The Waiting Game
I am so thankful to say that I am now home. After the 10 hour car ride, I stepped foot into my house and began to feel happy and comforted again. It was magical to be able to go on a family walk around the block and say hi to everyone that we care about, and who care about us. As we all sat on the kitchen counter sipping on root beer floats that were brought by a lovely friend (yes, I made myself the perfect baby size one to taste :)) I was able to finally breathe. I truly love being home. I am a strong believer that when you are in your own home, you will be able to heal your soul. And I am ready for some of that!!!
| Holding my darling love bug, baby Boomer |
| My little fun sized cup next to my sweet siter’s cup |
Nationwide brought some pretty spectacular news. We learned that the nerves and muscles in my stomach and small intestine are INTACT! This means that I *drum roll* am a candidate for the gastric pacemaker! This was massive news. I did not even process it until that afternoon, and I just burst into tears and hugged my mom. The gastric pacemaker will give me the ability to possibly eat again. It would give my stomach little shocks to remind it that it needs to digest my food. While this news was just magical, it followed with new questions. We were confused about my abdomen swelling, so we decided to look at my colon. At Nationwide I had one final test this Friday. This test brought us results that we were not expecting. My colon is about twice the length of an average person, and has three extra loops. This means that in the stream of your digestive system, my beginning (the stomach) and the end (the colon) are both struggling. My doctors decided to put everything to a pause so we can look into this colon issue some more. While I felt discouraged at the beginning to find yet another issue, I am looking toward the bright side that we actually found this issue!!! Now we can begin to look into solutions and move forward on this road.
| The images of my colon, one looonngg and wwiinnddy trail! |
| This is what your colon should look like! (Credit to the lovely Google images… Sadly this is not my colon haha!) |
For now, I am waiting to hear from my doctors. The team of doctors at Nationwide is going to call my GI doctor here at UW, and discuss my results. From there, they will together come up with a plan of action. While waiting is something that has always been hard for me, I am going to put my trust into their hands and know that the team will work to help me.
This upcoming week will be a big one for me!!! My goal tomorrow is to be able to make it to church, and spend time worshiping God and His glory. I am such a believer in the power of prayer. And it indeed worked! I made it into Nationwide in record time and before I suffered from any further complications. And now, we are learning more and more! I cannot thank everyone enough for the prayers and good vibes. It works. And I am filled with love for everyone that has lifted us up. This Monday also begins my return to the grind of appointments. I have cardiology appointments, an echo cardiogram, labs, and another dressing change of my PICC. A massive thing that will be happening is that I am going back to school! It has been over three weeks, but now I am finally able to return. With all of these big changes coming up, I know that I will need to settle myself into a routine. So tomorrow will be a day of settling in and getting ready for the new adventures.
I also, after much persuasion from my amazing friends, jumped on the bandwagon of instagram. I now have an account that I will update more, and give everyone more snapshots into this journey. It is located @thepeacewithinthefight. I felt that it would me much more easier for many people to get to!
So for now, I am going to love and soak up each second of being home. And I am so excited to be able to see spring come!!! Hello to the flowers and sunshine. HELLO SPRING!
Lots of hugs and joy,
Isabelle