The holidays. The holidays have always been kind of a stressful time for me. When I was a kid, it was the coordination. Mom's family, dad's family, step-mom's family, step-dad's family... there was not a thanksgiving where I only had one thanksgiving dinner.
Sometimes, it was the thanksgiving day shuffle. Sometimes, it was celebrations on different days. Sometimes it was two celebrations in the same day in different cities. As I got older and could drive myself, it became immensely easier on everyone else. Not necessarily for me.
There was still the shuffle between households, between meals. There were always multiple meals. First thanksgiving of the day, they can't understand why I don't eat more of their food. Second thanksgiving of the day, same story, only it was after having already consumed a ridiculous amount of food at the first one.
I always said I was going to grow up and have my own thanksgiving, and whomever wanted to come to me was welcome. Oddly enough, the size of our family celebrations has dwindled in the number of people, yet not the number of meals as grandparents have passed away and new traditions are made.
Then my husband and I got the gastric sleeve. Thanksgiving for the past three years has been a dance of careful choices because I literally cannot overindulge anymore. You really figure out what your favorite parts are if you can only choose to eat those items. Especially when you can only have about a teaspoon of each thing, depending on how many you pick.
I have always been kind of annoyed with thanksgiving. I always felt endlessly obligated to attend. Once Nana died, I also took over half of the cooking for that celebration. The shuffle also needed to include coordination of the food I was bringing as well (and cooking it the day of). I don't know how many times I have helped my mom clean up the kitchen from her meal, then immediately started cooking again.
This year, thanksgiving takes on a different meaning for me. I literally just got out of the hospital. I wasn't sure I would even be able to help my brother and sister-in-law with direction on what I usually make and bring. I actually made the dressing the weekend prior to surgery and took it to my mom and my sister with instructions for freezing it, thawing it, and baking it themselves.
And here I sit on thanksgiving eve, thinking about all of the family thanksgivings of the past that I attended, probably begrudgingly at the time. I think about my grandparents, and uncle, and step-grandparents, and great-grandparents and all the holiday celebrations I spent with them in houses full of other kids, grandkids, aunts, uncles, cousins and step versions of all of them. And I feel guilty that I cannot do the grand tour of thanksgiving tomorrow.
*IF* I feel up to it, I am going to go to my sister's where she is hosting thanksgiving in the house I just rebuilt. I am not going to brave the ride to Hernando for the other half of the family tomorrow. I honestly only really have the energy for doing things a couple of hours at a time. I still have stitches in my belly. I am still on a semi-restricted diet.
But I guess it is hard for me this year because I have so many things to be thankful for. We never had some silly family tradition of going around the table and naming things we were thankful for when I was a kid or anything (though I had friends who did that). I was always rushed from one place to the other, maybe I just missed that part.
I don't think I would have enough time to really put into words what I am thankful for this year. Thankful that I lived. Thankful that I recovered with very little long-lasting damage to my body from sepsis. Thankful I was able to have the shit bag reversal surgery, and that I survived that too. Thankful my job let me work from home in a really trying part of my life. Considering it was part of the reason I was able to heal, I guess I am even thankful for the shit bag.
But the most important piece of the puzzle is that I am thankful for the people I have in my life. My friends have (probably uncomfortably) indulged me with regaling poop stories for the better part of a year. My family has accepted that no matter what their current tribulation was, my response was going to be, "I have a shit bag; I win." So many of them also put time and effort into helping finish the house without a complaint. My coworkers have worked around the fact that I have been a remote employee with hardly any guilt trips; though I bribe them with baked goods whenever I go to the office.
I have an amazing surgeon. I think I surprise him with my attitude about the whole thing. And with the compliance with whatever he asked of me. I was cared for by some truly caring nurses, CNAs, medical assistants, and housekeepers at the hospital. The ones I felt really helped me the first time I was there in December and January, also remembered me when I returned last week.
And then there's my husband. I call him my bacon. It took a long time in this life to find him. I think I was most scared about maybe not surviving all of this because it wouldn't have been fair to us. My time with him would be over. Only 6 years? That is a drop in the bucket of time. He has been so patient with me. He tries harder than I do to make sure I take care of myself. He is my safe spot. To say that I am thankful for him would be a gross underestimation of how I feel.
I am thankful to say I am a survivor of 2016 (a lot of people weren't). I am thankful I have made it through 2017 as well as I could manage, one day at a time. I am thankful for puppies, and kitties, and elephants, and cupcakes. And for the first time in a long time, I am thankful that I am still here to participate in what I have always called "forced family fun".
“I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much; my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold onto it. And then it flows through me like rain, and I can’t feel anything but gratitude—for every single moment of my stupid, little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure; but don’t worry….you will someday.”
~American Beauty
When I was in grade school, I remember a teacher (I believe it was in sixth grade) saying that she didn't want to hear us say "just" or "only" as a minimizer.
"But, I just need one extra day for my project."
"I only asked if I could borrow a pencil."
"I just want to have class outside."
My cousin used to do this to the family when she was asking for an expensive present.
"It's only $300."
The words don't diminish what you are asking of a teacher who deals with 12-year-olds all day long, nor does it make the $300 any more affordable. The word is however an attempt at minimizing what you are saying. I am not sure why it stuck with me. But I found that I tried to eliminate it from the language I used. I never wanted someone to think that I was attempting to disguise what I was truly asking of them.
It most recently came back to the forefront of my thoughts because of a comment from the nurse practitioner working with my anesthesiologist for my surgery last week. They are trying a new protocol for post-surgical recovery utilizing an epidural port that stays in for the first few days after surgery instead of having a pain pump. This means that you see your anesthesiologist every day rather than only immediately before your procedure.
I saw her (the nurse practitioner) every day of my stay. She made rounds before the doctor came in so that the anesthesiologist would be prepared to just go ahead and make adjustments when they got there. She was very informative and thorough and had answers to all of my questions. She and this team have been working on this new epidural protocol for months to perfect it.
Essentially, the thought is that taking narcotics after surgery slows everything down. That is why it is hard to get everything restarted (bowel and kidney function, etc). In addition, it makes people unable to sleep, itchy, crazy, stupid, clumsy... the list goes on and on. Lastly, there is a pretty big opioid addiction problem in the US at this point.
The epidural only deadens a specifically targeted area of the body without the rest of these side effects. I think it is pretty ingenious. And although I was incredibly apprehensive about not having the pain pump with some pretty big incisions, I can say that it worked better than the dilaudid pump ever did. I enjoyed the fact that I wasn't out of it and could actually sleep.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. On the last day, I asked this nurse practitioner a question and she gave me an intelligent explanation (like she had to all of my other questions). And she followed it with, "but I'm just a nurse practitioner."
It didn't even register to me at the time what she had said, or the implications of it. I woke up at 4 am two days later at home in my own bed and the statement ran through my mind suddenly again. I'm just a nurse practitioner.
How many times have I as a woman in a professional capacity been the most knowledgeable one in the room and minimized myself exactly in the way she did with that one statement?
"But I'm no expert."
"I'm just the setup person."
I think I have effectively eliminated this from the language I use regarding what I ask of other people. I don't want to misconstrue or minimize what they will need to contribute. But I have not done the same thing in the language I use about myself. I still minimize myself, or my knowledge about something, or my experience. I know I am not the only one because I hear it from women in my industry (and in general) all the time.
I wanted to go through my hospital record, find her name, and send a card of thanks for the very thorough and informative care I received from her. I also wanted to tell her, "Don't ever say you are just a nurse practitioner." You should never minimize what you do or what you know. Be the expert in the room and own it.
The only "only" you should ever give yourself is in, "I'm only human." And it is not ever a minimizer.
Well... the final countdown is here. In about 12 hours, I will be in pre-op getting ready for the colostomy bag reversal surgery. It seemed like this day was never going to arrive.
I feel like my entire life has been on hold for the past 10 months. I know that people live with colostomy bags that are permanent and have productive and happy lives. But I also know that I haven't lived the life I wanted to since it was put in.
I realize that opting out of the bag would have been a death sentence for me. I was mostly dead when I went to the hospital that day last December. Having the stoma allowed my body time to heal all of the damage from the bowel perforation. But all of that doesn't really change how much it sucked.
I feel like I have done a pretty good job of keeping my spirits up about the whole thing. There was a lot I had to let go of and I have tried not to complain too much. It could have been worse, I could not be here at all. But the timeline I had in my head for finishing the project house was no longer possible. Moving to Colorado like I wanted was not going to happen.
I couldn't go to yoga because the doc said I wasn't allowed to work out my abs with the stoma in place. I understand why, but it had become one of the ways I was trying to take care of myself and my own sanity. Baths weren't really advisable. The bag gets soaked and the adhesive is more likely to break up sitting in water (rather than the exposure from a shower). Hot baths were my other go to for self care prior to this happening.
At the end of the day, I tried to turn to food as some form of comfort as it has always been that for me in the past. Since I was unable to continue on the healthier path I was trying to maintain, the old crutch reared its ugly head. I can say it is a challenge to self-medicate with food when you are post gastric sleeve surgery. I managed to do it even if that meant not drinking any fluids all day just so I could eat instead.
I guess in a way, I had replaced food with these other activities in my life. The yoga, the house, walking with my husband every day, a good long soak in the tub: they were all things I was doing instead of eating. I probably shouldn't be surprised that I have gained weight over this past year. Of course that's the opposite thing I wanted to do after going through with the gastric sleeve.
At this point, I am ready to get the reversal surgery over with. But I am scared. The last time I was in the hospital I nearly died. You know, I never really thought much of worrying about surgeries before then. Facing your own mortality is very sobering. I just always assumed I would be fine, no matter what I was going through. My solace going into this one I guess is that it cannot possibly be as bad as it was last December, and I survived that.
I am going to be in the hospital for about a week and at home recovering for another six weeks after that. My return to work date is 01-02-18. As much as I have benefited from working from home over the past 10 months dealing with the shit bag, I will be glad to go back to the office for a variety of reasons.
I think it will be most beneficial for me to not be working at a desk that is 10 feet from my kitchen, for example. I want to get back to the regular routine of life. I don't think I necessarily took it for granted before, but I definitely appreciate the mundane, yet happy moments of regular life. Just going to work, going for a walk, planning a vacation, taking a bath... so boring, yet so glorious!
I was actually thinking to myself earlier: what if something goes wrong and this is the last day you are alive? I spent it with my husband and my pets. I cleaned the house and washed the sheets. I am happier than I have ever been in my life and I don't believe I would change anything. I have always been authentic with my feelings with the people around me and I think they all already know that.
Tomorrow we are kissing this Mary good-bye... and saying hello to the one that poops out of her butt again. Welcome back, old friend... try not to shit your pants...
