He can knock, but YOU still have to answer...

as surgery draws nearer and nearer, i find myself swinging from feeling to feeling about it like an overzealous kid on monkeybars.

today i watched a video on youtube where a girl was showing how to change her bag. she's a young girl, younger than me. the whole time, she keeps up this bright and positive attitude. even when she's talking about how the last bag she used didn't agree with her skin and so she ended up with a gnarly rash on her stomach.

a couple of minutes into the video, i started to cry. and it became a panic attack, something that just rose up inside of me and refused to quell. the amazing thing was, though, this group of people in my life who were there to offer their support. what could have been a major panic attack stayed a tropical storm ;) one of my best friends linked me another video of the same girl, talking about how great her life is seven months after her colectomy. a life she hadn't even DREAMED of when she was sick, because it seemed so impossible. and now, she's living that life.

within a matter of minutes, i went from panicked and sad, to excited. i started thinking again, as i often do, on the list of things i will be able to do again after surgery. sometimes, the list sounds like a trip to japan or something because it's so hard for me at this point to even imagine being able to go camping, work a full day without crashing for six hours after, being foggy in the head from the prednisone. it almost sounds like a fantasy list- but i know i'll be able to do all of it.

and so i spent the rest of the day completely stoked. i wrote a few entries back about how i was disappointed in how i'd been handling this whole situation lately. i can proudly say that every day since the day i wrote that blog has been night and day difference better. not everyone will get what i'm saying, but to put it simply, He was waiting on the other side of the door, and only i could open it. once i did, aside from the here-and-there short lived panicky moments....i have felt more positive, hopeful and cheerful in my situation. i am handling it the way that i want to be handling it.

i really am looking at my surgery as a new beginning i've been offered. i've made it this far!