By TONEY ATKINS --- www.toneyatkins.com/
The world seems to be falling apart around us. Everyone seems to be pointing fingers of blame at everyone else for the natural chaos that has grown in intensity in weather tragedies (tornadoes, floods, drought) in our own country, along with what seems to be a hike in earthquakes, volcanic activity, tsunamis and other unexpected phenomena since just before the dawn of the 21st century. Much of this has come about in just the past few years.
People seem to be more on edge about everything, especially here in the United States. Hate, frustration and mistrust have multiplied in what seems to be an increasingly frightening world. We take advantage of, use and abuse, our friends, acquaintances, our neighbors and, even worse, our families. The whole nation needs to swallow a Xanax or some other kind of chill pill before we continue this embarkation to hurt, destroy or kill our fellow human beings.
Maybe folks should start listening to God instead of simply professing to know Him.
I will return to those thoughts in more detail as I proceed with what is the first page of a journal that I have decided to keep for the future to reflect back on the past and compare it to the then-present, especially considering the ominous predictions for a potentially devastating end-of-the-world future scenario. This thought hinges particularly if he prophecy should come true than some kind of Armageddon or the earth-changing event arrives on Dec. 21, 2012, as the ancient Mayans believed when they created a calendar which strangely ends on that date, with an emphasis that leads many to believe that something very dramatic and potentially unpleasant may occur, even though there are no clues to the times or the places.
All one has to do is watch how people have changed since 1999 yielded to the year 2000. Yes, there was even a bizarre atmosphere surrounding the earth as partygoers danced to Prince’s “party like it’s 1999 blasted from stereo speakers in nightclubs either before or after the new year came in. There had been fears that a strange Y2K computer bug would be unleashed as each time zone reached the midnight hour that New Year’s Eve – fears that everything controlled by computers would shut down, leaving us virtually powerless in a world in which more and more of our lives were becoming dictated by the Internet and all of the things that were in some way connected to and dependent on the Internet.
Nothing dramatic happened. The world continued to turn on January 1, 2000. We still had electricity; we could get our money from ATM machines and pump gasoline into our cars. We could watch New Year’s festivities on TV, cook refrigerated foods on our stoves. We could spend hours on our computers, powered by cable TV companies or even new Wi-Fi operations. We could dance the night away, not concerned about whether all of our luxuries and creations would be there tomorrow.
Life and its trials and tribulations, joys and sorrows and its parties went on. All was relatively good in the world as 2000 rolled in. We thought.
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I have personal news to report on this Oct. 16, twelve years later. A small growth on my head had increased from the size of a small mole earlier in the past year to a larger, irritating and sometimes painful “something” that seemed to be burrowing into my head, with a couple of scaly mini-towers forming on top.
It became a matter of concern, especially when nurse practitioners assured that it “looked like a mole.” I was afraid to mess with it because warfarin, a blood thinner, had been prescribed after I took a tumble onto a gravel sidewalk when my vision failed to convey to my brain that there was an extra step on the doorsteps and I crashed to the ground. A week later, I was in the emergency room, where doctors determined that I had at least one blood clot and that I would need the medication to thin my blood and fight clots for an unspecified length of time. I was told that I should be careful in shaving and in using cutting instruments, because even a small cut could cause me to bleed out. Therefore, I refrained from trying to scratch or pull of the offending thing growing on my head.
I finally got a doctor to look at the protrusion, and he immediately did a biopsy.The parts he cut out disturbed him, and he sent the piece to a lab somewhere to be analyzed. A week or so later, I was called and told to see a surgical specialist. The caller would only tell me that cancerous cells had shown up in the biopsy.
Needless to say, a certain amount of stress kicked in, although I never let fear take control. How could a small knot, that was starting to break off in small pieces but never coming loose be potentially dangerous? The “c” word had me a little bit worried, but I rested my hope in that it might be benign, that it could be removed and that it hopefully would not spread.
Being without transportation, I made arrangements with some fine neighbors who went with me to consult with the specialist. As I had anticipated, he said surgery was necessary to cut a larger area than he first thought. He said any treatment necessary in the aftermath would have to be determined after the operation, which he considered to be too serious to conduct in his office.
I was put to sleep with the same kind of anesthesia that allegedly killed singer Michael Jackson because of his abuse of it, the surgery was conducted efficiently by a fine doctor and his staff, I returned to the land of the wide awake and was taken home by my caring neighbors to heal, with stitches protruding from the new spot on my already balding head.
I finally had the stitches removed this past week. The surgeon was friendly, courteous and everything that a doctor should be when he honestly revealed to me that the surgery was essentially unnecessary. While the initial biopsy had revealed some cancer cells, he said, no cancer cells, benign or otherwise, were found in testing of the larger area of scalp that he had cut into.
A couple of months of concern and some anxiety, even a bit of pain at the spot – any worry was for naught, but I didn’t know that until a good doctor removed the intruder and deemed it to be harmless. You could have fooled me. I was delighted, thanked God, felt and still feel very blessed.
The only words that disturbed me were “unnecessary surgery.” I don’t regret it. So far, I haven’t felt any unusual impacts. Hallelujah! It’s one less major thing to worry about.
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