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It wasn’t supposed to be this way

It wasn’t supposed to be this way

– Nonfiction by Joan K. McAndrew –

Homemade Insanity

So much pain.

A voice says, “this will help, Joan.”

Who are these black figures, hovering around my bed like the dementors on the Hogwart’s Express? Am I dying? But there’s no bright light. Every breath is a struggle. All these strangers; a critical care specialist, a pulmonologist, a cardiologist. My surgeon is there. I know him.

“Don’t give up,” he says.

More masked faces—relatives, friends, clients floating in and out. Why is everyone crying?

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was just a hernia.

***

Deep brown eyes drift in three inches from my face. A gentle voice says, “Joan, you need to be ventilated.”

“No resuscitation,” I say.

“Ventilation is not resuscitation,” he says. “But I can’t guarantee the ventilator can be removed.”

“I don’t want to live like that,” I say.

“That’s not a decision for now,” he says. “That’s a decision for later.”

“You’re right,” I say, as I disappear into sweet oblivion.

***

I’m awake. My throat hurts, my whole body is bloated, I can’t talk or reach the call-button. But I can breathe.

In all, it’s ten days before I am moved to the post-surgical/rehab unit to discover I contracted Hospital Acquired Pneumonia, following hernia surgery on October 22, 2021. Over the next seventeen days I need to focus all my energy, my thoughts and my spirit on learning to speak, swallow, eat, sit, stand, crawl, roll over, walk and climb stairs.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

***

Retirement will be wonderful. I will travel, read books, and sleep until I wake up. Best of all, there will be no more debt as I am a hard-working, intelligent and fiscally responsible person. I follow the rules, plan well and will be ready. My well-earned reward at the end of my career as a Counselling Psychologist.

That colon cancer, in 2013 was just a blip. I was 67 and due to retire in three years. True, my husband and I might need a couple of years to catch up financially, but we’d make it. Except he required two angioplasties, four weeks apart for blocked cardiac arteries, in the same month that I had abdominal surgery to remove ten inches of my bowel. Chemotherapy followed. Then, as when two stars collide, our marriage vaporized into its own black hole in 2015.

Retirement was postponed once again, this time for another five years while I recovered financially.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

***

On November 17, 2021, twenty-seven days after the hernia surgery I was discharged home with a cane, a shower chair, and needing help with everything. My friends took shifts caring for me until I felt safe enough to manage on my own. Six weeks later I resumed workouts at the gym—my kickboxing days might be over but I could walk without the cane by the end of January 2022.

In mid-February, my personal trainer said, “you’re ready to lay flat on the floor and get up on your own steam.”
I balked, terrified. She reassured me. I made her promise not to abandon me. Five minutes later, she held me in her arms while I sobbed and sobbed. A Post Traumatic Stress Disorder set in which took four months to control.

Somewhere in the middle of all this chaos I realized that when you almost die and don’t, the you who returns is different. The sky seems vast and blue. Birds sing for mates and build nests while new life emerges everywhere. How had I failed to notice? I needed to reach out and touch everything! New ideas popped into my head.

What if my life is the way it’s supposed to be? What if my life isn’t about me at all? What if I am about my life?

***

Then with no choice, no plan, no graceful exit, I retired on June 1, 2022. It has taken three years to recover my physical, emotional and spiritual strength. I didn’t know that only 20% of people over the age of 75 survive ventilation. No wonder everyone expected me to die.

I sold my home in 2023, the perfect small one I bought after my divorce. I live in a newly renovated one-bedroom apartment two blocks from Georgian Bay. A large balcony faces west into a grove of pine trees—the sunsets are brilliant.

I know now that those promises made by the media, the banks, the governments, the psychologists (like me), and the self-help industry are not true. It matters not if you are a hard-working, intelligent and fiscally responsible person. You are still not guaranteed the life you imagine.

My hernia is permanent. It protrudes out the left side of my belly. I’ve named it Sally. In the first two years Sally caused me a lot of grief with four blockages of the bowel which required hospitalization each time. “Get used to it,” the doctors said. Instead, I hired a naturopath who has guided me to rebuild my microbiome. Bowel blockages no longer occur.

People tell me that I’m different now, that I’m an inspiration. Doctors tell me I have good genes. What I really have though is resilience. It can’t be promised or purchased, it has to be earned through thick and thin, through promises made and broken. It can’t be guaranteed and it will never be yours if you just do this and this and this.

Because that’s not life. I changed because I had to change. I am softer now, less critical of myself and others, less certain about everything. I have never felt so free to be who I am. I no longer have time for pretenses. Every day is a gift which I cherish. Not because someone told me to, but because when you are close to death and you survive, it is easy to be grateful.

About the Author – Joan K. McAndrew

Joan K. McAndrew

Dr. Joan McAndrew (she/her), age 78, recently retired after 45 years as a Registered Ph.D. Psychologist in private practice in Ontario. She has been a mostly reclusive writer for the past 30 years but is venturing more into the publishing world. Joan’s Ph.D. thesis entitled A Study of the Experience of Families Receiving Genetic Counselling was published by The University of Toronto Press in 1978. She has three publications on The International House of Reiki Website (2014/15) relating to her experience and subsequent treatment following a cancer diagnosis in 2013, and is currently writing a memoire Being Me, Helping You.

Dr. Joan can be found happily ensconced in her apartment with two cats.

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