You know, the ones we all get, the ones we never see coming, out of anywhere and nowhere.
It can be a betrayal, loss of a job, a car accident, loss of a loved one. This time for me, it was a health situation. It’s true, many people deal with ongoing health issues every day all day and I’ve been witness to how difficult and spirit crushing that can be, enduring ongoing, time-consuming doctor’s appointments, treatment, along with the financial strains they can cause. But here, I’m talking about sucker-punches of any kind that literally make your head spin.
In my case, I am a very healthy woman who doesn’t even have a primary care doctor and in fact, have seen a doctor only a handful of times in decades for things such as strep throat. I have always been very grateful for my health and in fact, so much so I took a focused interest in my health, not surprisingly approaching middle age, and well, noticing tell tale signs of yes, aging.
I, of course by no accident, became aware of and began following and reading about the truth of aging, and the truth about what we are doing to our bodies with the food we eat in such books as “Goddesses Never Age.” I won’t bore you with details, but I made up my mind I was going to live out whatever years I have left able to do all the things I want to do and not sitting in doctor’s offices and taking a plethora of prescription drugs.
While I know that we have no guarantees, even when we take control of our own health, it still felt like a sucker-punch when I ended up in the emergency room.
It was a Saturday afternoon and I was running errands on a beautiful day. It was around lunchtime and I felt this pain in my chest. It was so minor, I simply ignored it and expected it to go away. It instead got worse to the point I could no longer ignore it. It had been several hours and even though I was having no other symptoms whatsoever, and in fact felt great, I sighed and knew you can’t ignore chest pain and that it wasn’t going to let me rest and I didn’t want to go through the night like this.
Annoyed, I told myself, “Ok, just go to urgent care to see if they can rule out anything serious.” I impatiently waited, only for them to be alarmed at my way-high blood pressure. A problem I’ve never, ever had. But that, along with chest pains, they ordered me to go straight to the emergency room.
This can happen in any area of life – just sayin!
I wasn’t alarmed and somehow just didn’t feel this was consistent with anything to do with my heart. Annoyed and quite frankly confused (after all, I’d taken preventative measures, right?), I showed up in emergency at the Heart Hospital. They did the usual vitals, EKG, check for blockage.
In an hour and a half, the cardiologist was sure it wasn’t my heart and ordered a C scan.
Sure enough, they could see something wasn’t right with my gallbladder. They further did an ultrasound and confirmed it to be in bad shape. The doctor explained it was full of stones and would have to come out.
WHAT?
Not only did it not make sense to me, it didn’t seem to make sense to him given my health history and status. Nevertheless, surgery was scheduled.
Reminder: Gut-punches never make sense.
I’ve learned to accept circumstances you can’t control and I was doing the best I could, but my resentment built against the backdrop of feeling so excited and so good about being on a such roll getting so much accomplished in my business over the last month.
The doctor confirmed after the surgery that my gallbladder was indeed in bad shape. Go figure! Sucker-punched.
I simply let myself rest and let it all go. I was on pain meds but felt good and went home the next day. However, when inhibited by pain meds and body moving slow, you don’t get a lot done. And like I said, I had been on a roll and excited about things to come, which is when you least expect a sucker-punch.
In fact, it felt exactly like a sucker-punch. It wasn’t a depressing thing, I literally felt like my head was spinning. Regaining equilibrium has simply been the logistics of resetting myself back on the tracks, blowing my horn, and knowing I’m not a sucker, it wasn’t about fairness, it wasn’t my fault, I just got punched, and I’m all the smarter for it.
On the road again,
Ruthie
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