Dumping the Past Year

As I have posted before, I find it very difficult to write about anything very personal that is going on in my life t or anything that is less than positive or uplifting. I have always imagined that a sad post, or one that will bring anyone down after reading it, would not be anyone’s first choice.

BUT, I have been going through a life-changing event since June 2009 and now that it is almost over (God willing), I have decided that I need to dump it out here, all at once, and get rid of everything I have been carrying around for the last seven months. Perhaps someone else going thru the same can find a bit of hope or maybe be able to add hope to my own and share their story.

This is not a pretty tale, so if you are not up for it, please do not read on.

In June 2009, I published a post asking my readers to pray for my husband Andrew because he was having going into the hospital for routine surgery. I received many prayers in return and I thank all of you for that. Yet, what had begun as a routine surgery, you know, the kind that only has a 3% failure rate, turned into seven months of a nightmare we are still trying to wake up from.

Andrew was diagnosed in March 2009 with intestinal diverticulitis and it was a simple enough laposcopic procedure that he should be home within a week of surgery and back to work a week after that… but there is a 3% chance that the surgery could fail. If we had been playing the lottery the odds would have been against us. But in this, we won the lottery. They could not do the procedure laposcopically, so they had to do an old fashioned surgical incision. Ok, that we understood. No big deal. He will just take a little longer to heal. After six days in the hospital, they said he was doing great and he was up and walking around, etc. , so they sent Andrew home.

Speed forward 48 hours and we are back in emergency with my tough-guy husband in tears, screaming from agonizing pain. The surgery had failed and he had gone septic. Poisons were leaking out of the intestines into his lower body, settling on his prostrate (hence the agonizing pain).

The only thing we were concentrating on then was relieving the unbearable pain. Unfortunately, my husband has a resistance to pain meds; they don’t cut the pain entirely and they don’t last long in his system. After they put tubes into him to drain out the poison, we had a family member with him at all times, 24/7, keeping track of his pain schedule because the nurses, as wonderful as they are, cannot keep on top of it as well as he needed them to when they have ten patients each. My mother-in –law brings our son, Ignazio to see Andrew whenever she can.

After a week, it was determined that the drain was not doing a good enough job and they needed to open him up again. The thing we feared most from the beginning was going to come true, he would have to be on a colostomy bag after the second surgery scheduled for the next morning. They were going to go in, wash him out, literally, and hook his intestines up to the bag. He needed time to heal and the bag was temporary. After the second surgery, he was put in CCU for four days so that he could be watched constantly, then he was moved to another room. Even so, it was another two weeks in the hospital after infections and further complications kept him in the hospital longer than expected.

Finally, he was able to go home under a nurse’s care. At home he would give himself IV infusions of antibitoics and antifungals until his infections were all healed. My Andrew spent that summer and fall as a prisoner in our own home. Yes, you can go out with a colostomy bag, but it is no fun and everything must be planned out (meals, where the nearest bathroom is, etc.) He opted to stay close to home. Except for the occasional ten-minute jaunt to the store, he never left the house.

Of course, this also had him on disability for months and we had to worry about money, bills and his job being there when this was all over. But I imagine that most of America is feeling similar concerns during this current economy, so we were not unique in that.

Another fast-forward to December 7^th, the date of his scheduled reversal of the colostomy bag and re-hook up of his intestines. The surgery goes well and he is in good spirits and glad to have the bag gone and to be going home soon, UNTIL…the hiccups. Yes, hiccups Andrew’s diaphragm was spasming so badly as a result of the surgery that he would stop breathing. He was sent back to CCU and they watched him for another four days. It is the middle of December now and we are afraid Andrew won’t be home for Christmas.

Here is where I get a terrible cold and am not allowed to see Andrew for fear of getting him sick. Ignazio has not seen his dad for many days because the hospitals have closed visitation rights to children under 18 because of the swine flu epidemic. Andrew and I speak constantly on the phone. I have been continuing to work my day job thru all this and I am looking forward to the week between Christmas and New Year’s when I will have a whole week off.

December 17^th, Andrew calls me at work and tells me he is on his way HOME! The doctor’s released him under the care of home nursing and his dad was bringing him home. I leave work immediately and get there five minutes before him. I still have my cold and we cannot even embrace, but I am so thrilled to see him that I don’t care. We have a wonderful family reunion. Andrew, my son, myself and my in-laws, who live upstairs from us, are all relieved that Andrew would be home for Christmas.

NOW, it is three weeks later, a regiment of wonderful nurses coming in every day to pack his wound, and soon he is hooked up to a healing vacuum that is attached 24/7 for the next two or three weeks to his surgical incision and keeps the inside of him cleaned out while the vacuum helps the wound to heal. I am not sure why they cannot just sew it up, but they assure me that this is the best way to close the incision without the risk of further infection.

Phew! I am tired just from typing this. There is so much more that happened in and between all this but I think I have dumped enough of it for now that I can feel a little bit better for having spoke about it to someone other than family.

We hope for all of this to be over by the end of February. We cross our fingers and pray to God often. It has been a long, hard road for all of us, but most of all for Andrew who had endured the pain and discomfort the best he knows how. We see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we are anxious to get there, but we need to be patient for a few weeks more.

I have a better respect and understanding now of other families that go though something like this every day for years on end and for the doctors and nurses in the healthcare field. They are truly what I would call heroes. I am in awe of the nurse who showed up at our house on Christmas morning to care for Andrew, leaving her own children to do so, the surgeon who admitted to losing sleep over Andrew’s situation, and doing whatever he could to get him well again, answering my pages within minutes to relieve my concerns and the friend’s and family that came to see Andrew as often as they could to boost his spirits and keep us both positive, they are heroes, all.

Diane