From The Mud Puddle

Sometimes I get kind of twitchy as I consider writing something here on this blog that has moved me, either from my past or in more recent days. I often do not know who you the reader is or just exactly what will bring someone to my blog. Sometimes I write, take down a post and put it up there and down again in being wishy washy. Perhaps it is because I know I am opening a window into my soul for others to see those vulnerable stops. Perhaps I start to wonder if anyone will really care or will write off what I may want to write.

Irregardless today, the thing on my mind is that it has been six years since my hysterectomy. After years of horrid cycles, struggling with infertility, ending our official "trying" and then later dealing with extreme bleeding and anemia(hemoglobin 2.8- had to have a transfusion), I finally had enough and choose to change my situation by opting for surgery. I so hoped I would be like that woman in the bible that touched the garment of Jesus and was healed of her bleeding. In God's sovereignty, He took me down another road.

I had to have this surgery the old fashion ways because of the fibroids that were all within my uterus. I also had to switch back to a doctor I did not 100% trust because I could not bring myself to being operated on by another doctor who had shaky hands that I had been seeing a few years prior to this. It sounds crazy, but it is how it played out. After making the appointment, it was a painful 9 weeks until the actual surgery. I don't know if that is just how booked up things were or if they make women wait this long so they are sure about what they are doing first. Either way, it was mind torture to wait.

A few memories in particular come to mind:

• Signing the paper that was so boldly stating that I knew I would be sterile. The word sterile was cold, empty. It was a reminder that our plans to continue to try to have another baby failed time and time again.
• The overwhelming feelings of loss of control along with the knowledge that this was major surgery. I had to come to terms with the fact that even though we live in a country with many great medical advancements-God is still sovereign in the operating room and would be over my situation as well. Seriously, I wrote love notes to my husband and kids for them to find among my things later in case I died.
• Being woke up by the nurse yelling my name again and again while being in great agonizing pain. Not being able to sleep, but having to (from what they said for my own good to clear my lungs) stay awake and try to cough. The yelling though is what got to me. I had several nurses with no bedside manner at all that was appealing.
• Seeing my mother and my then 12 year old daughter and 10 year old son in the hall as they took me to my room. Not feeling like talking to them. Also seeing my in laws arrive in my room while I was trying to find a way to communicate to my kids somehow where they would not worry. In a word, it was all overwhelming.
• Reading the card from my son that said "we all feel prickly sometimes"...that was just what I needed to hear. I felt awful prickly for a while.
• The knowledge of being alive thereafter and God's presence so thick in the room, feeling the prayers of the saints that were lifted up on my behalf.
• My sister sitting there in my room so my husband could go home to let the dog out and feed him. I didn't want to be left alone at all that day.
• Learning to use the morphine button, while still wishing they'd let me just drift off to sleep.
• Not wanting to eat.
• Being switched the next day to a room on another part of the same floor because they were going to close that side of the hospital floor. I remember feeling displaced and uncomfortable in the smaller room they put me in. I always wondered why they didn't just start me in that room in the first place!?
• Watching 4th of July fireworks out of the window in my room with my husband holding my hand.
• Hearing my doctor the next day fuss at the nurses because he could not find me and no one told him where they had put me.
• Being ready to just go on home even though I really could have used another day there. Home was better than this treatment. At least at home, I could begin to heal somehow.
• Coming home and not being able to get comfortable no matter how I tried to lay. Crying again and again as everything overwhelmed me once more.
• Proping myself up with four or five pillows where I was basically having to sleep sitting up in the middle of the bed for many weeks.
• Seeing Bayley, our dog, lay across the threshold of our bedroom door. Personally, I think he was protecting me, knowing something was not right with me.
• Being scared silly that I would somehow "come apart" where they had stapled me back together or that Bayley would jump on me and rip me open. (I made him stay far enough away so that he could not jump on me.
• Sitting on the couch after taking some pain pills a week later watching Bob the Builder and some other show where the cartoon flower said "once upon a time there was a lawnmower" as she began telling her scary story to the other flowers.
• Breaking down on the phone with one nurse that told me I should be walking up and down the driveway by now (one week out or less) and being switched to another nurse who tenderly sympathised with my feelings of not being a woman anymore and that no, I did not need to be walking up and down the driveway yet in the summer heat of July.
• Not being able to bathe myself, dry myself, dress myself or put on my own shoes. I do not know how many times I started crying as someone else had to help me those first couple of weeks.
• Going to the home church we were attending a month later, in pain, prayerfully turning this whole situation over to God and knowing the pain, both emotional and physical was healing. I was beginning to accept things better, and beginning to see the sunshine again.

That is what was on my mind today. I praise God for the years hereafter that He has given me. I do not miss having a cycle or the intense pain, nor the extream anemia. I am facinated at the fact that I can take a portion of the skin directly above my scar and pinch it as hard as I can and not be able to feel it at all.

And glad, when it was all going on, that my husband, when he said his vows to me on our wedding day, meant every single word....for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health for as long as we both shall live....

posted by Muddy at 7:38 PM