This year – the last 12 months have been rough. Last week as friends were gathering in the neighborhood for a chat I was being discharged from the ER after being there all day. Armed with pain meds and anti-inflammatory meds I planned to rest. A few hours later I had what felt like a gall bladder attack. I do not have one.

It’s been off and on like this for several years but this time it’s the worst it’s been. A call to a 24 nurse line at St David’s walked me through my symptoms. The end result was to see a doctor within 24 hours. See your Primary Care Physician is always the first suggestion. The doctor who barely knows your name, sees you for the basics once a year and who virtually has no idea what to do about your GI issues so always passes the baton to the GI specialist? That doctor?

Saturday arrives and I go back to the ER. This time after several hours and it’s crystal clear I need a GI consult…hmm, how many hours, days and Dr visits have there been before now? Too many. The ER Dr. Admits me after talking to them. I am scheduled for an ERCP, a special endoscopy to look at a dilated area on the bile duct. Known about since I lived in Minnesota. Ignored because labs didn’t indicate I was having liver problems.

Sunday morning I have the ERCP. The on all GI specialist removes several small stones and gravel from my bile duct. At first look the dilated duct measure 16mm. Normal for my age is 6mm. It was a big deal and I’m told to expect I will feel a lot better in the days ahead. I’m grateful but the toll on the rest of me now that it’s over is proving to be a major one.

I de-activated my FB account last week because I needed a way to detach from so much information and focus on being present in my own life. I deleted the Threads App long ago. Instagram is FB lite so I’m an occasional visitor there but the detachment from the FB “Borg” saved me this week. I’d also just had one of those encounters there that make you slap your forehead while asking yourself how on earth you ended up in that drama again!! So… bye for now, FB.

I’m a highly sensitive person which just means I feel everything LONG before I intellectually process it. I’m also someone who has a really really hard time letting go of good people. Facebook takes on addictive properties for me when while I need to accept my human capacity for connection and get off or disconnect, I stay on and stay connected.

About a month ago, someone I let go of for the 2nd time in the last decade, sent me a message and asked if she had offended me somehow. Nothing triggers old patterns in my way of relating to people than drawing a boundary and being misunderstood or being understood and then being pushed back for it if it has to do with friendship. It’d been over a year, so I’d totally forgotten removing this person from my friends list. She hadn’t even missed me until a mutual friend passed away and she saw my comment on a feed about her. The out of the blue…”I thought we were friends…Did I offend you?” arrived in Messenger and I fell into the abyss.

I know that for so many of my less sensitive friends you’re thinking – “Don’t respond!” Just walk away. Not me. I go head into but… this is _______, I must explain. No, I do not.

The truth about this person is that she does actually offend me on FB but I don’t want to touch why with a ten foot pole. I don’t need to be in her life or she in mine for any reason. But the truth is also that this very opportunity for a disgruntled “friend” to pop up and challenge a boundary requires that I’m able to do the actual ignoring. When I’m physically challenged it’s just harder to stay focused because I’m weaker and in need myself. I’m even more sensitive than on a regular day and vulnerable to the things I’ve worked hard to overcome in my life. Perfection and people pleasing most of all. But alas, this time I have permanently disconnected with this person.

The after effects of our whole exchange made me take a long pause at why I think at 62 I must stay on the FB platform. In the middle of my ongoing health problems I also began to realize that I really needed all of my own mental and emotional energy to continue to navigate the situation I was dealing with. In the last 12 months I’ve had two major surgeries, at least a dozen ER visits, countless portal messages back and forth with a GI doctor I finally had to fire. The patronization and perception that I wasn’t really all that sick led to way too many diagnoses and medications than there ever should have been. I actually had to bring test results to his attention and ask questions about them beca his nurse didn’t give him the info. It was just a lot of work and after a special MRI revealed that the bile duct was growing but it would be five weeks before he would be able to see me, I found someone else. A very good doctor and staff replaced him.

A note about ER visits before I continue – all of them are generally awful – one involved eight tries for an IV before I walked out, completely spent. When a neighboring patient in a small room with six others called someone to bitch about the ER doc not agreeing order an MRI on her foot, ignoring everyone else, yelling into her phone while the RN tried just one more poke on me and failed, I nearly exploded. I got up and walked out just spent.

I am discovering that it’s time to stay away from Facebook and keep this new strength I’ve been tapping into. I would not have endured the last two weeks had I been there. Instagram is working and is just enough but for now I’m going to do as the poet David Whyte suggests, “Start close in”. My REAL is here in my own life.