Surgery

I am going to have surgery on Friday. I am not thrilled about this. In fact I am dreading it. I know that I will have a long recovery, that it involves a lot of pain for me and inconvenience for the family. It is an elective surgery, so you may wonder why I would want to go through it since I do have a choice? But for me there is no choice, I have to have the surgery. It all started back in September of 2006. (Sit back and relax, this is going to be long.)

We had recently moved to Massachusetts from Montgomery, Alabama where we had lived for 14 1/2 years. The move had been due to a new job for Dave, which was due to his being fired from his job in Montgomery, something he is still loathe to admit. It was a very difficult move. We hadn't sold our house in Montgomery yet despite many (Many!) open houses. Things kept breaking in the house after we put it on the market-sometimes the same thing broke multiple times, things like the ice machine, and the window in the laundry room kept leaking. We had problems with our realtor and had to find another one. Emma had just turned a year old in March and still needed lots of attention. Erica graduated from high school, Garrett was baptized, we had lots of soccer games, etc. while trying to sell the house. Life goes on! Dave had to leave for his new job in July so the rest of us were left behind to deal with things. It was a long hard hot summer and nothing seemed to be going very well.

By the time we got to moving day, I was just getting over bronchitis and was taking an antibiotic that made my mind race and made it difficult to sleep. Emma got a stomach bug and was throwing up all night. The movers seemed to be inept and extremely slow, they took forever. We had a severe thunderstorm move through as they were loading the truck (those of you in the South know what these are like) so they had to put everything in the garage until the next day. I had to stand in the laundry room with a towel held on the window sill while this was going on so that the rain that was pouring in wouldn't ruin our new paint job from the last time rain poured in.

So, we finally got on the road after saying goodbye to Jenna and Erica who would be flying to Provo the next day. I felt so bad that we couldn't take Erica out for her freshman year like we did with Jenna but it just couldn't be helped. That night we stayed in Charlotte NC and had the worst stomach flu I have ever had bar none. We all had it but Dave who got to stay up all night cleaning up after everyone. It was horrible and I felt so sorry for the hotel's housekeeping crew. We know it wasn't food poisoning because Jenna and Erica had it too and had to put off their plane flight for a day.

The one good thing to come out of everyone being sick is that there was NO fighting, whining, asking if we were there yet, etc. We looked like a bunch of dead bodies in the car. Two more days of driving got us to Massachusetts where we immediately started painting in the new house. We sent the 2 older girls off to girls camp and I started unpacking. We discovered that the movers really didn't know what they were doing and had packed our cases of honey badly. Yep, honey all over the place, even on my piano. Curses!

We had a couple of weeks before school started and spent it alternately trying to get the house settled and trying to comply with Massachusetts many rules and regulations. We got to know the nurses at the board of health pretty well.

The reason I am telling you all this background is so that you can understand all that we went through. We were finally feeling more settled and more relaxed about life. It had been a very long tough several months where I felt like I was slogging through mud the whole time. I was finally feeling like things were going to be okay.

We got everyone settled and school started and I could get the house put together. Whew! It felt good to be able to focus on the house! So I grabbed a box from the garage and started heading down to the basement with it. I guess I wasn't careful enough and shouldn't have been wearing sandals because the next thing I knew I am at the bottom of the stairs and my right foot isn't where it is supposed to be. Now that's a bit unsettling! I will spare you all the rest of the gory details but after a couple of surgeries and 5 very miserable days in the hospital I was able to come home.

Now we knew that with a 18-month-old child and me virtually bed-bound we were going to need some help. Fortunately we knew that a friend of ours, a 20-year-old BYU-I student, had the fall off. She was willing to come be our nanny for a few months and what a blessing that she was! She was so fun to have around, really made the adjustment to a new place easier for our teens, and did such a great job that we wanted to keep her permanently!

I was stuck in bed for several weeks, pretty heavily drugged most of the time but still really hurting! It hurt no matter what I did but I felt best lying down with my foot elevated. I could only sit up for about 15 minutes at a time before the pain was too much to bear. Nights were absolutely awful because I would wake up and hurt and just have to lie there and endure it. I had therapists who came to the house and gave me exercises to do. It took several weeks before I had a weight-bearing cast and could lose the walker. Then I could use crutches and get around a bit better.

After a month of that I got my lovely silver boot and could walk without crutches, yeah! Another month after that and I could start driving. Three months without driving! And I still had lots of physical therapy coming up-months of it-but at least I was able to function and take care of things.

That was 2 1/2 years ago. The physical therapy helped up to a point and then all progress just stopped. I have been hobbling and limping ever since. Sometimes I am able to walk fairly normally but first thing in the morning and after I have been sitting a little while and if I walk too much then I am back to hobbling around. I feel pain pretty much every day but not all day. Usually by night I am aching pretty badly. I can only take tylenol which doesn't really do much. Everything else gives me heartburn. The thing is, it's getting worse. I have arthritis in the joint and sometimes it feels like the bones are rubbing together. My doctor says that they probably are.

So, yeah, this surgery is major and the recovery is long but I have my reasons to go through it, namely:

1. No more pain

2. Be able to walk when I get out of bed

3. Be able to walk as much as I want without pain. I want to be able to go to Italy with Dave one of these days!

4. No more pain

So here we go. Two more days and then the whole process begins, Here's to (90%) Pain-Free Living!!