It’s been a while since I posted. I am completely off the schedule I set myself.
I’ve thought a lot lately about what I have done in my life. The most significant thing that I’ve done in my life was giving birth to and raising my sons. Most parents will tell you it’s the toughest job they’ve ever had, but the best as well. I agree.
My time with my sons was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, even tougher because they were inflicted with a rotten disease. One that is genetic. One that ate away at their muscles until they were too weak to keep their bodies going.
I spent twenty years as a mom to my sons. As they aged their care became more intense. By the time they were twelve, I was back to taking care of them as though they were babies. Physically that is. Their minds were bright and sharp. They were so smart and handsome. They were my babies.
It was heartbreaking and soul-rending to see them decline as the years passed.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized I was put on this earth to be a healer. No, not like a doctor, but more like a medicine woman or shaman, maybe not even that. However, I’ve been a nurturer since I was very young. I wasn’t even three years old when my younger brother was born. Yet, I was right there taking care of him. My mom said I never let him out of my sight. That was the case as we grew older as well. I was his bodyguard and caregiver when mom wasn’t around. No one around us seemed to care that he couldn’t walk as fast as they did. By that I don’t mean they accepted him, I mean they just didn’t take care around him. I remember the year I was in fifth grade. We moved to the little town my mom’s older brother and his family lived. My brother and I went to school with three of our cousins. One day at recess, there were dark clouds brewing and I don’t know if there was a twister or if the one teacher just spooked, but she screamed for everyone to get inside. Well, there was a stampede of kids. My brother was in the middle of them. All I could do is get to him and stand behind him as they all brushed past us like a herd of cattle. I was so mad at the teacher, but I couldn’t say anything to her I was only a fifth grader. I did tell my mom and I don’t remember if she talked to them or not.
I even wanted to kick a senior boy’s ass in high school because he’d been messing around in the hallway with his girlfriend and accidentally sat in my brother’s lap. He hadn’t seen him because my brother was in a wheelchair. The arm he’d just gotten out of the cast was broken again. I was so mad I couldn’t help but let the entire school know that this boy was going to get his ass kicked. He came to me at the end of the day and apologized. Said he never saw my brother, but he shouldn’t have been messing around the way he had been. I accepted the apology and recently a friend from school had told me he felt bad about what happened. I knew that when he came to me to apologize.
After that incident, my brother was never in school, again. He was taught at home. He made it through the eighth grade and that was it. In December of 1987, he died. He had Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which in my family is hereditary. The women are carriers. I don’t know where it started, but I did have a great uncle on my maternal grandmother’s side, an uncle, my brother, and my sons that all had it. They all died from complications arising from having the disease.
Now, I take care of my mom as she needs the care. I have several stories I could tell about the care she’s gotten from doctors that weren’t good. There is one cardiac doctor that she refuses to see. He was in such a rush to get her angiogram done that when he couldn’t go through her arm arteries, he decided to go ahead and rush to go through her groin area. He nearly severed one of her nerves in two. Then, he nor his partner doctor would do anything to help her. They were so afraid she was going to sue them. All she wanted was something for the pain until the nerve healed. Her heart doctor, this doctor’s partner wasn’t all that helpful and after he lied to mom about her needing a pacemaker then turning around when she decided she’d have the pacemaker put in telling her that it wouldn’t do her any good. I told her we were changing doctors. We had a rough start with the cardiologist she has now, but it’s looking up and getting better. For three years my mom just continued to get weaker and out of breath. She kept asking for oxygen and they kept telling her she didn’t need it. She couldn’t breathe. One of her stays at the hospital we found a guardian angel in the form of a nurse. She didn’t quit until mom came home with oxygen. One of the techs at the hospital knew what to put on the forms to get the oxygen without mom being diagnosed with COPD. We also found that she had pneumonia before this one hospital visit, which had nothing to do with breathing and everything to do with water weight gain. Not good for a heart patient.
Anyway, I try to be attentive and care for those that need it. So far, it’s been my family members and pets that get my care. I try to be there for friends as well, but most of my friends are distant and I only talk to them online.
Being a healer is only one thing I’ve discovered that I am. I’m also good with animals and have been my whole life, but that is for another post.
Why did I write about this? It felt like I needed to get it out. Maybe it will help someone who reads it in some way. It’s not really written as a help article. It’s just a get it off my chest kind of thing. A way for me to express who I am, what I am. I’m still figuring myself out, especially after being pretty much sole caregiver to my sons. Twenty years is a long time to care for someone. It changes you and it changes you again when the person or people you were caring for are gone. I was lost. I didn’t know who or what I was. It’s been ten years August 2019 since my older son has been gone, and nine in September 2019 since my younger boy has been gone. I am still trying to find me.
