Bitter & Sweet

This year has been bitter and sweet. I haven't been posting much because I found facebook and like most anything else that I have ever encountered, I fell madly in love with it and became obsessed with it. Now I'm back to normal and just use it to keep up with everyone. I missed the blog and have decided to give it another go.


Let's start with April ... I had SURGERY in April. I cannot believe it still. It happened so quickly. I had gotten up in the morning and started to get ready for church ... I was still feeling that early morning laziness, so I headed back towards the bed (a quite high bed) and hiked my leg up to get back in it.... AHHHHHHHHH!!!! I got into the bed and held my lower left pelvis just inside my left hip bone firmly with my hands. I tried to move around to accomodate the pain (Steve was watching Meet the Press) and nothing was working. After a few moments I started moaning in agony and the tears started. Steve became quite scared and insisted we go to the hospital. I was still trying to accomodate the pain ... "no, no ... please just go get me some hot tea" I asked him. He quickly ran off for the tea ... I went to the bathroom and started to run hot water for a bath. HOT TEA and a WARM BATH ... am I insane? Sometimes it is so funny to look back over things. I went to sit in the bathwater and there was no possibility of sitting ... to be blunt it felt as though something quite large had been shoved into places nothing should be shoved. Ohhh it was horrible. I never even got a sip of my tea. Steve at this point was not going to take no for an answer ... insisting "you could have bowel obstruction or something". So, we called his Mom to come watch the kids and I somehow was able to get into a prostrate, but somewhat comfortable position in the car. Long story short ... luckily not a long wait in the ER, followed by lots of tests including a CT, the ER doc was sure it was appenditicits ... Phew!!! UNTIL ... the surgeon arrived at my door. "Well, it's definitely not appendicitis" ... as you can imagine I was visibly shaking and the sweating commenced ... "you have a considerable amount of ascites in your peritoneum (fluid in your abdomen) and it could be consistent with small bowel rupture. There is a loop of small bowel that is enlarged and fluid in the peritoneum below it". Immediately I knew it was cancer ... it's just where you go when you work in my profession ... you often cannot see the tumors until they rupture through the wall and there are typically no symptoms ... small bowel cancer is incurable ... I have small children ... I need to be moved from this hospital to Barnes ... I can't say a word of these thoughts to Steve or Mom who are visibly nervous ... my mind was swirling!!! "We need to operate ... I'd like to go in laprascopically and see what is going on, but we may need to remove a small section of small bowel". It took me about 30 minutes or so to decide what to do ... should I stay at St. Luke's or move to Barnes where I know all the docs. I stayed ... "Let's just get it done." That was all the bitter part and I left out much of the bitter like throwing up way too many times, pain, pain and more pain and the horrible pain med Dilaudid which makes you dizzy beyond belief. But moving on to the SWEET ... When I woke up from surgery, the nurse told me everything had gone well ... "it was a ruptured ovarian cyst ... your bowels are fine". What wonderful news, even in my post-anesthesia hangover I knew how wonderful that was. I was able to be discharged the next evening and recovered amazingly well. I only have 3 little scars that I think will disappear over time. What a relief!!! I have decided though, that my ovaries certainly do not agree with me ... they turned on me at 19 and then they blessed me with two beautiful children and have once again become angry at me I suppose. Hopefully we will get along from now on. :-)