Conflated

I have the irrational tendency to blend painful events together, especially when they happen within a similar time frame.  I think it gives me something tangible to be angry/sad/frustrated over when I feel helpless about life.

For example, several years ago, a person I thought of as a dear friend proved herself, in terrific fashion, to be anything but a friend.  She revealed herself not just to be not at all the person I believed her to be, but also she was vicious and horrible.  Shortly after this event, the Old Woman got sick and started her spiral towards her last days.  It was easier to be even MORE angry with my ex-friend than to shake my fists at the skies because one of the people I love most in the world was suffering.

Now that I have, pretty much, fully recovered from my bizarro medical issue, I find that not only do I have some delayed trauma reactions, but I've also tied, in my mind, some of the pain to the loss of my dear friend who committed suicide about a year ago.

In the last six months, I've experienced:

5 emergency room visits
2 ambulance transfers to another hospital
3 surgeries
3 CTs
3 radiology guided procedures
2 blood transfusions
10 staples
6 weeks of home health care
7 weeks with a wound-vac
4 hospital admissions totaling 18 days
and more needles, blood draws, IVs than I can count.

And, as I start to think about just exactly how serious my condition was, I find myself thinking more and more about how much I miss my friend.  Allowing myself to be sad over his death seems to be protecting me from being too freaked out about thinking about my whole abdomen being opened up.

Damn I miss my friend.