My Terminal Illness 2014

I am remembering this because now we are again having our Provincial Assembly.  But everything is different!

Here we are in 2014, in Saint Louis.

and here are 20 of the almost 200 of us on Zoom in 2020.

It was at the conclusion of our Provincial Assembly, an event which occurs ever six years.  Our assembly was held in a hotel in Saint Louis.  I am embarrassed to confess that I remembered the food more than the meetings. The food was superb. Not much detail remembered. Just not the rubber chicken food one usually gets st such meetings. Our sisters who were on the food committee did a superb job.  I ate like a horse. I remember feeling rather stuffed at night and having trouble getting to sleep, but I continued to eat up a storm. 

It was at the end of the meeting, when we were boarding busses to take us to the airport, that my stomach began to hurt.  To make a long story shorter, I began to throw up in the airport restroom. This is so awful: I was throwing up whole, totally undigested raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, salad, and kalamata olives.  I kept throwing up until we boarded the plane, and by then I was throwing up gallons of coffee. I filled three “barf bags” on the plane tie from St. Louis to Baltimore. The Sister who sat next to me kept providing me with bags. 

We disembarked in Baltimore and I continued to throw up.  I even threw up on the grass outside our convent in Baltimore, where everyone agreed that I should spend the night. It was a rough night, as everything continued to empty out.

I rode back to Emmitsburg in a van the next morning with some other sisters who were returning there.

By then I was convinced that I had contracted some kind of Norovirus .  

Two days later, still very ill, I drove myself to the ER At Gettysburg Hospital (not wanting to make a big deal ). I told them my ordeal in the ER and that I thought I had a Norovirus. I was extremely dehydrated. And they admitted me and put me in a single room and wore protective gear because of the fear of Norovirus. 

The CAT scans and X-rays and all came back and the surgeon came in to tell me I didn’t have  Norovirus; I had a partial bowel Obstruction.  So they kept me on IV. And nothing by mouth for four days and the Obstruction reversed itself and I went home.

It took me almost five years of misery and repeated episodes of bowel Obstructions ( though none so bad as the first). Got me to agree to repair surgery- a small bowel resection. ( this was all due to radiation damage from cancer treatment back in 2009).  Successful surgery!  I’ve been free from that problem ever since.

Why am I recalling this now?  Because it’s six years and we are having our Provincial Assembly. But this time we’re all at home, and on Zoom.  If anyone would have told us in 2014 that we would be in this situation, we would never have believed them.  COVID19 and Donald Trump! What will happen to our country?