Here’s a Quick Way to Clear the Shit From Last Year

Brought To You by E-Coli

As a professional organizer for many years, I would sometimes joke that I offer an express clutter clearing service. It involves kerosene and a lit match.

No one’s ever taken me up on the offer. We laugh and then turn our attention to the closets. That shit’s not going anywhere until you make it so, after all.

Now I’ve discovered another rapid evac shit clearing strategy:

Escherichia coli. E-Coli.

Yeah, that little bacteria that normally quietly resides in our guts that can wreak havoc if it gets out of the yard and into the neighborhood, so to speak.

When I pondered the New Year, like many others, I wanted to start the year with a fresh slate. Out with the old shit, as it were!

But I’ve also joked that New Year’s Eve would find me quietly hiding under my bed, hoping 2023 wouldn’t notice my presence.

None of this “New Year=New Me” bullshit.

Like so many others, these past years have been brutal. 2022 brought divorce after 32 years of marriage, breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, lack of a place to call my own for several months, and then, to finish the year strong, Covid, Flu, Flu-Part 2, and then….wait for it….wait for it…

A trip to the ER on Christmas Eve.

I was in the most pain I have ever, EVER experienced. Childbirth? Appendicitis? Digesting glass?

Child’s play! A walk through a field of wildflowers on a spring day.

It’s hard to describe the agony.

After they did some imaging, the doctor assured me that I was fine. Go home and take Miralax. You’re constipated.

Really? Fever? Intense pain? Chronic diarrhea since cancer treatment? And you’re telling me I’m just backed up?

So, I got a final shot of morphine (I had already had two doses and it did little to knock the pain down) and crawled back out to the car. My beloved sister drove me home.

The past week has been spent in bed, whimpering and trying to hoard the meager amount of Tylenol 3 prescription I had. But I was feeling some mild improvement, so beyond talking to my doc at Mayo, I took the wait it out approach.

This is NOT what I had in mind for my fresh start into 2023. And I was to find that my hide under the bed and be quiet strategy failed me.

Happy New Year. My phone pings with a message from the ER I was seen at last week.

Please call it said. I call.

The nurse tells me they just got one of the labs back. A WEEK later. There is e-coli floating around in my system and I need to get on antibiotics ASAP.

Good god, enough already!!!

My sweetie is not here, so I have been alone during this ordeal save for my sister dropping off a few things here and there.

And this presented me with a challenge. How do I get the prescription on New Year’s Day? And I am still not well enough to drive anywhere. Not to mention I could not get my car registered and insured due to being so ill.

I posted my dilemma on the Facebook page for the 55+ community where I now live.

“Anyone out in about and could pick up a prescription for me?”

It has been down pouring here in the desert so I knew it was a big ask. This is a senior park and after consideration, the thought of a kind hearted 80-year-old offering to help gave me pause.

After a few minutes, a vulnerability hangover moved in. Fast. These people don’t know me from Adam.

I pulled the post. I’ll have to figure out something else, I told myself.

I’ll figure it out. That has been my mantra these past few years. And while it has brought some empowerment, it is also fucking exhausting.

How the hell am I going to figure this one out with a brain exhausted by illness?

Then I hear a knock at my door. I’m not moving fast, so I caught her before she turned away and went back down the steps.

“We’ll get your prescription for you,” a smiling silver-haired cherub said to me. It was my next-door neighbors. Evidently, I didn’t pull the post down quickly enough.

And as I often do so easily, tears welled up in my eyes.

Thank you so very much, I told them.

Look for the helpers, Mister Rogers would tell us.

And here is my very own helper on my doorstep. Despite my pride driving me to withdraw a request for help, my need still got sent out into the universe and was answered.

It is a long slow road to recovery, which, of course, stirs up all sorts of new anxiety since my plans to get working right away were foiled. No worky-no income.

But even through this, I had a Zoom meet and greet with a few potential coaching clients last week who will start coaching soon. The income crisis hit a speed bump.

I get to help these amazing women but yet I am also humbled at how they are helping me too. (As a coach/spiritual director, my clients enrich my life in so many ways.)

The helpers. Look for the helpers.

I long gave up New Year’s resolutions and this year will be no different.

As I reflect on the 2023, I would like to learn how to ask for help better and accept that help when offered.

My ego doesn’t like it. Not even one little big.

But yet I know in the bigger picture, none of us are flying through life solo. We all need one another. We are all connected. Your suffering is my suffering and vice versa.

It is an illusion to think we can tough through tough, er, shit, alone.

So perhaps this year will be a year of deeper humility, greater empathy for the suffering of others, and dear sweet baby Jesus, a healthy gut.

And if you need a rapid evac of clutter and crap-do not, I repeat, DO NOT get e-coli.

I recommend the kerosene and match approach.

Thanks so much for reading. You can find me around the internet at www.theresawinn.com, on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. If you’d like to support my writing in a small way, feel free to contribute to my wishlist.