As my CALLING has been patient..
And your Calling with you..
As Callings are non temporal..
They are Intuition made tangible guide..
Sealed with God's Knowing Nod..
And So It Is...
Jeffrey Louis Martinez
While those few indelible, ethereal moments were my first conscious experiences with my soul's attempt to assist me in remembering my calling, THANK GOD they were not the last. I have since learned the hard way, from what Jeff Brown calls the ‘School of Heart Knocks’(we've ALL been enrolled), that callings are not so much something in our path, but rather something we are in the path of. Eventually, if you do not get outta the way, your calling, as my dad used to say, will literally KICK your ass thru the goalpost of life. ~~ Don't believe me? Keep refusing YOURS! ;0)
For that moment, the thought of my calling was put on hold, as the door to the hospital waiting room swayed open, with my doctor not far behind.
“Jeff, we have the test results back. I need you to have a seat, ” he said with a sense of conviction.
My mom immediately burst into tears with the prescient thoughts of the words still to come.
“Jeff, you have a disease called Ulcerative Colitis, ” he told me.
Always having been known as the ‘good, devout Catholic son’, my very first inclination took over my thoughts, as I quickly turned to my mom and blurted intensely, “I SWEAR TO GOD I'M A VIRGIN MOM. SWEAR TO GOD I'M A VIRGIN.”
The reactive stare back from my doctor quickly detoured my thoughts away from me having contracted a sexual transmitted ANYTHING, to something potentially more challenging.
Over the next few minutes, the doctor explained to my mom and me that Ulcerative Colitis is a form of inflammatory bowel disease that causes extreme swelling, inflammation, and ulcers in the colon.
Immediately, I would need to be put on a rather large regimen of medications, some of which could cause serious side effects such as prednisone. All of which would be with the goal of suppressing my immune system, which was no longer able to determine good bacteria from bad, and thus was attacking a good portion of my digestive system.
SUDDENLY, sooooooo many things were starting to make sense. The sharp pains I would periodically have deep in my gut. The depth of fatigue that had caused me to sleep through most of study hall and miss a plethora of bus stops because I had passed out during the ride home from school. The fact that I was just a hair under six feet tall, and weighed a buck 45, no matter how much food I tried to scarf down. (My dad would tease me by saying I was so skinny, I had to dance in the shower to get wet.. LOL)
In fact, despite being a standout athlete my freshman and sophomore years, I was cut from the Varsity baseball team in my junior year, as I was too sick to make the two weeks of 'tryouts'.
Despite what my doctors have called a ‘Super Hero’ like pain tolerance, it's not like I hadn't tried to alert my parents to how I was feeling all through most of both junior high and high school.
I recall one morning my freshman year of high school, I was out walking our family dog Muffin, when I passed gas so hard I almost did a front flip over the pup. I got back to the house just minutes later, looked down at my jeans, and saw that blood was seeping through both sides of the now seriously stained denim. My mom was getting ready for work, and upon seeing me standing there like a male version of ‘Carrie’ rushed me into see the family doctor. After his examination, I was told that NERVES were the likely cause and sent home with a prescription for a nightly sedative. I KID YOU NOT.
The next few weeks were spent visiting a variety of gastrointestinal specialists, most of whom performed various tests that usually ended with me, once again, laying on my right side, doing my best impersonation of a human ‘Roto-Rooter’. This excessive poking and prodding in and around my Rooty-Tooti-Booty, caused the emergence of what one doctor called, "The biggest damn hemorrhoid on God's green acres!" It also meant I would be spending the rest of that summer sitting on an inflatable donut. If anyone ever asked, I would slyly tell them I was protecting my ‘jello pudding pop’. NUFF SAID! LOL
I was soon confronted with the first truly big decision of my life. I was still extremely anemic and it even with a Gi-normous regimen of iron tablets, it would take several weeks if not months for my body to produce enough blood platelets to bring my body back to normal, healthy levels. This was back in the 80's remember, AIDS was a hot button and blood transfusions were still a rather risky proposition. My doctors said that while I could certainly use a transfusion, that the risk of contracting something was high.
After talking it over with my parents, we decided to forgo a transfusion, but help lower the risk of complications due to my anemic condition by keeping me home, in a restful and stress free state.
All this proved to to super successful, until that night. The night that I was first visited by THE ELDERS.................
Tomorrow: Making of a New Age Nerd Part 3
Nerdmaste,
Jeffrey Louis Martinez
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