Remainig Hospital Stay

It is Thursday morning at 2:30in the morning. David helps me get up to go to the bathroom (a major ordeal at this point) and believe it or not this was the first time since the surgery that I felt some strength. I asked David when I was done if he would take me on a walk down the halls. So there we were in the middle of the night walking the halls. That was the longest walk I had taken, almost 45 minutes long, and it felt very good! We got back to the room, and went back to bed very excited about the progress being made. Just a mere 3 hours later I woke up in a frenzy of body shakes. I was freezing cold. David piled blanket after blanket on top of me but still the shakes just got worse. For 45 minutes David and I did everything at all possible that we could do to help me. My jaw kept slamming down hard on my tongue, and my hands were shaking so fast I looked like I was having a seizure. David put warm hearts on me, was constantly rubbing my arms and thighs to try and calm me. It seemed nothing we did made any difference. This whole escapade was constant torture for me. Basically for a solid 45 minutes every muscle in my body was tensed up. I don’t think I need to explain how bad it hurt to have all the muscles in my abdomen area tense for 45 minutes. After about 30 minutes of getting nowhere David called the nurses in. Very soon I had 4-5 of them surrounding my bed. They were watching my heart rate and temperature rise very quickly. Once they started giving me oxygen I could slowly start feeling my body relax and the body shakes calm down slowly. My whole abdomen area ached, and I could strongly feel each one of my incisions. Basically what happened is that my body spiked from a normal 98 degrees to almost 104 degrees in those short 45 minutes of time. I had no control.

So here it is Thursday morning, and I feel almost worse than I did the first day after surgery. After the doctor saw me he told us they are worried about the possibility of phenomena. They worried about my lungs collapsing. Immediately David and my family were worried and begging me to get up and walk more and do the breathing machine more and eat more. I wanted too…how I did want to. I hated feeling so bad and being so weak. The doctor put me on even stronger pain meds from the night before, and it made me so drowsy and weak and tired. On top of that I couldn’t eat anything. I think I tried eating 3 times on Thursday, and threw up each time. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday was three continuous days of high fever, nausea, and being so weak I could barely make to the bathroom and back to the bed. Disagreements of whether I was fighting hard enough or not those three days finally came to an end on Sunday morning when my fever broke, and I was able to ingest some applesauce without becoming sick. Those three days were full of emotions from one end to the other. All of the family was so worried about me getting worse. We were all so thankful once I started pulling through, and gaining some strength. Saturday night the doctor told me he would give me one more night, and if nothing changed they would start feeding me through IV. It had been 3 days and 3 nights since I had kept anything down. Praise the Lord that Sunday morning I took a turn for the better!






In those three days I had 2 CT scans done and 2 chest x-rays done. All the doctors could tell us is that I just developed some sort of infection, and it just had to run its course. What infection and where, they did not know. Sunday I started to eat very small portions of soft foods. It felt good to finally feel good! I was able to get up and walk 3 times that day. Monday was just another day of continued healing, and I was getting very anxious to get home!! After being in the hospital for 10 long days I went home on Monday afternoon.




Tuesday, just after I got home, my sister Stephanie flew down from Pennsylvania to be with me for a few days. Although it wasn’t for long, I cherished the time I had with her! Her and my little sister Katie took me in a wheel chair to Kohl’s to buy all new underwear. None of what I had was conducive to the larger incision that I have now. Steph also put up all my fall decorations around the house. This is my most favorite time of year. I just love all the colors and smells! She was very patient with me instructing her from the chair of what to put where. That’s what sisters are for, right! My grandma came down the Friday before I got out of the hospital.. She had anticipated I would already be home, and she wanted to be her for me when I got home. She came down here for the long hall. She doesn’t go back home till the middle of November! How wonderful it has been to have her here! She has just been awesome at taking care of me. She does very well at keeping lots of water done me constantly! That’s what I need. David asked me just the other day, “So…is grandma gonna come down for all of your surgeries?” :) He kept on talking about how he couldn’t imagine what the house would look like, or what kind of food we would be eating if he had to take care of it all. It is comical to think about, and I give him a hard time. The point in saying this is that we are very thankful and blessed to have grandma here with us to help!






My surgery was 3 weeks ago yesterday, and I am doing very well! I want to write one more blog update and tell in more detail how I am doing right now. Will try and finish that up in the next couple days. It feels like I got so far behind, and I just can’t get caught up.






One more quick thing I wanted to add. David and I have two praise reports to tell. First off, he got a job! It is not the “ideal” job that he may have wanted, but it is a job none the less, and we are very thankful!! Secondly, I was accepted into the Texas high risk pool insurance. No other insurance company would take me on, and this was our last resort. If you remember reading earlier in one of my blogs I told about the money the Lord provided to pay the first 3 months premium for this insurance. We had to pay that sum up front before we even knew whether or not I was accepted. Praise the Lord that I was!! What an answer to prayer, and a burden lifted that it was!






Well, that’s all for now. Thank-you for reading, and for each and every one of your prayers!! They are cherished!