Forgive me if this entry gets to be long, but I want to give the background of all that has happened to me. I have had many problems within this body for a very long time. When I was an elementary school, my foot had a bone that was not growing with the rest of my body and I needed a cast for several months. During high school, I fainted very often (very scary), and it was discovered that I have hypoglycemia. I also had severe stomach cramps and issues and would get very sick, as well as finding out I had asthma. After graduating, there were many other problems. I had kidney stones, ulcers, and while at college had a "minor" heart attack and was diagnosed with pleurisy. All of these things that had happened I was told, because I had a high level of stress and worry. I believe it. There were many things going on in my life, but ultimately I believe that I have been living in a broken body for a long time and it was all preparing me for a more difficult time that was about to come. Now I don't want you to think there were not good things, I had plenty of happy times, and the happiest came when I met Paul. He made me happier than I had ever been. I knew that he was the man I wanted to marry. I continued to struggle with most of these issues, but just continued to go about life with Paul and eventually started planning our wedding. We got married on June 18, 2005 and it was beautiful. God is good. It was just two months later that I got pregnant. We weren't planning on having kids right away, but we both weren't upset that it happened. It was the strangest thing, because literally within two weeks of getting pregnant I knew that I was. I was so sick and my body would not let me eat or keep anything down. So I took the test, positive. GREAT news. It was great, except that I was so sick. I was told to give it time it was just the typical "nausea". Try this and try that, but people were not understanding that I couldn't even get ice chips down. It was within a month and a half, and I was weak, I was brought into the hospital and needed IVs right away. I was severely dehydrated. It was bad. I was totally miserable. I would go in every day for IVs since I could not keep fluid in me. The diagnosis, Hyperemesis. Less than 2% of women get it. It is basically a severe vomiting that prevents adequate intake of fluids and food. This is not a first trimester thing, it is an entire pregnancy thing. After 2 1/2 months, they put in a PICC line, which is a way to get fluids, without getting a new IV every 3 days. I was poked alot! The PICC line was inserted in my vein in my arm and continues to right above the heart. Well that was my first pregnancy, fluids everyday in the hospital for nine months. The delivery was complicated, but in the end I had a perfectly wonderful baby boy, Dylan! Things were actually good for the next couple years, and we decided to have another baby. I was definitely nervous about the whole thing, but felt like I was eating right and was "healthy". I had Hyperemesis again, but this time it only lasted for about 7 months. On October 24, 2008, I was vomiting so violently, that I broke my tailbone. This was so hard. In January, I was still struggling with my pregnancy, broken tailbone and then I severed my tendon in my finger and I felt total despair. Just a couple weeks later, I had a baby girl, Lillian. I thank the Lord that these struggles actually happened, because had they not, I would not have discovered the birth defect that was a hole in my spine. My spine had been slipping so much, and had it not been discovered, they are almost certain I would have ended up paralyzed. My first back surgery was November 5, 2009. A L5 S1 fusion with a disc replacement. This was a very difficult time for me, Paul and the kids. Dylan was 2 1/2 and Lillian was only 9 months. I started to realize in March that at every visit my heart rate was around 145-160 bpm. I started asking questions, and soon was referred to a cardiologist from the Minneapolis Heart Institute. My heart was beautiful. Everything looked great, although the beats were getting faster, and I was going like 5 days at a time with no sleep. I was wired but tired. So this was when I was referred to an electrophysiologist down at Abbott in the Cities. Through testing the doctor was certain that I had extra nodes that took over my natural pacemaker in my heart. On August 7, 2010 I had my first heart ablation. They had burnt off several nodes, and it was good, for a little bit. By December I needed to go in again because my heartbeat was just too fast. After several more ablations, on February 21, 2011, I received my pacemaker. I am 27 years old and now live with a pacemaker. Through all of this, my back surgeon and I were still monitoring my fusion, which had still not taken place. In fact, one of my screws was moving and compressing on nerves, causing severe pain. Pain that was in fact worse than childbirth in my opinion. So skip a few months, and as it was getting worse, my son accidentally kicked my pacemaker and it shifted. Yikes! It burned. I can honestly say that I cannot describe the feeling of the burning from my pacemaker. It comes and goes, but mostly just stays. I have talked to the doctor and he said that he has had several patients try to describe it, but that others have said the same thing. And although he doesn't know what it feels like, he understands. It is different, he says, for me because I am so much younger, and many people when they are older don't notice it, because they are just old. So on June 7th, I had a pacemaker revision, in which they used extra suchers to hold the pacemaker tight and in place. They also shifted it more to the left and it became "less" noticeable than in my chest. Just one short week later (most of it spent in the hospital), I would be having my second back surgery; June 15th. It was taking out the right side hardware and some other work to make the bone work hard. Well, that leads us to now. After viewing my latest CT just a few weeks ago, it was discovered that my spacer is coming out and my right side slipping. I need to have another back surgery on December 14th. They will replace the spacer with a newer design and put in new hardware on my right side. This is so discouraging. Almost as if I am starting all over.
The one thing that has gotten me through all of this has been my relationship with the Lord. I have grown ever deeper in my faith as I have dug deep in the Bible for answers, prayers pleading for answers, and having my Lord understand my sorrow. He doesn't want me to suffer, just like I don't like watching my kids suffer. He understands when I am angry with Him, and He knows that I will always turn back to Him at the end of the day. God is greater than anything else, and because of this I am allowed to have any feelings that I want to. This is how I am able to live within this broken body.
Beautiful.
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