Listening to Your Inner Voice

Hi everyone.  Life happens as they say and before you know it a week or two has gone by and you’re falling behind on your posting again.  I want to thank all of you who have dropped by to read what I have to say and of course I always mean to put more out there than I do.

Today I want to share how important it is for all of us to listen to what our bodies are trying to tell us and to heed that inner voice.  I’m usually pretty good at this, but there are times I choose to ignore things I shouldn’t.  Luckily, I’m glad that wasn’t the case a year ago today because had I ignored the situation I probably wouldn’t be sitting here at my computer now writing this.

I got to thinking about all this because a year ago I was rushed into emergency surgery.  Thank goodness I had the good sense to go to the hospital when I did.  I had ended up with a stomach ache that lasted all day and by evening I was in quite a state.

It started out like any normal day and I went to the gym, etc and then got a bad case of what I thought was indigestion.  I used an old family remedy that we were taught as kids on the farm and laid around all day with my feet up.  For an upset stomach or indigestion, my grandparents and then my parents were great believers in lying flat on your back with your legs and feet leaning up and against the wall, so you were in an L shape.  As kids growing up, this seemed to work and all of us did it from time to time.  We thought it was to take our minds off things, but it always seemed to help so in about 20-30 minutes we could get up and go and play, or do what we had been doing that day.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I had been doing that all day and it didn’t help.  I finally decided I was getting no sleep that night so my husband took me to the emergency room at 11 pm.  To make matters worse my stomach was so distended and uncomfortable that I had to recline the seat and lie down all the way there.  Of course it seemed like we hit every bump in the road.

Once I got to the exam room I was X rayed and given a cat scan.  They called the surgeon and by 4am I was in surgery.  Unbeknownst to me, my colon had decided to twist around and I had to have half of it removed to fix things.  That was an ordeal and quite a long recovery for someone active like me, but it’s probably a good thing I didn’t have time to think about having the surgery, never having had any before.  If I had waited it probably would have burst.

My whole point here is to always listen to what your body is trying to tell you because there is usually a good reason to take notice of what it has to say.

Since that incident, I have heard of several people who have died from the same thing.  My sisters and friends make a point of telling me this news.  But I was stunned to learn that when the latest BeeGees brother passed away a few days ago, his younger brother had died of the same thing some years ago.

My surgeon told me it was not all that common and he did about four surgeries like mine a year, but I’m beginning to think it is more common than we know.

I am very thankful to have used my common sense back then and hope I do in the future when it really counts and is important to do so.

Thanks for reading this story.  Maybe it will help someone out there.  I wish the best of health to all of you and I hope we all live long enough to achieve our dreams.

Blessings,

Sunni