Days like today bring back memories, even memories we do not want to be brought to the surface again. I have found that dreams bring certain memories with them and a morning like today, brings other memories with them. My dreams bring the past of war and when I wake on a morning like this, I find it has brought a past of another war that I fought years after the war of my youth. Two cups of coffee this morning, even before I tried to type a word on this post, is what was necessary, before even beginning…
Once I fought and won a battle of a brain tumor. It was not cancer, but what did that matter in the short term, as my vision left me and the pain was beyond anything that I endured to that point in my life. I was lucky or maybe it should be called blessed, an emergency room doctor, looked in my eyes after an employee of mine took me to the hospital, after I collapsed at work. The doctor saw something in my eyes and rushed me into testing. He gave me a shot of something that sent heat all over my body and I actually went back to work. For you see I never missed work and was one of those very dedicated workers, that never stopped and may death do us part…
Information as gathered over a few weeks of time and a specialist, plus the emergency room doctor took on my case. The doctor from the emergency room said, “You should be dead!I want to know why?”
Therefore, that started what became a year of pathogen treatments, including a 28 week round of chemo, that nearly killed me as I never missed a day of work during the whole time. I was divorced, alone and work was my life, as it always has been. My family was at work and my employees took care of me as I took care of them. I remember that God stayed out of what was happening, except to push me back on the fence I was riding as I fell back and forth between death and life. He seemed to think that the best place for me was in the dividing line, between the two. Maybe it allowed him to keep a better eye on me… 🙂
I realized today that it has almost been 15 years since fighting that war and I won. In anyone’s book, I won!
From the little cook who took me bodily (picked me up and carried me) to the hospital after I collapsed, to the emergency room doctor who saw something in my eyes and God who decided that I was not done on earth. Were part of my helpers to stay on earth. That is how I understand the saying, “God helps those who help themselves!” I refused to roll over and die…
Then after that tidbit of interesting fun, the introspect of surviving and the astounding fact that I still had mental functions available that were not damaged beyond repair, was very much over shadowed by the ensuing heart attacks…
I realized that God evidently decided that I needed more lessons in humility and such. For I gathered my weakened forces, that had been battered almost to death from a brain tumor, just a few months before and retreated and dug in to fight the good fight, through six heart attacks over the next few years after stopping a growing non-malignant tumor in its tracks. I worked and struggled to survive through it all and never once considered saying, “Screw it and dying!” I do blame part of the heart attacks on all the treatments for the tumor…
Then everything changed one day, I remember after all these years of struggling, I questioned what the hell I was doing and why do I care if I live? It was really a serious question and I had ever right to think it and ever right to contemplate it. I was alone, my family could careless and work wanted me dead or making money…
Then around Christmas time I had a first contact with a Russian woman. Yes that woman (or better as she says, “Girl, I am a girl!” ) was Sveta and Sveta is who evidently God sent to push me off the fence that he himself seemed to think I needed to ride for years and she gave me the focus of life again…
How else could you explain it? I should have been dead multiple times already and when I decided that maybe I should contemplate the death aspect, along came a little angel, that d my hand from halfway around the world as I went through a couple more heart attacks. She had never met me and she had never seen me and she had never talked to me. She was at the other end of a text message and e-mails…
What do you call it? Pure dumb luck? OK! I can accept that also, for God definitely is behind luck also…
So this morning as I woke up and found myself in shear unadulterated pain, pain that courses through my body and brings back something I heard many years ago, “If you wake up and hurt, then you know you are still alive!” I guess that today, I am very much alive, for I very much hurt…
My last thought for today and I have to get started on other things at the village place; I remember once a very long time ago, a time that still equated into being a teenager. Do you find it strange that we send teens into war? I had been shot and a boy named Sparky was shot (His hair was bright red!), we were all that was left, it was deep in the jungle and being a brave Airborne, was kinda related to death at the moment. I remember the first time I said this certain saying, that I said many times after this, for I lived while many did not…
I looked at Sparky and said after tying his tourniquet tighter, “Ready to dance with the devil?”
You know, I danced with ole Azazel many times, but I never held his hand, for the day I do…
Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…