other mom" to pick up something specifically for me. They all agreed.
Before you call me stupid or prideful let me tell you what happened next. My mom asked if there was anything she could do for me. I said yes could she put lotion on my feet. They looked like the hooves of a beast plowing fields for years, (they still haven't completely recovered). They don't allow you to put lotion on prior to surgery...there's a gold star in heaven for the person who creates a substance for ashy feet during periods like this. Well mom comes to my door and as she's walking in the room she says, "You know ___ would have loved to have done this", that was a subtle way of saying you should have asked your sister to do this. When she finished, she sat on the chair near my bed and talked for a while. She asked if I needed anything else. I had gathered everything I needed on my bed, but got tired before I got water, so I asked for a glass of water. She said ok, talked on a few minutes when her phone rang. She went to answer it. She had several calls during that initial call and advised the callers she would call them back. She did just that and an hour 1/2 later I still didn't have a glass of water. I could only laugh that the lessons of childhood had not been misunderstood nor had they changed much. "Be good, don't disturb the adults, good children take care of themselves and don't require much of adults who have more important things to take care of." I got up and didn't even want to make her feel bad that she had not gotten what I asked for. I hid my glass as I walked to the kitchen. I stopped at the bathroom, she was still on the phone and saw me. She saw me go to the kitchen and return. There was no way to hide the glass on the way back, but I still held it low. She got off her call and said to me as I got back in bed, "Oh bless your heart, I forgot you..." I told her that was ok. I absolved her of doing what she had done so often during my childhood. I joked it off and told her she was fired. I sat in my bed and cried again. I didn't have to dig deep into my psyche to figure out why I was Ms. Independent and why it was so hard to give up that title. I am soooooo very grateful though that I could look across in the furnace of life and there were still others standing with me. Sometimes, we are not fortunate enough to have what we need in childhood, but then God sends the most wonderful surprises later on and when we allow them, they patch some of the holes. If we are really smart we allow these friends into our lives and we allow them to repair some damage. One of my seven friends had a crappy...oh hell I can't sugar coat it, she had a shitty childhood(those are my words, not hers). She has the husband we would all kill her for, if she wasn't our friend, and she says she thinks God blessed her with him because of such a bad childhood. So the next time you hear someone telling the story of the three Hebrew boys and the fiery furnace, pause for a minute and thank God for those "go to friends" in your life, who stand with you in the furnaces of life.