Body Parts

I have a friend named Winston, who has lost many body parts due to his diabetes. They call him the miracle man, though he prefers to be called your royal highness. Winston and I joke that heaven is taking us piece by piece because we refuse to give up on life.

With each surgery I have had, I've seen it as a steppingstone to becoming the authentic me. Though aesthetically that may not be as pleasing as I would like, now that I had to have a tooth pulled out because the root cracked. Luckily, modern medicine can provide me with an implant to fix my smile from its imperfection.

In Winston's case, his missing limbs classify him as disabled. Missing an eye, several toes, a leg from the knee down, and his kidneys. Winston is anything but disabled spiritually and mentally even though his physical disabilities classify him that way.

My own missing parts are less visual to the naked eye though each scar reminds me of what I've been through. This is not a woe is me chapter, for each part taken has saved me from pain, inability, and death. Whereas my girlfriend Lori-Beth’s scars revealed the nineteen knife entrances that her ex-fiancée created when he expressed his anger.

Lori-Beth's scars mutilated her gorgeous body at the age of twenty-nine, but thanks to her love of tattoos, her scars have become a tapestry of a symbolic rebirth. Butterflies, flowers, words of love, and Angel wings remind her, and I that she survives. I don't think I could ever get a tattoo, once I got a henna tattoo of “live love and enjoy life”. After two days on my ankle, I already was tired of its placement, and the font.

My scars are my tattoos. Each placed exactly where God intended. I trust that. There is an ancient Chinese proverb which shares that scars are where the light comes through. The light of life is a life force energy which I accept as a gift from heaven. I also accept the idea that each body part has a significant purpose even greater than its physical assignment.

The Roby chart is a holistic approach to understanding the location of energy within the body. When energy is stuck, motion is needed. In my case, the motion taken in several surgeries marked me with scars to recognize my own body.

At the age of fifteen, I had my second surgery. The first surgery was when I was in third grade to place tubes in my ears to help with my speech difficulties due to some hearing loss. The tubes corrected my hearing allowing my voice to enunciate words clearer. That surgery was a success and didn't leave any scars except for the memory of nausea after waking up from the anesthesia.

At 15 years old, I had an umbilical hernia repaired. I had been born with the umbilical hernia and the doctors felt that not repairing it would have risks for me one day if I were to carry a child. I was in and out of surgery on the same day for that procedure. It left me with a little scar in the shape of a smile under my adorable new “Innie” belly button. I had always wanted to wear a bikini, but I was embarrassed about having an outtie belly button, so I didn't.

The summer after my second surgery, I relished sunbathing with my flat stomach exposed. My cousin Wendy and I loved laying in the sun, and we tanned really well. We credited our tanned bodies due to our homemade sunscreen concoction of iodine, Crisco baking grease, and baby oil. Seriously! A few summers later I burnt my chest badly in the sun because I only used baby oil, after that I began buying pre-made sunscreen which protected me from sunburn.

Being tall and lean, a tan complimented my features. My mom once shared that she and my father discussed how beautiful I was, and my dad told her we didn't make a beautiful girl we made a gorgeous girl. Mom was a little jealous and he told her “Well, I think you are beautiful, but our daughter is gorgeous.”

Gorgeous or beautiful didn't matter to me. I never felt either about myself because my hair never grew the luscious length, I wanted it to, nor my boobs. And when my bikini wearing days were abruptly ended after my third surgery, I definitely felt less than beautiful.

I wasn’t even a month into my 16th year when I was scheduled for immediate surgery to determine if I had a cancerous growth. My parents never told me that the doctors suspected cancer until years later. I was extremely lucky it wasn’t cancerous because three nights before my surgery, I attended a Toga Party at school. It was a party I planned as Junior Class President so there was no way I was missing it. The doctors told my parents I shouldn’t have gone because the tumor could have ruptured. Obviously if it were cancer, that would have been really bad. Like I said, luckily, it didn’t rupture, and it wasn’t cancer, however what it left me with was devastating to my teenage bikini worthy body.

That surgery left me with a three-inch-wide scar from belly button to my pubes. I felt like damaged goods. When they removed the staples, I fainted. When I saw the incision, I was nausea, and immediately started silently sobbing. The doctor and my mother wanted to know what was so upsetting. I said, “Now I can't be a stripper.” Stunned, my mother said, “did you plan to be a stripper?” Crying harder I said, “No, but now that option is gone. I liked knowing I had options.” It was a serious moment, but today I laugh hearing my own grief being expressed that way.

Since that surgery, I have had well over two dozen more. Multiple laparoscopy procedures to remove endometriosis, a D&C to remove a belated ovum, which is a pregnancy without a heartbeat, two teeth extractions, two meniscus surgeries, a trapesicotomy to remove my trapezoid joint in my right hand and replaced it with a tendon from my right arm. Five nose surgeries to fix breathing and bleeding issues. A repeated umbilical hernia repair, a few colonoscopies under anesthesia, a procedure to remove something within my broch tube, as well as two total knee replacements.

Heaven really does have a trunk full of my body parts, including some really important ones…my right ovary, my right thumb, my first pregnancy, a few teeth, and my two knees. At least I know my parts have company with Winston’s toes, eye, leg, foot, and kidneys; along with Lori-Beth’s kidney and spleen.

It may sound silly that I know people who have lost so many organs, but I have. My aunt received a double lung transplant in 2011, and for five years her lungs waited for her in heaven. I have another friend, Lauren, that has had two heart transplants and a kidney transplant. Her second heart transplant was needed after the first failed. Just as she was losing hope for the second heart, the NFL Quarterback for the Patriots, Gronk presented her with the news that they found a match for her second heart. It was a really exciting day. Thankfully she survived that surgery and after over four years, she is still successfully thriving with that donor’s heart and recently engaged to be married.

Sometimes I imagine I gave my own parts to someone needing them. A knee here, a thumb there. I am grateful to have been repaired, just as my aunt was when she received new lungs, and Winston when he received his brother’s kidney, and Lauren with a stronger heart, etc. I know all these body parts were taken from us on earth to save us. I don’t know why others had to die to save another, but I can’t contemplate that on this particular page.

I have imagined that all these removed body parts are at a bar in heaven just waiting for us to reclaim them. I imagine they went through a process of repair, restoration, and then… my knees walked into that bar, meet up with two hearts, two lungs, a spleen, and many other parts of my friends. They are spending time together waiting for us to join them one day. That's a crazy scene right there.

Well, my knees are now bionic, 100% titanium, and it's given me better mobility and removed my pain. I am thankful for modern medicine which has provided me with life altering repairs and lifesaving procedures.

My great grandmother was not so lucky. She gave birth to a stillborn in the early 1900s. There was no technology to detect nor remove unhealthy pregnancies. To make matters more traumatic, after she gave birth, she herself died. There were no lifesaving procedures.

I was devastated to learn I had to have a D & C. I am thankful the doctors prevented me from going septic and dying like my great grandmother.

Recently I had a childhood friend die from septic. It is profoundly serious, and the signs can often be silent. Which is exactly what happened to my great grandmother. My girlfriend Michelle was recovering from pneumonia and didn't know it was happening. Though her energy was low, and she didn't feel well, she didn't think she was dying. She imagined it was part of a slow healing process, but once at the ER there was no reversing it. She was 51 years old.

I am fifty-four at this moment of writing. I am the same age my grandfather was when he died of a heart attack. The body parts in heaven that I know have increase in numbers so quickly. My grandparents, my knees, my friends, my Angel baby, and my twin.

I rarely talked about my twin. About 10 years ago after the movie Pitch Perfect was released, I began to. In the movie, a shy low speaking Asian girl shares her unique secret -she ate her twin in the womb. After hearing that line, I shared with my family and friends that I did that too.

The year my bikini was tossed away was when my twin’s body parts went to heaven. I was fourteen. During that exploratory surgery to discover why my belly began protruding as if I was a model for starving Ethiopian children, the doctors discovered I had a 3 1/2 lb. six-inch dermoid cyst engulfing my right ovary.

They sent the tumor to Yale University for studies. We learned it was a dermoid cyst, which was a twin in utero. It seems I engulfed the twin in utero, or at least took the nutrients which forced it not to thrive. My mother always thought she was having twins but when just me, Angel A came out and there was no proof of an Angel B.

The doctors showed us photos of the remains of the twin, a large cyst was filled with teeth, hair, nails, and bones -the remnants of a baby. All stuck within me for 14 years. The energy of two beings was within me. I learned that this type of DNA is referred to as a chimera. I never knew I was a chimera until I heard what it was.

The living proof of a chimera is their DNA carries two sets of DNA. All pregnant women become chimeras during their pregnancy for they carry their own DNA, and their Childs. After birth, the DNA separates. However, in my case, I absorbed the DNA of my twin, thus making them both my own. Of course, this sounds like a fictional tale, but there are more people who have absorbed their twin than people would ever know. Luckily for me, I absorbed her internally, but there are others who have absorbed their twin and became a Siamese twin or had to live with giant tumors which were not only scary looking, but extremely uncomfortable.

At the age of fourteen, when I hit puberty, my own hormones were feeding the dermoid cyst, thus creating it to grow. The body of a fetus did not grow, however the fluid within the cyst unexplainably grew large rather quickly, therefore I was scheduled for the exploratory surgery which confirmed my mother's pregnancy suspicions.

Spiritually I've always connected to my twin. I consider her a girl. I kept it secret for many years, fearing people would think I was crazy. Mentally and emotionally, I considered my connection to her to be a direct connection to God. As I was raised Catholic and understood all children are created in his likeness, thus a part of him.

Today I still believe we are all part of God’s creation, parts of him scattered on earth to experience life, make the world a better place, and accept there is no worry about what happens when we die. Perhaps, these beliefs are not true but for me, they are my truth. I believe all my body parts which have been removed from my physical body carry my own God spirit reflecting back to me.

Most people keep their spirit contained within their physical body armor, but my armor has been pierced multiple times. All saving me from death, yet giving me guilt about living, and a lot of energy to explore why.