Dear Blog/Journal,
I have been avoiding you for a while now. The thing is, I just don’t know what to say. I’ve been going through “something” lately and I haven’t been able to put it into words what’s been going on.
The last time I wrote in you, I was still carrying my wound vac around with me everywhere I went. I lost that son-of-a-bitch a while back and started changing my dressings myself, twice a day. Having the wound vac was a blessing in some ways. I didn’t have to change the foam and examine the wound, so I was kinda left in the dark about what things looked like. People would tell me that it looked good and I listened to them. What I didn’t realize was that they were telling me that it looked good from a medical standpoint and not from a cosmetic one.
The first time I changed my wound myself I cried. I looked into the bathroom mirror and saw what had become of my body. It horrified me that this was what I was carrying around. I immediately decided that the kids wouldn’t see what my lower stomach looked like. The doctor assured me that it could be fixed and I stood there wondering how the hell he was going to fix this.
My next appointment with the doctor wasn’t for another two weeks. During that time, James comforted me as much as he could and changed the dressings for me at night – they have to be done twice a day – so that I wouldn’t have to look at my wound. I started to feel like that woman Allison on Starting Over who has breast cancer and then decided to have her uterus taken out as well. She would wail on nearly episode about her wooooomb… just exchange womb for wound and that was me on a couple different nights.
I came to several other decisions during those two weeks, most important, the doctor who did my previous two surgeries would not be the doctor to fix my stomach. This doctor had pretty much blown off all questions and worries I had about my hernia surgery right from the start. It took four weeks for him to listen to me when I kept telling him I wasn’t feeling well. During those four weeks an infection spread throughout my lower abdomen down into the muscle. I asked whether or not the muscle would regenerate and what my stomach would look like, only to be met with answers that basically told me to shut up and just be thankful I am alive.
There were concerns about the scar that was forming. It was not what the surgeon had expected since he told me that I would have a large purple vertical scar. Instead there is something forming that is oddly star shaped and makes the skin pucker like a balloon does near where it’s tied shut.
At my next appointment, I stood up in front of my doctor’s nurse to show her what I see when I look in the mirror. She looked at the two sides of my sagging stomach with a hole in the middle and proclaimed “It looks like a butt!” James rolled his eyes and sighed since this is what I constantly referred to it as, except I said it was an old man’s butt since it was so deflated and saggy.
When the surgeon came in I showed him as well, asking how he planned on fixing it. As soon as I stood up the look on his face got very concerned. The only time he had seen the state of my stomach was when I was laying down and the whole old man saggy butt was sunk into my poochy tummy. I think during that visit they finally started to understand how upset we are with them.
So, that’s where I’ve been hiding. There’s the whole taking care of 5 kids and a husband thing too. They are doing awesome, by the way. We now have 5 teeth between the triplets, well between Lauren (3) and Megan (2) anyway. Katie is still working on two in her little mouth and Lauren is working on number 4. It’s insane dealing with 3 teething babies. Sometimes I go to bed and wonder how I made it through the day. My mother in law has been coming over nearly every other day to help out and without her, I think I’d be in a padded cell right about now. (I think I misplaced a comma there, but I am too focused on getting apost published that I am not really giving a rat’s ass. Rat’s asses by the way, totally gross, no?)
Oh, and the lamp on our big ass LCD tv went pop tonight. I made James bring down the little tv from our bedroom after I figured out – ok, Marnie figured out – that making watercolor paintings would only take up so much time in Abby’s day. Plus, Emma’s been sick with some sort of throat/tonsil issue. We might be making a trip to the doctor tomorrow to see what’s going on there if she’s not sounding or feeling any better tomorrow. Of course this breaks her heart since tomorrow is Grandparent’s Day for her grade – the one day out of the year that grandparents or someone special can come and eat lunch with you.
James wants to play doctor and the cat look slike she needs someone to cuddle with. So, until next time.
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