He'll never leave me...

It's been a while since I've blogged about anything, but since I have time on my hands now I figured I'd give an update on things...

For those that don't know, I just had surgery. I'll back up and bit and give you a background on everything though so you know the whole story. But be warned, there might be some TMI details in here.

Most of my problems started a year ago, last October, or at least that's when it all hit full force and I began to realize there was problem. I left on a cross country drive to Arizona with my Aunt Ethel and grandma (Esther). A few days before I left I had been feeling nauseous, but didn't think much of it. Well, while in a hotel in Texas, I was woken up by extreme abdominal pain and vomiting. I began feeling faint, having chills and some other unpleasant, torturous bodily functions I won't mention. It was awful! I seriously thought at one point the pain was bad enough that I might day. So I just prayed and prayed. That night I knew I should have gone to the ER, but I was in Texas and didn't want to get stuck there and not be able to go home. So after dealing with all this for a while, I finally was able to go back to sleep and just figured I'd wait till I got back home to get checked out. Well the rest of my trip to and in Phoenix, I continued to feel nauseous, throwing up a time or two and still having some abdominal pain, but nothing like that night so I just figured I'd be okay till I got home. And then Saturday hit, which just happened to be the day some friends of mine were getting married, a wedding I was supposed to do the photography for. Well, from Saturday morning till late Saturday night I threw up and had abdominal pain all day long! And not to gross y’all out, but everything coming out of me was green bile so I knew something was wrong. Not to mention it felt like I was having a hard attack and my insides were going to be ripped out of me. It was terrible! But by the strength and grace of God, I made it through that day and left the next day to come back home to Virginia. Luckily I wasn't throwing up on the plane, but I was nauseous and in pain the whole time so I was definitely ready to get home.
Once I got home to VA I scheduled an appointment with my doctor who in turn scheduled an appointment with a gastroenterologist. He ran some blood work and an ultrasound, but said he found nothing and it was probably just constipation and acid reflux and sent me on my way with some prescriptions. Needless to say, I didn't agree! But what was I going to do to convince him? I went back into my regular doctor, but after a while it didn't seem to go anywhere and no one could seem to do anything to help except prescribe meaningless prescriptions So I just let it go. And besides some nausea here and there and a little pain, most of the symptoms pretty much went away over time.

Now that was a year ago. Since then, every few months I’ve have these bouts of throwing up and abdominal pain and then it'd all go away, but to be honest I didn't really realize how often it was happening till I began to look back at the patterns. Honestly till I realized what was going on.
It wasn’t until we got back from Belize in July, that I started having problems again. It was actually a couple weeks after we got back, on a Saturday night and we had gone dancing. I started having abdominal pain again and it was pretty bad pain this time. But I was so tired of doctors spending my money and not figuring out what it was that I didn't want to go back in to get it checked out...so I waited. After a couple weeks of the nausea continuing every day, all day and abdominal pain pretty constant as well, along with the persistent nagging from friends, whom I love very much ;), I figured I'd go back in to the doctor. So she referred me to another specialist, but they couldn't see me for a month. So another month went by and I continued to have abdominal pain and nausea and low grade fevers and finally after my recent trip to Phoenix, I was able to go to a different specialist and thank the Lord, this specialist found out it was my gall bladder after all! All this time, it was right there and I just couldn't get the doctors to listen to me.

So this specialist told me immediately I needed to have surgery and there was no way around it...hence the surgery I just had. It’s been a long journey getting here, but hopefully this fixes the problem! Hopefully that was it! Mikey said the surgeon told him that he could see scaring and remnants of past stones I had and passed and that was probably the times that I had been real sick and in pain. So he said it was good they got it out because it would probably just get worse. I guess apparently I had what they call sludge in there, which...not to be too gross...was old bile that was never released from the gallbladder mixed with basically small stones and over time and if I had waited, it could not only get worse but also cause infections and problems with my pancreas and liver, etc. So I guess it was good timing.

And now, I'm just recovering. It hasn't been easy. I'm in a lot of pain because the pain meds don't work and they make me sick and yesterday I spent the day throwing up everything I tried to eat....BUT today has been better! Last night I was able to finally keep down a couple bites of soup and this morning I kept down a shake. I'm still in pain, but I'm able to move a little bit more. So I'm just taking it day by day.

I will say the hardest thing about all this for me is being alone. I've had friends come at night when they get off work, but during the day I'm on my own. Mikey was able to take off work the day of my surgery and another friend was at the hospital with me that day but Mikey can't take any other days right now so I'm left alone during the day, which is hard for me. I hate being alone when I'm sick. Especially yesterday. Every time I’d get up, I’d get dizzy and throw up so I just stayed in bed all day. Yea, that was really hard. BUT I made it through and today I've been able to move around a bit more and since I'm not getting sick every time I get up, it's been easier on me both emotionally and physically. Thank you Lord!

So today I'm just thanking God for the little victories in my life right now and thanking Him for being with me, ALWAYS! Maybe that's my lesson in all this. He is always with me and gives me everything I need and I just need to learn to rely on Him. I need to trust and know that even though may flesh may feel alone, I'm never alone. He will never leave me or forsake me.

You know, I don't know what God has in store for me with all this. I don't know why He chose to lead me through this or what I am to learn or where I'll be when it's all over but I know one thing, He'll never leave me and if I can just learn to trust Him, He's got it all in His very capable hands.