Part 34: Tattling Is For Kids

Remember last year when I saw that doctor that told me that they could remove all of my painful cramping issues with surgery? I was still waiting for a surgery date, and it had been almost a year. One morning, I woke up to a voicemail from the Abbotsford hospital telling me that they had space for me to get my surgery, in two days. 

I had been waiting for this moment. All of the pain and unexplained issues, all of the waiting and wondering and it was happening. I would have to take time away from school and work. It was a small procedure, but surgery nonetheless. 

It was a day surgery, and Covid had calmed down quite a bit so my mom was able to come in with me. I was starting to get really nervous about having surgery again. The difference between this one and my appendectomy was that I would be home by the end of the day and it wasn't an emergency. The vibes were totally different. I wasn't in active pain and we weren't at risk of anything happening before I could get in. But I still had to get an IV, and if you know me, that has never been my thing. 

When the nurse came by to talk over everything and to give me the IV, I cried so hard my mom told me she was worried I was going to pass out. They had tried to give me an Ativan before they placed it, but it either hadn't kicked in yet or didn't have too much of an effect on me. I also explained to her that before my last surgery, I didn’t like when they put the oxygen mask over my face to put me out because it made me panic (do you see a pattern here?). She said a simple solution would be to just hover the mask over my face, and it should put me to sleep without any problem. That would have been a good plan, but she forgot to tell the anesthesiologist. So the last thing I remember before falling asleep is fighting the mask, tilting my head back, and saying, “NO! This wasn’t supposed to happen!” 

It was a quick procedure and the rest of the day is a blur. Funny enough, I don't remember one thing for the rest of that day or for the few days after. What I do remember, was finding the after-visit summary that they gave my mom. In big black letters, it said: "EXPLORATORY SURGERY UNSUCCESSFUL" 

Unsuccessful? What exactly was unsuccessful about it? 

When they had gone in to diagnose me with something, and solve my problem, they didn't find anything. The doctor had presented this surgery to me as "the thing that will stop my pain." She had led me to believe that they had found a problem, and were going to fix it. But they didn't, and I was still in pain with no solution. So I called my doctor up, told him how frustrated and upset I was about it and he basically said that he doesn't know what to do. Great. 

It was then that I learned about the Nexplanon. Think of an IUD, but instead of being placed in the uterus, it sits just under the skin of your arm. It creeps everyone out, but I did my research and asked my doctor about it. "I guess you could do that" were his words of wisdom for me. So I did. 


-

One morning, I woke up to the sound of crying and screaming upstairs. It was one of my sisters fighting with my parents. It's not my story to tell, but it was not a great time for my family. When Brody woke up and I started to text him about it, he responded right away which was unusual for him. It typically took a few days for him to respond. He told me that he had some good news and bad news for me. My day was already awful and I had been awake for two hours, so I doubt it could get worse. 

Brody told me that his mission president had called him in for a meeting that morning. We hadn’t really been doing anything wrong, but missionaries weren’t supposed to message their girlfriends, at least not openly, so I thought he might just get a slap on the wrist. Even that would have devastated me, but it turned out to be something else. A church member from Abbotsford had contacted Brody's mission president in Guyana to report that he had spoken to his girlfriend on the phone on his day off. There was no reason to do that, other than to hurt us. He didn't want what was best for us, he wasn't doing it to help Brody focus. He didn't even know Brody. This guy has a history of issues with my family, and I think he just wanted to hurt me. 

That was the bad news. Brody was pulled into a meeting with his mission president and confronted about talking to me on the phone. When asked if it was true, he was honest and admitted it. His mission president, in his usual loving and caring way, told him it was okay. He said there were worse things missionaries could be doing and encouraged him to keep it appropriate and mention the gospel once in a while. It was the best possible outcome, and I hope the guy who tattled on us knows that the mission president just thought it was weird. That's the good news. I was getting excited about the fact that this was actually working out and it seemed like I had found my person. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part 1: He Thinks You're Dumb and Stupid

Image
  From a very early age, I had this feeling that I was dumb. This probably goes further back than I actually remember but my first real memory of it was when I switched from French immersion (grade 3) to English (grade 4). I knew I couldn't keep up in French immersion and even though my older sister Manda loved it and excelled in it, we had to switch. I think there were a few reasons why we did, but the one that stands out the most in my mind is that it was because I just couldn't keep up.  So when I started at a new school in grade 4, it was a fresh start. I could dazzle everyone with my French skills (or lack of), make new friends, and probably make all of the boys fall in love with me. But before that, my teacher had to embarass me a few times.  My first recollection of being embarrassed in class, was when I was trying to be a good friend to my new friend, Emma. Emma had lost her voice and told me that she wasn't going to talk at all, all day. I took great pride in thi...
Read more

A Wholesome Day in Diagnostic Imaging

Image
  Today I had to go into the hospital for an MRI. From now on October will be the retesting month for any residual metastatic disease and to check on my kidney that is dying (oh yeah, my kidney is dying by the way). So far all the blood work has come back beautifully clean and the imaging is the next step to hopefully get some good news.  So if you've had an MRI, you know that you can't eat or drink anything before. Which would be fine if I didn't get really bad headaches when I don't drink a lot of water in the morning. So I show up to the scan after fasting overnight and my head is really pounding. I go to the desk and asked the nurse if I can just have a small sip of water to get a headache pill down. She said that it would be okay but I had to go beyond the locked doors to get to a fountain and she would escort me. Cool.  So we go past the locked doors and we enter into CT. There are people sleeping, people in hospital gowns, IV's being inserted, typical hospita...
Read more

Part 24: My Journey With Counselling

 I went to counselling in the spring of 2020 after the intervention with my family. My dad is a therapist and my whole family has always been extremely mental health positive, pro counselling and aware of our feelings. Some people (who don't understand how mental health works) might not get why the daughter of a therapist would be in counselling, because "can't you just talk to your dad about all of your problems?" My dad is wonderful in endless ways, but no. He wasn't my therapist and it's not a secret that we all need someone to talk to who has no biases and can keep things confidential.  I initially decided to target my break up with Gaston which triggered my fears of abandonment that I didn't even know I had. We had to meet over Zoom because of the height of Covid, but what was really going to help me was EMDR. I did EMDR for the first time when I could finally meet with my therapist in person. I am no expert on EMDR, but the simple version is that  EM...
Read more