Thanksgiving Reboot

My youngest son cooked dinner this year.  We kept it small, just the four of us because I still wear out quickly, but we had a wonderful day.  The food came out perfect--turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans with bacon, mac n' cheese, sweet potatoes, rolls, cheesecake and cherry pie.

It's times like this when I think of my mom. What a joy to pass these traditions on to the next generation.  One tradition that isn't getting passed on is rutabagas.  Looks like I'm the last of the Bylins who actually likes mashed yellow turnips. In the back of my head, I hear my entire family shouting, "Good! Rutabagas are awful!"

So much to be grateful for!

One Last Trip Around the Mountain

So back to last week and the hospital. It's Wednesday night.  I'm one week post op from the hysterectomy, and the kidney failure is resolved. At this point I'm waiting to get rid of the catheter and to have the stents removed. I don't want to cross into TMI (too much info, and some might think I already have) but here's what happened: they took out the cath and left the stents in with plans to remove them in the morning. 

So the pain starts around 9 pm. It's not all that bad, but enough for a pain pill.  An hour later, it's worse and it's different from the surgical pain I'm used to. This is on the right side in the back, isolated, and equivalent to a glowing red brick.  The nurse and I do the "what would you rate your pain" game for a while. 1 to 2 -- headache level for me. 3 to 4 -- worth taking something.  5 to 6--bring on the heavy stuff.  7 to 8 -- knock me out.  This pain hit 10. That's the point where my mind checked out.  All I remember is praying one words, "Jesus . . . Jesus . . . " over and over. I can't begin to describe how vivid that moment still is to me.  Pain, yes.  But there was such comfort in that prayer.  And peace. 

At some point the nurse called the doctor and he had her replace the catheter.  The pain ebbed in a breath and eased even more with a second breath. By breath #3, I was comfortable enough to fall sound asleep.  I woke up six hours later feeling . . . perfectly fine.  No pain. Completely rested.  It all felt like a dream.  Turns out a bladder spasm caused the trouble. We waited another day; the doctor took the stents out; and everything worked like it should.  My son drove me home on a gray day that was anything but gloomy.

Home!  Finally. It's been almost a week now and I'm feeling better every day. I'm glad, but part of me is clinging to these memories because they changed something deep and internal.  I don't ever want to be flippant with my faith or to take God's hand lightly. Or to turn him into an errand boy -- "Get me out of here, Mr. Wizard!"

My biggest take away from all this -- That little yellow flower in the tapestry belongs to a world far bigger and more beautiful than it can comprehend. There's beauty in pain, beauty in healing. There's joy in coming home, but there's also joy in a hospital bed when the future is uncertain and you know that somehow God knows, and it's okay--whatever it turns out to be.

It's Thanksgiving. That strikes me as the perfect to say it again, "Thank you God! Amen and Amen!"

Amazing Grace & Blooming Gardens

So back to the story . . . I'm in the hospital for the second time, hurting, nauseous and miserable.  To be honest, I was pretty much everything but scared.  It never occurred to me that the nausea was more than just that. I figured I'd get fixed up and be on my way home.  But they did a CT scan and the blood work came back.

The next day it was definitive: acute renal failure. 

I'll never forget hearing those words, but at the same time, the moment wasn't real.  A good looking young doctor stood at the foot of the bed and very carefully walked me through the events that led to the moment--the pain meds, the nausea, the stomach stuff, the blood pressure medicine. Then he said that my kidneys had essentially stopped working.  The chances of them coming back? He declined to say which I understand. He had a stethoscope, not a crystal ball.  The IV treatment stuff started big time. The pastor of our church and a good friend came and we prayed. I can't remember a single word, just that sense of abiding in God's presence, that certainty that that He knew all about this mess and that I was safe in a way that defied test results.

That night I had a cystoscopy plus stents put in by a doc who could have been an extra in MASH.  Seriously, he reminded me of Alan Alda. Turns out he's an old trauma surgeon. Compassion oozed from that man. When he looked at me and said he did this all the time and could do it in his sleep, I believed him.

So they knocked me out again, I had the procedure, and the waiting began to see if my kidneys would jumpstart. 

Still, no fear.  Just that sense of God is God.  If I can trust him with my eternal soul, surely I can trust him with my earthly body.  This doesn't mean I expected to be healed. It means I knew God would be with my family and me wherever the path led, even to a life on dialysis as remote as that seemed.  I had a dream that night about a tapestry being woven.  I was a little yellow flower. Friends and family were other types of plants and flowers, but the main thing about that image was that the tapestry was being woven by God one needle prick at a time, and that those flowers were all connected in an amazing garden of beauty.  

It's sounds a little pain-induced now, but that dream is embedded in my brain.  The oneness I felt with God and community--everyone from family to friends to church friends to nurses and docs--was beyond description.

We got word the next afternoon that my kidney function was back to 100% normal.  That's when it hit . . . I was on the mend.  As things turned out, there was one more ordeal . . . more on that later.

Just Two Weeks Ago? Really?

Two weeks ago tomorrow I went "into the shop" for some routine girl surgery -- a laparoscopic hysterectomy and some other related stuff. No worries . . . the docs do stuff like this every day. I'm extremely healthy and generally heal fast.

Everything went just fine and I felt better than I expected when leaving the hospital after an overnight stay.

 Twenty-our hours later, the nausea hit. 

I don't know if it was the pain meds, eating too much too soon, or what . . . but once it started, I was in trouble and didn't know it.  I toughed it out from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning with doctor calls, different anti-nausea meds, different pain meds, tried to drink a lot of water, kept some down, but not all.  It was just awful, and my poor husband went through it with me.  I kept insisting that healing takes time, which it does, but it's important to know when the healing isn't happening at all.

Finally I stopped arguing and we went back to the hospital. Trying to "tough it out" was one of the stupidest mistakes I've ever made . . . That's the start of tomorrow's story.