Praises

For the first time in quite a while, I am sitting here once again, listening to Micah coo at someone, the house is fairly decently in order, I can look forward to more rest after I'm done with this, it's snowing outside again and everything is peaceful. Also, I feel almost normal again. This is the biggest praise. I am still uncomfortable in some ways, the incisions are still healing, so I still have to be careful, but for the most part I've been able to eat again without pain and enjoy it. I have to be careful with what I eat right now, to avoid another day of more pain, but I am so thankful for where I am now. It seems like it's been ages since I was not in some sort of pain.

I feel like sharing the whole story now, and I kind of tend to chatter on because I like detail, so bear with me here. Or you can just skip it and scroll down and look at all the pictures. :P

As you all know from my prayer requests, I was having some rather painful (huh, that word is going to come up a lot I'm thinking. Perhaps I will grab a thesaurus.) attacks that ended up being gallbladder attacks. The Sunday I ended up in the ER for one particularly excruciating episode, I was given medication that was supposed to help, but all it did was make me nauseated. For the rest of the week after that day, I was pretty much having what I thought was a non-stop attack. It kept me up very late into every night, I couldn't sleep in my own bed any longer. It was very hard to feed Micah because I had to sit still and I couldn't curl up into a position that felt better. For those days, I just pulled out the sofa bed in the living room and hung out all day on it with Micah, and I had his diaper bag close by so I didn't have to get up to change him. It was so bad at that point that I couldn't even stand up without being hunched over. At the ER visit, they told me about the gallstones, and had me schedule an ultrasound appointment for the following Thursday, and then a consultation with a surgeon the day after that. I didn't make it to either appointment.

Thursday morning, at around 3 am, I started getting sick as well as still hurting, so Scott once more packed us all in the car and we went to the ER. They did blood work and discovered that my levels (as they told me later) were off the charts, and I was admitted into the hospital with pancreatitis. It was a pretty miserable day. I was taken to the other hospital down the road via ambulance (those things are so bumpy! They need better shocks.) to get that ultrasound done, then taken back to the hospital and put in a room where I stayed for the remainder of the time I was there. This of course is all really shortened, by the time I got into my own room, it was about 8:00 in the morning. Later that day they also gave me a CAT scan, and that's pretty much all I remember of those first few days. I was very drugged up on morphine, but in so much pain that even morphine hardly helped, and I was also getting sick every couple of hours. I pretty much stayed curled up in fetal position for three days. I was also not allowed to eat or drink anything by mouth since that would just aggravate my condition. I vaguely remember a few things, like the nurses telling me that on my first night there, my heart rate sped way up and my blood pressure was extremely low, and I was severely dehydrated. I also remember that on my second day there, the silly fire alarm system was going off. All. Day. Long. They were trying to fix it I guess. And I remember one of the nights being annoyed because the people in the other room had extremely loud visitors, someone was clapping and hollering at a football game on TV. It startled me every time he shouted. The next three days as I waited for surgery, I felt much better, but I was starving by that point, and I have this thing with needles...I absolutely HATE them. And I had to be stuck multiple times a day (because people kept missing) every morning, and I kept going to sleep at night dreading the 3 am nightmare of having blood drawn, and at one time, having a new IV inserted. Blech.

I was very happy when the day finally came (Wednesday) where my levels were normalized enough to have the surgery. I didn't do anything funny when I came out of the anesthesia. I know I cried a little bit because I was having a hard time breathing, or so I thought. Every time I started falling asleep again, my breath would get really shallow and it made me feel very panicky. Thankfully, Scott was by my side that whole time, and he kept me awake with conversation and calmed me down when I started panicking again. Praise God the surgery went well and I was able to go home the very next day. Things have been getting better ever since.

I have definitely learned a few things from all this. The whole time I was trying very hard to praise God through it all and remember that He has a purpose for everything He allows and does. I think I can definitely say that I grew closer to Him during all this. There were a few times where I truly thought I could die and it was very scary facing that. I realized I'm not ready to meet Him yet, I want to grow closer to Him first and serve Him better and not waste my life. So I think this may possibly have been a wake up call.

The second thing I learned is that I actually have organs in my body that I have to take care of, so I can be healthy and take care of my family, and so I'm making efforts to actually start doing that. Not nearly as important as learning more about God, but still important. So, even though it was a terribly difficult time, I AM thankful that God allowed it to happen and that He gave me the strength to get through it.

And I am also very grateful to all of you, for all your prayers and encouragement, and for those of you who were physically there for me as well during our time of need. I now have an even better understanding of how the Body should be working together, and it amazes me.

And now, without further ado, I'm going to post some pictures to catch you all up. Enjoy!