On death, dying and living...to be continued

The reason I’m here instead of We’moon and womyn’s land is because I have to have a procedure on Monday – 2 procedures actually. I’ve been having reoccurring yet intermittent side pain that I decided the last time it almost debilitated me for 4 days that I need to prioritize it and get to the bottom.

I was hoping I could go to we’moon plus do the procedure next week but it didn’t work that way so here I am at Mendocino National Forest and the Red Bluff Sycamore Grove Campground. When Tessie was little, we often went to Mendocino National Forest but by Lake Pillsbury – it was one of my most favorite camping places, close enough to the Bay to get to quickly and isolated, up steep inclines with no drinking water so it eliminated RV’s – the scourge of camping in the day – and other wooses who couldn’t be so independent. Not me and Tess though!

There was also a state (I think) campground just before taking the for Pillsbury by yet another lake – but this one was more expensive and more policed or rangered.

This Sycamore Grove is probably the farthest north of the forest – and also the most developed – it has flushing toilets, showers, and electrical hookups – most things not found in the national forest.

I’m needing both a colonoscopy and an endonoscopy or something like that – where my doc will take a camera and look up my butt (bottom, as she says) and also go thru my mouth into my stomach and look around. She say that often side pain is associated with the stomach, which most people don’t know, so she’ll be looking for ulcers, polyps and the like.

Of course, I’m worried about cancer, there being sooooooo much cancer in my biological family. I’m finished with the breast cancer fear, I’ve passed that hump now that I’m 66, and moved on to the colon cancer fear. I believe my great-grandmother (my mother’s grandmother) had colon cancer. She was one that never made it out of Germany, so she was one that was never talked about, but my grandmother did tell me once that her mother had colon cancer the same time as hitler was in power because she said she wouldn’t wish the pain on anyone, not even hitler.

Death dying and living: I’ve been so fortunate, I’ve never been afraid of dying, even after my ‘near death’ experiences. I’ve been afraid of suffering –with cancer, with torture, with awareness – but dying itself doesn’t scare me, at least I don’t think it does.

The times when I’ve been in situations where I’ve thought “this could kill me or end up with me dead” I’ve ploughed forward, keeping my eye on the goal and not caring if it cost my life.

My grandson has been talking with me about dying. He is afraid of death & I’m trying to reassure him that death is not all that scary. I think living a life that is not the one you want, or that is meaningless to you, or makes you miserable is a much worse fate than dying.

He’s really worried about me dying. He often asks me how long I think I’ll live for, how old will he be when I die. When I tell him no one knows when they’ll die and I certainly don’t know when I’ll die, he asks me well, how long do I want to live for.

I can answer that: I tell him as long as I am healthy and independent. But he’s not accepting this. He lets me know that if I get sick, he will take me to the hospital and they will make me better. I tell him, to his utter shock and sadness, hospitals can’t always make you better.