Life's been trying to kill me since I tumbled in to it- at least that's what I like to tell myself when I'm feeling especially mopey. Really though, sometimes I wonder if I'm not just a really great escape artist when it comes to all manners of life and death. I'm the queen of close calls and near misses and as much as these experiences have scarred me they've also strengthened my resolve in ways one wouldn't necessarily expect. Allow me to explain…..
Like literally every life on this planet, my story started at birth. Actually, back it up to a little before that. I was the second and last child born to my parents who are still two of the greatest people I'll ever know. Back then they were just an excited couple with a very busy toddler, a sweet puppy, and a girl on the way. One of their last ultrasound appointments tinted their bliss with an impending unpredictability.
It was that moment that all expectant mothers and their partners dread, when the ultrasound technician politely excuses themselves and in their place is soon a doctor too high on the payroll to be there if there's not an issue with who is growing in that tummy. Yep, I was starting problems in utero. Thankfully it was nothing that put Mom at risk, but she and Dad were told there was something wrong with how my GI system seemed to be growing. It was ‘87 and even that information was pretty advanced, to be fair. So with that vague shadow of insecurity in my last formative month of the pregnancy, they were left to pretend they didn't worry about what was wrong. Maybe they tried to forget sometimes but I know them and I can tell you that effort would be fruitless.
Ready or not, I came crashing into the world in a hurry. In fact, I almost made my debut in the parking lot at the hospital but apparently they were able to convince me to chill out long enough to get Mom to a room. Very shortly thereafter, I was here. I was a person- this thing that was just in there and then suddenly part of everything else they were. I had a brother, and a doggie, and a giant family that fawned over me. And I was sick.
I had the normal jaundice lots of newbies to Earth get. But I also had a really hard time keeping down the sustenance Mom was trying desperately to feed me. I'd eat and spit up and repeat. I'm sure that's emotionally exhausting for a woman who had just gone through childbirth, but I can only imagine that knowing something was wrong made it so much harder.
When I was a fairly functional little human, they started the tests. Over the first several months of my life they did everything imaginable to see why I was starving, despite being consistently fed. Why was I vomiting every single meal or feeding? It got so bad that my dehydration led to what they call a febrile seizure. I was almost a year old and while standing in my little mobile jumper I began seizing. My poor parents did their best to stay strong during the subsequent battery of blood tests which included a cut down of the veins in my ankles to get one that hadn't collapsed. I also endured a spinal tap through which my Dad had to hold me, which I have been told was one of the hardest things he or Mom had had to do. At the end of that very bad day they did have some answers from a scan.
That congenital defect they saw in the ultrasound? It turned out to be a significant rotation of my small intestine which is medically known as a volvulus. It has to be surgically corrected and I was too young to get it until I was a year old officially. So we waited, and I grew sicker. Eventually the day came when I could finally have the surgery. They cut through my muscle walls and reached in and rearranged what had grown together incorrectly. My appendix found a new home on its rightful side of my body, too. All in all, it was a success and finally I could eat and quickly began to thrive.
I spent my youngest years being the kind of fun loving girl that played like a boy and was prissy like a girl. I was country, and tomboy, and nerdy, and smart, and really really happy. Other than my absolutely deft ability fart like a grown man, I was about as normal as anyone could expect. My parents treated me like every other kid because in most ways I was. When they took me out in public Mom was often having to run interference as I walked up to strangers and flew my dress up around my neck, offering politely, “Do you want to see my zipper?” I hadn't seen other tummies really, but I thought it was pretty cool that mine had a scar that spanned the length of my little body- from my pubic bone up to my sternum. It was the 80's, it was the best the doctor's could do. Plus, I'm pretty sure my parents would rather chase me around to try keeping me from flashing medical wounds than not have me there at all. In fact, I'm sure in some ways they were more than glad to, just as sure as I am that they were thanking God above that I finally grew out of the “zipper” phase.
Rest assured, I still have my zipper- but it's closed for viewing these days. Sorry. My GI system is a little, shall we say touchy? But I'm alive so you know, I deal with it. Plus how many gals do you know that got their first tummy tuck at a year old? That's what I thought.
My life started out complicated and in the time since I came crashing on the scene, I have learned to live my days with gratitude because I came so close to not having the chance to make it beyond my first days.
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