Genes are Stupid

The next few weeks would prove to be the lowest point of my life up to that point.  After having my herniated bowel issue fixed, I thought I’d get better quick and get the hell out of there.  But after having been eviscerated twice within ten days and having my bowels removed from my stomach cavity twice, they didn’t appreciate that and because of the damage my bowels had suffered, they were extra slow to start working again.  By this time, I had not eaten for almost two weeks.  Back then, there was no such thing as PPN, or peripheral parenteral nutrition.  PPN is a liquid nutrition that is administered through the peripheral veins, via an IV.  It’s used when a patient cannot put food in their bowels or stomach.  It is not a full replacement of daily calories, but it’s close enough to keep a patient from losing a large amount of weight.  Today, they give patient PPN after being NPA for about five to seven days.  Doctors have discovered that when the body starves and wastes, it impedes its ability to heal, which weakens the immune system.  It’s not good for the body’s healing process to be starving. 

At this point, I had lost probably 10 pounds, which is a lot for an eight year old.  The only thing I could do was lay in bed and watch TV.  Then, there was no cable TV at the hospital and there were no VCR’s, DVD's, or instant video.  You had to watch what was on TV.  I watched cartoons in the morning, game shows later, and then the soap opera’s started mid-day.  I was bored by them, but they had a story line and it was a valid distraction.  But the commercials were the worst.  Probably 90% of them were food based commercials – McDonalds, Taco Bell, cookies, crackers, TV dinners, Hamburger Helper, the list goes on and on.  The food, even some of it I didn’t even like, looked so good.  Even though my bowels weren’t moving and hungry, my brain was still hungry.  The worst part about the commercials is the detail and close-ups of the food.  They would show people eating it and having this satisfied look on their face.  If they had any idea how much it hurt to have to watch, being a person who was starving and dying to eat, but not able to.

Then there was the people visiting me, like my sister, who had to eat.  Before the second surgery, I didn’t care if people ate in front of me, because it wasn’t that bad at that point.  But now that it had been nearly two weeks, I was getting really pissed off.  I was tired of smelling visitor’s food, or even the cafeteria food waiting in the hallway for other more fortunate patients.  I finally had it one day and I snapped at my mom to tell everyone who felt the urge to eat in my room in front of me to beat it and go stuff their face elsewhere.  It felt good to get that out at the time, but I was still pissed as hell at life in general.

I was undergoing a transformation.  I was becoming a very angry child.  I hated life and living and I hated my mom and a lot of people, including doctors and some of the nurses.  But nothing got my fury more than a dimwitted child psychologist.  The doctors saw that I was wallowing and in despair, so they sent a student psychologist from the university to shrink my head.  The student was probably in his early to mid-twenties and he was one of these ignorantly blissful kind of people.  His job was to listen to me, but he did a lot of talking instead.  He asked me how I felt and I told him I hated the hospital, I hated the doctors, and most of all, I hated my mom for giving me this shitty disease.  I was only eight.  That’s how I felt.  He went on to ask me “Do you know what genes are.”  I thought he meant jeans, like blue jeans.  Again, I was eight, almost nine in a few days.  “Yeah, I know what jeans are.  You wear them.  Who cares about that.”  He smiled and explained to me in detail what genes and DNA were and how genetic diseases are inherited.  He told me my mom didn’t mean to give me her genetic disease.  I said “Genes are stupid and I don’t really care how they work.  I know my mom didn’t mean to give it to me, but I’m still mad at her.”  What he was too naïve to understand is that no matter how much you abstractly understand how the disease works, it doesn’t help you to feel any better about having the disease.  You still are angry that it happened to you.  What he should have done is sat there, listened, and then brought my mom in the room so I could tell her how angry I was.  He should have let me unload the anger from my shoulders and let my mom have it. It would have helped my eight year old brain feel some sense of justice.

Some things in life never have justice or resolve.  You just have to accept them and there is no answer and nothing will every make it acceptable to you.  You just have to find a way within to move on with your life and not look back anymore.  I was far from that point.  I was a child and I had no wisdom yet.  I would have to live through a lot for many  more years until I would start to find nuggets of peace and wellbeing from my suffering.