They say don’t write when you’re crying but honestly I’ve been crying the last few days and I feel I just need to get this out.
I truly, honestly, can’t believe that we are here again. Physically, I thought I might be improving. I was struggling with some interpersonal issues that only a few knew about, but physically, I thought hey – maybe we’re getting somewhere. Maybe the demons in my mind are all I have to worry about. I encouraged my friends to invite me out, I set up dates to get together, I was trying to do more. Because for the first time, I felt like I was able to more. It had been five months since I had visited a hospital and for me, that’s record timing. I thought we were headed somewhere.Then my intestines started coming out…
At first I chalked it up to a one-time thing; just a gaffe that would correct itself. I had plans; I was going back into the office, I was being more social; I didn’t have time for this. But it only got worse; they started coming out more and more and I became more immobile as a result. While we planned a surgery date of August 31st, we quickly learned that I was not going to be able to make it to that date – so my surgeon pivoted plans and told me to report to the hospital ASAP – he would revise my ileostomy, staple my small intestine back to my stomach, and all would be well.
No part of me wanted to have another surgery. Another surgery means another recovery. And another recovery is painful. It’s horrible what the body has to go through to get back to where it originally was, and with my opiate tolerance, I knew I was looking at nothing good. But whatever, we could do it. So the operation happened.
We thought all was well; the first day after seemed okay; but my surgeon accidentally sewed a blockage, and if you know anything about intestinal blockages, they’re the most painful things you can experience. It just so happened he was out of town, and none of the other emergency docs in the group wanted to touch me with my history, so I was left to suffer. I didn’t move for five days. I couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom, I couldn’t shower, I couldn’t leave the one position in the bed. None of the medication was working for me. The NG tube wasn’t draining my stomach fast enough which usually gives me the most relief. I kept counting down to Monday, praying for my surgeon to get back and do the surgery as soon as humanly possible.
What I needed was a brand new ileostomy and him to repair the blockage. And a brand new ileostomy is not a minor surgery. When he first told me this, I told him I wanted to wait a few months to fully recover from this surgery so I’d be ready for this one; I couldn’t handle two at once. He understood that, and that was the plan. But with the blockage thrown in, it didn’t make sense to repair one thing and not the other. So that’s what we’d do.
Pain control for me in a hospital is next to impossible; as a chronic opioid user, it’s hard to find something that works, and works well, undergoing all of the severe internal cutting that my body just went through. My doctors work hard to find something, but it’s not easy, and I always end up feeling an extricable amount of pain. I ended up leaving the hospital a day early because I was on so many meds I knew how difficult it would be to wean off of them, and that wasn’t a battle I was ready to pile on on top of everything else. So we’d tough it out at home.
My family is beyond helpful at this time. They’re used to this; and so are the nurses in the hospital that know me and for that I am so thankful. But it’s still not easy.
I want things to get better overnight. I don’t want to be hurting as bad as I do at this moment. I’m lonely. I’m hard on myself. I want to be a mother. I want all these things that I can’t have because I continue to have a body that fails me.
I feel so unbelievably low; and I’m trying to find God in all this again, but it’s not easy. I’ve restarted therapy, because I know I need it. People like me need extra help in all forms: whether its religion, friends, family, you name it – we can’t do life alone.
So this is my update, and my thank you to those have checked in while I’m working through all of this. I appreciate you reading, your prayers, and your being here for me. It’s a long road ahead..
