Hey!!!!!

Hi there to whomever reads my long lost blog! I've felt the need to write some things down for a while now...fun things, sad things...I just never remember until it's late at night or I'm in the grocery store, or I'm giving a dog a bath or doing laundry. Something always makes me forget...old age NOT being one of them. Anyway, I thought with my most recent life changer, I should start writing things down again. 

It's been a pretty crazy year here. Definitely a crazy few weeks. There are so many things I need to say there's just NO way I could say it all in one single post. So I'll start from the most recent...I want to tell you how blessed I am. So crazy blessed.

I’m blessed by my family and my friends, new and old. I'm blessed by my church and by my Facebook friends believe it or not. People I barely know have been wishing me well and praying for me lately. I'm getting an unbelievable amount of emails and posts and messages and phone calls asking how I am, offering prayer and anything else I might need. So I thought I’d let you know what's been going on. Tell my most recent story so to speak. Or part of it cause I'm tired and really could use a nap. 

So....tonight, it's late, I’m awake. As I have been most nights since Saturday, the 27th. Weird it's only been a couple weeks but it feels like it was yesterday. And that terrifies me. I’ve been having some major panic attacks since I woke up to find myself ALIVE that Saturday morning.

Here's what happened. 

Most of you know that I am a sucker for kidney stones. What can I say? It runs in the family somewhere down the line and I’m the lucky one that should be watching the diet to make sure I don’t end up where I did Thursday.... It takes a village....  And I didn't listen to my little village that told me to be healthier.

So Thursday morning, July 25th, the sweetest and most wonderful hubby in the world, Ben, took me to Nashville (where Jacob and Owen were both born) for a ‘routine’ procedure on a kidney stone. Normally, I would have had it done here in our town but this stone was so big they wouldn’t touch it here.  Like... a slab of concrete big. It was huge.

'That big rock' was stuck, embedded actually, in the lower half of my right kidney. And it wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, it had started collecting more calcium and was starting to get bigger.

So we headed to Nashville and waited for surgery. Surgery comes and surgery goes on Thursday, the 25th. We find out, not long after surgery, that they couldn’t get ALL ‘that big rock’ because there was infection inside it and they were putting too much trauma on my kidneys at one time. I could have kidney failure and/or a host of other things if they hadn’t stopped.

Side note: I signed all the waivers that ended in YOU COULD DIE! that day before surgery. I always do without blinking an eye. The things you learn.

Anyway, so they stopped the surgery. ...And. they. leave. a. hole. in. my. back... Yep. They had inserted a drainage tube into my kidney and LEFT IT THERE. For two weeks. 

Side note: For the record I haven't left my house but twice and I won't do it again until next Tuesday when I go back to get the sucker taken out. Going anywhere with an ugly drain hanging from your back really doesn't make you feel pretty at all...even if it's just to the drive thru.

Anyway, we knew going in I would be spending the night so they could ‘watch me.’ Ben went home so he could work the next day… Friday. (Remember this is mostly normal for me or he never would have left). So they put me in this little private surgical recovery room so I can sleep and go home the next day when my sweet and way-to-patient-with-me mom is to come pick me up. I end up with an infection, throwing up every couple hours, nothing made me feel better, blah blah blah. It was HORRIBLE but to me it ‘came with the territory’ sometimes. And we had been warned that ‘that big rock’ was going to have some major stuff inside that could potentially make me sick.

I talked to a host of sweet nurses and doctors and yes, interns..boys and girls...whatever you want to call them (remember Doogie Howser?) (because my beloved Vandy is a teaching hospital), who tell me ‘You’ll be fine. It was the bacteria inside ‘that big rock’ causing this. We’re going to move you back to recovery so we can watch you more closely and give you some stronger antibiotics.’

Side note funny: On my way to recovery I called my mom to tell her they were moving me and where to find me and I also texted my friend Debbie to tell her I was fine. On the gurney. Headed back to recovery.

Side note: If you’ve never been in a recovery room, for whatever reason, be it you haven't had a need for recovery or you're not the Doogie type, it’s just a huge open room with curtains that don’t hide much from your neighbor in the bed next to you. There are nurses and doctors and interns everywhere you look. Like worker bees. They’re everywhere.

So after I’ve called Mom and texted Deb, they buzzed around me a little and checked on me and ‘gave me something’ to help my nausea. I was thrilled with that because I knew it would make me sleep and I REALLY needed the rest and still have people ‘watching me’ JUST IN CASE.

Yea.

Just. In. Case.

The first and last thing I remember is sitting straight up coughing. Everything was getting dark around the edges and I couldn’t breathe and I was trying to scream. And then my worst nightmare and current reason for current panic attacks happened. ALL those worker bees came buzzing toward me in a blurr and literally slammed me back down on the bed. (I know that sweet boy didn’t mean to cause me to panic and in fact was the gentleman that undoubtedly saved my life.) Nevertheless, he threw me back down on the bed like I would imagine they throw dead meat down to start the cleaving. He had this HUGE plastic oxygen mask over my entire face that caused me to panic even more and make me start swinging. Yep. Sure did. Knocked his hand away from my face for a mere second. Twice. And all I remember saying aloud to him as I knew I was surely dying was "God I’m not ready to die but I can’t breathe."

"God I'm not ready to die but I can't breathe."


Saturday morning, this is what I woke up to.

Evidently I had an allergic reaction to Rocephin. Rocephin is used for bacterial infections and has a loooong list of side affects. Most of which I think I went through including anaphylactic shock and sepsis. My throat closed up and I couldn't breathe..they said I turned red from head to toe. They pumped 8 liters of saline into me in a very short amount of time to flush it out and I'm almost positive I looked like a whale laying in that hospital bed. I'm so grateful I was where they could take care of me. 

Although I was the one in trauma, the worst was probably for my mom, who was there alone and had no idea what was going on, and Ben, who called the hospital after talking to Mom but couldn't find out anything. They wouldn't tell him anything and that freaked him out. 

It was suppose to be routine. Normal. I ended up in ICU for the next couple days and then another room for a couple more days. 

It was scary, I cried a lot. But thank God I'm alive.

My next post will tell some of the things I witnessed and went through during those days and the days following. It literally changed my life. 

Just know that I am blessed.

Blessed beyond belief.

      

I heard this the day I left the hospital. It pretty much sums up my future.

Tracie

Micah 7:8 

Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. 

Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light.