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Nov. 3rd, 2007 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameI woke up this morning certain I was going back to the ER (not passing gas, feeling bloated - major warning signs I could be rushed back into surgery for scar tissue blockage or something). I was terrified. Like shaking and just...so scared. And it's such a familiar sensation lately - being afraid. I had said last night, after a full day of feeling bloated and not passing gas, that I'd go in the morning if nothing had changed. Eggshells and tension.
I called my surgeon though, and he said as long as I'm still going to the bathroom and eating I'm probably fine - rush there if I vomit, or my pain escalates, or this or that. And then the day just kept getting better and better. I took a (short, slow) walk with Grant, in the new cooler weather with the warm sun, and we just talked. About the house we would buy one day, about the dog an old neighbor used to have when we were in high school...I don't know how to explain how precious everything seems. How incredibly grateful I am. I want to be able to take everything for granted again, but appreciate it this time, if that makes any sense. There are all these little things I kept promising myself I'd remember to be thankful for - like not having a tube down my throat anymore. I remember it at weird times and think, man I'm glad that's out.
Mindy came over and talked about how her mom (my mother in law, who visited me in the ICU) wasn't sure I'd pull through, and my brother in law (Frank, Laura's wife) was here, talking about how awful it was to see me laying there and how serious that "heartrate in the 150s for days" thing really is...we had a big dinner at the (new, one I wanted so badly a couple of months ago) huge dining table - Laura's little family, and mine...and toasted me being here. And had pies for dessert. And damn, you know? This day could have played out so differently. Things seem so...bright. So vibrant. So fucking tenuous.
I feel good tonight. Not bloated. Able to lay on my side to nurse Elise with minimal teeth gritting. Elise. Elise! My God, if you all could see Elise crawling up on all fours, rapidly from room to room, and playing peekaboo - that's it. I can't stand it. You all have to see.
She gets from crawling to sitting and back again like an old pro now. She throws an angry fit when you take something she shouldn't have. Her hair is fluffy. Grant calls her a turkey, and says she's looking for stuffing when she goes around searching for choking hazards.
I feel ten years older than I did at the beginning of this year, and right this second, it seems like that might even be a good thing.
-Walking into the bathroom at just the right moment, in the night, to see Aaron waking up confused and uncovered, and be able to go into his room and cover him up, and hand him his Good Bear, and tell him I love him.
-All the little times when Ananda and Aaron and I can slip into my room and just talk, the three (or two) of us. I explain things and they ask me questions and we snuggle.
-My mother, and all her help
-Taking showers with Grant, and him washing my hair and conditioning it and helping me balance my way over the tub ledge
-MY SISTER. Pause for emphasis
-my brother
-this beautiful weather
-that we got married...my rings, the memories of the ceremony, that I can say "my husband" and be "Mrs Walker"
-my devotional journal
-whoever gave the blood I got
-traditions and holidays coming up
-a husband who will let a baby take all their naps and most of their nighttime sleep in a kozy carrier, and tell stories every night, and and and...
You know one thing this whole ordeal has given me peace about? NEVER HAVING ANOTHER BABY AGAIN. I'm still a little sad at the idea, but I don't want - at all, in any place, at any time - to get pregnant again, ever. I'm done with it. So done. I'm ready to move on to the next phase. I mean, really...all this stuff. All these complications. So done. I am ready for a vasectomy now. It sucks that it had to be this way, but in a regretful, done deal way, not a "Well, maybe..." way. And my belly cast design seems more right on all the time.
Something else I realized I'm ready for, assuming I am alive, is writing. I was really surprised by how sad and regretful I was about the idea of my life ending without me publishing things...It was something that really, really bothered me, the uneasiness and sadness of unfinished business...maybe we'll have something of a windfall that will make things like that more possible. Time. I was having a burst of ideas and productivity as my pain was escalating - short stories, novel ideas. But then things came to a head, and the sudden cut off of "well, maybe not" was HORRIBLE. Even in the midst of motherless children, I somehow had that to mourn, too. So maybe it means more to me than I realized, even as an idea.
Anyway. I think I need more Vicodin and a change of position. But life is beautiful.
I called my surgeon though, and he said as long as I'm still going to the bathroom and eating I'm probably fine - rush there if I vomit, or my pain escalates, or this or that. And then the day just kept getting better and better. I took a (short, slow) walk with Grant, in the new cooler weather with the warm sun, and we just talked. About the house we would buy one day, about the dog an old neighbor used to have when we were in high school...I don't know how to explain how precious everything seems. How incredibly grateful I am. I want to be able to take everything for granted again, but appreciate it this time, if that makes any sense. There are all these little things I kept promising myself I'd remember to be thankful for - like not having a tube down my throat anymore. I remember it at weird times and think, man I'm glad that's out.
Mindy came over and talked about how her mom (my mother in law, who visited me in the ICU) wasn't sure I'd pull through, and my brother in law (Frank, Laura's wife) was here, talking about how awful it was to see me laying there and how serious that "heartrate in the 150s for days" thing really is...we had a big dinner at the (new, one I wanted so badly a couple of months ago) huge dining table - Laura's little family, and mine...and toasted me being here. And had pies for dessert. And damn, you know? This day could have played out so differently. Things seem so...bright. So vibrant. So fucking tenuous.
I feel good tonight. Not bloated. Able to lay on my side to nurse Elise with minimal teeth gritting. Elise. Elise! My God, if you all could see Elise crawling up on all fours, rapidly from room to room, and playing peekaboo - that's it. I can't stand it. You all have to see.
She gets from crawling to sitting and back again like an old pro now. She throws an angry fit when you take something she shouldn't have. Her hair is fluffy. Grant calls her a turkey, and says she's looking for stuffing when she goes around searching for choking hazards.
I feel ten years older than I did at the beginning of this year, and right this second, it seems like that might even be a good thing.
-Walking into the bathroom at just the right moment, in the night, to see Aaron waking up confused and uncovered, and be able to go into his room and cover him up, and hand him his Good Bear, and tell him I love him.
-All the little times when Ananda and Aaron and I can slip into my room and just talk, the three (or two) of us. I explain things and they ask me questions and we snuggle.
-My mother, and all her help
-Taking showers with Grant, and him washing my hair and conditioning it and helping me balance my way over the tub ledge
-MY SISTER. Pause for emphasis
-my brother
-this beautiful weather
-that we got married...my rings, the memories of the ceremony, that I can say "my husband" and be "Mrs Walker"
-my devotional journal
-whoever gave the blood I got
-traditions and holidays coming up
-a husband who will let a baby take all their naps and most of their nighttime sleep in a kozy carrier, and tell stories every night, and and and...
You know one thing this whole ordeal has given me peace about? NEVER HAVING ANOTHER BABY AGAIN. I'm still a little sad at the idea, but I don't want - at all, in any place, at any time - to get pregnant again, ever. I'm done with it. So done. I'm ready to move on to the next phase. I mean, really...all this stuff. All these complications. So done. I am ready for a vasectomy now. It sucks that it had to be this way, but in a regretful, done deal way, not a "Well, maybe..." way. And my belly cast design seems more right on all the time.
Something else I realized I'm ready for, assuming I am alive, is writing. I was really surprised by how sad and regretful I was about the idea of my life ending without me publishing things...It was something that really, really bothered me, the uneasiness and sadness of unfinished business...maybe we'll have something of a windfall that will make things like that more possible. Time. I was having a burst of ideas and productivity as my pain was escalating - short stories, novel ideas. But then things came to a head, and the sudden cut off of "well, maybe not" was HORRIBLE. Even in the midst of motherless children, I somehow had that to mourn, too. So maybe it means more to me than I realized, even as an idea.
Anyway. I think I need more Vicodin and a change of position. But life is beautiful.
