Witness

Oh, I’m a baaaaaaad blogger! Nothing since Thanksgiving? Bad, bad Cait!

The good news was that the holidays were full of fun and friends and running around – incredibly normal…which is the best Christmas gift for me!

The new year is bringing lots of changes to our lives – jobs, moving, new projects…and I’m really ready for them. I’m ready for all the good things that are finally coming, breaking through the years of struggle and perseverance.

But that’s not what this post is really about. This post is about a strange little collection that I have.

I have saved all of my hospital wristbands from my very first hospitalization back in 1997 through my most recent cancer surgery.

I don’t know why I’ve been compelled to save each bracelet, but maybe it’s because each one symbolizes a small victory for me. Cait = 19   Illness = 0. Each time, I overcame the pain, the fear, the doubt, the suffering, the ugliness, the struggle, the recovery. Each time I had to give in and go in to the hospital because I was sick, I came out again, determined to get better, to get stronger.

If I’m having a bad day, or feeling some malaise or just struggling in general, I look at my collection and remember that compared to all that, whatever it is just ain’t so bad. Those bracelets are my witness. Getting home and cutting off the bracelet became something of a true ritual for me. The scissors slicing through the plastic, the bracelet falling off meant that I was once again released, freed from the shackles of sickness. I usually stare at and study the bracelet for a few moments after it’s off. I look at the stains or wrinkles. I measure it against the others to see how tight or loose they had made it on my wrist. I think about what I just went through. I add it to my collection.

But as I’m doing that, other thoughts begin to surface…maybe I’m hungry, or really want a shower, or want to check my email…and my life gradually reasserts itself. As it should.

Writing about this has made me think back to my anthropology classes in college, and the importance of rituals and symbols in our lives. There’s one other symbol that I have in my collection that is what I go to in my darkest hours of suffering and worry.

This is one of my dad’s hospital bracelets. I don’t think he realizes that I snagged it a long time ago. But if there is one person who showed me how to deal with physical suffering and endure chronic illness with equanimity and even black humor, it is my dad. Through alllllllll (and I do mean allllllllllll) of his illnesses, surgeries, struggles and hospitalizations, he has kept going and kept focused on the next project he was going to do. All of the sickness was just inconvenient background that had to be dealt with. And so he taught, and so I learned.

I don’t foresee any more bracelets being added to the collection in the near future (God willing!). My December check up showed all systems a go. Cancer free for a year, creatinine of 1.3 (best since I left the hospital after the transplant with a 1.0), perfect BP of 112/70, and good thyroid numbers. But if it does so happen I have to go back unexpectedly, well, then that’s just one more bracelet for the collection.

Even Denny likes my collection….

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