He’s Okay, God is Good and I’m Breathing Again.

 




At 10:22 am, I was walking down the hallway of the middle school and I felt my phone vibrate, I looked at the screen and it said “Portsmouth Hospital.”, I quickly slid into a booth in front of the school cafeteria. Finally, the call I had been waiting for. Mike’s doctor introduced himself and said “he’s out of surgery and it went smoothly.” He continued with the post-op instructions and what recovery should look like. When I hung up the phone, I just sat there for a minute, I didn’t cry, I just sat still for a moment feeling the weight of the morning, the anxiety and the worst case scenerios that flooded my thoughts, and the prayers I had said that flushed the negative thoughts away. I could finally breathe. In the same instance of feeling relief, the adrenaline that kept me going through the motions, and getting my work done, seemed to leave my body when I finally exhaled. Pure exhaustion hit every limb, my eye lids just wanted to close. I only had a few more hours to push through. 

Nobody really talks about how exhausting it is when you’re holding it together to get through the work day, putting on the brave face, pretending to be okay. Then when it’s finally over, you feel like you have a hangover.

Thankfully my sister took Mike to the hospital this morning and brought him home when he was discharged. I didn’t work for my step father today as I normally do on Fridays, she covered that (he lives with her) so that I could just be home with Mike. I am grateful.

I stopped and picked up supper for later and came right home. I walked in and he is sound asleep in his chair. Oxygen under his nose, mouth wide open, pretty pale, some moaning. Just looking at him, I can see he had a rough day. I just fixed the O² cannula and am letting him sleep. I still feel the tension of the day in my neck and shoulders, but it’ll fade. I am just so relieved that he is home, he’s breathing and God has blessed us with another day. 

Tomorrow another dialysis day but until then, we are going to take advantage of some well deserved rest.

Have a great weekend everyone.

“The Lord gives strength to his people; The Lord blesses his people with peace.” Psalm 29:11



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Caring Becomes Too Much: Recognizing and Coping With Caregiver Burnout

Image
  I am writing about this topic because writing helps me reduce my stress. I know although I feel alone in this journey sometimes, I am not, so I’m hoping by writing about it, I will help others to feel understood and validated. I have written a blog post in the past about living with someone with chronic illness, this post will be similar to that, but more on the feelings of burn out. I think like me, many care takers don’t vent or talk about their feelings as much as they probably should. I can only speak for myself but I suspect that there are probably many who feel the same way. Most of the time I don’t say how I’m really feeling because I don’t want to sound like a complainer. Besides, do people really want to know how I am feeling? Probably not. Sort of like how the majority of people ask “how are you?” In passing, but they really don’t want to know, they are just being polite. If they really wanted to know, they wouldn’t ask when passing by, they’d ask when they planned on s...
Read more

Another Day, Another Procedure and a Whole Bunch of Feelings

Image
  Another day spent at Portsmouth Hospital with Mike. Today he had a Fistulagram also known as a Fistulography. It’s an imaging test where they insert a needle and dye and do some imaging to make sure the fistula in his arm is working properly before they can remove the Central Venous Catheter (CVC) which he has had since February. Since Mike has stage 5 kidney disease, this Fistula is a life line for dialysis. He did well during the procedure, even though there was a lot of pressure and discomfort. The test showed that he had scar tissue built up from a previous antibiotic picc line, so they had to open it up with a balloon. He was in the operating room for about an hour and in recovery for another hour. Starting Tuesday, the nurse’s at the dialysis center will try using the arm Fistula for the next 3 sessions. Once it is proven to be working properly, an appointment will be scheduled to get the CVC removed from his chest. He can’t wait to get rid of that thing.  Another upda...
Read more

Update in the Michael Health Chronicles

Image
  As I posted on Friday, Mike’s dialysis fistula placement surgery went well. He had a bit of a tough weekend. Dialysis on Saturday was a bit rough between the fatigue and pain from the surgery the day before. We are grateful it all went well though, a step in the right direction. But, in true Mike fashion, it’s one step up and two steps back. On Saturday we got notice from Lahey Clinic saying that Mike will not be put on the kidney transplant list at this time, as we suspected but it’s still disappointing. After all the tests he went through, his team of doctors determined that he is too high risk at this time and would more than likely, not survive the surgery. He is still considered fragile and has to continue to gain some strength back as well as get his broken back fixed. They will retest everything and reassess in January.  We will not give up, we still trust God’s plans for us no matter what they are. The winds have changed a bit so we must adjust the sails. With school...
Read more