First days after surgery

Two weeks and ----- days since my last blog update. I am very sorry for the delay of my updates from my surgery. I don’t believe I will be able to write about everything from the past two weeks in one update, but I will start at the beginning.

September 25th…..it is 4:15 on this Friday morning and the alarm is beeping away. Today is the day of my first major surgery, and my nerves are on end! David and I are scheduled to be at the hospital for pre-op at 5:30am. The first thing that we did before we got out of bed was hold on to each other and pray. It was a special time for me to remember back on. Today was very scary for both me and him! Once we got to the hospital things moved along rather quickly. It seemed like I was ready and in a room waiting to go back in no time. My mom and Katie came up early that morning along with mom and dad Ronson to see and be with me. All the nurses kept commenting on how special it was to have so much support and family around…..and it was! I have to thank each and every one of you for your prayers on that day. I can honestly say that the Lord gave me extra special peace going into the surgery that morning. There is no way that I would have been so calm on my own! The Lord was definitely with me!

I woke up from surgery in a lot of pain. The nurse that was assigned to me during the recovery post-op was the sweetest lady….I am so thankful! Waking up from anesthesia is a funny thing.  At the time you don’t realize how out of it you still really are. The only thing that really brings you to any amount of thought is the pain. Your mind is constantly pulling that feeling to the front and foremost of your brain. My sweet nurse gave me this button and put it in my hand. She told me that whenever it hurts to push the button. Then I asked her, “How many times can I push it?” Her response should not have been “as much as you want”.  Seriously, I laid there at one point and pushed the button over and over and over….probably 20 times at least. And then a couple minutes later I’m pushing it over and over and over again. Once I told her, “the button isn’t working”. She just laughed.  My time in the recovery post-op was supposed to be only 1-2 hrs. I ended up being in there for almost 5! Try and think about David during this time. The 4 hr surgery is done, and the doctor tells him he can see me soon after my short time in the post-op. Him and the whole family waited anxiously all afternoon for me to get out. In the post-op recovery they ran six big bags of fluid in me very quickly, and my body wasn’t putting any of it back out. After a very long afternoon for both me and the family I got wheeled to my room at 5:30 pm that night. David was so happy and relieved to see me!

Below is a before and after picture of my belly. At one of my pre-op visits they marked me where they would place the stoma. That is the blue mark on me in the first picture. The second one if you look closely you can see all six of the incision sites.

I can honestly say that the incisions are the very least of the pain that I felt. Although they may look bad, the amount of work that they did on the inside far exceeds these small cuts. The colon (which is the large intestine) had to be cut completely free from everything and removed from the body. In turn the small intestine and everything around it has new “neighbors” and has to be reattached to abdominal walls. Basically, my point is that the work done on the inside was very intense, and you feel it! It is 90% of the pain, and very painful!

Saturday was a hard day for me. It was the day I realized how out of it I was. I honestly wasn’t prepared mentally for how bad of shape I would be in. It was hard for me to even look at myself and how bad I looked. I was immediately depressed about my self image. I felt like I would never be normal again. It is over 2 weeks later now, and I can still honestly say that I still struggle quite a bit with my self image. I secretly hate my stoma and ileostomy and can’t wait for the day it is gone! I do know that these things are just something I have to live with and deal with for now, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, does it? Ok, so on top of all this the doctor came in and told David and I that he thought that the last 8 inches of my small intestine had the disease called Crohns in it. This news hit David and I very hard! We wouldn’t be able to get the results for a few more days. The news of that possibility was very hard on both of us! I couldn’t at that moment even think of the many things we would have to deal with if the results came back positive. My husband (though he probably wouldn’t admit it) was such a strong support to me every single day! I praise the Lord for him!! It was this night, just one day after the surgery that I started feeling all the anxiety that I thought I should have felt going into the surgery. I don’t think that David or I slept all night that night. I felt an overwhelming sense that that night was going to be my last. It was so very real to me at the time and in that moment that I didn’t want to even close my eyes I was so scared. We tried calling pastor to talk to him but couldn’t get through. We talked to dad Ronson on speaker probably for 30 minutes. David read to me from the Bible chapter after chapter, and we prayed together over and over. I talked to my mom for a while, but no peace. I felt so scared and without any peace at all. David was wonderful, and did everything he could do. Finally we called our used to be youth pastor at 1 in the morning, and he talked to us for almost an hour on speaker. It did help a little by the end of the conversation. He told David to get in the bed with me and wrap his arms around me. That did help me to feel safe, and I dosed off and on for a couple hours. That night seemed to go on forever, and I couldn’t wait till the morning.

Sunday was just another day. Lots of pain, but nothing out of the ordinary. According to the doctors I was progressing well. We still awaited the news about the Crohns. This waiting was a huge burden on us each day we waited. Today was the day of my first shower after the surgery. My mom and mother-in-law were there to do that very hard job. They were wonderful, and took care of me very well. I can’t emphasize enough how helpless I was. I felt like I couldn’t do anything for myself. I guess really I didn’t realize how much you use all of your core muscles, and without them…..its just hard to do anything. I was soon a big fan of all those wonderful pain meds they were pumping in me! Rachael, my sister-in-law spent the night with me tonight. This night I was having a lot of the same feelings of being scared and anxious like the night before. It was nice to have a girlfriend there to talk to. Rachael started reading to me from the Bible too. She just read a lot of the Psalms and Proverbs, and a lot of the promises of the Lord. She was reading in Proverbs 3, and read this set of verses that spoke to me, and I claimed them, and I had her read them over and over. It was Proverbs 3:23-26a “Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stumble. When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet. Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the Lord shall be thy confidence,….”

Monday and Tuesday were uneventful days. Each day anxiously awaiting the news about having Crohns. Each day I received so much support from family and friends! My room was filled with flowers, and cards from people who loves and cares so much about me. On top of it all I slowly started crashing emotionally. 

On Wednesday I finally lost it, and after a sting of events I finally broke down. I cried, no I should say I wept out loud to David for a good 15 minutes, and then to my mom for just as long again. It did feel good to just get it out. It was kinda funny that in the middle of this breakdown I was having the doctor comes to inform us that the results for the Crohns was negative. Praise the Lord!! Everything was in such a tizzy I couldn’t even be as happy as I wanted to be.  Ok, yes, I am a girl! Oh, may I also mention that right then in the middle of all this pastor shows up too. David leans his head in and tells me, and I just started shaking my head and crying more. In my head I almost wanted to laugh how everything was happening all at once, and also how out of control I was….!

I will have to say these first few days after surgery were hard in many different ways, and I am very glad to have them done and over with. The Lord is very good, and he was with us every step of the way. Thank-you to every one of you for your prayers for David and I during this time! The Lord was with us. We are very grateful!

More on the rest of my hospital stay in a little bit. Sorry it has taken so long to update you all.