The Beginning

It was Friday before Easter, 2009 and my life was completely routine.
Little did I know that the next morning would be the start of a battle that I was totally unprepared for.

I had given up my land line and was dependant on my cell phone for communication with anyone outside my home, however, lately my cell phone would not receive or transmit calls inside my home.

Therefore, when I awoke on Saturday morning, doubled over with pain in my abdomen, I could not call for help. However, I remembered that I had received a text message recently so I sent a cryptic text message to my brother Stan that simply said, "Help me!".

It had the desired effect and about 20 minutes later Stan came rushing in completely out of breath asking what was wrong.

Now it should be stated that I had a past history of heart problems and was grossly overweight, so he came in with the expectation that I was possibly having a heart attack.

When I told him what the problem actually was, he was unsure what to do but decided to stick around a while to monitor the situation. The pain continued for about 2 hours at which point I began to have "the runs". The pain was such that it was difficult for me to move around, but the situation called for me to get to the bathroom as soon as possible. Several times I didn't make it in time and poor Stan was left to clean up after me.

Saturday afternoon the pain subsided and I thought it was all going to pass, however, Sunday, Easter morning the pain was back with a vengeance. This time I couldn't get a response from Stan, so I texted my sister, Beth.

When she arrived, she called the rest of the family to find out what to do. It was then that I realized that I had not urinated in almost three days. When I told her that, she decided that I needed to go to the emergency room.

It was there that I was diagnosed with renal failure and scheduled for dialysis.

Things from that point are a bit of a blur for me as they dosed me with morphine and put me in a critical care unit. I went through dialysis twice before my kidneys started working again, however, by this time I was diagnosed with colitis.

The morphine was continued as the abdominal pain had returned and I was in and out of awareness of my surroundings. I recognized most of my visitors, but the morphine and the toxins in my body put me in an alternate reality. While I was aware of the actual reality, I was also seeing things that weren't actually there.

I became paranoid and thought that I was being held against my will and everyone was in on it. It was very strange, because as I became aware of the false reality, it would morph into something different that was just as real to me as the previous visions were.

The pain was such that they gave me a button to push that would shoot morphine into my IV to relieve the pain. The problem with this was that I was pushing the button without realizing what I was doing. I have been told that I had developed a twitch in my thumb that would push the button repeatedly. As a result, I OD'd on the morphine.

They stopped the morphine, but the hallucinations continued. I was watching my life being played out on TV, and the TV wasn't even on.

I don't know how long this lasted, but for me it was an eternity. Meantime they decided to do a colonoscopy to check things out and discovered that I had a cancer in my colon. It was decided that surgery was needed to remove the cancer and the family gathered in the waiting room.

After the surgery, the doctor came to the waiting room to tell the family that they could not remove it all and that it had spread to my bladder and my liver. It was determined that it was in stage 4 and I was given six months to live if I did not receive chemotherapy and two years to live if I did get the chemotherapy. They said that I was told this, but I don't remember it. My memory was that it was just a couple of spots and nothing was said about my mortality.

After giving me antibiotics to clear up the colitis and I recovered from the surgery, I was finally sent home to contemplate the decision to do the chemo or not. At this point I was leaning toward doing the chemo, because that's all the knowledge I had about my condition. However, before I could make the decision, the pain in my abdomen returned.

I was taken back to the hospital where they proceeded to put me through multiple tests to find out why I was in pain again. This went on for several days and my stomach area began to swell up. When the doctor would ask where the pain was located, I told him that it depended on which side I was laying on. When I would turn, it felt like I would slosh, which as it turned out was exactly what was happening.

They drained almost 8 liters of fluid from my abdomen and found that the fluid was urine. It seems that when the surgeon was cutting the cancer out that he accidentally cut the urethrae tube going from the bladder to my left kidney.

At this point the kidney doctor said that they could try to repair the tube, but he was not optimistic that the repair would be successful and he wanted to remove my kidney. He said that because of the short time I had left, it would not be of great consequence. Well, this was a surprise to me as it was the first time I became aware of the death sentence that I had been given. Needless to say it had a profound effect on my mental state. I had never considered my death in such a way as to have it close at hand. It wasn't that I thought I would live forever, but I thought I had plenty of time left.

I have not mentioned my relationship with God before now because it didn't seem as important as it now had become.

My battle within has now begun.