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Middle Aged Woman

Major changes since my last entry!

I have not had the heart to post to this blog since my last entry. Little did I know that day last August that in just a few days an event would occur that would profoundly affect my entire life and turn it upside down. I read that last blog and thought- wow I was talking about such trivial things!

On August 14, 2007, I was inside the house getting ready to take my dog, Sam, into town to see the vet when the phone rang. It was one of those phone calls you NEVER want to receive. One of my neighbors, who is on the same rural water board as my husband, was on the other end and the first thing he said was that my husband had experienced some kind of "episode." They were at the resort close to our home at a board members training session. HR had ridden his motorcycle there. The neighbor told me that an ambulance had already been called. I hung up and jumped in my car and headed to the resort and passed the ambulance on the way, so I turned around and followed it into the nearest town where they took him into the ER.

The moment I saw him and approached him and tried to talk to him I KNEW that he had suffered a stroke. Everyone was running tests on him talking about heat strokes and other things but I KNEW it was a stroke and I told the doctor it had to be. He was then taken by another ambulance to a hospital in Tulsa where the stroke was confirmed. He was in the hospital for about 7 or 8 days.

I have not been able to put this into words in the past 6 months since this happened because it has been too hard. I have seen the MRI pictures. I actually have them. The neurologist said it was a huge stroke that hit two different areas of the brain. His vision is very impaired and we have tried every specialist we can find but there is nothing that can be done. It also affected his memory of names of things and people. He can describe someone he has known all his life but cannot put a name to them at all. It affected his personality too. He was always one of the most self-assured, confident, intelligent, laid back people I have ever known. He is still very intelligent, but the confidence and self-assurance is gone and has not returned. He is something of a shell of how he used to be. I have already had to grieve the loss of the man I knew and try to get to know the one who has taken his place in my life.

He worries constantly that he is saying or doing the wrong thing. Although he has improved some since this happened, he is probably now as recovered from that as he ever will be. But that is not the end of the story.

On September 18 he began to tell me that his stomach hurt. He couldn't describe how it felt - just that it felt weird. I told him he had to see a doctor. By the 20th he was in enough pain to let me take him to the ER in Wagoner and they did a Cat Scan and sent him immediately to Tulsa.

I can't discuss the details of the events between Sept 20 and 23 because of a possible lawsuit, but let me just say this. He had a ruptured appendix from the time we took him in until 60 hours later when they finally took him to surgery. The surgeon told me he was surprised that he had lived that long. They had to clean out the entire abdominal cavity because of the poison. Never in my life have I seen anyone suffer as much, be in as much pain, or nearly die because of a misdiagnosis at one of the supposedly BEST hospitals in Tulsa.

The big problem with a ruptured appendix is that they cannot just take it out and sew the patient up. They do internal sutures and leave the rest open so it can heal from the inside out via a wound vac that is attached to the would. Two days after this surgery he suddenly felt wet all over. I checked him and one of his internal sutures had broken and part of his intestines were outside of the opening and bodily fluids were soaking him and the bed. The surgeon was called and arrived within minutes and I watched him actually stick his hand into Rodney's wound to push the intestines back in and put a temporary strap bandage on him and back to surgery he went.

This was a 10 day stay in the hospital and 4 weeks of home health nurses coming every other day to change the dressings on the wound vac. Once it was close to the outer skin, I was trained on how to change the wet to dry dressings until it completely healed which took about another month. Now, this man has been to hell and back for about 4 months by that point. I am happy to say that right now he seems to feel really well and he spends most of his time working and taking care of me because I fell apart right after all this ended.

I have degenerative disk disease. I was born with scoliosis and in the past few months it has limited my ability to walk. I can only walk very short distances with the use of a cane. I see a neurologist in a few weeks to determine if I am a candidate for surgery or not. I have not been in the past. The type of scoliosis I have makes surgeons hesitant to operate because the curvature is at the base of my spine and the spinal fluid follows it in an unnatural way. There is the chance of paralyzing me in surgery. So...another decision to make.

On September 18, just a couple days before he had his appendectomy, I quit smoking. I stayed quit through all that stress - but in the process, I gained a lot of weight really fast and there is a chance that the extra weight is putting pressure on a nerve causing this and if I can get the weight off then I will be able to walk again. I am trying, but not being able to exercise at all has made it very difficult. Also, I have had the steroid shots in my back a few times and I take two medications for myback and ALL of these cause weight gain. I am unable to work full time now. I teach part time for the University of Phoenix and have just been asked to be a faculty reviewer of student essays, which is all done online and I am contemplating this, but if I have surgery, it will have to wait.

I have decided that getting old sucks and I don't see why anyone would want to live a long life. At the time that I quit smoking, I was thinking that in a few months I would feel so much better! NO. I feel worse and worse all the time. We have spent a fortune on doctors, hospital bills, specialists, tests, etc... between us in the past 6 months. Rodney was told he absolutely must stop smoking but he hasn't. He says he does not have the will power. On March 18 I will be smoke free for half a year! That is a huge accomplishment for me, but hard to celebrate when I am in pain so much of the time and confined like I am now.

I keep telling myself that we will look back on this some day and talk about how bad it was and we will be better because after all, everything is temporary if you give it enough time, but how much longer until that day? I thought 2007 was bad. 2008 has been a bad year so far also.

Youth is wasted on the young. I don't want my youth back, but I don't want to feel like I am 85 years old right now either.