Say "Cheese"

It’s been a little while since I posted my last article. Have you missed me??? Just kidding. It’s been a very interesting last month and a half. This story will give you an idea of what I’ve been up to... thankfully, it’s all over!

It was Friday night, I had been sick with one of those stomach bugs so I hadn’t eaten anything for a few days. My son had enjoyed the most expensive Valentine candy in the whole world earlier that day… Fun Dip. Why was it so expensive? Oh, because we found out he was allergic to it the hard way. I rushed him to the doctor at 4:00 then stopped off at the pharmacy on the way home to get him the steroids he needed to not scratch all his skin off before morning light. Now 6:00ish, I was getting dinner together for my hubby and son, but I wasn’t going to eat since food still wasn’t terribly appealing to me. Out of habit, I stuffed a piece of sliced Colby cheese in my mouth as I prepared my son’s dinner plate. Oh how I love cheese! In only minutes, a pain begin at the base of my sternum. I thought maybe it was a hunger pang, so I ate another piece of cheese. It got worse as I handed out dinner and tried to do a little living room clean up from the busy day. Before long, I couldn’t stand up straight… the pain grew and grew. I tried everything I knew… antacids, sitting, lying, I even tried to make myself throw up with the wrong end of my toothbrush, but the pain got worse and worse.

I felt like such a wimp. I mean, normal people don’t writhe around in pain when they have a little heart burn, why was I almost in tears. It got worse and worse to the point I felt I might actually explode… in fact, explosion would have been a nice relief. In probably the worst pain of my life I broke down in prayer, praying the prayer God always responds to with immediacy when it is spoken from my heart…

“God, I am in so much pain. I know I deserve this pain… I deserve worse pain for being the filthy sinner that I am. The pain Jesus endured for me is so much greater than this… help me put this in perspective, help me Lord… Help me!” a few seconds later I added, “Tell me what I’m supposed to do!”

I managed to go to the living room and fell at my husband’s feet in pain. I was in tears, and writhing in pain. He didn’t know what to do. I repeated in my head to God, “Tell me what to do God…. I don’t know what to do.” At that very moment, my body began to go into shock. I was hyperventilating, and the blood rushed out of my arms and legs so they curled up became rigid. I began to feel numbness all over my body and I couldn’t speak normally… I was speaking very slowly and stuttering. That was when my husband called 911. The beauty of going into shock is that the pain actually seemed to subside slightly, so as scary as it was to be “in shock” it was a relief, at least from the pain.

The ambulance came and two very kind paramedics took very good care of me. Shoeless, they strapped me to the gurney and put me in the back of the ambulance. They hooked me up to an IV then offered me some morphine. As a recovering alcoholic, morphine is a dangerous drug for me so I had to think about it… but ultimately I said yes. The pain was incredible.

Once at the hospital they kept pumping me with more and more morphine, but no matter how much they gave me, the pain was incredible. I became nauseous, no doubt from all the morphine and they eventually gave me an additional drug to take the edge off the nausea… they basically knocked me out and the rest is fuzzy. Although I do clearly remember the devil women who gave my a sonogram, jabbing her sono-gun into the areas that hurt the most while it hurt the most. To her I say… I know you were just doing your job but… REALLY!!! It hurt. I will try to forgive you.

It was almost midnight and I was released. The pain had subsided (or the drugs had finally worked, not sure) and I slowly walked, shoeless, to the waiting room to wait for my hubby to pick me up. I was high, still in some pain and felt like a little kid, helpless and wandering in the desert waiting for salvation. I held a single piece of paper in my hand that said, “Follow up with your doctor for elevated liver enzymes.”

The emergency room had sent me home with drugs… Vicodin and another kick-ass nausea/anxiety medication that supposedly worked well with Vicodin. The instructions were to take them as needed for pain. In the morning, I was groggy and afraid the pain would return full force so I took the meds right away. By late afternoon the drugs were beginning to wear off and I felt another panic…what if the pain returned? I took another round of meds and went back to sleep. I awoke as my husband began to get into bed. I felt the addictive part of my personality taking hold of me as I saw the Vicodin bottle and thought, “I better take another one, just in case.” I realized I wasn’t in pain at all and thought about lying. I weighed the “high” feeling against my integrity and by pure instinct I grabbed the bottles… and handed them to my husband and said, “Take these… hide them… I don’t trust myself!” He was a little shocked but did as I said. He would become my drug dealer for the next few weeks.

The next morning was Sunday. I got up out of bed determined to go to church. I felt I needed confession and prayed it was a communion day. Guilt was washing over me… I was questioning my sobriety and I was close to tears every second. I recalled my old AA days when some of the AA nazi’s would pound on the table vehemently saying use of any drug nullified their sobriety. I didn’t believe that crap… but I did believe that inappropriate use of a drug was grounds for sobriety interruption. I was about to celebrate 3 years of sobriety and I was wondering… had I used the drugs inappropriately… had I abused them and thus interrupted my sobriety??? We went to church, I had communion and I cried and begged for forgiveness and clarity.

I tortured myself for about two days over this… was I still sober… had I crossed the line??? Here I was getting ready to launch a recovery ministry in Mansfield, Texas on April 7th 2010 – a ministry that has been in the works for over a year and… was I, the ministry leader a fraud? Had I let everyone down… my husband, my kid, my sponsees, my sponsor, myself… God??? Finally it hit me… the devil would love nothing more than for me to question myself and my sobriety to the point of breaking down and quitting the ministry and life style I have grown accustom to. Who cares! My new life is a life of GRACE and LOVE… and in the very moment I recognized I didn’t need the meds for pain, I did exactly what I was supposed to do - I gave them to my husband. I told him I didn’t trust myself. I asked for help.

Well, it turns out I had a bad Gall Bladder. I had it removed on March 19th and everything went perfectly. I have released my husband from his drug dealer duties because I believe with God, I can be okay dealing with the pain and the pain relief.

Before my Gall Bladder surgery but after my 3 year sobriety anniversary, we had a family photo shoot done with SGLY Photography. The pictures turned out INCREDIBLY. Tiffany, the photographer, took some extra time with just me and she captured a great shot of me with my three year sobriety coin. It seems every year right around my sobriety anniversary, something big happens in my life as if the devil were trying to trip me up. I think this whole experience was part of that little idiot’s plan. To me the photoshoot was a celebration of getting through one more of the devil’s schemes. An irony hit me… saying ‘cheese’ is what got those pretty smiles captured on film; a record of joy and achievement. But cheese, Colby to be exact, was also the catalyst to all of the trouble. That’s right, that little piece of cheese I put in my mouth that day was what made my gall bladder finally totally freak out. The pain that cheese caused me makes me wonder if I will ever eat cheese again, but how about I just take it one day at a time instead of swearing it off completely. I am so very thankful for the ability to walk through life one day at a time... with sobriety and with cheese. Thank the Lord, my King!!!