Two, Thirty, and More Than I Bargained For...

Eek, it's been a long time. Life has been a bit of a roller coaster lately (as it usually is, I know), but this has seemed a bit exceptional. Since my last post, we've marked the two year point without Mom. It was really difficult, as usual, but there was this little inkling of hope that somehow I will survive this.

I also turned 30 in September. It was difficult, again, as usual, to celebrate a birthday without Mom, but there was a sort of feeling of "coming of age" that came along with this one. It was the feeling that my age was finally catching up to how old I'd felt for a really long time, and now maybe certain people would start to take me more seriously. It was a feeling of confidence; of being a strong, independent woman. It felt good.

I'm pretty sure this is where God decided to remind me that the only reason that I am surviving any of this thing called "life" is through His grace. So He decided to take me down a little health journey.

It began the day before my birthday actually (Sunday, Sept. 20th). I started having some strange pain in my upper abdomen completely out of the blue. It got progressively worse all week. I started to have pain on my lower left side, so by Thursday I was pretty much thinking it could be appendicitis. After school I came home that day, had a bowel movement, and it was bright red. I was a little bit scared, obviously, and took myself to the emergency room at the St. Pierre Hospital. The doctor felt around my stomach, said it didn't seem like it could be my appendix, and sent me home. He didn't even do bloodwork.

He had given me a few days worth of medication to make the spasms stop, so I actually did start to feel a bit better over the weekend and into the next week. I had about a week where I was virtually pain-free, with just some discomfort. All of a sudden, however, it started up again with a vengeance. I was in a ridiculous amount of pain in my upper and lower abdomen. It came and went in waves and I couldn't sit or lie down in a comfortable position. On Thursday, Oct. 22nd I took myself to the walk-in clinic and thankfully saw my own doctor. She sent me immediately for bloodwork and an x-ray. The following morning she sent me for an emergency ultrasound. At that point, they noticed a mass of some sort and it looked like it was on my pancreas. My lipid levels were elevated, as well, which meant that my pancreas was irritated. So she admitted me into the St. Pierre Hospital. To alleviate the strain on my pancreas, they didn't allow me anything by way of mouth--no food or water. I was given lots of morphine and gravol and the pain started to subside a bit again. By Tuesday I was feeling considerably better and my lipid levels had returned to normal so they sent me home. I was still scheduled for a CT scan that Thursday, though, just to make sure that everything was all right.

I went for the CT scan "just to make sure" and by the end of the day my doctor was calling me (that's never a good sign when you hear from the doctor on the same day as your test). She said that it showed something was going on in my intestines, rather than my pancreas, so she was sending me for an emergency colonoscopy the next day. I had to drink that garbage to clean out my colon and it kept me up all night long, made me vomit, and gave me a migraine. Good times. The next morning I went for my colonoscopy. I had to wait in a room in the emergency department in Bethesda Hospital where we'd been told that Mom had died. I hadn't been back since and it was pretty traumatizing. At least I wasn't in the room where she'd died.

The colonoscopy confirmed my diagnosis. It was intussusception. It's very rare in adults, apparently. I had a lump inside my colon where my small intestines met my large intestines, and it was sucking my intestines into each other like a telescope. The lump also had a bit of an ulcer on it, so it was causing bleeding. It was all kind of a big problem. Thankfully my intestines were not completely blocked so they didn't make me have surgery that same day. They did keep me overnight in the hospital, though, for observation and sent me home on Halloween. They scheduled my surgery for Monday, November 9th. I had a week to attempt to get my life in order before it would come to a grinding halt.

My surgery was successful. The procedure was called a bowel resection. They took out a chunk of my small intestine and a chunk of my large intestine (colon) and reattached them. My appendix was all wrapped up in the mess, so they removed that, as well (makes sense why I thought I was having appendicitis in the first place). They were able to do the surgery laparoscipally (sp?), so I have four poke holes from the camera and instruments, but they also cut a three inch incision in my lower right abdomen. It is a very painful place to have an incision as it goes through all the abdominal muscles, and it has taken a long, long time to heal.

My hospital stay was quite traumatizing, overall. I got to experience having a catheter, wearing support stockings for days, and even had a male health care aide written up for inappropriate comments made to me during my sponge bath (yeah, that's right). I violently got my period one night so I had cramps on top of the other pain. I had an infection, so I was given really harsh IV antibiotics which made me extremely nauseous (note: vomiting while feeling like your incision will rip open is not a good time). I had to learn how to poop again. And there were endless "meals" of chicken broth and jello. I finally just refused to eat and begged the doctor to give me something else. The day I was allowed ice cream was a happy day. My surgery was on Monday and I finally ate actual food on Friday at noon. Even though it was hospital food, I cried tears of joy while I ate. They finally allowed me to go home on Friday afternoon, although I had to return on Saturday for the 10 staples they somehow missed removing on Friday.

Everything happened so fast that the reality of the situation didn't start hitting me until after the surgery was over. I felt so sick in the hospital. I remember lying there and wondering how my Mom did it for so many years. I know that she told us many times that the only reason she was still hanging on was for my brother and I. I thought I had a lot of perspective into her situation, but it gave me a tremendous amount more appreciation for what she endured for us.

Coming home that first night was really difficult. I had to sleep on the couch because if I lay down flat in my bed, I would have never been able to get up. It was a dark, sleepless night filled with emotion. The Enemy attacked me right there in my moment of weakness. He lied to me with every lie he knew I could believe. He told me that I was heading down the same health path as my Mom and that I wouldn't make it. I just couldn't pray hard enough to pray him away. The next day I told some family and friends so that they could pray, too. It really helped and I began to be able to sleep.

I was off work for 3 1/2 weeks, but still had to keep working from home to finish my grade 3 assessments and work on my report cards. I really felt like I needed to go back to work to get a handle on things again. I'm sure I rushed it. I was so ridiculously exhausted those first few weeks. I came home and could do nothing else. But Christmas was fast approaching and there were a million things that needed to be done, including hosting my last stamp club. I absolutely overdid things in December and over Christmas and I've been paying for it. I had a lot of abdominal pain and discomfort return. I went for another CT scan in January and haven't heard anything back, so I'm assuming that everything is okay. I think it's just a matter of learning to take it easy and respect my limits. I'm really working on that.

Shortly after I'd returned to work, I got called back to the surgeon's office. I knew it was going to be about the pathology report and I knew that you don't get called back unless something's wrong. I was worried about it all weekend. The doctor told me that the lump that they removed was something called mucinous cystadenoma. Basically, it was precancerous. If my intestines hadn't gone all crazy, I may have never had any symptoms, and I would likely have developed cancer of the appendix. Thankfully, it was out of me now, but it's all connected tissue, so he wanted me to be aware and to be an advocate for myself in the future. I will likely have to start going for routine colonoscopies in 10 years, which isn't a big deal.

I left that office and started to cry on the way back to my car. It suddenly hit me that even though God had allowed me to go through this huge trial, he had indeed spared me from much. It's really hard to admit this, but at points after my Mom died, I just really wanted to die myself. When I had first started to experience so much pain and when everything was so unknown, I was more than a little worried that He was now going to allow that to happen. The thing is I've come a long way in the healing process, and actually want to live again. It is so humbling to know that He's not done with me yet and that He does, in fact, have more in store for me.

This has been an incredible physical journey and an incredible spiritual journey, and I certainly haven't "arrived." I'm still in the physical healing process and I know that He's still teaching me to trust Him. It's what He's always been working on. I just wish it could be a little less painful sometimes. :)