I’m back! Y’all miss me? :)
Can’t believe it’s been a whole year since my last post! For those who don’t know, you wouldn’t believe what the last 12 months was in my life. Even I don’t believe it and I lived through it!
Remember how in 2022, I found myself in hospital no thank to a serious stomach ulcer that came virtually out of nowhere and threatened my life? Well I thought that was bad, but then 2023 smiled and said “Hold my beer!”
My goodness! It was as if all my ‘enemies’ joined forces and decided to take me down for good. I got a beatdown from life, the likes of which I could never have imagined in my wildest alcohol fueled nightmares.
Long story short, of the 12 months of 2023, I endured severe health issues continuously for 10 and a half of those months. Two of those incidences landed me in hospital for a combined period of a little short of a month.
I’m not gonna bother telling you all about all of them but I will summarize and tell you of the last of it.
So out of nowhere life hit me with sciatica in February of last year. Now for anyone who has ever experience it, it’s pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy! (ok, maybe some of your enemies tbh!) This turned me into a partial cripple basically throughout the year.
Most of last year I had to rely on a crutch just to help me move! Then in July, I got this weird boil(abcess) which was resistant to antibiotics and eventually found its way to infecting my blood turning it septic! I needed a surgical intervention to save my life.
A month later, an MRI I had in August then showed I had 2 herniated discs which apparently were the cause of my sciatic hell, so I was given a surgical date to fix it.
But lo and behold! A few days before I was to go in for the surgery, I developed some odd symptoms.
I couldn’t breath, my body/muscles were shutting down and I sensed I was in dire danger.
A voice then spoke to me in my spirit, in the most stern manner saying “do NOT sleep at home tonight!” so I called a friend who came to me and helped me get tho the hospital, a day before I was to fix my back, as I was to weak to move let alone carry a bag.
We arrived at the emergency part of the hospital, I went to the reception and all I could mutter were : “Help, please help me!” The lady immediately took my blood pressure and when she saw the result she gasped! It was like 220 or something. I was ushered into the emergency room where it was basically pandemonium all round. I was stabilized and the next day the cardiologists met with me and performed an ecography. From their expressions, I knew it was really serious. This was further confirmed when suddenly, the room was filled with doctors looking at the monitor and occasionally back at me.
Basically, it turned out I had one of the largest blood-cloths in my heart that any of them had ever seen.
Immediately they started their treatments. I was hospitalized for two week.
I’d never been jabbed by so many needles in all my life! So let's tally. At that point, I had the blood-cloth(with my heart pumping at only about 35% capacity), the high blood pressure, the paralysing pain of the sciatica and my blood sugar reading was around 568 or so, all at the same time! Oh and I was still recovering from my recent abcess surgery too.
I was pretty sure that was it for me, and I wasn’t going to make it, particularly since something similar had claimed both my dad and immediate younger brother, one after the other recently.
They ran so many tests, jabbed me with so many syringes, I was fairly certain I would be a candidate for the X-Men after all that! Funny thing was, they still couldn’t figure out what the cause was.
Anyways I somehow survived all that and kept asking if I could go have my surgery to fix my back so I could return to my new job I’d just found in a school since the pandemic lockdown. But that was not to be as the doctors just bluntly told me it was not going to happen. I was made to understand that in my current state, if I had taken anesthetics, I most definitely would not have woken up again. So…. That was that!
I remember at a point one of the doctors(probably due to my ‘Meh’ attitude about everything), didn’t think I was taking my situation serious enough, said, “Do you know how lucky you are to still be alive? With all these things happening to you all at once. I don't even know how are you still functioning?? To which I smiled and said under my breath….. “You see, they call me THE BLACK THUNDER!!!” :))))
(I’m so not a serious human being! Lol!!!)
Anyhoo, that went by, and the candy-store of meds I have to now take for life apparently have kept me stable and somehow my sciatic pain also went away as well. Dunno how that happened!
Ditched my crutch and have been learning to walk again ever since. Each day I’m getting better!
One of the most heartbreaking things I had to do was give up my new teaching gig. As I no longer knew when I would be well again I had to contact the school and let them know the state of things and renounce my place. I’d started bonding with the kids and had promised them I’d return. I guess life had other plans. Oh well!
Now I have to start the search for a new place that could use a semi-crazy ‘teacher’ like myself again.
Wish me luck.
I have had a lot of time to reflect on my life as I recover and I have decided to change so many aspects of my life. Most importanly, I have decided to find my way back to being who I was when I first set foot in this country mentally. A lone wolf.
I have been reminded that I am indeed alone in this country with no family (yes I do have a handful of people I consider friends that are quite close to me, but they all have their own lives and families to attend to.) and as such, I must take extra precautions and be perpetually on my guard for my own sake.
Recently I was talking to that ‘voice’ and the conversation kinda went like this:
Voice: My child, I think you've played it safe for too long, I’ve given you so much skills and talent, it's time you get back to showing the world what you can truly accomplish.
Me: I know, I’m just not sure how. It's like I’m having to start all over from scratch.
Voice: It's part of life, remember you never stay down, get up and just move, don’t worry, whatever you do, I’ll be with you.
Me: Really? So I can go and make another sort of series of booby paintings?
Voice: What? I’m trying to help you get your life back on track and this is whats on your mind?
In the name of all that I’ve created, Unde am greșit cu acest muppet? Dacă mă faci să cobor de aici, bătaia pe care o vei primi va face ca ceea ce a trecut Isus să pară un tratament balnear blând! Mă înțelegi?
Me: You speak Romanian???
Voice: Vai de capul meu! Hey Jesus! You’re certain this clown is one of the people you died for??? :))))))))))
Anyways, I’ll stop here for now, I’ll do my best to post more consistently. For those who showed up for me in my darket hours on memory, I thank you and will never forget. (Y’all know who you are)
Happy new year again everyone! It's a new year...LET’S GO!!!
Best of luck, dear Professor Kingsley! You do deserve it! ❤️