Pass The Salt And Ketchup "My Life Story" Part 1

Pamela, what’s your pain threshold on a scale of 1 to 10? “20” I responded. The doctor asked me once again. Maam, if you could rate your pain on a scale right now with 10 being the highest threshold where would you rank it? Whispering I responded again, “20 sir I have never felt anything like this before” Here I am at Piedmont Hospital emergency room waiting for a room to become vacant, thinking to myself “I must be dying. This must be the end for real this time, no way can I survive this.” Skillful and tactful is what I had become at dismissing all pain in my life. I had overcome physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and whatever else you could name. Even, death when a gun was placed to my head, the trigger was pulled, but it jammed. The list goes on. So, yes, I was a Broken Mess! I was tough and I was prideful! Trials, tribulation and affliction can have redemptive purposes, but they can also motivate one to develop a dependability on self. I did not trust anybody. Finally, I am assigned to a room. My tummy is hurting badly. I am contemplating “should I fight to stay alive, or should I just let go and die,” I’m so tired of fighting, but too afraid to die" While laying there snapshots of my life begin to flash, flash, flash in my memory box, I can hear the camera clicking, clicking, clicking clicking. Glimpses make the scene. Look at me, I’m 6 years old. I am so shy, so innocent, so pure, and so trusting, a lot like my mom. My First-grade school year, I had been sexually molested by two people, I can’t count the times. This was the beginning of an unforgettable journey. The early years of my life I did a lot of crying. School was not my favorite place, because it exposed many of my inabilities and disabilities, which led to physical abuse and emotional abuse. My mom was oblivious to the trauma that was occurring in my life. When I think about my dad and the countless and unmerciful beatings I received, because of my inabilities and disabilities in school. I often think of the quote by Dr. Martin Luther King “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”. My mom was silent about the abuse that was taking place, and my father was not aware of the abuse that had taken place. His ignorance caused me to wear more scars. At an early I was broken. I felt hopeless and despair. I had been emotionally, mentally, and physically victimized by the people whom I trusted and upmost respected. I had grown accustomed to hearing how I would never amount to anything. Schools would call DFAC to come speak with me, obviously they knew something was wrong. Cautiously, I never disclosed any of my issues. My fear was if they removed me from the home, I could have been placed me in foster care. I so was afraid of that. As a result of the trauma, I developed a speaking impediment, experienced anxiety, fear, despair, sleep disorder, persistent fatigue, and nightmares. There was a 4year span in my life where I don’t remember anything. Finally, I found something that I enjoyed doing, I played basketball and ran track athlete. During track practice one day I excused myself with coach permission to go back in the building to get water, as I walked through the high-school gym, to my surprise there he was, a star football player who just would not take no for an answer. He laughed and said to me “I got you now, where you going to run to, I ran, he clipped me, punched me in the face and drugged me behind the bleachers. Aghast I laid there almost in a trans, thinking to myself, Nonoo not again. I could not believe it, then he begins to take his pants off, and pull for mine, and with the biggest kick I could gather, I kicked him right in his private area he went down screaming. I ran as fast as I could and told my track coach what had just happened, he told the football coach and the principal. Consequently, the police were called, they spoke with him and me. He was expelled from school and kicked off the football team. They didn’t call my parents and neither did they arrest him. I never informed my them about that experience until I graduated from high school. I had grown weary of their decision making and decided at a very early age I would be better off making my own. I chose a basketball scholarship over track and off to college I went. While there I met my ex-husband, we got married, we were so young. Neither one of us was ready for that kind of responsibility. In a drunken rage one day, he loaded a gun, made me get on my knees, put the gun to my head and said “Bitch pray to your God that I don’t kill you” so, I prayed to my God that he didn’t kill me, he pulled the trigger, the gun jammed, he dropped the gun in shock and left. Those were the snapshots I saw flashing in my memory box, there were so much more I had experienced, but what I visioned reminded me that I had never quit at anything, why should I quit now. Purpose was calling my name, “Pam the world is waiting on you! The nurse informed me they were preparing for surgery. They begin to roll me into the surgery room, right before we reached the door, the Doctor stopped and said let’s pray. Prayers went up. I was confident, hopeful and faithful that once surgery was complete everything would be okay, it sure didn’t feel okay. Why are all these tubes hooked up to me, tubes everywhere, tubes down my throat, tubes in my tummy. What is wrong with me? Ms. Gardner, the doctor said “You had a blood clot in your colon, we had to abstract your large intestines” other words I don’t have a large intestine anymore, only have a small intestine. Happy to be alive, but I am so tired, I’m so broken, my mind is tired, and my body is not responding to the surgery. I’m praying, family and friends are praying, it seems as though, the more I prayed, the more my body was attacked. I was unconscious, my organs were shutting down, not once, but three times they began the shutdown process. Three weeks later I was moved to ICU, there I was placed in a medical induced coma. My family and friends informed me how doctors from different parts of the hospital came to my room seeking permission to observe and study me, as no-one had ever lived through what I was going through. Who was this fighting on my behalf, was it my spirit, the angels, who? Of to surgery again, they couldn’t put it off any longer. The Doctor’s notified me that I had an infection that affected 65 percent of my body. They told my family there was a possibility I wouldn’t live through the surgery, because no-one at Piedmont hosptial had ever survived with that much infection in their body. I made the decision if I had any more setbacks I was going to let go, If I die, I die. The nerve of me right! I fought four hard weeks to stay alive. I had an ounce of nothing left in me. Finally, it was time for me to be released from the hospital, before leaving one of my nurses came to say good-bye, she had my medical records in her hand. She slammed the door and said “Pamela do you realize you are a miracle, your organs shut down three times. I don’t know what your purpose is, but if you don’t know, you need to find out” A year later, another surgery, and more life defining moments I was completely healed.

To be continued: Where did the name Pass The Salt and Ketchup come from?