Prologue: A Bit About Me

This story is a long one, and it is deeply engrossed in my own personal struggles. Therefore it is meet to give a healthy amount of back-drop for those to whom this story may be new.

I was raised Seventh-Day Adventist, and among many things taught in the SDA church, the importance of healthy eating habits is one of them. Back in the day, my family were vegans and ate absolutely no meat, dairy products or eggs. Because of this, I was a very healthy child and never got any uncommon disease. As a personal choice of my parents, I was also home-schooled from first to seventh grade. Somewhere along the line, my parents left the church and, with it, veganism was replaced with lacto-ovo vegetarianism (a no-meat diet that allows eggs and cheese). But, for the most part, I was still very healthy. Sure, I could get a fever, cold or sore throat, but those were never serious and I recovered quickly.

Now while my physical health was in good condition, my social health was not. My extended family was large, but they were all older than me and spread out across both coasts as well as in Florida and Maryland. The only ones who were close to my age lived quite a ways away and we rarely saw them. By eighth grade I was in a little private school (30 kids in grades 7th through 12th), but I made no lasting friends there. I spent two years there before going to a small town high school of some 2000 kids, where I finished high school and graduated. Here I was also much of a loner, but here something else changed with me: as I was still living in Tennessee, there were quite a few evangelical Christians around me and, though I believed in God and read the Bible, I hadn’t gone to church since 2000. It was while at my graduating high school that I made the conscious decision that, whether my parents would take me or no, or whether they would go with me or no, I would go back to church (I had a car at that time and some measure of independence).

Church wasn’t much better. The nearest Seventh-Day Adventist Church was the size of a cathedral, and there was little chance of gaining much spiritual blessing during a service with over 300 people in the sanctuary. The youth Sabbath School (like Sunday School, but held on the Sabbath) was no better, as everyone here had grown up with each other, knew each other since they were babies, and were basically hanging out with their friends. Here again I made no friends and, as I was no more mature than they were, I suffered quite a bit. I was constantly tortured over the fact that, though they were, as I supposed, “raised right” and “knew the truth”, these young men and women had such little regard for their faith. True, there were some who tried to be kind and welcoming, but, as I said, I was immature and fastly growing bitter and even their patience was worn thin, which didn’t help with my bitterness.

Without going into great detail, my first two years of college weren’t any better. In fact, they were much worse as I slowly became more and more bitter and drifted away from the faith slowly but surely. I think I made one friend from those two years, but we rarely talk. About this time we moved out west to where we live now, in liberal California. Anyone who is a vegetarian is also a lunatic, and those who are Christians are few and far between and most certainly eat meat. I tried to finish college and that was difficult. Working on the side is needful and work is always hard to find (it will become impossible if colonel sanders gets his way), and by this time I was embittered towards the world. Everyone and everything was inconsequential to me and I spent most of my days drowning in misery, listening to really angry, depressing music. My health was still decent, though, as my family now went red (ie. they’re all meat-eaters now), I was definitely opened up to the possibility of meat bacteria carried over from unwashed cutlery (which also happens). But my healthy eating habits were now fastly going into the gutter. I was eating very little and sometimes not at all, and what I did eat was of the poorest quality. Fruits and vegetables were rarely consumed and the “cracks” were beginning to show. I got weaker easier, my skin became dry and flaky, and the first symptoms of this disease began to appear as liquid, sometimes bloody, and VERY loose, diarrhea. At first I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome and given some medication for it, and for the time it seemed to relent and I went about my poor eating habits and solitary life-style.

As if to make all of this worse, my spirituality was slipping as well. As many of you know, my blog is flagged as ‘NSFW’ (which is probably why Christian blogs won’t even give me the time of day). While my faith waned, I became indulgent in certain habits that are clearly against the law of God. Being lonely and depressed made being tempted towards these sinful habits easier, but indulging in them did not alleviate the loneliness and depression. Eventually I also left off going to church, since I was still very bitter and jaded at Christians. To be sure there were (and thankfully, this time, still are) good people I encountered who, as of this article, have not abandoned me. I did not appreciate them as much as I should. But things were about to change.

Part One: The Onset

It’s the month of February, winter still grips my area and spring was unreal. Big plans are on the horizon. Some people from my college, with whom I was still in contact, were planning a little music program which I was going to perform in. After a disastrous 2015, I had decided to focus all my time into making music and had already tracked drums for an eight-song Bathory-inspired album whose foundations had been laid as far back as 2011. I had a long-delayed recording session with a guest vocalist that was planned for the 15th that was tedious at the very best. As I now had rent to pay (and will again once I’m in full health), looking for work hung at the back of my mind like a portent of doom. I was making the conscious decision to go to church, but there was little spiritual blessing coming from it and I was still very bitter towards the world and especially Christians. Most of the time I was wondering if I should leave again, though I knew that, being in the world as a Christian (to say nothing of an atheistic majority like California) required a strong anchoring in God.

By the 12th, the watery, slightly blooded diarrhea was starting to return, but I kept this quiet. There were no abdominal pains and, unless I failed to find a bathroom in time and defecated in my pants, there was no real emergency. After all, I still thought this was irritable bowel syndrome: just another flare-up that would go away with time, something I just had to live with. It was also at this time that I started getting a cough and could feel the onset of a sore throat. My back-pack, which I take with me all the time, is stretched beyond its capacity: and the side-pouches are too small to fit my water-bottle (and every single bladder-pack I’ve ever gotten leaked). Suffice it to say that dehydration, especially on days of 100 degree California “dry heat”, was a constant agitation.

At my church, the young adult Sabbath School which I attend every mornings (stated to be for ages 20 to 30, though it is mostly populated by people ages 40 to 50 and I am the youngest member) often has someone who, hoping to entice other members to arrive on time (the people at my Sabbath School are notoriously late quite often), would bring coffee and donuts. Though I could feel a sore throat and a bit of a cough coming on, my sweet-tooth got the better of me and I ate a donut. That proved to be one of the many things which led to the sudden downward spiral of my health.

After the 13th (the Sabbath in question), I noticed that I was steadily getting worse. I drank water to counteract my foolishness the day before, but the diarrhea was not helping matters. I was going all through the night every hour on the hour. But I decided to forge ahead, since I had obligations and I was not ready to give up on them so lightly. On the 15th, the group of music students were getting together to organize their production and, afterwards, I was to meet up with my guest vocalist for the song I had written. For clarification, I will make a short divergence to discuss why this arrangement took place.

There are studio engineers who produce music on a budget, and then there’s me, recording off-tempo guitar tracks directly off of crappy laptop microphones via Audacity, mixing it to crappy programmed electronic drum machine beats and calling it “music.” Well, maybe it was a good thing my old laptop died, because my new one had even worse built-in microphone than the last one, so I was stuck using a Guitar Hero World Tour karaoke mic fitted with a sock to block out the wind and an $8 wind-screen for those annoying pops and whistles for vocals. As there was no quieter place to record than my room, this flat-walled, un-sound-proofed little rectangle became my Heavenshore as I fancied myself able to take on the Bay Area ‘core scene with my own special brand of Sleep and Bathory-inspired stoner viking metal. While my skills as an instrumentalist and vocalist may not have improved, I have graduated from being unable to write lyrics to being able to write poor lyrics. With this unnecessary shot of confidence, I fancied myself a songwriter and began writing songs. One such song, entitled “Shieldmaiden”, was in the same Norse-inspired vein as my other music (taking inspiration first from Greek act Hildr Valkyrie before morphing into something more Bathory-esque).
However, as the song title suggests, this song was not suited for my Danzig-esque baritone growl and altering the pitch of my voice in Audacity would have made the song laughable. So I decided that I would hope to find a female vocalist who could do guest vocals for this one song. Unfortunately the number of metal-heads in my area was very low to begin with, and we were all guys who listened either to thrash, death metal or ‘core (or in my case, doom and black metal). I tried to commute with vocalists over the internet, but to no avail. I tried to find vocalists at the college, and that’s how I got roped into this little music recital (jazz musicians just don’t understand that players aren’t as expendable in metal as they are in jazz, but that’s another thing). Finally, I managed to find someone through a mutual friend who not only liked vikings, but was willing to sing on this song.

Then the problems began to arise. I am a single young man, and all of my recording is done from my bed-room, where the door has to be closed to block out sound from the rest of the house (usually quite a bit, which is why recording can’t be done in the living room), and, because my room is within ten feet of a busy street, the windows also have to be closed to keep out the sounds of the street. Anyone with a lick of sense can see how this might be an uncomfortable position, even for a forty-something married woman, so I talked to my guest vocalist and we began looking for a place where we could record that was less intimate. This was going on as far back as January (maybe even earlier), and it wasn’t until February that we finally got something planned. We both lived in different towns that were far away (even farther for me, since I was only on my bike, my car having been sold when we moved out to California). At length, I asked our mutual friend – who owned a rehearsal studio that was less intimate but more sound-proofed than my bed-room – if we could record in his rehearsal space, to which he said yes.

Part Two: Darkest Hour

Now we’re mostly caught up and everything started to go downhill from here. On the 15th of February, I forced myself to get up, ate what I cannot recall (if I even ate anything) and meandered down to the college where I would join a meeting with the other music students to give them an update on my performance (I was to perform “Shieldmaiden” in April, even though I had no vocalist, no sheet music to give them – unlike metal-musicians, jazz players are totally lost musically without sheet music to play to – only a rough, unmixed draft with a melody line, and had only just revised the old lyrics into something which I felt was better). They claimed that they could find a drummer, a bassist, a keyboardist and a singer by that time, but the little room we were to perform in was in no way suitable for amplified, roaring metal music. But I went to the meeting regardless and then passed the time at the college library, waiting for my guest vocalist to arrive who would drive me to the other town, where we would begin recording. I ate a sparse lunch that consisted of nothing good, just things that tasted good.

At last she arrived and, with my bike secured to the bike rack and my back-pack filled with my laptop and a side-bag with the microphone stand, we set off. While we were en route, it began to rain. But we found the rehearsal space before the rain got too heavy and got to work. We only had a small window of time because my guest vocalist worked that day and she didn’t get off until 3pm, spent an hour to get me from the college to the rehearsal space, and then on top of that, we only had until 6pm when our mutual friend closed up the rehearsal space for the evening. As I have stated above, I am beneath amateur when it comes to recording and we messed up most of the vocal takes (and when I say “we”, I mean I failed to communicate vocal cues, microphone distance, the weakness of my equipment and had the Audacity mic channel on the wrong input). But as 4 waned and the hour of 5 was coming upon us, I struck one last “decent” take, said that I would look it over and call back, and decided to leave. I was more than a little frustrated, mostly with myself because I failed to get what I needed in the little time we had and was still coughing and diarrhetic.

On the drive back to my town, she shared with me some of her past life. As we were both Christians, what we talked about was a good deal spiritual and what she seemed to be saying, in brief, was that God had a plan for me, though I could not see it. This would be much more profound later on, but was lost on me as, once we reached the college, the rain was coming down in truth. I had not dressed for heavy rain and it would be a long (30 to 45 minute) bike ride back home in the pouring rain. My guest vocalist, God bless her, offered to give me a ride home. So there I was, in the pouring rain, with a wrench in hand trying to unhook my front bike tire to fit it into the back of her little car. We get home and, since the garage door is broken, I have to walk with my bike and my gear and my back-pack, through the pouring rain all the way to the front door. My guest vocalist does give me a hand getting my things out of her car, but the damage is done. I’m now coughing, exhausted, diarrhetic and soaked. Surely it can’t get any worse, right?

It can always get worse. And it certainly did. As usual, I’m diarrhetic all night, and now I’m exhausted during the day. No, ‘exhausted’ is too small a word. If you bike across town in 100 degree weather with little to no water to drink, then you’re exhausted. I had zero energy and could do little more than shuffle from my bedroom to the bathroom, and even turning bottle-caps was difficult. As most of my food was going in and out, I wasn’t absorbing any energy and even though I rested during the day, I wasn’t getting any stronger. To top all that off, being out in the rain probably gave me a fever. My forehead was on fire, but I was shivering violently. And that’s not hyperbole. I was shivering so violently that, if I opened my mouth, my lower jaw shivered beyond my control and the noises that came from my mouth sounded the mutterings of one that was possessed by a demon. Every night as I went to bed I felt like Ingrid Bergman’s Joan of Arc as she stood at the stake, wearily leaning my head to the right, calling the name of Jesus over and over.

To say that I was very worried was an understatement. I was terrified. I have never been this sick before. Even in 2014-2015, when my symptoms first appeared, I was concerned and frustrated, but never this terrified. I was quite literally wasting away, unable to keep any nutrients in my body long enough to make a lasting difference. I took some of the pills I had been prescribed back in 2015, only to vomit my guts and feel even worse. I drank water, I took probiotics, I even tried cayenne. Nothing was making my condition any better.

I was now so weak and my bowels were in such pain that I could not indulge in my lustful habits as before, though the desire to do so was strong and my body was now so conditioned that I could not properly fall asleep unless I had “made the bald man cry”, as Tyrion Lannister put it. But as death was leering its ugly head into my door and fear gripped me every night, I decided to give up that habit. The first night was awful, made worse in no small part by my other ailments, and I could barely sleep. The next few days I erased my collection of adult material from off my laptop. But I was still weak and feverish and diarrhetic and nothing seemed to be changing it.

Part Three: God is Definitely There

By this time, my parents were in the know about my condition. My mother was so concerned that she begged me to go to the hospital. I was reluctant, as, though I was insured under her plan, it would still be costly and what money I had left was to be saved for rent, as work was hard to find (impossible in my condition). But I was afraid of losing money and had no idea what else to do. So I decided to pray. That night, as I shivered under my blankets and feared the moment when my bowels would force me to make the long, dark journey to take the porcelain throne, I prayed to God, asking Him if I should go to the hospital.

In all of my life, there was only one time when I was certain that I heard God’s voice. It came years ago in a moment of profound sorrow and broken-heartedness. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with my life, and I just sat there and asked Him; “What do you want of me?” The answer came from a place I certainly wouldn’t have chosen, for I was estranged from my father and had no desire to reconcile, yet it became apparent that I should reconcile with my father. I did and a great burden was lifted from off my shoulders. As I know that forgiveness is what God teaches, and that my natural desire would have been to not reconcile, I am convinced that the voice that spoke to me that day was of God.

So it was with great surprise that I heard such a voice again, late that night on the 26th of February, telling me to go to the hospital. Even as Peter, who rejected the LORD three times, had to be asked three times “Simeon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these others?”, I asked the voice again ‘Are you sure?’ The answer was the same: go to the hospital. One last time I asked, and the answer had not changed. So I got up, shuffled across the house and woke my mother, who, God bless her, agreed to take me to the hospital even in the late hours of the night. The significance of this moment of God speaking to me will be revealed in time.

Now I’m in the emergency room, and the nurses and doctors, God bless them for working into the late hours of the night (and may such a curse as colonel sanders’ free healthcare never fall upon their heads), began stabilizing my condition. I was hooked to an IV to rehydrate me, given morphine, underwent blood-pressure checks and CT-scans, but the results were inconclusive. Anemia was named, as well as low hemoglobin (normally the number is about 14, mine was 9), immature blood cells, and anything between Crohn’s Disease and colitis. I was told that a colonoscopy would be the best choice, in order to discover what exactly was wrong with me, but I was reluctant to do this since it would be expensive even with insurance.

Over the next week or two, I went to my primary doctor for an examination of my symptoms and a diagnosis. They ordered more blood-tests and sent me to a gastroenterologist. This gastroenterologist was the same one I had seen in 2014-2015, who had given me the diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome, but his diagnosis this time was more optimistic. I was worried to say the least, and now I was given an exact date for the colonoscopy and a rigorous procedure to follow.

For those of you who have had a colonoscopy, you have my sympathy. For those of you who have not or have no need for one, count your blessings. For those who do not know, a colonoscopy is a procedure where you are put under, then your bowels are filled with air and a camera is inserted up your ass to see what’s inside your colon (because CT-scans and X-rays don’t give high quality images to show exactly what is wrong). Now the surgery itself was nerve-wracking enough, because I hate needles and ever since I had my wisdom teeth removed, I’m always a little worried that I might not come out of anesthesia (it hasn’t happened yet, but seeing “death” as a side-effect of anesthesia does get one worried). But quite possibly the worst part was the preparation for the procedure.

In order to get your large intestines empty, three days ahead of surgery you are required to stop eating…well, most of anything. Fruits, nuts, grains, vegetables, that sort of thing. The only thing you were allowed to eat were meats, potatoes, white bread and “some desserts”. As a vegetarian, what was off the table was everything I eat, and what was on the table was everything I either hated or couldn’t have. Meat, obviously, was off the table. Potatoes get dry after a while, especially since I only know how to make baked potatoes and boiled potatoes: sometimes hash-browns if the food processor is working, which it hasn’t been. My family does not believe in white bread, so there is nothing at home but whole wheat bread (which is also off the table), and we never have desserts, so for two days I was up crap creek without a paddle.

As if eating nothing but potatoes and water wasn’t bad enough, the day before the procedure my diet goes from small to nil. Here no food is to be eaten at all, not even dairy products. All I can have is water, fruit juices that are neither red nor orange – which shortens up the list of juices – and Jell-O: once again, we don’t have any Jell-O and so it’s just apple juice, white grape juice and water. In addition to this, around evening, I have to drink this foul liquid meant to clean me out. It has little smell but tastes like formaldehyde, even with the “flavor packet” provided by the pharmacy. I also found out that I can’t pinch my nose and drink it, because then I can’t breathe and certainly can’t “drink it quickly” as instructed.

Thank God I was able to get through the preparation and the procedure. But there is another, more important, aspect that I’m forgetting, to which He also deserves thanks.

Part Four: A New Hope

Before we go any farther, let’s back it up and give a little bit more in-depth knowledge of what was going on. I used to have several posters in my room, but eventually they all came down except for one: a picture of Stefani Germanotta in Judas Priest-esque leather, studs and fishnets, sitting at a piano, brazenly raising a middle finger. It looked rather metal and, in regards to her more outlandish outfits, very tame, but it was also an expression of my own bitterness at the world, as the poster was placed such that the middle finger was pointing at my bedroom door.

Cut away to the month of February, just before all of this madness began. One other reason I was considering leaving the Seventh-Day Adventist Church was that I saw that we were drifting from the truth as it had been revealed to me in my youth and from my parents. For example, aside from not teaching what was once taught among the SDA Church (the Seventh Day Sabbath, the State of the Dead, the Spirit of Prophecy, victory over sin, the health diet, Bible prophecy), what was being taught reminded me of the evangelical churches I had visited in my lifetime. During the month of February, starting on the sixth, the young adult Sabbath School group began watching a trite and cliche video series about the Ten Commandments that was clearly made by non-Adventists (usually we never seriously studied the Bible or the pillars of Seventh-Day Adventism, we always just watched some video made by some evangelical teacher, another reason I was considering leaving). I had seen the first two and, though my condition was deteriorating, I promised myself that I would see the fourth video in the series, to see how the subject of the Sabbath was addressed by people who were clearly not Sabbath-keepers.

Unfortunately, that date was the 27th of February, the day after I was in the hospital (although I was there until the early morning). I was sick and weak throughout the whole Sabbath School, missed what was said (as I was on the toilet frequently) and hadn’t enough strength to sit through church service. I went home immediately, but there was some measure of ‘good’ brought from my fool-hardiness. The people at my young adult Sabbath School group saw my condition and asked to come visit me. This was exactly what I needed. Being weak and lethargic, I could not go to meet with anyone, and I had no friends as it was. My mother, a registered nurse and a believer in the SDA health message, told me that my health was tied to my mood. It was therefore in view of this that many other things in my life were being examined in this trying time, as we shall soon see.

So it was that, weak and lethargic as I was on a rainy afternoon of the 5th day of March, I welcomed them into my home and told them of my condition. Thankfully the fever was gone and I wasn’t shivering or making demonic mutterings. But I was genuinely touched that there actually were Christians who were willing to do as Christ said the redeemed would do (“I was sick and you visited Me”) on a moment’s notice for someone who had, until then, regarded them with much inner derision. For the first time in a long while, I felt genuinely happy.

Now here we are, one colonoscopy later and diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. The journey to recovery will not be an easy one; pills will be taken, food I once enjoyed must be given up and I will have to take it easy for a very long while. But all of what I have told you has caused me to reconsider everything about my life. I am much less bitter than I was before, and try to remind everyone I know and love of how thankful I am to have them in my life. As far as music goes, I am listening to music that is less depressing (though finding that in metal will certainly be a trial), and wondering just what my purpose as a musician is now. Something that was once a big part of my life (and even influenced my music, what with the crass and intentionally vile “Stockholm” that bespoke of an angel forgiving a demon that had raped her) is now being delegated to the cesspit of forgetfulness, and while I still have a long way to go, as I am still single and women are still beautiful beyond words, with God’s help I may be victorious.

Now we come to what I have built up all this time. For so long I was of the belief that God had forsaken me, as I hadn’t heard His voice and drifted through a directionless life of uncertainty and gloom. That was the condition I was in before this sickness happened. Now that I am sick, I am grateful that it has happened. Yes, you heard right, I am thankful to God that I have been brought low by this sickness. It has made me rely on God more and more, and relying on Him that fully has not been in vain. As silly as it sounds, I’ve even brought my diarrhea-related pants-defecating before the altar of mercy, asking that God give me the strength to make it across the house to the bathroom before I crap myself. Every time that prayer has been on my lips, I have had no accidents. But what strikes me even more is what my guest vocalist told me about God’s plan, and how He chose the darkest moment to finally speak and tell me to go to the hospital.

I don’t know what, and I don’t know how, but I believe that God has something planned for me. If not, I would probably have died that night. But He wants me to live; He has something for me that I have yet to do. And that is hope enough to keep on living.