My Left Side

The Use of Drugs

I remember getting high blowing cocaine. I used to blow so much cocaine that the vein coming down my left nostril busted, and the wall in my nose is gone. I can take my finger and go from the left nostril to the right from the inside.

One time when I was in a medical facility, my nose started bleeding really badly from the left side. The medical provider had to bring in the nose specialist— that’s how bad my nose was bleeding. The specialist said that he was going to patch the left nostril up but that it was going to hurt really badly.

After he started looking up my nose, he said, “You used to blow cocaine, didn’t you?” I said yes, and he said, “You have a big hole in your nose, and you should let me put a button up there in your left nostril.”

The specialist gave me his card, but I did not pursue that. I said to myself, I have been like this all this time. I am not getting ready to let him put no button in my nose.

Diagnosed with Illnesses

In 1994, I moved back home. Before I left from where I had been staying, every time it rained, my left leg would ache terribly. Once I’d returned home, I made an appointment to have a full physical. That’s when I was diagnosed with lupus.

Lupus attacks every part of your body, all your organs. The type of lupus I had—notice I said had, because I am healed in Jesus’s name—attacked the left side of my body. My left hand started twisting up and looking deformed. I had excruciating pain in my left arm. The doctor decided to do a biopsy, which confirmed that it was the lupus acting up. I was at that medical facility so often I told them to put me on their payroll.

At one point, when I got really sick, I was at home, and I started falling out of the bed. My left arm would start jumping out of control, and I would start grabbing stuff and throwing it. I would try to take my left arm and hold my neck to keep my arm from jumping and grabbing stuff. I thought the devil was in me. I called my minister, and he came over and told me I was not possessed, because my spirit was calm.

The next day, the same thing happened. I told my caregiver to please take me to the hospital, and she did. When I got there, I told the medical providers what was going on. They tested my sugar level, and it was really low, so they admitted me. My sugar started dropping uncontrollably; the doctors said they had never seen anything like it before, how my sugar level kept dropping so fast.

The doctors told me they needed to take some tests and X-rays. When the tests came back, the medical providers said they saw a spot on my pancreas, and they needed to operate and remove that part of my pancreas. While I was lying on the table getting prepped for surgery, I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me and say, “Fear not what can man do to you.” That’s from Hebrews 13:6. Psalm 56:4 (KJV) says, “In God I will praise his word in God I have put my trust: I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.”

After the surgery, the doctor said that there was no spot on the piece of the pancreas they took out. That surgery left an unnecessary scar going down the middle of my body, protruding to the left side. I was on life-support, and a lot of people thought I was not going to make it, especially Ricky. He had the whole block on Patton thinking I was going to die. But I remembered God’s word: “I shall live and not die.”

In 2001, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in my left breast. When I went and had a mammogram, the medical providers said they saw a spot inside my breast but that I had to wait for the diagnosis to come back and it would take about a week. In fact, the diagnosis took a couple of days. I was served with a telegram saying “the test was positive” and the tumor was malignant. I called the doctor, and he told me to come in the next day.

That day was the worst day of my life, I thought, because I knew of a couple of people who had died from breast cancer. You hear on the news about people dying from cancer all the time, so I really just lost it, forgetting my faith in God. I made the medical providers take another mammogram, but they still saw the spot. They said that I should arrange to have the operation.

I told the doctor I was just in the first stages. I did not have anyone to take care of my mother. The doctor said she would get someone to take care of my mother for me, but I just kept coming up with excuses. I waited a whole year before I let them operate. I had a mastectomy—they took my left breast. They put a tube in to drain it, to keep it from getting infected. Because of my type of insurance, they left the tube in for a year. My friend Idell witnessed this and had a few choice words for them.

My medical providers at the time told me they would give me an implant, but my insurance did not want to pay for it. The company didn’t want to pay to have the tube taken out either, because the doctor was going to take out the tube and put in the implant at the same time. My doctor and I were calling people—I called the people who had authority, and he called whoever he was calling. The insurance company ended up paying for the tube to be taken out and for my implant. That was a miracle because my insurance did not pay for cosmetic surgery.

I have been cancer-free since 2002. “For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, ‘Fear not, I will help thee’” (Isaiah 41:13 KJV).

I had pneumonia, and I got a blood clot in my left lung. It was another time I thought I was leaving this life. I could hardly breathe; my lung was hurting so badly. I would be bent over or in a fetal position. The doctors decided they wanted to take some fluid off my left lung, so they asked one of the students they were training if he wanted to do the job. He said no, thank God, but if he had said yes, I would have let him. I was studying in the medical field too before I took sick. The nurse went ahead and did the procedure, and my lung collapsed.