The Long, Bumpy, & Blessed Road Back

Hello all!  It has been a looooong time and a whole lot of life going on since I last posted, but, just like falling off a horse, I think it is time for me to get back on and blog again.  I can't believe that it is Easter week already and yet we may have a few flurries!  

So when we last visited I was already suffering with some blog fog (more like crazy hormone fog) and was slacking badly on blogging.   At that time my biggest concerns were angling to get the BDJ to move to this side of the country, moping around and dreading Mini heading to college next fall, and spending countless hours reading reviews in preparation for buying a new camera.  Boy, what a difference a few months makes.

The week before Thanksgiving I was making the most of some beautiful fall days, thanking God for those beautiful days and praying that I could get through them physically.  I took a few days off and spent some days raking leaves and working in the yard.  It was a slow go.  I continually had to take breaks and couldn't figure out why.  I slogged through the yard work and helped Wonder Hubby lay a new wood floor in my Coastal bedroom before returning to work. 

I headed back to work on the Monday before Thanksgiving excited that I had managed to clean up the yard, and precook quite a bit of our Thanksgiving dinner as well as finally narrowing my camera options to two.  The plan was cleaning on Wednesday in preparation for the family on Thursday, enjoying Thanksgiving with the family, getting most of the Christmas decor up and of course getting that camera on Friday!  That was the plan.  You know what they say about the best laid plans......

I have to admit here that I can be kind of dense ostrich-like when I choose to be and for a couple of months I had been making like an ostrich and playing the game of denying that there seemed to be something in my abdomen area that wasn't normal.  I also can be very mind over matter so I had decided to just do that....I would will it not to be there.  I made the dreaded doctors appointment for the Tuesday after Turkey day...cause you know I was not going to let this whatever it was mess with my plan.

That worked well until it didn't anymore and after a long Thanksgiving week with lots of pain and not being able to accomplish anything I had planned, a visit to my doctor was welcome.  I don't know what I was thinking other than the fact that since I could no longer wear pants they were probably going to have to do something to fix that, but I wasn't thinking that a mere 15 hours later I would be in an emergency surgery. 

Yep, I had time to go pack and feed the dog and that is about it. My doctor (who by the way I love to argue with) just didn't see my point of view on waiting a week so I could Christmas shop and decorate.  No...he whisked me right to the front of the line, he is polite like that don't ya know.   I had an emergency hysterectomy on December 4th,  they fixed up all my girl issues and found lots of goodies that I should not have been carrying around and took care of those too.  Thankfully it all happened so quickly there was no time to fret about any of it!  

BDJ was very helpful telling me what fun the Morphine pump would be....so I looked forward to that until it was determined that Morphine makes me very, very sick!  I was to be in the hospital for 2 days afterword but after a long and painful night I decided I could be miserable at home and this time my doctor let me win and sent me home after 23 hrs.

The next couple of weeks I had to do something I don't do well, let others do for me.  Thank goodness for my family because they took care of everything.  Because Wonder Hubby's schedule had him leaving for work in wee hours of the morning, Mini would set her alarm to get up and get my meds and anything else I needed.  She was a full time caregiver when she wasn't at school or work.  BDJ came home for Christmas several days early to help out and Spare Daughter was good with meds and monitoring me since she is in her final semester of nursing school.  I had lots of help and received some very pretty flowers to enjoy when I wasn't too drugged!

Mini surprised me a couple days after my surgery by managing to decorate 3 trees and put up all the Christmas decorations while I was in a drug induced slumber.  She will never know what that meant to me.

We did virtually all our Christmas shopping online.  Wonder Hubby and I did stop for a wee bit of shopping after a doctors visit the week of Christmas. That little outing took care of my feeling that I was missing out on that "holiday shopping experience" and completely wore me out!

The few days before Christmas we managed to finish up the family tree....wrapping finished up about 5:00 pm on Christmas Eve.  I never quit trying to act like I was completely healed, in fact, I worked on the gifts I had planned for friends two days after surgery.  They were a little project I had seen on Pinterest and I passed them out along with a note that explained "results may vary based on the amount of narcotics in my system at the time of production!"  I think they turned out great...below are some in progress shots, I guess I was a little too loopy to shoot the finished product. Just picture sets of 4 tied with pretty ribbon and made with love! lol  

The kids did a lot of cooking and I even felt up to a little candy making...although I did rely on a stool in the kitchen! 

 Best of all I saw a lot of this......

 The kids decided to host Christmas as would be normal and everyone pitched in with food.  I think I will have them handle this every year from here on out since everybody brought way more food than it normal!  You literally couldn't even sample everything there was so much.

Despite all the craziness, Christmas was wonderful.  After getting the no cancer diagnosis and getting through the surgery I was feeling more thankful than ever to celebrate Christmas with my family.   It was my kind of Christmas too....it took 14 hours start to finish to open all the gifts! Yes!   Indulge me a little since I haven't yet shared any Christmas photos!

I wish there was music I could put here that would create the set up for the drama that continued to unfold in our lives because the next 3 1/2 months deserve dramatic music,  but I will just have to explain it all.

By the New Year I was feeling much better and The Nana, Mini, my MIL and I all headed out for a day of shopping.  It was a wonderful day....I was so glad to get dressed and out of the house.  By that weekend I was beginning to think this post surgical life might just be awesome...then the rug was pulled out from under us.  Wonder Hubby lost his job.

The man has had 3 jobs in the 30 years I have known him, so this really threw us for a loop!  The stages of this adventure are tons of fun!  It is strange, this job was a job he took because at the time the hours worked to allow him to be able to attend our son's college football games.  It was never intended that he be there long term and we had talked A LOT in the past year about it being time to make the change but when it isn't your choice it is a shock.  

So the month of January was spent looking for a new job and starting a new job. It was also the first time the signs of a very sudden menopause became very apparent as well as a month,  January also brought the death of  a sweet uncle to cancer.  Very sudden as he found out only a week and a half before he passed away.  January was also the month Mini's car began to have a sick transmission.   All of these events delayed my healing and I ended up being out of work five weeks.

I returned to work mid-January to a very busy travel booking season.   February was month one of the new job and a very different schedule and was a challenge to the whole family.  It was also so cold and gloomy the whole month it was hard to stay positive.  The fact that Mini's car with in and out of the shop 4 times and we were constantly arranging rides was frustrating as well.  

There were several moderately unbelievable events here and there in January and February including a close call on my convention oven, a tire issue on my car that required 2 new tires about 10,000 miles early, a leaking toilet line that should have been fixed in a half an hour but was complicated and lasted 3 days.  How about an ice storm that did some tree damage, the refrigerator trying to die again, Mini doing an about face on her college decision and the biggie....Wonder Hubby having a wreck in his parents car!

Yes March too was heavy on drama.  Thankfully from the ashes some good has come.  I was offered the opportunity to move back into my previous job as an travel consultant (oh yes....I am very, very excited about that one) and Mini chose her college.  With the new job has come lots and lots of studying and lots of brainstorming but I truly do love travel.

Wonder Hubby has managed to find a car, the in-laws car is almost out of the shop and thankfully the sun has begun to appear on a fairly regular basis again! lol  I am beginning to feel like a better version of me with a few meno ups and downs but not nearly the hormone and pain filled existence I had before.  

Wow.....I know there is more but truthfully I think I blocked quite a bit of it all!  We seem to be coming out of the fog and are on the road to better times.  We have learned and grown tremendously during this time and that is what we are focusing on. 

Whew, I am so glad to have this post done so that I can move on to posting about some fun stuff!

Thanks for stopping by and reading about our 4 1/2 month adventure in our little corner of the South!