He Was Sick of Being Sick

“A colostomy? You mean wear a bag that I go to the bathroom in? No,” Ralph said. “Absolutely not. No way. What are my other options?”

The doctor explained that Ralph could go through chemotherapy and radiation and not have the colostomy. He could choose not to have any of the surgeries. Or he could go through chemo and radiation and have the colostomy, which was what he, the doctor, recommended as the best route.

“I’ve got to go home and think about this,” Ralph said. “I’ll get back to you later.”

Ralph drove home, not saying much to his wife sitting next to him.

Where had his life gone? He had been in perfect health until one day last spring. It started with stomach pain. Then the doctors had discovered cancer in his stomach. They had taken that out, said he was fine. Then when he went back in for a checkup, they discovered more cancer, this time in his colon. It was all getting to be too much. Way too much. He hadn’t felt good for over eight months.

Now this doctor was telling him he wanted him to wear a bag? “Honey, I want you around,” his wife said. “But it’s your body and your life. You decide what you want to do.”

It’s hard to get sick. It can affect our emotions, our relationships, our faith, and our quality of life. It’s another time when it helps to hunker down, pull out our emergency self-care procedures, and gently take care of ourselves the best that we can.

We don’t have to be getting older for our bodies to break down. Some people are born with physical handicaps. Some people get very sick, very young. Some people live to be one hundred with almost no physical ailments at all.

I’ve known people who were paralyzed and people with no legs who jump out of airplanes. I know one man who had a colostomy years ago. He’s in his early seventies now. He drives to the drop zone each day—on a motorcycle—and jumps out of a plane just to keep himself young.

I know another woman who had a serious form of polio and spent most of her young and adult life in a nursing home, so severely handicapped that she’d be stuck on the toilet for hours until a nursing assistant remembered her and came to help. When she turned fifty, she rented her own apartment. She has a boyfriend now. Because of her physical handicaps and his, they hire a sex aid in order to make love.

I know a woman who’s lived with HIV for years. She’s young, beautiful, and has a safe and active love life (both romantic and with friends). She has more suitors than most women I know.

Broken down or in great shape, it’s your body.

People can tell us what to eat and when—no cholesterol, low cholesterol, the Zone, no meat, lots of pasta, no eggs. Sometimes it seems like everyone says a different thing. At any given time in history, something on the food shelves at the grocery store screams, Don’t eat me or you’ll die.

We can listen to what the doctor says. We can get a second, third, and fourth opinion. We can go holistic or Western medicine or a combination of both. We can take whatever medicine a doctor gives us or we can ask questions and get information.

But if we’re over eighteen, deciding what to do with, what to put into, and how to medically treat our bodies is our choice and ours alone.

From the book: Choices: Taking Control of Your Life and Making It Matter

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