In other news, I had my broken neck surgery and then had to fall when the cow bowled me over with joy at seeing her momma. The second neck surgery is not going so well. I believe they hired some homeless guy to tube me because it's been a whole week since surgery and the neck is still sore and I have no voice. I do feel better though. No more stumbling and weakness and dizziness. OTOH, my right arm is simply gone. It doesn't move and I can't use it at all. Doc says it will go away, just swelling from the surgery. Gee, that's what he said about my left hand which is still dead. Oh well, we'll see.

Here's an easy dinner that seems to work with all my kids and the various neighborhood kids who drop over at mealtime.
Now I can my own beef and chicken (we'll do a blog on that sometime later) so it's easy for me to use the can of meat with the juices for gravy. You can buy a jar of gravy at the store and chopped up meat if you so desire, or no meat at all. When the gravy is done and hot add some asian stir fry veggies or just some frozen veggies that the kids like. Top with Chinese noodles and it's a quick, easy, nutritious meal for everyone.

In the midnight hour….

As the title implies I was awakened last night in the middle of the night.  The glow from the bathroom shone on the beloved man beside me and I nearly reached out to him but the coils of feeding catheter and drain tubes stretching out like anemic bowel stopped me.  The constant flow of milky nutrient balanced by the drain of foul slurry into the bag I wear makes me self-conscious.  So, I wrapped myself a little tighter in the blankets and let my thoughts roam.

As always, my musings turn to my shortcomings as a parent.  Sometimes I relive an entire day berating myself for things I could have done or could have done better.  On the one hand I honestly believe that parents who don’t second guess themselves once in awhile probably should but I’ll admit that I obsess more than I should.

In an attempt to cheer myself up and turn my thought from self-flagellation I start planning my egg incubating.  With any luck at all I will be up and about a week or so after this next surgery.  I’m hoping to fill an incubator with chicken eggs as soon as I’m able.  Hopefully the turkeys will have started laying by then and I can get a few ready to go in the other incubator.

Thoughts of baby chicks naturally lead to more springtime plans and I worry for awhile about the whereabouts of my missing garden seeds.  Of course I’m also worried because I’ve never waited so long to start my seedlings.  Will I be able to fuss over the little pots of dirt and seeds as I usually do?  Will I have a greenhouse full of splendid tomatoes?  And what about the other gardening?  I’d love to see the kids eat some good fresh salads, squash and melons.  Yeah, this train of thought doesn’t seem to be any more uplifting than any of the others.

Here’s a great topic!  I should consider my plans for finishing my training and riding on Dixie my horse.  Wouldn’t it be grand to walk sedately around the neighborhood, perhaps a little trot allowed on the way home….oh, how I long to fly at full gallop one more time.  But then the doubts come creeping in.  What if I can’t train her?  What if I think she’s pretty well trained and then I get hurt?  I forget that I was once strong and fearless with a horse because I’m now weak and already have so much pain.  Will I be strong again?

The pain in my side reminds me that I have another surgery coming up on Monday and then floodgates open for all the usual worries and fears about yet another hospitalization.

About this time I decide that my brain is not someplace I want to be so I make a brief journey to my happy place while I practice some meditative breathing and I sink into sleep.

I’m hoping that one of these days I’ll actually have farm stuff to talk about on Farmgirl musings. 

Finally!!! Part Three

The next few days were full of surprises for me.  All this time I’d thought that I was supposed to be short of breath after strolling around the couch ten times!  Wrong!  I hadn’t been able to lay on my sides to sleep at night and my back was beginning to scream about that but suddenly side sleeping was not only possible but the best way to sleep.  Once again I was lulled into thinking I was on the mend.

Another fever started on a Friday and I battled it off and on all weekend.  I finally tearfully agreed that the doctor must be called and he pronounced that it must be a PIC line infection and I needed to make another trip to the hospital.  The hospital confirmed an infection after drawing several gallons of my blood.  I was sent off to have my PIC line removed.  Greg was upset thinking that he’d made me sick.  Removing the PIC was a piece of cake but it turned out that putting a new one in was not going to be so easy.  Damn those roly poly veins of mine.  Doctor decided a central line would be safer and easier to install so off I went for that procedure.  The nurses put in a regular IV so that they could sedate me but it turns out that installing a central line hurts!  I guess I could be over stating this since I was also quite sick with infection and that tends to exaggerate pain perception but OW!

I’m hoping that was that last dramatic episode and that I’m on the mend.  I’m trying to cut back on pain pills now and find that between the pain and the lack of narcotics I get a little weepy.  It doesn’t help that I try to overdo things and work too hard at getting better instead of letting it come naturally but now we have more good news!  Greg’s surgery has been approved!!  I have to get better to take care of him.

Finally!!! Part Two

 

In the last installation of our never-ending story we left poor, sick Lor in a hospital bed filled with toxic fluid and a particular hostility for Doctors who don’t explain the whole story and present a cohesive plan.

It seemed like the longest night until a nurse told me that it seemed I was scheduled for a procedure to place a drain in my gut next morning.  More drugs and I slept.  I’m thinking that at this point we may have been going a little overboard on the drugs.  I don’t really remember the drain placing procedure although I’ve been told I erupted like Old Faithful and filled three drain bags quite quickly.  I do remember a nurse showing us the drain and telling us that we needn’t worry about positioning as this drain would remove the liquid regardless of gravity.

   More hearsay as I don’t recall many things that happened in those days at the hospital:  things that went into my stomach were not playing ball and going through this new pouch hole into the intestine.  No, stomach contents wanted to stay in the new pouch and the new pouch was still paralyzed and unable to help move things along with any muscle contractions or other GI functions.  We had to heal stomach pouch and get it working again, so back to clear liquids only and a new little buddy-a PIC line to use for taking in nutrition!  WOOT!  I get night feedings just like Mikey used to have when he had his GI tube! 

Several days of observation and getting pain meds straightened out and I was released again to go home.  This time I went home with a new drain, a new pump and a nurse who would come visit me several times a week.

Just a little off topic ramble here.  Remember the old days when people went into the hospital and friends and neighbors and relatives all sent small gifts, flowers, books, etc to the patient?  Remember paying obligatory visits to hospital patients to “cheer them up”?  I can easily recall finding out that Mr. Johnson was taking care of his three children alone while Mrs. Johnson was in the hospital so the whole community would go into cooking mode and drop off casseroles and cookies and at Mr. Johnson’s house so that he wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.  Why, even Mr. Johnson’s mother would open up his house and the neighbors would be in there cleaning……  Okay, back to our regularly scheduled blog with that mournful commentary on times past.

So I was home….again but still not feeling well.  My little walks around the couch for exercise were going well but I was still running out of breath by the time I’d hit my goal for the day.  Always tired, now I started to feel sick. 

A few days after I returned home I was running a temperature.  Those memories of the Staph infection in my back that almost killed me rushed back and now we were terrified and depressed.  The doctor told me to take Tylenol for the fever but that if the fever went over 101 or kept up for more than a few days I’d be back in the hospital.

As I sat on the edge of the bed shivering off a fever on my last day before I was going to have to call the doctor and tell him we couldn’t keep the fever under control, I was milking the line to the new drain.  It had been several days since there had been much coming out of the bag but I’d hoped that meant the stomach was waking up and doing it’s job.  But now my old nursing training came back and everything was gravity flow.  We even learned how to set up surgical suction using a big bottle and gravity.  So I unhooked the bag from it’s pin on my bra and dropped the bag unceremoniously to the floor.  Almost immediately the bag began to fill.  After three trips to the bathroom to dump this nasty stuff, it slowed and I slept. 

to be continued:

Finally!!! Part One

Are you ready for the big medical mystery, adventure tale that is my life?  For any readers who are checking this blog out please remember that my experiences will not be the same as yours.  I had to have a much earlier surgery that had gone very bad, revised and repaired.  This has created many complications and frequent scares for us this past month.

The approval and subsequent scheduling of an actual surgery date set off a flurry of emotions.  Depression and mourning:  Really?  I’m never going to eat a piece of bread again?  How long will I have to wait to taste peanuts or diet pepsi again?  Then there was a sense of “live for the day”:  knowing I wouldn’t eat them for a long time if ever, I binged on my favorite Friday’s Bacon and Cheddar potato skin chips and Butter Toffee peanuts until I almost burst.  Of course, right behind that came the euphoria that finally, finally we were heading towards a real solution to my many stomach and weight problems.   I would dream about putting on skinny jeans and riding horses.  Fear followed:  what if it doesn’t work, what if I die on the table, what if I die from the many complications that this particular surgery often entails?

I checked in December 21st in the afternoon.  Cutting and gutting me took several hours so I woke to a dark sky and the kind of pain that eats you whole.  After a few punches on the pump that provided pain meds I was a little more comfortable and even managed to walk and pee on my own to the delight and awe of the nurses. 

Over the course of the next few days I developed some killer back pain but everything else seemed to be healing well.  I walked several times a day and began to talk about going home whenever I wasn’t whining about the back pain and trying to find enough pain meds to alleviate said pain.

The doctor let me go on a Saturday, a few days earlier than the original plan.  My last words to him as I made my exit were that I hoped the pill form of Dilaudid would help cut some of the back pain.

The first couple of days at home seemed to go pretty well though I was uncomfortable with back pain.  Greg lobbed the ball back at the doctor when he tried to make my post-op appointment and asked if they could send a wheel-chair as he couldn’t see how I would manage to walk all the way to the office.  The doctor was concerned but I was still complaining of BACK pain and his job and been to fix my stomach.  Surely the two were unrelated.

A couple of days later I could not find one place to rest that was comfortable.  No amount of narcotics would calm the screaming neurons so this time when Greg called the doctor and insisted we go to the emergency room I decided to acquiesce.

That night, overcome with a sense of failure, angry at my body’s betrayal and scared that this was the beginning of something bad, I probably wasn’t the nicest patient.  Drinking contrast dye seemed like an act of torture.  Nice IV drugs made the CAT scan go smoothly but then a doctor came to my room, said “Looks like you’ve got a huge pocket of liquid sitting inside and we’ll probably have to do more surgery.”  “Good night.”  Yeah, because knowing there’s some toxic fluid that’s killing you inside is always a cure for insomnia. 

to be continued:

Dilaudid Dreams-Part One

Okay, I know everyone is waiting with baited breath for the whole rundown on the surgery and my recovery so far but while in the hospital I was on a Dilaudid drip which actually caused hallucinations.  I saw scampering little kitties everywhere, big jovial, multi-colored rats and happy polar bears made of bed linens.  That hospital had a regular infestation of capering, playful animals!  So while the hallucinations weren’t actually threatening in any way I was a little worried about taking Dilaudid in pill form when I came home and wanted to relate to my children in some semblance of normality.  The pain finally got to me and no hallucinations but I have the most delightful (and some not so delightful) dreams to relate.  Just some cute stuff to help brighten my otherwise rather dim days wrapped in what is often unbearable pain.

So, dream number One:  The Chicken Ghost Whisperer.

Mrs. Alvin’s only son, Dean, has just died in a horrific tractor accident.  There’s some question as to whether it was truly an accident or if the newly found deposits of GOLD under the Alvin family farm may have had something to do with this tragedy.  Surely a case for Scooby Doo? 

A day or so later I’m feeding and watering my chickens.  As always, I talk to them and they murmur their various woes and worries of the day (chickens are very burdened by the pressures of everyday life).  The queen of my flock is a brightly plumed Easter Egg chicken named Lillianne and she is particularly upset this day.  She seems reluctant to impart any information about the cause for her distress and it finally comes to light that she thinks I’m going to think she’s crazy if she tells me the truth.  Reminding her that we are communicating at all is enough to be considered crazy opens the spout and she relates the whole story.  It seems that young Dean Alvin has paid her a visit.  He is melancholy about his precipitous demise and wants to talk to his mother just one more time.  

Why surely this can only be a mission of mercy for this poor family?  We must depart forthwith to bring this grieving mother some closure and send this sad, young man onto his heavenly reward.  We jump into the old farm truck.  I assume Dean is in the back seat as Lillianne is going on about her bout of egg bound and I’ve already heard this story.

When we arrive at Mrs. Dean’s house we quickly find that the woman does not share the rapture with which most people greet the idea of having a chicken in the house so we reserve our conversation to the patio table.  Mrs. Dean is less than accepting of our tale at first as we begin to see little clues like a meat cleaver and stew pot but finally Dean relays through Lillianne, who relays through me that Dean was once caught by his mother in a compromising position involving a magazine called Cupcake Lovers and an actual cupcake.  The mother is stricken that she’s given us such a hard time and hands back the feathers she’s already plucked from Lillianne.  Dean goes on to say through his relay system that if they search the accident scene they will find buried under the detritus that same magazine and the remains of another cupcake.  Yet again, a young life wasted by an inappropriate desire for dessert.

Dean’s now unburdened soul begins to ascend and his mother, who suddenly realizes that life without Dean will be somewhat simpler sheds a final tear.  I look over to find that Lillianne is also moved by the help she has given these humans and that in turn, makes me shed a tear.  Chickens are after all, very burdened creatures.  It’s nice to appreciate their talents once in awhile.