I AM BACK

My last post was October 3rd, 2010. Yesterday March 23, 2011 I typed my very first post since that day in October. It was a long post full of all the details that caused me to stop posting. Right after I finished the post, somehow I lost it. So now I am debating as to whether or not to write it all over again. It was very painful to live it all again while writing so I don't know whether I can do it or not. But as I mentioned in that post that I lost the only reason why I want to keep a blog is for my daughter to have something to look back on long after I am gone. I regret sometimes that there aren't memories of my mother's life in writing somewhere. She is gone now and the only thing I have of memories are what I can remember she told me verbally.

Four days after my last post on October 7th, 201o I was scheduled for gall bladder removal surgery. A simply outpatient procedure, so I thought. It was going to be done laperscopically (I am not sure of the spelling). It is a non surgical procedure. Four little holes made in your stomach and the gall bladder removed through a tube. Everything went wrong that could have gone wrong. The gall bladder was horribly diseased and sent poisons through my body as soon as he touched it, there were hundreds of gall stones that he had to removed. The surgeon completed the doctor went ahead and completed the procedure without doing a regular surgery on me, which was probably not a good call but his call after all. So, my liver was bruised and (this is a big AND) MY KIDNEYS SHUT DOWN. This was probably a defense mechanism because if my kidneys had tried to process all of the poison from my gall bladder they would have probably been totally broken, if that's a good word to describe a kidney. So now I have no kidney function poison coursing through my body and a very bruised liver. I don't remember a single thing about the next four or five days. I was on heavy doses of morphine and two different kinds of antibiotics for my infected blood. My husband and my daughter thought they lost me. I was in the hospital for 16 days. While I was there I had to endure three days a week of kidney dialysis for four hours each time and when I finally got home I was on dialysis as an outpatient. Going to the dialysis center three times a week at 7:30 in the morning for four hours each time. The whole month of October and November were a blurr. My family and friends rallied around me a the hospital and never left my daughter alone for one minute. They were such a comfort to me and my family. I must have seen a doctor for each organ in my body; kidney, blood, heart, liver etc. I have had the worse last nine months of my life. Here is a recap:

June - I decided to finally put in my letter of resignation effective July 2nd 2010. It had been almost a year since my father died and I wanted a little break.

June 30 - my brother died, two days before I was due to retire. I left work on the 29th and never went back.

July - I spent the month closing up my brother's apartment and taking care of all of his personal stuff

August - I spent doctoring a bad back which I assume was due to stress from my brother's death and dealing with all of the stuff associated with that

September - My daughter and I got to take a nice cruise, which would have been great if I wasn't dealing with a bad gall bladder. My doctor let me go on my vacation loaded up with antibiotics so my gall bladder would not flare up, the antibiotics caused a yeast infection all this while I was on the cruise hoping to relax and enjoy myself. I had promised my doctor that I would schedule the surgery as soon as I got home. As a matter of fact the appointment to see the surgeon was already scheduled before I left.

October - My surgery and the subsequent aftermath of gall bladder surgery gone bad. When I came home from the hospital is when the contact or started phase I of our back porch reconstruction. It was probably the worse and the best time to start. We had probably been planning this since the first day we moved her over 24 years ago and there was no way I was going to stop this from happening, even if it caused a bit of stress to my already stressed out body. The best part was that I had something to keep me preoccupied while I was busy recuperating. More on the story about the reconstruction in a future post.

November - Dialysis every other day. The days on dialysis were completed wasted. When I got home I was totally wiped out and could do nothing but lay on the sofa. By Thanksgiving I was getting weened off dialysis, kidney function was getting better.

December - I tried to salvage the holiday the best I could. One of the best Christmas gifts I ever gave my daughter resulted in her meeting her now boyfriend and soon to be fiance. The gift that caused the meeting was a three month subscription to MATCH.COM. He is the best thing that ever came her way and there will be a lot more posts about him in the future. By Christmas I was off of dialysis and starting feel better.

January - We dealt with a lot of snowfall. A record 7.5 feet. My husband did a lot of snow blowing and shoveling and I did a lot of thinking about how to keep ourselves from getting cabin fever and forcing us to go out even to go for a little ride to the market.

February - I took a two week vacation to see my cousins in Florida. It was nice relaxing time. It was warm and I was able to wear sandals and capris and no socks. Just ask anyone I hate socks. I have all I can do to keep my feet covered in the winter long enough to keep them warm.

March - Came and is going by really fast. They will be starting phase II of our back/mud room. More on that to come. I am feeling almost 100% and even started doing a daily walk again, slow at first 15 minutes at a time and hoping to increase that as I go along.