Daisy List is the Greatest Bucket List Ever!

Hello everyone.  Now that you know all of my characters, it’s time to go back to my Journey.

Let’s pick up on my trip to Mass to tell my family about TAZ.  I explained that the Doctor had found some “strange” pre cancerous cells on a polyp and I had to have a hysterectomy.  No need to worry the surgery would remove them.  After I put everyone at ease with my positive “Pollyanna” attitude, I turned the whole focus back onto the DAISY LIST thing.  Everyone was fine. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

I brought my mother back to NJ to keep me company until the surgery.  I can’t say how much that time meant to me.  It was just enough and right on time.  I had 3 weeks before the surgery, and I think if I had been home alone, I might have lost it.

The original date was April 1, 2015, “ugh” excuse me people, April Fools Day?  Are you KIDDING me?  No one should have surgery on April Fool’s Day!  I absolutely did not see the humor in that.  I didn’t ask for it to be changed, but I wasn’t happy either.  I just wanted to get this over with.

You see, I had BIG summer plans, a big birthday celebration in RI, a Family reunion, a 2-3 week vacation with my BMF, a Cape Verdean Festival, a Posse Reunion, a nephew’s High School Graduation in Michigan, my brother was buying a new home and I was going to help him furnish and decorate it.  My summer was totally, totally booked.  OH REALLY!

Not only that, but Easter was also in there somewhere.  We had always celebrated Easter at my Mother’s home in Massachusetts and I usually did all the planning, shopping, decorating and cooking.  It was one of my favorite holidays.  Hm-m-m!  Let’s get this surgery over with and out of the way so I could get on with my BIG summer plans and my wonderful life.

Oh wait, do you hear something, how does that saying go?

“we make plans & God laughs.”

I needed so many tests, permissions, and clearances before the operation, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  I had two cat scans because they found a spot on my kidney on the first scan.  REALLY people, what else?

Oh yea, they also made an emergency appointment with a cardiologist so I could get surgery clearance for the hysterectomy.  Talk about crazy!  Ultimately I suppose keeping busy was the best thing.  The one thing you DO NOT want at a time like this is too much time to sit and think.

My mother truly hung in there with me.  She went to every appointment with me.  We were running all over the place, parking the car in these dark garages and running across cold windy streets.  She walks slow but keeps it moving, GOD LOVE her.

It worked out GREAT though, it meant Denise didn’t have to take a lot of time off but also not have to worry about my being alone.  My mother is a real trouper, I dragged her all over the place and every night when we got home she’d go DIRECTLY to bed.  Poor thing, all 90 lbs of her and she just hung in there.  Did I mention that she was 88?  I will always remember that support, ALWAYS.

To my exalted joy, the surgery date was changed from April Fool’s Day to Thursday 4-9-2015 and it finally came.  The night before, my mother, my daughter and myself, were petrified about not getting up in time for the surgery.  We were all so nervous, there was nothing to do but laugh.

We had to be at the hospital very early in the morning and no one wanted to be late.  As a matter of fact, my mother was so nervous she considered sleeping on the steps with her clothes on.  Talk about a 3 Stooges movie

We arrived early, and I was the 2^nd pre op in the room.  What a weird experience.  On one hand you want to get everything in your life in order.  Your finances, your relationships, clean your house, auto insurance, everything.  On the other hand you say “What the hell, what does it matter, if I’m not going to be around anyway.   “WHO CARES IF THE HOUSE IS CLEAN?”

While you’re getting prepped, you wonder how you should spend your time and what should you be thinking about.  Okay, think those “POLLYANA” thoughts.  Oh, “REALLY, ABOUT WHAT?”  Probably should have brought an ipod with beautiful music. So you sit on this hospital bed while they’re prepping you and you wonder, what’s the most important thing you should do before you go into surgery?  And you realize, whatever it was, it’s too late now, so “forgetaboutit”, just relax and enjoy the ride.

Then you think about your children.  I have two and you wonder how they will handle things if something happens to you.  But again, nothing you can do about it now, so click that out of your mind too.  So sure enough, by this time, my thoughts went back to all the things I didn’t have a chance to do in my life.  You know, all those things on my Daisy List.

But my funniest memory of that day is about a small ruckus that occurred in the pre op area.

My daughter was discussing with a nurse how things would go for the day.  The nurse explained how the next person we would meet would be the anesthesiologist.  As usual, Denise started her rapid fire questions.  She wanted to know, who, where, how long, success rate, you name it.  She wanted to know EVERYTHING about this doctor.

Just as the nurse was reassuring Denise how competent he was, a doctor entered the area and was visably upset about something.  He was walking around, flinging his arms, and talking loudly to whoever was listening.  He was obviously having a BAD day.

Denise’s eyebrows immediately went up, she folded her arms in front of her, picked up her shoulders, stood at the foot of my bed, looked straight at the doctor and said out loud, Oh NO, this is NOT happening!  In her foxhole mode, she let the nurse and everyone in hearing distance know that this particular individual was in “NO WAY’ coming within 100 miles of her mother.  Now that’s an ADVOCATE!

My mother and I looked at each other and actually burst out laughing.  But Denise saw absolutely no humor in the situation at all.

Thank God as it turned out, he was NOT my anesthesiologist.  I think Denise would have pulled the Fire alarm if he was.  Under NO circumstances was she letting him near me.  What a kid.  Now I ask you, “What better way to go into surgery than laughing your head off?”  I’m cracking up now just thinking about.

Well anyway, I had robotic surgery, with minimal pain, minimal meds, minimal stitches, and I went home the same day.  I thought WOW, this experience is nothing like you read and hear about.  In my mind this journey was done I was out of the woods. Oh really, (bring in the heavenly chorus here)

As much as I would love to tell only the Care Bear side of my journey, my daughter insists that I also address the other side.

So here’s the deal.  They send you home to heal, but with so much idle time, you begin to think too much.  I started to dissect what had happened.  At the risk of sounding too dramatic, I began to think of my body in cellular terms.

Our bodies are made up of cells, they say every 7 years those cells completely evolve, and at some point we have completely new ones.  These cells are impacted in a million ways: verbal, mental, physical, psychological, and who knows what else.

I believe these cells react to words, things, places, people, food, and definitely our thoughts.  These impacts are either negative or positive

Two of my favorite sayings are:

“Your body believes EVERYTHING you tell it”, and “The thought of pain will cause pain”.

Think about those statements!  If your body believes everything you tell it, shouldn’t you only tell it positive wonderful things about yourself.  Won’t that impact your cells in a positive way?

So, on a verbal level, when someone told me I had CANCER, aka Mr. Taz, my cells got an immediate ding!  Your brain goes into crisis mode and with all the negative cancer thoughts, your cells start to panic.  When you have surgery, ANY KIND of surgery, your cells get dinged AGAIN!  By the way, there is no such thing as “minor” surgery.

While dealing with all this, your mind is in crisis.  It immediately begins to process the possibility of eminent death.  Every cell in your body is scrambling to stay alive and figure out what to do next.  Post surgery, your body knows things have changed, but exactly WHAT! Your whole psychology has completely changed.  This ding, ding, ding results in stress, and you know what they say about stress.  Hm-m-m-!  So although your cells are in chaos, and scared to death, you need them to stay calm so you can heal for the next round of attack, whatever that is.  Whew!

Your world is a little upside down, and your cells are scrabbling to figure things out.  What happened?  Where are we?  Are we okay?  Will we make it?  The good cells are fighting the bad cells.  What a mess. What in GOD’s name is going on?

Me and my cells were scared to death!

I share all this to say, try to protect your cells as best as you can.  For all we know, all this negative “dinging” might be part of the cause for cancer, heart attacks, diabetes and all the other ailments in the first place.

Keep them away from all negatives; words, thoughts, people, places, food, smoke, pollution, EVERYTHING!  Embrace positive, and run from negative, in whatever form it comes.  So you have to tell them only good things.  You have to tell your cells that EVERYTHING is going to be okay.  And then you have to BELIEVE IT!

Your cells will Thank you.

If you take care of them, they will take care of you.

Back to the hysterectomy, the surgery was a success, I was out of the woods, this was going to be a WALK IN THE PARK, RIGHT!!

Oh Honey, hang on, this ride has just begun!

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