I found this recipe for crustless broccoli-cheddar quiche. Since a commenter on the recipe mentioned she changed it to a bacon version, I thought I would follow her lead. I baked some thick sliced Applewood smoked bacon and then followed the recipe, deciding that a proper proportion of bacon would be one slice per egg. I halved the recipe, since I have only two ramekins and am only one person. In putting it all together, I was very careful to mix in the grated cheese because I might, possibly, have added more than halved amount. Once I was certain there were no lumps, just eggy bits of cheese, I snipped the bacon with the kitchen shears into small pieces.
Seriously, I was stunned at how well they turned out.
Later, for dinner, I had a bit of oatmeal to bring back up my dropping blood sugar, not realizing that my stomach had not emptied the quiche at all. Within an hour, my discomfort was building. By midnight, I knew ... knew ... it was going to be a bad night.
It was.
Somehow, I had forgotten just how bad it can be. I am not sure which is worse: my stomach stalled or my small intestines. In any case, pain and writhing and a hugely swollen abdomen is the result. By 2:00, I was voiceless in my pleas to God for rescue, for grace, for endurance. By 4:00, I hoped that the very next second would bring my death. Only, I knew it would not. At least, I am fairly certain that my stomach will not explode from gas and bacteria in a single day. Since I have endured four days, I am fairly sure it would take longer. But I longed for it to happen. You know ... thinking of those scenes from the Alien movie franchise. Just burst already!
Other than pain medication, I cannot really take anything to stimulate my nerves into getting back into the business of making my stomach work. I can take gas medication, but it is like using a squirt bottle on a three-alarm fire. And, if I do take pain medication, my entire digestive system slows, particularly my lower intestines. Not really wanting to add to the problem, I simply endure.
In the early hours of this morning, when I knew the tide would be turning, and eventually I would be spotting that light at the end of the tunnel, all I could really think about was: How? How in the world could I forget just how bad my innards writhing can get?
While on the funeral trip, I had one early morning of a particular innards issue, but I have had a fairly endurable few weeks. Until last night. It made me think about someone I was seeing weekly for a while. Each time I arrived, she would ask me why I was not home in bed. Some weeks, even I was surprised that I made it. However, even on my best days, she would tell me how wretched I looked. Granted, I mask all the time, even with my beloved Bettina, just how bad I feel, but not with this woman.
I suppose this is my way of saying that I have been accustomed, after a fashion, of the daily aches and pain and dizziness and weakness and blood pressure/heart rate swings, the sugar crashes, the arthritis, the confusion, the forgetting ... the sum of my daily existence that she found rather intolerable to witness.
In my exhaustion and pain and grief, I had forgotten just how bad it can be. I had forgotten innards writhing so great that even the slightest movement makes me feel as if my organs are being stabbed, where waves of nausea drown me again and again, where even the covering of a sheet is brutal agony, where I become an insensible, inconsolable child begging for her Creator to somehow, in some way, rescue her.
To me, it is no wonder, statistically speaking, that of the first 35 psalms in the Psalter, the petitioner cites our triune God as His refuge 14 times, either by claim or by plea. Were I more of an analyst at this point, I would be curious, out of the total number of different words in those psalms, what is the percentage of one that ask God for help or acknowledge His help in some fashion: rescue me, deliver me, contend for me, fight for me, protect me, hear me, save me, hide me, preserve me, restore me, defend me, keep me, be my refuge/shelter/shield/safety, etc.
Truly, I understand that sort of plea and longing and praise and thankfulness.
I will admit, though, that some of my more sensible thoughts were just how unfair it was to have such misery follow the culinary joy. Eggs, cheese, bacon, cream ... those are all safe foods for me. I know that the problem is my nerves. I know that the problem is my stomach and/or small intestines holding on to food far, far, far longer than they should. However, I also feel like my foe simply will not allow me a single day in which even the small measures of joy I find in this life I lead are not tempered with larger measures of pain and/or anguish. SIGH.
I am Yours, Lord. Save me!
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