On The Road to Recovery:

As I sit here in bed and type this, surrounded by the laughs, giggles, and of course screams of my 2 beautiful children, the love & help of my mother, and of course the love from my husband, I couldn't be more grateful to be HOME! 

Thank you to everyone again for the love, support, and prayers as I underwent a very long surgery and an incredibly bumpy road while in the hospital. It truly meant the world to us to know we had so many family and friends behind us every step of the way during this battle. 

So thank you again, from the bottom of my heart! 

Surgery went very well and my surgeon feels extremely confident that he removed every single thing he needed and all is clear! I will go back in at the end of the month for a check-up and pathologies to confirm, but for now, I am clear and healthy and couldn't be happier! 

Now on to my hospital stay and what lies ahead...

Spending 8 days and 7 nights in the hospital was not ideal nor fun for any of us. 

Surgery was around 4 1/2 hours long and 90% of my Colon (around 4 1/2 feet) was removed. Fortunately they were able to do the procedure Laparoscopic, and unfortunately due to myself never responding well to Anesthesia I spent a good 5-6 hours in recovery not waking up. I know just how worried and scared Steven must have been watching families get to go back and see their loved ones (who by the way went in long after I did) as he continued to sit and wait. The nurses finally let Steven back in hopes he could actually help to get me to respond and thankfully it worked. 

After a very long day and night, we headed up to our room (which by the way was not a private room, no private rooms in the hospital). The amount of pain I was in is indescribable. I don't remember anything from that first day. Steven said I slept a lot and I vaguely remember having a few visitors (we truly have some amazing friends here!). We were then kicked out of our room due to an old bitchy not very nice lady who felt "uncomfortable" because there was a man in the room (my husband who was by his wife's side taking care of her... Sorry rude lady). Any who, they moved us to a different room where we greeted another roommate (and where we would greet 3 more roommates after that). 

The healing and recovery process has been hard. Not only was I in excruciating pain with 6 incisions in my stomach but I had just lost a large, major organ and didn't realize that would also mean my body would forget how to go to the bathroom on my own (I know it might be TMI but it's true). I had zero control of my bladder and bowel movements and was put in an adult diaper (which later my almost 3 year old kind of sort of made fun of me because of it...). 

I was on a clear liquid diet for a couple of days and then moved to a full liquid diet on Monday (pudding and ice cream). I was on the full liquids that whole day when the absolute worst thing could have happened... My Small Intestine shutdown and stopped working. I started to feel incredibly nauseous and told Steven how much my stomach hurt. When I lifted up my gown to show him, my tummy looked as if I was 6 months pregnant (it was THAT swollen). I then started throwing up uncontrollably. I will be forever grateful for my nurse that night as she rushed the Doctors and X-Ray Tech to my bedside. They lifted me onto the board and started taking X-Ray's of my stomach. In the middle of the night on Monday, while I was passed out due to pain meds, the Doctor came in to tell Steven they found an Ileus (my small intestine shutdown and I had a bowel obstruction). I was told I could not eat or drink anything that whole next day and I was to be monitored 24/7 to see if they needed to put an engi tube down my nose and throat to pump everything out. Thankfully being young, my organs responded on their own and slowly started working again. The scariest part of it all was my husband being told his wife was "knocking on deaths doorstep"... With one organ shutting down others could have followed suite very quickly...

Wednesday came, and after a full day on Tuesday of no eating, drinking, and feeling awful I was feeling down. I was in so much pain, I missed my babies, and I just wanted to be back to normal. Steven decided to drive all the way home (an hour each way) to get my mom and kids to bring them to me. I can't tell you how happy this made me! I cried big ugly alligator tears when they all walked through the door. My heart was truly happy!

Things slowly started looking up as the day passed and I slowly started feeling a little better. I had better control of my bladder and bowel movements and I was starting to hold down clear liquids and even full liquids at dinner time! Thursday was another really good day and I was moved to a regular gluten free diet by lunch (let me add that my meals consisted of maybe 3-5 bites of food, that's about all I can handle). With all the improvements I was making they said if all continued to go well we could go home Friday afternoon!
Words I was longing to hear!   

Friday came (day 8) and they said I could go home!!!!

I still have a long way to go but I am home and healing!
The road to recovery has started!
Thank you all again for all of the prayers!