This time a year ago, at 6 a.m., I was still sound asleep which is an extreme rarity for a fifty something year old woman. My sleep was then facilitated by a great deal of morphine as I’d been cut open about a foot long in my abdominal area.

Our month of Hell, described here, I just reread it and found it hilarious now although I'd cried a great deal during that time.

I’d awakened sometime that morning, in the surgical ward, to discover my elderly mother asleep in a chair next to me, my oldest daughter was at my house trying to calm my terribly anxious children down, and another daughter and her husband had the unenviable and very thankless task of taking three of my toughest sons into their house for a week to lessen the strain back at my house while Big Mama was gone. This couple had cancelled a beach vacation for this opportunity that later entailed having three police cars appear at their house because the bipolar one decided to “run away and raise hell,” in his own misguided words.

I ended up having to spend a week in the hospital; I was in pretty bad shape. I’d googled it before I went in and discovered a 90 percent chance of it being malignant. I’d told a doctor that I would simply, “will it away,” and I did so. I’d not told anyone for quite some time that I’d felt an unusual mass in my belly, I’d lost so much weight though that it was becoming obvious so I’d quickly told the surgeon to forget all the tests, let’s just get this sucker out and be done with it. He gave me about 48 hours to get my affairs in order.

I told the grown kids to not come see me in the hospital, I didn’t need anyone seeing me laid out like that so helpless, knowing all their abandonment issues, this might send someone over the edge. I lay there for an entire week watching HGTV and drifting in and out of consciousness. The nurses told me to walk the halls once a day or so, I wanted to go home pretty fast so I hiked those halls about five times a day.

My church and even the school system stepped in to provide meals for the thirty something scared kids at home, blindly fearing that I’d die and be ripped away from them. It was, thank God, not malignant but I did lose a foot of my intestines and I attributed it to either stress or the asbestos in the high school I’d worked in for 13 years. Five women, in that time span, died of tumors and cancers, two men teachers survived theirs, one with a brain tumor and one with lymphoma the size of a loaf of bread in his mid-section. I’ve lost track of both the men so I’m not sure what eventually happened to them.

You’d have thought when I finally returned home, frail and skeletal, that my kids would help out, and most did so. Interestingly enough the three worst behaved ones are all now in different confinements.

I healed very rapidly with vitamins, herbs, protein smoothies and Lortabs. Now there is just a very thin line down my middle but I was so humbled by the experience, blessed by so much help from our community and my extended family. I’d never been sick before, never needed that much help, and never parked my butt on the sofa for such a long time.

I’d lost my baby sister to cancer 11 years ago so I had my own river of fears coursing through my system then, but now, even with these knuckleheaded kids of mine, I’m so very happy to be alive and healthy and back to my hard-headed, ornery self.