My forgetter...

The title for yesterday's post was "Like a kidney..."  This is something I forgot to explain.  The mass being checked looks just like a kidney ... sort of.  I know because I asked to see the screens and the ultrasound. I mean, if I am going to have to wait to learn results and I have to go through so much to be responsible with my body, I want to at least see what's on the screen. It is also one centimeter.

I had a solid, benign tumor removed in the same breast way back in the dark ages.  A scar I mostly ignore, though when I was younger I was certain I was disfigured for life.  Time really does provide perspective ... even if you are certain it will not.  Back then, I was in surgery before I could blink.  So, I am going with "this is nothing" since I am not yet in surgery.  That's my plan and I am sticking with it. What I want to hear is: "You are fine."  What I don't want to hear is: "Let's wait and see."  Wait-and-see means going back sooner than a year.  I'd rather a year.  Maybe two.

I am not brave enough to go back any time soon.  My well of loin girding is nearly empty and it will be mighty hard seeing the male cardiologist on the 12th.  For one, I would bet a case of Dr. Pepper I'll have to have an echo cardiogram again, which has been par for the course since first pursuing the cardio-related symptoms of Dysautonomia.  I will, most definitely, ask to be draped with a towel again, but I have found in the cardio world there are far, far more male techs than female ones.  And a whole lot less understanding of why it is that I cannot bear for a male technician to be the one doing a sonogram of my heart, much less applying sticky doohickies for the EKG I know I will be having.

While a mostly clothed test, I am fairly certain I will have to do another stress test.  I am no longer able to do them physically, so I have to do them chemically.  Chemical stress tests, in my opinion, are pretty much one of the worst experiences I have ever had when it comes to poking and prodding.  The last one had a side effect of intense pain in my legs and an inability to use them for hours, just as if I had been chugging along on a treadmill.  I found that odd, frightening, and truly inconvenient, since I had to find someone to unexpectedly pick me up, take me home,  lug me into my house, and get my car back to my house.  This time, I can be prepared for those things, but the sensations of the chemicals, the response of my heart and my body, and the anxiety sure to blanket the whole experience is just not something I am ready to face.  SIGH.

I need to, though.

I need to understand the changes in my heart and in my blood pressure. It helps me, for example, when I am writhing in pain from gastroparesis to know, to understand, what is happening to my body.  I can talk myself through at least the parts when I am still sensible, telling myself the whys and wherefores of the pain and sensations I am having and that there will be an ending.  At least, thus far, there has been, even if those endings are taking longer and longer and longer to arrive.

I am on my sixth dose of low-dose, liquid Erythromycin ... round three in trying to take that drug for motility assistance.  Of course, it is not a covered Medicare drug, so if my GP can figure out a way to include it with the other drugs I am on without the side effects that have led me to have to stop it twice before, I will need to find another $50 every two weeks to cover it.  It is the only thing that has helped with the gastroparesis at all.  I long with my whole being to be able to take it.  I really do.

Most of the side effects are cardiac related.  So, frankly, since I am going to have that part of my body put through the mill, I wanted to be back on Erythomycin so perhaps the cardiologist might pinpoint where the interaction is or how to make it so that I can take the medicine.

That is a goal.  That and hearing why—hearing in such a way as I can understand—it is that my heart rate will skyrocket, the trembling will start, as well as dizziness, nausea, and chest pain.  If you explain, "Well, Myrtle, your this is doing that when it should be doing this which leads to that."  It helps.  It helps with the fear.  It helps with enduring.  It really and truly helps.

I have found that people can be ... disturbed ... by the fainting.  But, to me, fainting is like burping.  A person burps because there is gas in the stomach, usually an intake of air somehow ... gulping food, using a straw, etc.  I faint because of ... well, I have already explained it a gazillion times.  It happens because of a specific reason. There is no fear, no uncertainty.  It is just what I have to face.  Granted, I sometimes fail rather spectacularly at facing it, but I understand it.  For three years, I went from doctor to doctor to doctor not knowing and mostly being treated like I was just a crazy person, with all those normal tests.  I am not crazy.  I have Dysautonomia.  My autonomic process of increasing heart rate and blood pressure to compensate for when I sit up or stand up and gravity pulls blood away from my heart is broken.  I faint.  My fainting, in that sense, is normal.

So are many, many things about my body and my mind and my thoughts and my feelings and my responses.  They are normal for what has happened.  I am trying, not merely to grasp that, but to live it.  To stop punishing myself for things that are what they are.  Like needing a towel covering when doing ultrasounds on my body.

Sunday, my visitors talked with me about faith, about my struggles.  They talked in such a way as I could hear that those struggles are normal and okay.  That has been the greatest gift of my Good Shepherd, sending Mary and this couple, to speak in such a way as I can understand that struggles are not a failure of faith, but rather evidence of faith.

Oh, how I understand the father's cry in Mark 9, the cry I end many of my posts with:  Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!  I was reading the whole of Mark 9, not just verse 24, and was struck by a parallel with regard to my own struggles.  The disciples asked why it was that they could not help the boy, drive out the demon.  Jesus answered, that it was a kind that can only come out by prayer.

I think that faith is like that.  I think that wanting to believe easier, to be better, to not doubt, to struggle less is something that really only can come through prayer.  By this I do not mean by praying hard enough or long enough.  No, I think that it can only come by letting our Triune God work through the means of Grace as He answers our prayers. The end of my struggles may not come this side of the vale.  I am sort of, slightly, just maybe getting to where I can accept that without feeling the failure, without feeling despair.

What I do know, unequivocally, is that healing lies in receiving the Living Word and Christ's body and blood into my body.  What I am starting to understand is that spiritual healing does not always mean someone giving thanks and singing praise to God for suffering, giving glory to God for the privilege of enduring pain and sickness and rejoicing in suffering.  Spiritual healing means understanding that weakness is faithful, doubt is faithful, sorrow and fear and agony and weakness are faithful.  For those are things are happening in a body that is faithful because it is a body created by God, redeemed by Christ, and sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit, a body's whose faith is that of Christ's and His is perfect, sufficient, and complete.

Another cry I end my posts with is: I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!  It is from Psalm 119.  I love reading through that psalm from beginning to end, whether I am doing so with someone else or merely by myself.  There is such a glorious picture of the cycle of faith, certitude and cries for help, all immersed in the fullness of the Law, of the Word of God, of Jesus Christ contained within those 176 verses.  That cry is an interesting juxtaposition with the words of the psalmist just as is the cry of the father in Mark 9.  A declaration of faith right next to a declaration of the need for help in faith.  Confidence right next to doubt, if you will.

I believe.  Help my unbelief. I am Yours.  Save me.

I forget to explain.
I forget appointments.
I forget the Truth.

I need to hear things again and again and again.  Maybe that is one of the reasons I love Psalm 119.  The psalmist was not rushed with words, with the Word.  Repetition fills the psalm, truth and promises said again and again and again in the midst of the realities of this world, in the midst of how sin fills this world and our own lives.  Truth and promises, the Living Word, for the psalmist's prayer.  For yours.  For mine.


Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.