Friday, December 14, 2012

beauty in the breakdown

well, here i am two and a half weeks out from surgery.....i feel great!
every doctor i've seen in the past two weeks, goes on and on about number one: how perfect my stoma is (gee...thanks? the stoma nurses even said it looked like a 'model stoma' and they wanted me to model for some stoma convention thing hahaha)
number two: i am freakishly resilient. no one can believe i had surgery so recently and am already moving around and looking the way i do. i can hardly believe it myself. i met with my surgeon on wednesday and he kept saying how great i look. he also took the steri-strips off of my incisions. they are literally the size of the top of my pinky nail, no kidding. they're tiny and when they scar, they'll barely even show. hopefully they show enough that i can still go through with my plan of walking up to someone, lifting my shirt and saying, "you wanna know how i got these scars?" ;) i'm awesome, i know.

i have a date for my next surgery, and a general time period for the third one. when i first met with my surgeon, we talked about doing two-step surgery but i was too sick for that. also, my body had become dependent on prednisone, which inhibits wound healing. so dr. kim wanted to make sure i was totally off of that stuff before constructing the jpouch. so anyway, it's ended up being a three step surgical process. i don't mind. i told him i'm ALWAYS the kind of person who'd rather be safe than sorry. we're talking about not having to have a bag the rest of my life here vs. having to have one. a few months, i can handle. i'm not going to rush or get impatient and raising my chances of something going wrong and being stuck with this bag forever. so yeah. the actual date for my second surgery will be january 29th. it will be another five to seven day hospital stay (the first one was, too but i only stayed four days. what did i say about resilience? :P)

then, i have to wait about six weeks to allow everything to heal and stuff. then they can go in and do the "takedown". they'll connect everything and it will be bye bye stoma and hello normalcy. well, as normal as you can get without a large intestine/colon haha. but yeah...needless to say, i am mad stoked.

the third surgery will end up taking place right around my birthday, actually. happy birthday to me! if everything goes as it should, i could not think of a better birthday present, so if i spend it in the hospital it's fine by me. the third is the "easiest" surgery for me- you are only in the hospital about three days. and then....it will be over, and my life will truly begin.

don't get me wrong- this week has actually been pretty productive, and i'm only two weeks out! i just can't stand sitting around being useless and not doing anything. the first week i took it super easy and slept a ton. this week i've still slept more than i normally do, but i've been going out and keeping busy (aka away from the computer so i'm not just wasting hours surfing the web) as much as possible. it's been great!

don't get me wrong, there have been some annoying things. i've had some bag troubles and stuff, but i have just kind of tried to laugh them off and be patient. i'll only have this until march, you can do anything for just a couple of months, whether it sucks or not. of course...i also have felt SO much better than when i still had my guts, that i would NEVER say that this "sucks". maybe parts of it can, but overall it's awesome and i'm forever grateful for modern medicine, a sense of humor, and a Father in heaven who loves me. and about the best family i could ask for!