Oh coffee

I'd never even had a sip until I was nearly 30 years old. That's more than 8 years ago now. It was my doctor who started it. Just after my son was born, and just 17.5 ( yes the .5 is important) months after the girl baby came along I was facing some very serious medical issues. My doctor reeling with disbelief at the caffeine intake box checked 'no' asked if it was a religious thing. He leaned in close and looked me square in the eyes and said "if you need a little something to keep you going try coffee, trust me".  So, he's a doctor. I trusted him. I was sure I was dying anyways so I might as well start experiencing new things. 

    I was only sort of dying. Slowly and painfully bleeding and having my internal organs crushed over the course of about 14 months. 

*Spoiler alert, I lived*

   
  I was so sick, in so much pain that the awful taste didn't bother me. I just wanted to be able to stay awake long enough to feed the baby and play with the almost toddler and maybe sit outside on the back porch in the biting cold Chicago winter air and breathe. 

     Of course there are a million things that helped me pull through that scary sad time in my life. The surgery didn't go as planned and things got scary. Blood transfusions and visits to the VA hospital and being pushed in wheelchairs and waking up in hospital beds happened more often in those few months than anyone should ever have to experience but the one thing, the simple pleasure that stuck with me is coffee. It's an addiction for sure. Morphine and Oxycontin are pretty addictive too but somehow I managed to wean myself off of those fairly quickly and just coffee remained.

     Just a few months after surgery. The surgery that took away a piece of me I wasn't ready to give up just yet, we moved thousands of miles across the country to a place where coffee rules. It became a huge part of my healing. In the state of Washington coffee is social, it is friendly, it warms hearts and hands and gives people an excuse to venture out under wet gray skies and seek out the electric buzz that some of us need to live. 

       I'm in Hawaii now. Humid mornings and hot coffee don't always mix and my body is perfectly healthy, better than ever in fact, but I don't think I'll ever be whole without a fresh hot cup.