Blessings...

I ended up in bad shape this past weekend. I was born with an umbilical hernia. It didn't really bother me for most of my life but became more problematic in recent years as my abdominal area sometimes hurt when my guts were trying to push their way out of my bellybutton. People always said I expose my na'au, my viscera, to the World. I guess that was meant to be from birth. 

Then in 2012, I had surgery to save my Life from pancreatitis. That created a second hernia, an incisional hernia in my lower right abdomen. I wear a band to keep it compressed as it can sometimes fill with air or who knows what and bulge out. Every time I go through TSA at the airport, and the body scanner, the machine, flags my hernia with bright color. It looks like I am packing a kilo of cocaine or plastic explosives strapped to my stomach region. I always get pulled to the side, patted down, tested for explosives, the whole routine. I kind of know what to expect.

Well, I seem to have won the lottery, since now I have a third hernia. An inguinal hernia, that also recently set off the alarms in the full body scanner as a second suspicious area on me that doesn't conform to normal body contours. I already had a distaste for air travel before all of this added consternation.

My inguinal hernia has become debilitating to say the least, with pain, gastric distress, and an inability to stand upright for very long. It first started showing signs last year with strange cramps and noises coming from just above my groin area. I remember quietly taking photos of the Hōkūle'a 'awa ceremony at Hakipu'u and as I walked around the crowd, my groin started emitting quite audible and loud gurgling noises much to my astonishment and embarrassment. I could see people snickering and giving each other side-eye. I tried to blame it on a bunch of Cane Toads mating in the bushes.

Well, too busy and exhausted with work, home, family and everything else in this busy Life and I didn't get it addressed soon enough so it worsened. 

I saw my doctor today and he confirmed the diagnosis, but the prognosis wasn't as clear. He knew from my cardiologist that my blood work numbers were still atrocious. I need surgery, but can't have it until I clear it with my cardiologist, and through other tests, as to whether my heart, pancreas, and everything else can take the surgery. 

I told him I understood. My Mother's Heart stopped during a hernia repair at Tripler and she died on the table. She was resurrected however. My own paternal grandfather and namesake, went to have his hernia repaired, and the doctor decided to fix his heart issues during the same procedure. He too died on the operating table. He wasn't resurrected however. 

I knew surgery, anesthesia, infection, healing and all the potential issues and complications of a simple hernia repair could lead to disastrous results if the body was already weakened in any one of numerous systems. I may be facing three hernia repairs.

I also sheepishly admitted that I had stopped taking all of my medications about six months ago.

Then my Doctor asked me the one question I didn't want to hear. "What if you get pancreatitis again?" I knew the answer, that neither of us wanted to hear. We were both very quiet for quite awhile. An awkward, painful reflective silence. Then I said, "Well, that would be it. Three strikes and I am out." 

I had barely survived the last episode, actually dying and coming back. We all know that the likelihood of me surviving one more episode like that is not very likely at all. I have been told that for years now. 

He asked me what kind of example do I want to be for my sons? For Elliott, going towards Medical School, and that future. I felt guilty, but said that a big motivation for Elliott to be a doctor is he saw his own family devastated by chronic disease. His father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and others. 

Elliott, just having turned 14, and watching his Father on Life Support, in a coma, the machines pumping and cooling my blood, respirator lifting my chest to breathe and every other mechanical contraption. Old enough to understand the physicians telling his Mother that I only had a 30% chance of survival in the ICU and seeing the terror and devastation on her face. Father of the Year Award for sure. 

My Doctor asked me if I wanted to be around to see Elliott become a Doctor. To graduate from Medical School. I said, somberly, "Yes..."

"Well, we have work to do." he responded.

Thus I enter a new Era in my Life. Lots of activities and things have to fall to the wayside. Priorities emerge crystal clear. Old habits, so hard to break, with a vice like grip on my Being, must not only break, but be shattered. 

I now will be in the Fight of my Life. The Fight for my Life. Yet, once again...