I Survived 1995 - a personal journey

I wasn't a soldier in a war, aid worker in the Sudan or caught up in a great natural disaster. The dramatic, traumatic and tragic things that happened to me in 1995 all came in on personal fronts.

My mother had fought and won a battle with breast cancer when she was in her mid thirties. It came back in her early fifties (1992) and got into her liver. She "fought like hell" and "did what the doctors told her", and "had a pretty darn good life" for three more years.

My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall of 1994. The lumps in her breast were originally thought to be hardening milk glands, because my sister was weaning her recently born daughter. Once discovered, radical and aggressive treatments were promoted. The doctor's fearing that the cancer had infiltrated her lymphatic system. It had.

In other news, my marriage was on the rocks. My wife was having the best time of her life awash in the feelings of close comradery with fellow cowboys on her community college campus. Spending time with me rained on her sunshineyness.

Additionally, I was starting my second year as the administrative assistant at a rural AIDS task force. We worked with over one hundred clients and I was beginning to attend funerals of people I had come to know.

I was depressed and stressed.

On one fine day in May my then-wife and I rushed to a doctor with an abnormal swelling, and a whole lot of pain, in front of my left ear. During the examination the doctor got up, left the room and returned with a medical text.

I had developed the rarely seen Cat Scratch Fever virus. And it looked to be near my eye. The swelling was a lymph node that was fighting beyond the call of duty against some infectious threat. He said it only occurs in people under grave stress and asked if I was under much.

I explained and he became even more concerned. Antibiotic drops for my eyes, a round of antibiotic pills, and orders to de-stress no matter what it takes, at least one hour per day. Or else.

I did the best I could.

On June 16, 1995 my sister passed in a hospital bed as I stood unknowingly at the front door of the hospital. I had spoken by phone with her some twenty minutes earlier and been assured that everything was going to be all right.

Her death devastated my mother. "No mother should ever survive her children." she told me soulfully woefully from her wheelchair. Her cancer already having robbed her of mobility. I stood by her and wept with my hand on her shoulder. I was Momma's boy.

Everything rushed down hill with her after that. She passed twelve days later, in a hospital bed, me holding her left hand, her husband holding her right.

My wife and I never patched up. I stayed depressed and she continued to resent it. She moved out in October, ten days after our four year anniversary.

It was one of the hardest times of my life.

1995

And I survived.

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528 words

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