WARNING: THERE ARE PICTURES IN THIS POST THAT MAY BE DISTURBING TO SOME, BUT I WANT THE WHOLE STORY TO BE TOLD.
This isn't my first rodeo. This I say on many levels. I have had so many blogs in the past. Some I abandoned on my own when things got tough or life got busy. Others were hacked. Its taken nearly a year to start this one, but i need all of the support and accountability I can get.
I've also struggled with my weight for most if not my entire life. I've had some success - I lost 100 pounds back in 2009, but it slowly crept back up and brought friends. I never had any major health problems with the exception of high blood pressure diagnosed in 2007, but after regaining the weight, my health began to deteriorate.
The longer I maintained my weight in the 300's, the worse I felt. My activity got less and less until one day I realized that my days consisted of getting out of bed, making my way to the living room couch where I'd sit all day long. Every now and again, I'd go see my parents, or shop, but the minimal activity would drain me for days.
My legs began to swell and over time, got blisters on them, that would break and weep for weeks. I'd go to the doctor, they chalk it up to poor circulation, give me a diuretic and send me on my way. Eventually, this was no longer helping, and I tried one last time. This time the doctor told me I was having congestive heart failure. After multiple testing by cardiologists, this was debunked, especially after they were able to get a lot of fluid off of me with stronger meds - I actually lost 67 pounds of water in just a few weeks. I was encouraged....until I started going downhill again.
It used to be that when I was forced to get up from my sedentary lifestyle that I would actually start to feel a bit better, and yet i would always regress afterward. We were dealing with the sudden illness my of Dad and his passing about a month later in May, and for the first time, the more I did, the worse I felt. I kept a few doctors appointments and watched my weight spiral out of control to 439. It was evident when we snapped a picture of my sisters and mother....
Fast forward to later this summer, when went back to the cardiologist, who focused on my legs, saying I have venous insufficiency and sent me to the wound care specialist in their group. I was prescribed a round of una boots.....
I could barely walk with them and had to go weekly to have them changed. While I initially had some positive results, it didn't take long to get discouraged with these, too. Next step: a vein ablation. This procedure would strip the vein and reroute the blood low to healthier veins. Sounded like a winner to me so I went into with hope.
It was a painful procedure that let my thigh pouring excess water for days - I couldn't even leave my home because it wet my shorts to badly. This was done on August 20th. I naturally signed o on a bunch o papers that I understood the risks even though they were highly unlikely. I was fine with signing as I was being told that there would be almost immediate relief.
Instead of relief, every morning I woke, I felt a little worse.I had already resorted to sleeping on the couch because I couldn't get up in my bed any longer, so I was not resting well and quite exhausted. But this was different. Finally, on September 3rd, I got so winded just walking the length of our hallway that I knew something was terribly wrong. I told my hubby I needed to call for an ambulance because I needed to go to the hospital but there was no way I was going to get to the van to have him take me.
The next while was a blur. I had no idea what was going on, other than being put on a ventilator....
But I remember well the day that the doctor came in to talk to me. I had blood clots in both of my lungs, cellulitis in my legs along with an infection, an infection on the skin on my stomach, my kidneys were nearly not functioning which caused one side of mt heart to overwork and enlarge. He told me they did all they could do but they couldn't wean me off of the vent. He could either discharge me, but I would be back in three months or less, and I'd be in worse shape. They'd fix me up and I'd be back again until they finally couldn't fix me any longer. The other option - a tracheotomy. Once I was off of it, I need gastric bypass.
So, I agreed to the trach....
Thus started a marathon hospital tour, moving from one facility to another, then yet one more, until I got strong enough to come home on November 9th. Today, 52 days later, I am walking on my own without the aid of a walker, and my battle scars are fading - the one on my neck and the ones on my right arm where I had a pic line inserted (there was a time when I had 9 IVs in me at one time). The best news was that just after Thanksgiving, I weighed 335 pounds - I was already down 104 pounds! Gastric bypass be damned!
I have gained some over Christmas, but this is going to be my year. My year to finish getting my life back. I already threw three years away and its got to stop. I don't ever want to put my loved ones through anything like this again, and I want this blog to serve as a reminder. To remind me of what I put my husband through, as he spent part of every day that I was in the hospital by my side, logging over 6,000 miles on our van in 67 days. To remind me how my heart broke, hearing about how my Mom, who just buried my Dad only 5 months earlier, was planning my funeral as my nephews and niece tried to comfort her. So much more that I couldn't even begin to list them all in one post.
Still, I'll be sharing more hospital stories over the next while, just to keep myself walking faster away from the potential death of myself until I run full speed into the arms of my healthy strong self.
Here's to 2016! Ready or not, here I come!
