Surgery recovery? Check!
Middle Schooler out of middle school and heading for high school? Check!
Grade Schooler out of grade school and heading for middle school? Check!
Four Year Old Preschooler out of four year old preschool and heading for kindergarten? Check!
Two Year Old still a two year old? Check!
Husband traveling and stressed? Check!
Mom overwhelmed? (But what's new, right?) Check!
Packing and ready for get-away cruise this weekend? Um, not yet. But we'll get there!
What a time of beautiful, stress-filled, crazy, wonderful blessing! School will be done for everyone at noon today! Our yard is decked out in green grass, leaf-filled tree branches, pots of flowers and comfy seats....ready for summer!
After a snafu with Amelia's passport (not Bereket's passport, but Amelia's! Who knew?), Boulder County did a one-day-turn-around court proceeding, completing her adoption validation and allowing us to get a new passport for Amelia. (Otherwise, local friends would have been sharing the caring for Amelia while the rest of us vacationed?)
The happiest news of all? IAN friends Stacey and Stephen are heading to Ethiopia in a few weeks to meet their new son! They are going to travel to Shanto, and they will spend a day with Desalegn and the children at FOVC. We are able to send a few donations with Stacey and Stephen....and they are taking TONS of donations that they have put together. What a wonderful day it will be for the children, Desalegn, the staff and Stacey and Stephen. Oh, how I wish we could be there, too.
On other FOVC-related news: It looks like Stacey will be able to get 501C3 status for FOVC. Yea! A U.S. charity is about to partner with FOVC, which will be so life-changing for the children servced by FOVC. Yea! And we are still praying and planning to return soon. Yea! Let us know if you want to come, too!
Friends of Orphans and Vulnerable Children
What could be better than an Ethiopian welcome, FOVC style?
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Attack of the Killer Fallopian Tube
This week, I am recovering from spur-of-the-moment major surgery. (Note: This is a blow-by-blow account! Not very interesting to anyone but me! That said, take comfort in the fact that I have decided not to share the ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHIC (emphasis on graphic) evidence of the situation!)
The fun started Sunday, when I developed really bad pain in the lower abdomen and lower back. After several hours, I told Dave I needed to see a doctor and asked him to take me to an urgent care clinic. Lacking the ability to really do diagnostic testing, the doc there said I "should" go to the E.R., but that I "could" take pain meds and follow up with my family doc the next day. After all, "maybe" it was just gas pain!
Fearing a night of unbearable pain, we went on over to the E.R. I laid on the floor until I was seen. I got an IV, and some pain med, and that helped. When that first pain med wore off, they gave me two full doses of morphine and two full doses of something much stronger, before the pain started to subside. (The nurse said it was enough drugs to knock a horse down. I'm not sure exactly what she meant.....?)
Ultrasound showed that I had a couple of big ovarian cysts...not too terribly uncommon, right? But the weight of the cysts caused my fallopian tube to wrap and wrap and wrap around the ovary, cutting off the blood supply and killing it. Exciting! Painful! Dramatic!
The on-call surgery people came in and operated around 12:30am Monday morning.
Dave, aka Mr. Compassion, had been seen doing a moderate amount of eye-rolling when I tried to describe the extent of my pain.
However, he developed some compassion when the surgeon described the pain like this:
The nerves affected are the same nerves that end in a man's, um, groinal nether-regions (complex medical term mine). A man's version of my situation would be like attaching a steel clamp to afore-mentioned groinal nether-regions. And twisting. And twisting. For hours. Without stopping.
'Nuff said. Dave got really nice.
I came home late Monday night. Grammy screeched into town to save us all early Tuesday morning. It's not fun to have surgery, but recovery totally trumps the pain before the surgery!
The fun started Sunday, when I developed really bad pain in the lower abdomen and lower back. After several hours, I told Dave I needed to see a doctor and asked him to take me to an urgent care clinic. Lacking the ability to really do diagnostic testing, the doc there said I "should" go to the E.R., but that I "could" take pain meds and follow up with my family doc the next day. After all, "maybe" it was just gas pain!
Fearing a night of unbearable pain, we went on over to the E.R. I laid on the floor until I was seen. I got an IV, and some pain med, and that helped. When that first pain med wore off, they gave me two full doses of morphine and two full doses of something much stronger, before the pain started to subside. (The nurse said it was enough drugs to knock a horse down. I'm not sure exactly what she meant.....?)
Ultrasound showed that I had a couple of big ovarian cysts...not too terribly uncommon, right? But the weight of the cysts caused my fallopian tube to wrap and wrap and wrap around the ovary, cutting off the blood supply and killing it. Exciting! Painful! Dramatic!
The on-call surgery people came in and operated around 12:30am Monday morning.
Dave, aka Mr. Compassion, had been seen doing a moderate amount of eye-rolling when I tried to describe the extent of my pain.
However, he developed some compassion when the surgeon described the pain like this:
The nerves affected are the same nerves that end in a man's, um, groinal nether-regions (complex medical term mine). A man's version of my situation would be like attaching a steel clamp to afore-mentioned groinal nether-regions. And twisting. And twisting. For hours. Without stopping.
'Nuff said. Dave got really nice.
I came home late Monday night. Grammy screeched into town to save us all early Tuesday morning. It's not fun to have surgery, but recovery totally trumps the pain before the surgery!
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