They released me from the hospital on Thursday, just a handful of hours before I was supposed to board a plane for Africa. The simple task of going into Walmart in Frisco to pick up my medications and grab some food that conforms to my mandated restricted diet, wiped me out. I found myself leaning over the cart handle to rest, using the lattice of metal and plastic to hold me up.
As we drove to Denver, a battle waged inside.
“Maybe you could have made it to the plane! It would have been close, but you might have made it. Maybe you shouldn’t have canceled the trip. Maybe you could be on your way to Africa right now!”
“Nope, you wouldn’t have even made it to the airport in time. Plus, did you see how tired you were just walking around in Walmart? Like you could even think about hiking any mountain right now, much less Kili.”
“But…maybe. Maybe I could still try. Maybe I don’t have to let this go.”
“Yes. You do. Let it go.”
My husband, a total champ in the hospital, was starting to unravel. I think we both had held ourselves together during this crisis with everything we had…and now we were crumbling. Me, dipping into despair and self-pity. Him, spinning up with anxiety and waspishness. I was in no mood to take on his Mr. Crankypants routine. We did several rounds of him being snappy and mean, me telling him to knock that shit off, and him saying sorry. I wasn’t sure how many rounds I had in me before I just lost my shit.
When we checked into the hotel in Denver, I could barely stand up. Fatigue pinned me on the floor and laughed at my efforts to fight her.
When we got to the room, I collapsed on the bed and realized we hadn’t eaten since my “see I can eat solid food!” breakfast in the hospital. It was my final test before they allowed me to leave, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be.
“I am upgrading you to a soft mechanical diet.” The doc looks at his chart and smiles, as if I should know what that means.
“So, I can eat solid food now?”
“Well, yes, technically. But not really. You can eat food, but you can only have things that are easy on the bowels and easy to digest. Nothing with too much fiber, or anything hard, crunchy or scratchy. Your intestines are still inflamed and thin. You don’t want to eat something that could tear your bowel, or you will come right back here and probably end up having surgery. No, you must be very careful.”
“I see. So, what does this mean? What can I eat?” I was still sitting in that damn hospital bed with an IV in my right elbow, a heart monitor on my left middle finger, and a tube in my nose to supply me with more oxygen at this altitude.
“Soft foods and things low in fiber. No fruit, vegetables, or whole grains. You can have white bread, white rice, meat is ok but nothing too tough. Eggs, cheese, yogurt. Things like that.”
Shit. So, avoid everything I would normally try to eat for health reasons. No veg. No whole grains. No fruit. WHITE bread and WHITE rice? When was the last time I ate that crap? This sucks big hairy donkey balls! How am I supposed to repopulate my ravaged bowels with good belly bugs if I can’t eat the food that feeds them?
“It’s that, or you come back and I’ll see you tomorrow. This time, with my scalpel.”
Crap in a handbasket, Wonder Bread here I come!
After that, I had my first “solid” meal in four days. Scrambled eggs with cheese, a biscuit, and a banana (the one fruit I am allowed to eat). It did the same thing as my creamy soup diet from the day before, a ripple of pain and discomfort for 30 minutes, followed by generally feeling yucky and tired. But this was all supposedly fine and totally expected for my condition. I wonder what a “bad” reaction to food looks like.
So, as I lay on the hotel bed in Denver, I contemplated what I could eat. I wasn’t really hungry, but I thought I should try to eat. After looking at the map in my phone, I found a Noodle & Co. down the street and ordered mac and cheese with chicken. Most of what I wanted all came with mushrooms, or broccoli, or some other thing I couldn’t eat. Bastien went to pick up our food and we watched Mrs. Maisel until we fell asleep.
The next morning (yesterday) I got a text in the group thread for Kilimanjaro. It was the person who was supposed to arrive around the same time as me and share the shuttle to the hotel. She was already there, talking about seeing the mountain on the drive and being awestruck by it.
I fell in to deep chasm. I went into the bathroom to…you know, and cried. I wanted so badly to BE there, to see Africa, to see Kilimanjaro! Not the inside of a god-damn Hilton in Denver.
I don’t want to see Yellowstone again, I want to see the Serengeti! I don’t want to go to Wisconsin, I want to go to Africa!
I felt sad, and devastated, and angry, while grasping onto something that was already gone. Hello Grief, it’s very unpleasant to see you again. Please go away and leave me be. I even had a moment of missing and wanting my mama, something else that’s already gone.
As I moved through the day yesterday, I tried. I tried to combat the deep fatigue and my despair. Sometimes, I managed to perk up a bit but mostly I nursed my sad. I went to the bookstore to look for US travel books that might inspire me to see something this summer…but if it didn’t say Africa, I couldn’t get excited over it.
Even while standing there, I realized how fortunate I am and how grateful I should feel. How lucky can I be that my biggest problem is finding some other cool thing to do for the next two months? I thought of all the people who get no time off, all those who are too broke to travel, or too sick, or…so many people that maybe never have the opportunity to see Yellowstone or Wisconsin. I look at these travel books, and see all the Southwest and I say, “Eh, I’ve been there already.” I see Alaska and say, “that was last summer.” Hawaii, check. Utah, check. Montana and Wyoming, check check. Pacific Northwest, check. Really, I feel grateful and fortunate, but also still sad.
We did make one pretty cool stop on our drive from Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming. In Loveland, Colorado there’s a park called Chapungu Sculpture Park situated behind a fancy mall. It is over 20 acres with more than 80 stone sculptures from Zimbabwe (I saw something from Africa!). Rather than highly manicured, the park is left with natural vegetation around a few ponds with foot bridges, woven with paths taking you to different stone sculptures. I really enjoyed it, but only saw about half of the sculptures because I got tired and felt yucky after a half mile of walking. I laid down on a bench in the shade while my husband saw the rest of the park.
So…this state of sad and mopey is stupid. I know it. I am so lucky in life. Heck, I had multiple conversations with doctors and nurses about how LUCKY it is that I got sick before I got on the plane. This could have been a story of being medevacked off the mountain. Or, I might not be here to tell the story at all if I was halfway up Kili and they couldn’t get me adequate medical care fast enough.
I know how truly fortunate I am. But I also accept that feeling sad over this is ok…normal.
Maybe today will be better. We plan to drive from Cheyenne to Thermopolis, WY. On the way we will see the Quebec 01 missel sight that my husband is excited about, and the town of Casper. If we get to Thermopolis early enough, we will stop at the Hot Springs State Park before heading to our campground, The Fountain of Youth RV Park (selected because it has its own thermal pools too). I do love a good hot spring!