5th Anniversary

April 3^rd 2006, I started a blog called The BlissQuest.

What began as an attempt to keep friends and family posted on my travels became an exceptionally amazing experience about the odd interconnectedness of the world via the medium of the internet.

Five years later, I still blog. Five years later I am still trying to find the balance of doing what I must and doing what I love. Five years later I’m in touch with friends I’ve met along the journey. Five years later.

When I started blogging, I struggled with things like; voice, truth, protecting the unsuspecting, shielding identities, embellishments, honesty and the fear that at any given moment – speaking the truth would get me burned at the stake, a fear that proved valid time and again. And I understood for the first time in my life – that not everyone is ready, capable and willing to see themselves through the eyes of another person. And I began to feel five years later that I no longer had the right to hang my perspective up for all the world to see. That I no longer had the right to keep blogging my experiences.

Then last August I was lying in a hospital bed in the emergency room, waiting to bleed out enough for the blood transfusion that was standing by. I knew they wouldn’t give it to me until I reached a critical point and all they could do for the moment was try to stop the hemorrhaging and keep me hydrated.

The little room was sterile, vacant of any warmth or humanity. Machine lights blinked and the sharp lights overhead washed out all the colors. In the room on my right was a car accident victim- blood and crash carts in and out of the curtain. The room on my left was an accidental child poisoning. The parents weeping and hovering as their little girl might not make it.

And I sat in the room in the middle, feeling embarrassed, ashamed, like I was taking up space for more important emergencies because I had a stupid hemorrhaging vagina. Although I was soaking through the largest tampons they had in a couple of minutes and bleeding all over the absorbent dog pads I was lying on – I still felt like I should be able to suck it up and make some room for the people who really needed it.

When I’d walked into the emergency room, they actually rushed me past people waiting in the lobby. I told them my symptoms and the pain and they skipped me past a guy with a broken arm and a woman rocking a sleeping baby. I felt terrible. Disgusting. Like I was cheating good people out of time they needed.

And while I was lying in the bed, pale and shivering, getting weaker by the moment, I thought, “Fuck. I so didn’t see this coming.” For the first time since my diagnosis – I began to believe I might die.

For months, I’d told everyone it was no big deal. “Just a little tumor” or “it’s not a lung transplant, no problem” I’d say to people. Because the last thing I wanted to do was talk about my girly bits, and have people worrying over my lady parts.

While I waited for my doctors to get the results of the blood work and ultrasounds and x-rays – I thought, “What if this is what kills me? It’s like the ultimate freaking irony. This is what I get for making Vag jokes for four years on the interweb.”

Then I thought, if this is the end – I never saw myself dying at a desk for someone else. I’m going to die at ITT? IT fuckingT? How is that fair?

And the bleeding began to slow.

Ebb.

Trickle.

I decided that if I found a way out of this mess, I would find a way out of ITT. I would find sunlight and bliss and joy again and I would put all of this – all of it behind me.

The doctor returned and told me that “You have a truly impressive tumor.” It had become so large, the weight was now ripping the capillaries as the uterus was being dragged down by the mass and the blood wouldn’t stop until the tumor came out.

He suggested I set up an appointment with a surgeon for the next immediate appointment, for what would probably be a total hysterectomy.

Admiral Fubar showed up at the hospital with a potato and a bottle of water. It was his innocent, loving desire to be helpful that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks that  – this would not be the way I go. Could not. Would not. I simply wouldn’t let it happen.

I went home in total denial. This is not and will not happen.

And it was the BlissQuest that helped me remember how I would pull this off. I lay in bed reading post after post of what I used to feel like. How I used to be and what sort of strengths and weaknesses I had. I read all your comments and ideas, voices and stories and it gave me courage I’d forgotten I had.

Working in a corporate meat-grinder for four years, I’d forgotten what I am actually like. How I live, and what I truly want from this life experience.

I read the notes to self and started sobbing. Because I remembered how I am going to die, and this was not it. A fucking bleeding tumor was not in the end cards for me.

My vanity worked in my favor because I simply refused to be beaten by such a stupid thing. There was no adventure in it. There was no true potential reward for the risk of this death that would make it worth accepting the challenge of possibly dying. Ergo – it was not a viable end for the BlissQuest.

And once I put it in my mind like that. “Not an acceptable end for the BlissQuest.”

This bombastic, cocky, egotistical, grandiose way of thinking, I am too good for this kind of death – suddenly made it possible to tell people and actually believe it this time, that – “All will be well” and “it’s no big deal”.

I booked an operation with my surgeon and took all the rounds of drug treatment she suggested. Once I knew this chapter was ending so that a better chapter could get under way – I did everything she said, because it was one step after another in a climb out of this hole into the light.

And this is the BlissQuest, so there would be light.

It was the longest surgery she’d ever had to save a uterus. To save my option to have kids some day. To keep most of my parts. To invite other doctors to come look at my case while I was under the anesthesia to document the rarity of my particularly advanced case.

And she saved my uterus. She saved my ovaries. She rescued one fallopian tube. And she believes I can attempt a family some day if I ever decide to try. I went in at 5:30 am and came home 12 hours later. Six months of drug therapy and a year ahead of hormone therapy.

And I am back. For a minute. Okay maybe more than a minute. I thought I might die or lose all of my reproductive organs. But I am back. I survived it and per my promise to myself I am finding the light. I left ITT and am closer to happiness than I’ve been in years.

It was dark down there. But there was this place. A safety on the web. A little nook that held for me, all your voices. It held your contributions. It kept your answers and concern and your ever reaching thoughts together for me and I want to thank you all.

Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, from the deepest center of my core and the wealth of all my gratitude. Thank you.

Thank you for reading the BlissQuest. Thank you for leaving your comments. Thank you for stopping by and letting me know I was not floating out there alone. Thank you.

Thank you for helping this place to thrive with a new life and helping me to get back up when I just wanted to curl up and sleep for a hundred years – thank you for reaching. For sharing. For encouraging me.

Even when I was too afraid to ask for help, too proud or scared. You offered.

And I thank you.

I don’t know how to repay that generosity, and that thoughtfulness except to keep doing this. To keep blogging. Keep questing for bliss and adventure and quality of life and sharing what I learn that may help someone someday. To put all my experiences up for the world. There may be one person who benefits and I can pay it forward. Maybe. I hope.

Furthermore, I intend to open the BlissQuest to contributors. The search for Bliss it not best served from my very limited perspective. I believe there are stories and adventures and wisdom to be shared from some regular fans and readers and friends.

Therefore over the next year or so, I will be asking some people to add their voices to this nook. This place of safety to carry forward with the tradition and add what they had learned as well.

With health back in the cards like it hasn’t been in a few years, I am thirsty for adventure and have made arrangements to start being out, causing harmless mischief and testing the boundaries of life again.

For this five year anniversary, I hope that you can join me in some of these adventures throughout the summer. I will post in advance the things we will be doing and I hope that you can come celebrate and toast to the surprising knowledge that we are still here.

Believe me. No one is more surprised about that than I am. Five years later.

It turns out that a lot can happen in five years. Where will we all be five years from now?

Let’s find out.