Hindsight in 2020

Bruh, do I have a testimony for y’all! WHEW! Ok so the first two weeks of 2020 has been the worst and longest year of my life. Everything has been all wrong. So far my New Years resolutions to write and read more have been shot to hell, but at least I have finally gotten to a point in this journey where I can tell these series of events without erupting into hysterics. Pardon my storytelling, as I have had zero time to actually concentrate on what I am writing.

The genesis was Christmas Eve. I had been dealing with the anxiety of a breakup and Mommy apparently contracted the a flu-like virus from my father and couldn’t get her life together at any point after. Long story short, her insanely frightening cough developed into a NASTY phlegm animal in her chest (that we found to be a sort of viral-induced bronchitis), for which she was given steroids and cough suppressant as treatment via urgent care the weekend before New Years. We pretty much had to beg her to seek help, but finally got through to her when she began to question the possibility of pneumonia that we had all been concerned about. By this time, she had stopped eating altogether despite our prompts and lost a noticeable amount of weight. 

Mommy had been so sick that she wasn’t even able to help cook her traditional New Years dinner of collards, black-eyed peas, rice, turkey, and cornbread. Actually, she spent her entire New Year's Day and Eve lying in bed, in and out of sleep, unable to move. The only thing she had been able to do was drag herself to the back patio of the house and sit outside in the sun in her Versace stunner shades. I felt bad for her; I felt helpless. 

Slowly, by the first Saturday of the year, she began to express feelings of pain in her left knee, which wouldn’t have alarmed us if she hadn’t just received a total, brand new knee in December 2018. Naturally, it scared us. But what scared us all the more, by Sunday she was unable to walk and even scarier than that, unable to verbalize her pain, or anything else for that matter. All she could do was whimper, which was not like her in the least. She suffers from chronic pain and takes it all with such grace that seeing her like this lit a fire under all 3 of us to get her to a hospital. The knee had become massive and warm to the touch. She went into the emergency room that morning while I was at work… which was its own damn disaster. I got to work only to find that nothing was ready or prepared for me to do my job (at no fault of my own), which added time to my life that I didn’t have, and I got my period in the middle of productivity and had zero access to my menstrual cup. By the time I went to do data entry for the day, I was a basket-case. Bad things always seem to happen around the time that I PMS, amplifying them x13. The cherry on top was the crazy painful post-nasal drip I had been experiencing, which felt like I had been swallowing a hot sauce and hydrochloric acid concoction. Before I could even concentrate on what mommy had going on, I had to treat myself. Ney and I went to urgent care and found that I had developed laryngitis over the course of a very hoarse, nasal-drippy few days. They prescribed me the same Prednisone that they administered to Mommy (different urgent care centers; I don’t know why that drug is so popular lately). 

Anyway, mom was admitted to the hospital that night with the diagnosis of an infected knee. By the next morning, conversation had escalated to talk of surgery and we had also learned that her blood work had come back positive for Streptococcus B, the bacteria that causes strep throat, which scared me because I have a cousin who had Strep A in her blood and almost lost her arm and her life. It also scared me because I knew what a systemic infection entailed: the possibility of major organ failure. Thank God that wasn’t the case. She got first of two surgeries on the January 7thto remove the infected hardware in her knee and had received an “antibiotic spacer” until they were able to get her Strep under enough control to have a SECOND SURGERY to replace the unit with yet another brand new knee! She was to be pumped intravenously with antibiotics for the next 6-8 weeks before being able to even have the conversation of the second surgery.

She was so weak from having lost so much weight, recovering from the anesthesia, having been sick and actively fighting her crazy productive cough and gagging, and having eaten basically zero things for a week or so before her admission. She even needed help sitting up so that she could inhale properly. She was in terrible, scary shape.

The point of this post is to share how Kanye West got me through this tough time. Not literally, obviously, but his Sunday Service Choir debut album reignited a praise in me that I forgot I possessed. Mommy spent 7 whole nights in the orthopedic unit, and I was just about through. I would get in my car to drive home close to midnight after having worked a full day and in anticipation of repeating it all over again, and belt out Revelations 19:1 to the top of my laryngivitous voice (I know that’s not a word), with a flood of tears rushing down my face and neck, and into my bra. I actually only had about 45% of my voice but I didn’t care. I was petrified. My mom was quite possibly dying, lying in a hospital struggling to breathe, septic throughout her body, and was fresh out of emergency, exploratory surgery. 

Mommy is now in still in the hospital rehab, learning how to walk and do basic things involving her injury again. They recommended her to stay for 5 weeks, but God willing, she won’t need that much time. 

I am thankful for my God-fearing friends because I need more of them. They spoke life into me when I felt like I had none. My family came through with the power of prayer also, praying for my sister and my emotional endurance just as much as Mommy’s physical. I was broken. My faith has been hit or miss lately, and I hadn’t fed it in a while so it had begun to noticeably starve. I learned that I need to pray first, and pray most. I don’t pray over my loved ones like I should, and it shouldn’t take this trauma to prompt me. Nothing like a good old reality check to remind you that you can’t just use God like a genie.