Singin': This'll Be the
Day That I Die,
This'll Be
The Day That I Die
by
Bobbie L. Washington
I've never thought of myself as
anything special. I never had a lot of things growing up and never
expected much out of life as a kid when you live below a certain
economic line. However I did had my health. As far as I knew, I was
in general good health with the exception of having the whooping
cough that kept me out of school for seventeen days. Over the course
of time, I had sustain a back injury while in high school when my
elbows didn't lock and I fell back with a set of dead weights. Yeah,
that was pretty ugly at the time. I was in gymnastic and track and
field and the coaches weren't happy with that.
As I got older, college days were
unremarkable with no health problems or injuries. As the years went
by, I experienced a hernia problem, more specifically, a right
inguinal hernia that I suffered through for a month. I remember
tearing it because some lazy workers weren't doing their job and I
went and picked up some signage that wasn't my job to do. That was a
hard lesson to learn as you come to the reality that you will be cut
on and that you'll be carrying around a scar for the rest of your
life. It happens and you move on.
Time ticks on and you move on to
another career and friends. You're invited along to a restaurant
because your friends know that you are a vegetarian so you accept the
invitation. While dining at the establishment you bite down on a
cornbread muffin and then there is a loud pop. Everybody stops
eating and you spit of a chunk of glass. I know that's not a part of
the recipe. So you go the the doctor and you discover that you have
damaged the joint at the point where the mouth hinges to the skull
and know you have temporomandibular joint dyspepsia or TMJ. That
little dining experience cost me two years of having my mouth wired
shut. I had a choice though, either the doctor could wire my mouth
shut or he could go in a perform surgery and run the risk of hitting
one or more major nerve that stems for that joint. In other words, I
could have run the risk of losing my hearing, my sense of taste, my
vision, my smell or having some paralysis to the face. And I thought
having a scar would be the worst of that.
So you get through this chapter as well
in life. You learn a little more about yourself, you have the
ability to speak with your mouth closed and if you had to, take up
the art of ventriloquism. So what more could there be? Well, how
about appendicitis. I got that later on. I was eating a baked
potato and felt a slight twinge in my stomach. Me being a male
heterosexual, didn't think much of it and went to bed feeling fine.
As I slept, I felt the pain of a thousand pains hitting me in four
compartmental sections. I had not called anyone as I went through
that pain that night. So the next morning I wasn't okay but was
trying to figure out what was going on. I was in radio at the time
working as an executive producer and we had on doctors as guest to
talk about things in their respective fields. There as an internist,
a plastic surgeon, and a psychiatrist. My thinking was that this is
a panic attack so I called the psychiatrist. He said you should go
to the doctor but I insist that it must be a panic attack. After
four days of pain and not being able to move, I was taken by a friend
to the hospital and they were shocked. Nobody is suppose to live
past two days when their appendix burst and I waited four days. I
was thirty minutes away form circling the drain. All of my internal
organs had turned black. But this isn't the day that I died.
On January 29, 2015, I died. What led
up to this day was me not feeling great because I was stressed out
and working seven days a week doing architecture, filming and editing
and running a horse ranch. My sleeping habits were horrible
averaging three hours on occasions. I was peeing a lot, my vision
was blurry and I was tired all the time. I went to do some filming
and I didn't have the strength to pick up the camera case. I knew I
was in trouble then. I have always been a good researcher so I
googled my symptoms and the results told me that it was diabetes. I
didn't want to believe that. But this kept getting worse and a
finally asked a friend to drive to to a clinic to see what this was.
On the way there I had my first seizure. I lost the ability to speak
and my left arm fold on itself. I could understand what my friend
was saying as he drove me so that part of the brain was still
functioning. I arrived to the clinic and they told my friend to take
me to the hospital. This was drama building up as time was not on my
side. We take off to the hospital and when we arrive there for check
in, I had my second seizure. I'm wheeled into the ER and as a doctor
is seeing me I had to go pee. I make it to the restroom and back and
then I have my third seizure.
I told that I had conversations with
two of my colleagues there. I have no memory of that. I was
diagnosed DKA with is Diabetic Ketoacidosis and that's not a good
thing. What I found out three months later was that I had died.
What was it like? I didn't have this out of body seeing myself from
above experience. There was a void of nothing. There was time lost.
There was the darkness, just a sea of darkness. People have died
and come back and tell these glorious tale of seeing the light at the
end of some tunnel or seeing relatives or loved ones but I
experienced none of that. The only thing I remember was the quiet of
it all, no fanfare, no muss, a certain peacefulness to it all.
I'm a vegetarian, nonsmoker,
non-drinking, don't do drugs Type 1 diabetic. At best, I would say
that I'm at 75% with good days and bad days all rolled into one. I
was told that diabetics must consume 2000 calories per day. I'm
barely consuming 1000 calories a day. I'm not a big food person. If
there was a way to eliminate eating, I would do it. I find it to be
a chore and now it is since I have to do this three times a day. And
as I go through all of these test, they are finding other things that
are wrong with me internally. On the surface, I am a facade of
supposedly good health but beneath it, there are things that are
going on. Of the laundry list of health issue is something called an
aorta root dilation. I just know found out about this last month and
from what I found, it's not a good thing.
That male heterosexual thing is a
problem when it comes to man's health. We ignore pains in our body
until someone points out to you that this is the problem. I've been
having pain in my chest for quite sometime and this is the problem.
I will be seeing a cardiologist in September and I am not looking
forward to the conversation where they tell me that my chest will be
cracked open but at the same time, I'm resigned to that outcome. It
may not be as bad as I perceive or it could be as problematic as I
think. This may be the one where I won't come out of it. As
Captain James T. Kirk said in Wrath of Khan, “ I've cheated death.
I've
tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my
ingenuity.”
Maybe
I won't be able to cheat death this time out. I know I don't have
the strength because I'm always weak in the morning, low blood sugar.
Growing up in East St. Louis, Illinois, you witness a lot a bad
things including your friends dying of an early age due to violence
and drugs and car accidents. I've had my fair share of bullets
flying by me and car accidents over the years and as you get older,
you realize that you would like to live a long life. It's something
in your brain that gets turned on when you're in your twenties that
says there's more to life if only you give it a chance. I would like
to live a long life and impart some advice to that next generation.
I will try to hold on but if that is not the case, it's been a slice.
