I love this. A friend posted this quote on Facebook the other day and it came at a time when I needed it most. As some of you know, the last two weeks or so have been a little stressful. Ok,
A LOT stressful.
I'm sorry if this post is long. I just wanted to explain what has been going on.
Last June, when I had my emergency gall bladder surgery, the Dr. told me that we basically had three organs in our bodies that were kind of unnecessary: tonsils, gall bladder and appendix. Ok, I thought, well I'm two for three then, because I had to have my tonsils out when I was 6 due to constant strep throat and at that time (June 2011), I was having my gall bladder out. *Sidenote~ I don't believe anything that is in our bodies is "unnecessary" because God made us and therefore HE has a reason for those organs being in our bodies, even if medical personnel doesn't understand or agree.*
Anyhoo, fast forward 8 months to two weeks ago, I felt fine. After I left work on the 14th, I noticed my right side was sore. It really just kind of felt like I had pulled or strained a muscle. Not at all possible since I work in a MDO program and I lift some precious, but sometimes hefty cargo. LOL! Didn't think much about it and went on about my day. Wednesday morning, I was planning on attending my MOPS group but did NOT feel well. Felt totally exhausted and my side was still hurting but worse. So I crawled back in the bed after the kiddos were off to school and slept for maybe two more hours. I needed to run a few errands so I got up, got myself and Pudgie ready and left the house. I stopped by my work and picked up my paycheck, headed to the bank and then to the local thrift store. My Boogs, bless his heart, really needed some more jeans and I wasn't about to head to a major department store to buy "nicer" jeans only for him to put holes in the knees and especially since our weather here as been kind of abnormal, so I knew he wouldn't be wearing jeans much longer to school, so I thought, Well, I'll go to the thrift store and get some "almost brand new looking" jeans for way less! Sorry if that was a run on sentence. ;)
Ok, so, while I was in the thrift store scrutinizing every pair of size 7 jeans, I got a phone call from my aunt and I was telling her how I felt and she said she needed me to do a series of test. Ummm, ok. She was having me test the level of pain depending on how I moved and so on. She had been through this before so she had her suspicions. I know those people in the thrift store thought I was weird or something because I was whispering on the phone while flumming through jeans, standing on my tiptoes only to drop down really fast to my feet. She
made forced asked that I repeat those "tests" several times. After telling her how I felt after each one, she said she thought I needed to go to the Dr. and be checked out. Now, I am NOT one to run to the Dr. everytime I am sick or if the kids are sick. God made our bodies in such a way that if we would wait a few days, a lot of times our bodies will do what they were designed to do and start to heal themselves. AND, we also have a
garganchuin hefty family deductible to meet, so if it can be treated at home, then I am all for that! My sweet aunt even suggested that I go to the school nurse to see if she could help me. LOL! Well, I went back and forth, wrestled with the fact that we would probably have a huge Dr's bill, but overall I just did not feel well so I made the decision to go.
I sat in the waiting room for a while, was called back to the tiny room, they drew some blood, tinkled in a cup and waited. The Dr came in , pushed down on my side, saw my level of pain and went back out. A little bit later he came back in and told me that my white blood cell count was 17 (should have been around 6) and that with the pain I was having, he thought I needed a CT Scan to rule out appendicitis. BUT, they couldn't perform that test there so I was going to have to go to the ER. OHHH GREAT, I thought. What's THAT gonna cost me? David got off of work and met me up at the Dr's office to get the kids and take them home and my mom and her husband were going to go with me to the ER. For those wondering why David went home with the kids and not my mom, he knows our nightly routine and we felt like it was best if he went home but that we would keep him updated.
We got to the ER and waited for a bit, then was called to a room, waited some more (you know how it goes) and eventally went up for the scan. Sure enough, results confirmed that my appendix was indeed inflamed (NOT ruptured) and I would have to have surgery sometime on Thursday morning. I was glad they could tell me why I was hurting but I was not happy thinking about the pending bills that were sure to be headed our way. Well, in the pre surgery area, the surgeon told me that he wasn't convinced that I had appendicitis but make no mistake, I was going to go home appendixless. Wait what???? It ended up that once they got in there, I truly did have a very enflamed appendix so it was removed and I went to recovery. The surgery had gone smoothly and I really wanted to go home, so he released me and I got home around 9:45p on that Thursday night. He told me that based on some info I had given him regarding a possible virus I had the previous week, He thought the virus had brought on the appendicitis. Nice huh? Oh and don't think I was jacked up on pain meds either. NOPE! The pain meds they gave me made my heart go crazy! It scared me so bad so I stopped taking them. I pushed the button on my heart moniter so much that the people who monitor it called me at midnight to make sure I was ok. (heart monitor? That's a whole nother story that I'll explain later.......)So I guess you can now say that I am 3 for 3!!
During this past week of recovery, I must have slept on or twisted my knee in a weird way because I woke up one morning hobbling around. My knee was incredibly sore. When I mentioned it to David, his words were "Well......I guess you'll just have to walk with a limp". BAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! I know what he was thinking.....Since I've hit 35, I'm falling apart, so he'll just have to trade me in for a younger model or start having things implanted to make up for the things removed. LOL! He cracks me up!
Fast forward a week to this past Wednesday night. I got a phone call kind of late and it was my mom. She told me that her head was hurting really bad and that she didn't feel well. ( Her husband was out of town for his business). She started describing how she was feeling and that she was nauseous and had lost some of her peripheral vision. Well, my first thought was possible carbon monoxide poisoning because I have had that before and those were symptoms, so I mentioned to her that I wanted her to go outside and get some fresh air to see if that would relieve the headache. I listened as she struggled to walk from the back part of her house to the front. Each step she took seemed to make the headache worse. She got outside and layed down on the hood of her car. She continued to tell me how bad her head was hurting and that something didn't feel right. I asked her if she wanted me to call my brother and she said yes. I called on another phone and my sister in law picked up. I told her what was going on and she advised me that I needed to hang up with her and call the paramedics. DUH Amanda!! I hadn't even thought of that! So I did, and I stayed on the phone with them on one ear while my mom was on my cell phone on my other ear. I could hear that they arrived and I spoke with one of the paramedics and told him what had happened. Thankfully, my brother had pulled up at her house shortly after they got there and so I hung up. They had done an EKG on scene and saw some type of "blip" so they were treating it as a cardiac event and they were taking her to the ER (the same ER that she had been with me at just a week before). After more EKG's, CT Scans and an MRI, it was confirmed that my mom had suffered a mild heart attack on Tuesday which caused a mini stroke on the backside of her brain on Wednesday. :(
Due to the stroke, mom was very repetitive and if you mentioned that she had had a mini stroke, she would open her eyes really wide, gasp and say "Really? I had a stroke? Oh my goodness." It was hard. Hard seeing her look confused and not able to remember what we had just told her 5 minutes ago. Hard to see her in pain and not be able to take it away for her.
As of right now, she will have to have a triple bypass surgery sometime later in the week.....unless the dr's change their minds, but that is the plan as of now. They want her body to heal from the stroke first. THANK the LORD, she still has full use of her limbs and so on. She still has some peripheral vision loss but she looks much better and the repetitiveness has subsided a little compared to how she was on Thursday.
Sooo, that has been my life the last two weeks or so. Plus, throw in there that I am still recovering from my surgery. My incisions are healing just fine and the soreness has almost subsided completely, but I am still extremely tired and worn out. Alot of it having to do with affects of anesthesia and stuff, but still.....I am a mom of four children and it's crazy hectic sometimes. I do want to say that David has been so strong and an amazing help through all of this! He has done almost all of the cleaning and laundry and running the kids around. He actually told some of our friends that I needed a "raise" because of all that I do. HEY, I LIKE THAT IDEA!!!! ;-)
If you don't mind, please keep my mom in your prayers this week. Prayers for clarity of mind and for the doctors to have wisdom in regards to what she should have done and what is best for her care needs.
Again, sorry this is so long and Thank you in advance for your precious prayers on behalf of my mom! :)
