Yesterday, the nurse of the surgeon, who had cut a large polyp out of my colon, said the biopsy was benign and her doctor said he will see me in 5 years. I asked her to tell him that the prescription he had written in hope it would relax my colon was not working, and he had her call in a different prescription for me to try. I will try it, but if the past is any indication, it will not help.
One March morning in 1969, I realized I was constipated, and thus began my relationship with what medicine calls irritable bowel syndrome. There was no prior warning. I was fine, then I was tortured. By my own colon. Medicine tried, but had no answer. Sometimes I discovered a supplement or a meditation or an affirmation or an alternative electrical treatment that helped, and then my colon reacted horribly and I was terrified and quit using the supplement, and the threat stopped and my colon resumed torturing me in its accustomed way. That’s how I figured out whatever was behind it was intelligent.
I was moving deeper and deeper into alternative healing methods, which included herbs and different kinds of what was called bodywork, including body psychotherapy, which recognizes severe emotional trauma takes up residence somewhere in a person’s body and causes medical symptoms, which traditional medicine is not able to treat. A branch of medicine called “psychosomatic medicine” attempts to treat such symptoms via talk therapy. Sometimes patients get some relief, sometimes not.
In 1995, I trekked in Nepal from Pokhara up to Annapurna Base Camp and back down to another Nepal village. I was out there for two weeks. I did not see one car, truck, airplane or helicopter. I saw the most beautiful presentation Nature has to offer. I was having a steady stream of mystics experiences. Every morning after breakfast, I went to a privy and my bowel emptied completely. It was not like before the IBS began. It was much looser, but it was a good flushing out. After lunch, I went to a privy and there was a much smaller release, For 14 days it was like that. The morning after the trek ended, my bowel returned to is old torture me ways.
There would not be another reprieve.
Imagine living with that while living on the street. I imagine living with that while living with a woman. Imagine living with that while trying to raise children. Imagine living with that while trying to practice law, and before that, working for my father at Golden Flake in Birmingham, and before that, clerking for a federal judge in Birmingham, which was when it began.
Imagine me wondering many times what I did to cause it? For there was no other possibility that I could imagine. At least I know I do not have cancer in my colon. At least a magnesium supplement with ozone causes my colon to empty each day, which the colon surgeon recommended I keep doing. There is nothing pretty or easy about the supplement. It is unnatural and my colon doesn’t like it. The alternative is worse.
I do not write about this to complain. I write about it, because medicine tries but does not have all the answers and never will have all the answers. Nor will psychology or psychiatry have all the answers. Nor will body workers and therapists, of whom I knew many, and some of them trained me and I was one of them, have all the answers. Some of them told me that whatever was ailing me was beyond their range (pay grade). Nor do shamans have all the answers, because I am one, and I have known a few shamans, and I deeply respected them, but nobody can out smart God.
I quit trying to use those approaches, because I learned it was futile. I went back to living with it and doing my best to live my life as it presents itself each day. There was nothing else to do, but that. When my colon took a sudden turn for the worse last year, I finally decided it needed to be checked. If I had cancer, that needed to be dealt with. I don’t have cancer. I’m back to the old routine.
Yesterday, I told my physical therapist’s assistant that the pain in my back behind my heart, which showed up about 3 weeks ago, might have something do with my son who died. The body stores emotional trauma. I had had many visits back into that trauma over the years. The physical therapist's assistant said he would have to think about what I told him. I already had told the physical therapist.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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