How Rare & Beautiful it is to even exist.

     I start every blog I've ever tried to start writing about how I'm transparent which if I'm doing a blog...Duh. I've also stopped and started so many blogs it's ridiculous, I over share, I over post, and it's just who I am take it or leave it. 

    I've been encouraged by many therapists, doctors, some friends and family, and random strangers on the internet that I should write things down, journal etc. So I decided to start a new one but one that I can share. I also have a few who are like Nope! don't wanna see that - and that's okay too. So here's your warning, this post later on will be graphic. It will contain images that are hard for some people to see that don't enjoy seeing the inside of a human. However research and other peoples stories are what got me through my stuff so I'm hoping to answer people who have asked questions, and have one source to direct them to. It also apparently will be helpful to my mental health. Which by the end of this and the following updates I make you will see is hanging by a thread some days. 

  So I will preface this with saying I have been through a lot of stuff and I'm just here to talk about mine. I know that there are people who go through long term illnesses and people who go through different kinds of issues and I fully respect, support, and feel for that. I couldn't stop thinking about how I felt for people who had to go through these things everyday for their whole lives. I'm not saying I'm any extra special but I will say it's just taken it's toll on me personally and everyone's journey is their own.  

5 Years ago up until shortly before I met F I was healing from Abuse, Separating with my Husband of 7 years, The Loss of my unborn Child, Sexual Assault, Giving into far too many worldly vices of coping, Being cheated on (twice), and a few other forms of rejection. I worked like hell those years in between to fight the sadness, depression, anxiety, pain, physical healing, and more by pouring myself into health and exercise, and reading, and crying, and dancing and going out and far far too many selfies. When I met F I was at the best place I had ever been in my life. I was healing, I was in love with myself, I felt connected to my friends and family in a healthy way things were just so good. F was the icing...the sweet sweet icing to my cake! Our love started quick and fast. We just knew it was like all great love movies and we literally were that in every bit of the term. Still are I sometimes stand there thinking if people saw this in real life (in our intimate moments) they'd be like you two make me sick! haha I never believed in romance movies I feel they're unrealistic but ours really is so special. 

 

A month into dating we had the discussion of you want kids well I have PCOS with my ex it took us 5 years so I don't know how long this will take, and given my age...We didn't hesitate out comes the IUD and in comes our sweet baby a month later. One month- wow that took us by surprise. I thought I'd at least have a summer to make sure I really really love this guy :P (I'm kidding). We were tested like all couples are but we honestly didn't know the tests that were to come. The storms we'd truly have to whether. I think that it would make or break any couple. First we were nervous about down syndrome. We received results that looked like she could but then after some careful research weren't so worried about her odds. Relieving as it was my pregnancy was anything but easy. I was sick so much, I couldn't eat so many things, It was miserable and the most beautiful. Baby S was growing quickly and they kept thinking I had gestational diabetes but all of my tests always came back negative. Finally at 32 weeks my doctor wanted one more test and sure enough I had it. Just by a hair. My fasting glucose was just .2 over. So then I spent the last couple of weeks in so many appointments it made my head spin. If you're not pregnant and want to be just know you'll be in appointment after appointment I feel like no one prepared me for how many. 

 

February 16th came along and my dr wanted baby S out. C section became the plan for the day and off we went to surgery. The most terrified I have been in my entire life. I shook so badly on the table the nurse was hugging me so tightly. I love nurses, I think they saved my life truly Angels! out came baby S and I barely remember it I was so out of it. The rest of that time was a blur because I felt so sick but goodness she was beautiful and nothing will change how she made me feel. It's indescribable. Like suddenly the world was just better. 

 

I went home a few days later after telling them I was still waking up covered in sweat but it was believed at the time that it was all just regular C Section healing... Nurses would be coming to check on my incision and they would let me know if something was awry. They came and  I informed them of the sweat and chills. I kept being asked about fever but I never had one. They weren't sure but they weren't loving a red area up from my incision. I got alarmed. Now all of the images I'm about to share please don't body shame me I do enough figuring of that my own, and obviously there's curves, marks, hairs etc I just gave birth/had been unable to shower/groom for the days following. 

The nurse asked forest to draw a line around the read area and if it expanded to go into Emerg. It expanded; a lot.

It was then that I was told that there was an infection and I'd have to be re-admitted but without baby S. I recall those days being the hardest I've ever had in my life. I cried and cried, Things were just so sad, and I felt so sick. Morphine shot after morphine shot, Gravol to ease the morphine, Dilauded to switch up pain relief, non stop throwing up. It was rotten. Then we found out that there was a small opening in my incision it was barely a cm but It was a bit deep so they had to stuff it. I cried as I held onto forest every change which was every day. They'd come in prepare and undress me, take out the previous long thing of gauze and slowly stuff it again with tweezers. I recall one nurse even saying "I stuff wounds all the time but this one gives me shivers it looks so painful" I mentally had to turn my brain off some days just so I could bear the loneliness, the sadness, and the pain, and then a few days later they discharged me with nurses coming to do the small wound but said finish my antibiotics and I should be okay. Did I mention I was still waking up with sweats and chills and still complaining about it? 

I'm home for I think a day maybe 2 but I'm feeling more and more awful by the day. I'm barely able to help with baby but I have to because F has to work. The nurse came and still didn't like how things were looking good. Contacted my dr and sure enough Go back into Emerg if things worsen. The next morning I can still feel all of this pain when I think about it. I was inconsolable. I probably should've called an ambulance but I waited for F to get home. I shook and held onto him and I got ready to go to Emerg. Every bump, every moment fearful of what's going on because It just hurt so bad. They made me sit in the waiting room for quite a while- all I could think is pretty sure i'm supposed to be laying down. Once I got in things started happening pretty quickly. It wasn't long til they realized My incision had turned necrotic and I needed to have an emergency debridement. We thought it would be then, the nurses put me on NPO and I waited...and waited. Due to emergency surgeries it was 36 hours later that I layed there with my skin decaying and my body feeling like fire with more drugs. 

I'm not sure what I expected going into another operation. I was terrified again, I had so much PTSD from the first operation. I had a bad reaction to the spinal tap and I had a full blown panic attack on the table so I wasn't sure how this was gonna go. When I came out of surgery I felt like I was on fire. I screamed, I cried. I was like what's going on with my body and where is God, and all sorts of ridiculous things. The freezing from surgery didn't hold off til they could give me meds so my body went into complete shock and then they gave me so many drugs in a row that my oxygen was tanking off. Within 10 mins I had Dilauded, Fentanyl, Morphine, Torotol. I was wacked and out of it for a good day after that surgery. In my head I went into this I think thinking that my body would still look relatively the same. The incision would be small like it was. When they came in to remove their vaccuum (most painful experience of my life) Forests face said it all. To this day I have severe body dysmorphia over this. 

I cried, I got sick, I spent a month and a half in that place. Every other day having to have my wound vac  changed, they took the foam out and then replaced the foam in. This took hours to do, a ton of meds that couldn't cut the pain. I gripped onto the sides of the rails just shaking and trembling while they removed every piece of foam and then placing every one back in. We went through different fears during that time, re-infection scares, missing foam, mental health was attacked from every side possible. I lived there most days without my child because who wants their baby to grow up in a hospital and be exposed to so much illness around them. It was the hardest time of my life, my family was away, my friends couldn't come, Depression came and went but my people kept me grounded. 

Within that time F mental health took a huge dip. He wasn't doing good and that made me fight like hell to get better for him and for S. He was in therapy, I was in therapy at the hospital, He was being full time Dad. It was just a mess. We were released when Quarantine began for Covid.  So we left one isolation to sit in another. Anything felt better than the hospital room but we weren't prepared for shut down like some people had time to prepare with food and groceries our lives were mayhem because we just had a baby. I was still on a wound vac and would be until this wound healed from the inside out so the only people in were nurses to do those changes and from home you don't have opiods to get you through. It was hard and painful every damn time I had to take my brain somewhere else. But slowly but surely it started to heal and by the middle of June in a place where F could finish my wound alone and shortly after it closed. 

I can't say enough good things about nurses or wound vacs. Amazing technology. We felt amazing so we took some trips to canmore respecting covid protocols, and low and behold F had plans to ask me to marry him. So it felt like Sunshine after the rain. 

Me with the Wound Vac on.

We thought we were in the clear for a decently good year....We thought wrong...