A Thanksgiving Day Baby!

Now, where was I?

Right, I was about to begin to describe my venture into the world on my trek to the NOW.

I was a Thanksgiving Day baby, in Canada, born on Monday, Oct 9, 1944. at Saint Michael's Hospital in Lethbridge, Alberta.  I don't think my mother had a Thanksgiving dinner that day, but she did not mind missing it.  She was hoping or a girl, but was pleased to have a other healthy son.

The key word in the sentence was healthy, because that state did not last for long.  Soon I was sort of going into breathing fits where I would stop breathing, turn blue, and on occasion, even reaching purple.  Repeated holding me upside down and shaking me and, probably, swatting me, seemed to resolve this problem temporarily.

On one occasion, I stopped breathing and spent considerable time with a skin tone of purple--I had no understanding that purple was the colour of healing at the time, but I was purple.  Nothing seemed to work quickly that time, but somehow my parents managed to keep me alive on a snowy winter's night and made a hasty trip to Edmonton.  The doctor's diagnoses was that I had an enlarged Thymus and they gave my throat area radiation treatments (about 300 r--a lot by todays standards.)  But the breathing seizures stopped and my parents were told to never allow me to be anaesthetized since that could bring on a sudden recurrence of the problem. 

I guess my seeming plan to return to the comfort of the other world ran "gang aft agley,"  This ancient being did not get his way again and had to remain on this plane of existence.  The day will come when the cliff edge of the other side of the valley will be within my grasp and I will once again own my place and simply be in the NOW.

Yeah, no tonsillectomy for me!  Only year after year with bouts of tonsillitis which usually kept me out of school for at least a week two or three times a year.  At some point the medical profession managed to add to each of this bouts at least one antibiotic shot in the gluteus maximus. 

I did not worry, I was basically a happy child, and I really did not mind missing any amount of schooling.  It was only in my late twenties or early thirties that I learned that the majority of people who underwent that radiation treatment for enlarged thymus had succumbed to some form of cancer.  I opted not to participate in a study of the survivors--too scary for me. 

Subsequently studies have shown a correlation of the mother's who often held the babies while the baby was irradiate coming down with cancers, thought to be caused by the radiation.  This is possibly why my mother underwent and survived two bouts of intestinal cancer, though there is no direct evidence, but it is a possible explanation.

I lived for years dreading should I ever have to have an operation--the large thymus might return and get me. 

In my mid twenties I had fallen on my coccyx bone and wacked it out of joint--a tad painful it was--this was termed a coccyx dislocation.  The remedy was for the Doctor to inject a fluid to put pressure on the bone to pop it back into shape.  That worked fine and my tail bone ached no more.  That is until the injection point allowed a bacteria to enter and subsequently the cyst.  Having to undergo anaesthetic treatment was scary, but my Doctor convinced me that medicine since the 1940 had disproved the enlarged thymus theory and I had nothing to worry about.

Preparation for the operation, on my part, involved taking mega doses of Vitamins A and E, the week before the operation.  All went well in the operating room.  I was the last operation scheduled that day because it involved dealing with an infection and they wanted to lessen odds of that spreading to another patient.  The cyst had been full blown and they had to remove a quarter inch of flesh on either side of the cleft.  Apparently it was quite a sizeable incision, but I felt no pain.

I think I left the operating room around 8:30pm.  The next late morning, the Doctor came in to dress the wound.  I was  somewhat astounded to hear the Doctor exclaim, "It is already healing!"   Apparently the vitamins A and E did their job.

Time for the removal of the intravenous needle.  "I will stand, said I".  Then as the needle was removed and grew longer and longer and longer and seemingly even longer, I wished I was seated. Thankfully I did not succumb to the desire to faint.

I had the joy of sitting on a donut cushion for sometime as the incision healed.  About every other day, I would visit the Doctor to have more of the stuffing to keep the side of the cleft from healing together remove, about a yard at a time.   Two weeks later, all had gone well and the rest of the stuffing was removed--it seemed like an eternity until the Doctor finally got the yards and yards and yards of dressing out!  But the results were positive and my visits to the Doctor were over.

Why am I sharing this with you at this time in this blog?

Every experience is a learning situation and lessons learned become part of us in the NOW and hopefully carry forward and are embellished in the next NOW, and the next NOW, ensconcing us into what we will be when all there is is the NOW.

As I share more of my life experiences on the road to spiritual awareness I will be sharing other experiences.  Some of them may be of no consequence at the time, but later on, as the blog develops, an understanding will crystallize and clarification will appear.

In the meantime, enjoy the experience of me sharing my experiences.