Wisdom from my walk

In a few hours, I’ll get up and head to the hospital.   I am still in a bit of shock that I am really having this done, that there’s something wrong and I need to.   I know I’m in pain and I read the report, but I guess I’m still surprised.  It’s been a crazy year and what better way to end it than with major surgery right?

My grand dad has finally been moved to the same nursing home where my grand mother has been for living for a while.   I am glad they are finally together, even if he only has a short time left.   I was upset that they wouldn’t be together at the end of their life.   They’ve been married their whole lifetime, well over 50 years and while I imagine it might not all be about the same things it was when they fell in love, I can’t imagine they’d not want to be together in the end.  I can only hope that’s how it is, and it seems to be that way, as he finally seemed willing to go there and be with her in the end, or that’s what I was told.   That’s what I’d like to think and that’s fine with if it’s not true, I’d rather be disillusioned and think that there’s hope that maybe at least one relationship will live on even if it’s not perfect but at least until death they do part.

The kids spent the day fighting with me about wanting to go out to play in the snow, since they canceled school which left me home with all three boys while trying to catch up on chores before I’m on major restrictions starting tomorrow.  I didn’t get nearly enough done, but I blame most of that on our non-efficient dryer which has to be run at least 2 if not 3 cycles for the load to be completely dry.  We need a new one, but it took 6 months for us to buy a new vacuum so I imagine short of a miracle a new dryer is just going to have to wait!  Too bad it’s not summer still or I’d be able to hang clothes outside to dry still!

I turned in my final, although not completed which will take my A down slightly but I was willing to accept that as I couldn’t do much about it and couldn’t give any more of myself to the work needed with how badly I’ve been feeling.   I’ve been lucky enough to have kept a 4.0 this far into my coursework, so this final might mess that up, but again, considering how the last few months have gone, it’s a miracle I’ve gotten all A’s with all of the things I’ve had to deal with and still go to class and get work done!   Needless to say, I dropped the class that was to start today, so my next class starts in February which will give me time to recover from surgery.  I think my next class is marketing, which should be interesting.  I’m missing accounting this time, which I will need to make up somehow.  I will probably try to take it via an online course.

So off to sleep for a few hours, I need to be at the hospital at 7.  Dean’s arranged for a friend to come over early to be w/ the boys, praying they all have school tomorrow and no more snow delays or cancellations to make for an easier day for her and Dean!   🙂

I have tried to live an authentic, transparent life.  It has given me nothing but heartache and despair.   Has it been worth it?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.   Keeping with tradition, I had my pre-op appointment today.  Zeke accompanied me, and I was naive to think that it would be an in and out visit.   An hour and a half, one abnormal EKG, a few downed computers, 3 lab slips, 2 x-ray orders, a dme order and some PT exercises and an RX later, we left.   Zeke was brilliant, he simply drew, played tic-tac-toe with me and was the cutest quietest kid I’ve ever taken with me for an 1 and a half appointment ever.  I told the nurse that he’s the only of the three boys I’d ever consider taking to a doctors appointment with me anymore, simply because he’s the best behaved in general. I guess being third, he just goes with the flow of things.

After I took Zeke to school I went to get bloodwork done, and ironically she was able to get a good vein on the first try but made a mistake and pulled out the needle by accident before attaching the vial and I ended up with blood on my jeans and having to be re-stuck.  I told her that lucky for her I am used to being a pin cushion when going for lab work, and she is usually great at getting me the first time and sure enough the second time got the vein on the first try.    I think she must have written down that I have deep veins because she went straight for the small needle w/ the catheter type attachment, I usually have to ask new techs to do that, which I hate to do because it clues them in that they might have trouble which usually ends up in at least 2 sticks before a successful draw!

I ran out of time so I didn’t get my x-rays taken care of, but my pre-op form says, pending lab work I am cleared for surgery on Friday.  Now I know that may be normal, but usually my labwork doesn’t say that.  Nor, I am sure do many of you have to have attached your abnormal current and past EKG’s along with your heart tests confirming that yes at age 31 you have something going on with your heart but that they don’t think it will kill you so you should be ok for surgery and they think it’s just normal for you, again at the young age of 31, to  consistently have abnormal EKGs.  now, that may fly for most doctors, but for a young woman who’s father has been facing major heart issues and died several times because of heart attacks and is awaiting open heart surgery, this places a bit of fear in my mind, but sure, lets go ahead with surgery anyway. Because really, when you’ve had over a dozen surgeries, again before the age of 31 and never died or had heart related surgery complications, I guess that’s precedent enough that I’ll be ok.  Now the breathing issues post surgery, that’s another issue altogther……

So now we wait.   I suppose if I hear nothing back from the doctor surgery is a go for Friday.  Today’s doctor was most concerned with my kidney function as well as my B12 level, as I’m having significant back pain, decreased mobility and strength in my arms and back.    Over time my muscle strength has weakened, and I knew it was getting worse, but until today’s neurological test I didn’t know how badly.   I think today was the first time I really did badly on one of my neuro exams which is actually pretty funny since I get them so frequently due to my history.    I don’t think I’ll be all that disappointed if surgery is canceled for Friday, as long as they find something that is treatable, although I would like to have the surgery done before the first of the year so we don’t have to start all over w/ our out of pocket deductible in order to pay for it!      For years Dean and I have suspected that one day they will finally dx me correctly with MS, but until then, I just battle worsening symptoms of pain and limited mobility.

On top of these things, I battle the day to day.   I am not perfect.    I don’t pretend to be.  I know my health affects my family, especially my husband and kids.    I know it makes me a crappy friend who often is too needy.   But I also don’t think it’s fair to not do my best to try to overcome my pain and physical limitations in an attempt to have the best day possible every day, so my kids can have the best day possible every day, so when my husband gets home the house is clean and dinner’s started or at least thought about and I’m available for him, and if I can have at least enough energy to email or text friends to check in throughout the day even on the worst pain days.   We can control how we act.   I admit there are days when my pain and the stress of it all gets too bad and I lash out at the kids, or I let them have their way, which sometimes makes people think they are manipulating me, but if they knew how little strength I had in those moments to even be up and out of bed maybe they’d think twice before thinking that.

I admit that my kids take advantage of my health but I also admit that in the last month we have taken back the home field advantage, or rather I have.  I am not allowing the kids free reign.   Caleb is finally helping, and is not only doing so without grudging, but has learned to enjoy cooking snacks or breakfast for his brothers as well as himself.  He loves our new vacuum (his words not mine)   His attitude is slowly moving from one of complaining about helping to being more like Bo, who instead of having to be asked to do something, just does something because someone mentions a need or because he sees a need.        That being said, in the last week, the boys all have seemed aware of my decline in health.  Caleb and Bo have made attempts, and Bo more successfully, have staged sit ins of sorts.  Refusing to go to school, in hindsight , to be near to mom.   Caleb does this out of worry that I need help or that I won’t be OK.  Bo does this for many reasons, and I think we finally have figured out how to overcome it at this point by changing several motivating factors as well as transportation issues as the cold was making him have extremely chapped dry skin so Dean is now driving him all the way to school so his skin won’t be so raw.    But Bo also felt the need to be with mom because he felt like no one else cared for him, which was a sad thing to hear.    We’ve since addressed these concerns and he seems to be doing better with the new plans set in place.   He’s also going to sit down with the school counselor to discuss how to better manage his emotions.

So while life is a tangled mess right now, we’re doing our best to make every day the best it can be by focusing on our family.   Listening to and really paying attention to needs of one another to make sure we’re all on the same page.   We’ve had a rough year,and as the year is ending, I’m hoping we can end it on a high note.   We’ve had a lot of negativity in our lives, and we’ve shed a lot of that in the last 6 months, and are still going to have to keep processing a lot of that in the coming months, but doing it as a family instead of not listening to each other is the first step.

I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas, I realized yesterday that if I do have surgery this week that I might not even be up to much for Christmas this year, it seems like that happens to us often.    I’m looking forward to few weeks of R&R but really, I’m only getting one week of R&R as that’s all Dean gets off of work and the boys have off school til January.     But I’m grateful the boys are all big enough and helpful enough to chip in and do their part, so really it won’t be that bad.  Caleb can cook eggs and oodles of noodles, as well as make sandwiches.  Bo is great at cleaning up toys and Zeke can entertain us all, and is pretty good at cleaning up when the mood strikes him!  He’s going to be a great baker one day.    So if things change, I’ll update, but if not I’m not sure I’ll post again this week as I’ve still got a final to finish before Thursday and want to get the house work done before then as well.

Sometimes when I can’t seem to figure out what else I’ve got to look forward to, I’m grateful I’ve got this amazing man by my side. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him. Been going through a rough 6 months or so, and things don’t seem to be getting any easier. I’ll be getting surgery to have two hernias repaired on Friday Dec. 17th, so will have two incisions. The total recovery time is about 6 weeks, comparable to my hysterectomy recovery. I had to drop my next college course, so at least I’ll be able to finally get Mockingjay read! Once I’m recovered from that the doctors will be looking in to what is causing the real pain, making it nearly impossible for me to move without having extreme back pain, even after being on my normal pain meds and vicodin.   They don’t think this pain is related to the two hernias, unfortunately, but the surgeon said we have to treat the hernias first due to the risk of problems with my stomach if I don’t, and if the back pain is still there than deal with that.   Although, my back pain is worse than the pain from my hernias.   All I know is that after the last few months, I’m really having a hard time having faith in God to provide for the little things, big things and all the things in between when every day is a struggle to just get out of bed and there’s no end in sight.  I’m doing the best I can, we have been for a long time, and I am trying to persist, but I’m got little to look forward to and am quite discouraged for the future.   For now, I’m going to spend the next few days finishing up my final for my last class, then will focus on my kids and getting last bits of Christmas prep done before surgery on Friday.   I’m not sure why these kind of things keep happening to us, but it seems like we keep getting knocked down just to get back up and thrown right back down again by something worse than before.   I am not sure I am ready or willing to keep playing this game.   I am not sure I have a choice.   All I know is for now, I’ve got this amazing guy who’s encouraging me to stick it out and three awesome kids who need me.   I’m not convinced that my faith is going to be a part of any of that for a while, or if it is I’m not sure how to reconcile it.   I’ve been walking this line for months and I know the devil’s been working hard to get me here to this place, and I don’t want him to win, but I feel like I lost this war a long time ago. My body can’t keep this up any more, and my spirit is truly done the fight, at least for now.   I’ve got a few weeks of R&R lined up, would love to have some proof that there’s more to this life than this futile fight just to continue to be in pain every day, emotionally and physically.    Would give anything to just be happy and have even just 5 minutes without pain, maybe a Christmas miracle?  I won’t hold my breath.   I’m grateful for what I do have, a great husband who does more than his share and then some, kids that are realizing they need to do their share and are not grouchy about it, friends that care, a house that we aren’t going to lose (at least not this month), and food in the fridge.   It’s enough for now, and heck I even have a working vacuum finally(it’s only been 6 months or so without a working one!), so things aren’t all that bad!  🙂

For a few weeks I’ve been mentioning to Dean that I think I might need to see a doctor, but due to our financial situation, I was choosing not to.   I just felt like something was wrong, and usually I know my body well enough to know when something is off.   I kept thinking I was having hip pain, on my right side.   I thought if I could get my hip to re-align, and move differently, my back might not hurt as bad, and it would be more comfortable to sit.   This weekend, I woke up in horrible pain, I thought my appendix was bursting or somehow I was in labor with some miracle baby.   I woke up about 4 am and stayed up til around 7 am, until I couldnt stay up any longer and crashed finally from the exhaustion of the pain and fatigue.  We had had several friends who had the flu/stomach bug, so I thought I must just be getting the pre-cursory stomach pains without the nausea, diarrhea or vomiting that went with it, and expected that as the day went on I would.  As the day went on the back and stomach pains worsened and I realized I also had a mass by my thigh that I hadn’t noticed before.    I decided as long as I wasn’t fevered, I probably wasn’t going to die, so I was going to try to wait for Monday to see a doctor.    On Monday, my doctor was busy so I saw another in the practice.  I presented w/ nearly classic appendicitis symptoms, minus the mass in my groin.   So he sent me for a CT of my ab and pelvis along with blood work.   Ironically my appendix did not even bother to show up at all on the CT, but two hernias did, or one, that’s up for debate.   The reading radiologist apparently was so rushed by the stat order to rule out appendicitis, did his job to do so but failed to be consistent in his other findings.   I went to my gyn today, who said the report was nonsense, but that it’s possible there’s a small hernia near my belly button, which is nothing to worry about, but that the hernia in my groin/thigh area, possible resulting from the hysterectomy incision weakening my abdominal wall, needs to be addressed by a surgeon as it could affect my bowels, if it’s not already, which I believe it is.   The CT also shows that the pain I felt over the weekend was also ironically the result of my stupid overly active ovaries, which despite a lack of uterus, felt the need to ovulate this month, and create a large cyst of the sort the gyn says is the most painful of all the kinds that there could be.    So when I thought I was in labor, I was just ovulating.

Point is, I feel really dumb for having chosen to have gotten a hysterectomy in 2008 if now in 2010 I’m still suffering all this pain and will again need surgery to deal w/ the consequences of that bad choice in getting that surgery.   Not sure how things will pan out, but at least as of today, I’ve got a prescription for a pain med that should finally take the edge off the pain.    Have an appt set for next Tuesday to see the surgeon.   Hoping to get surgery set befroe the end of the month as Dean has time off already set for the end of the month as well as we are already at or nearing our out of pocket max for health insurance, but if we wait til after the new year, we’ll have to meet our deductible all over again before insurance kicks in.

I guess if I am going to have surgery again this year, I may as well go ahead and schedule that eye surgery I was putting off too.  Geez, I really thought I was going to be get through til next year without having any more health drama on my end to deal with, then this.   I really could have done without this, especially dreading this one for the pure location of it!   Not my idea of fun!   I think I would have rather already had my appendix taken out, even if it was an emergency than deal w/ a hernia! (or two!)

My son, Caleb, has a lot of my traits, one of them is his love for music.  This morning he is sitting on the sofa listening to music videos on youtube and singing.   Something if I could have done at his age I would have done!   At his age I sat on my bed and listened to the radio or cassettes!   What a difference technology makes, and I am glad, because now we can share things.  He is able to find things new and then I can sit on my laptop pull up the same thing, listen and share it because it appears the boy has decent taste!   He was sitting singing this song, and darn can the boy sing.  One day, someone will notice him and be able to pay for him to go far, sadly he lives in a community that is sports geared not music so his talent stays here hidden in this house.    One day…..this boy will go far.  His dream is Broadway, and if we could get him voice lessons and dance lessons I think he’d be there.  Had he been born elsewhere I think he may be there already.   Maybe God has other plans for him, maybe the Christian music industry one day, who knows.   Anyway.   The boy was singing this song and I had to laugh at how much I  kept thinking of my silly husband and all the times I tell him how crazy he is but really that makes me love him even more.    I feel in love with him many moons ago for his silly sense of humor, cute smile and loving embrace.    He’s safe, encouraging, loving and mine.    He’s made me a better mom, friend, and person.   I hope he knows how much I love him.   Dean’s working today.   Not because he HAS to today, but because if he does he gets paid a little extra and can and we know we could use the extra money.    I could definitely use the help, Bo’s party is tonight, we have no cake ordered, or planned, I have four kids here, will have to go shopping on black friday for party stuff, like plates and the like, and I will manage, but I know he wishes he could be here too.   Just want to make sure he knows I appreciate his sacrifice for us to be at work and not with us today.   And that  I love him, even when I’m calling him crazy because that’s the Dean I love the most.

I would love to say that’s how my friends think of me one day, we should strive to live that authentic servant life that shows God’s love to others so that one day they can.   My dream…..also my dream to one day play guitar like that.   Working on one thing at a time!   🙂

I’ve been applying to jobs for months, never getting past the application stage, until last week!   A company, a well known one even, asked me to do an online assessment then asked me to schedule a phone interview.   One of the questions online asked what I expected as far as pay, and it was a a multiple choice answer so I chose the highest pay as we really do need to get that number to ensure we can afford to pay for childcare and pay the bills or else my working will be pointless.    I assumed since I had made it this far they had taken that answer into consideration and spent today looking into childcare prices, and even emailing some local providers via craiglists for rate info just in case things went well.   This evening I had the phone interview and it seemed to be more of her telling me about specifics of the company; hours, benefits and then pay than an interview.  She asked again that same question as listed online, and to play it safe I gave the same answer I had online.    She said she was sorry but the pay rate was “X”, I said I am sorry too.   She said would you consider the job at “X”.  I said unfortunately no.   I didn’t feel I should have to explain myself as I had already answered this question ahead of time and they had failed to pay attention to it and if they had we wouldn’t have wasted our time, or my stress level!   She said then we can go ahead and end the phone interview now.   I really felt in hindsight had I said something else I could possibly have a job lined up right now.   But I also know that I really do know that Dean and I have talked countless times that w/ three kids needing childcare at least part of the time, it needs to make sense financially for me to go to work, and the numbers just need to work out.  At this point in the game, I can still say no to a job.   Granted, things are not going well, but if we can’t afford to pay the bills now, adding in childcare for three kids just so we can possibly get another $200 a month once I go to work 40 hours week after taxes and paying for childcare is just plain dumb!   I felt like this was just a sign that I needed to be patient and wait for another opportunity to present itself, and we know God will provide for us financially, even if it seems impossible right now.  That being said, we are hosting an open house this weekend for the launch of our new Scentsy business, Dean and I, that is.   We are hoping this will be a way that Dean and I can spend time together, work together some, and add to our income.  Leave a comment if you want more info and don’t have my most recent contact info.