Down the path to surgery

Our lovely autumn weekend is over. Tonight for dinner we ate up the rest of the homemade chili and cornbread. There was not enough chili for each of us to have a full bowl, so I baked potatoes and put the chili on top. We of course added cheese & sour cream, yum! For dessert we ate the other half of the pumpkin pie. The next two days I am going to be eating lightly in preparation for the bowel cleanse on Wednesday. My stomach has started filling up with nervous knots, so I am sure I won't feel like eating much these next two days anyway.

Wednesday at 8AM I begin the cleanse by downing my first dose of Fleet's (I affectionately call it Draino). Then at 12 noon I have a 2nd dose of Draino to take and then I am done with the "gag me with a spoon" part of the cleanse. While I am doing the cleanse I am going to be homeschooling. It will be okay because I have the colostomy and I won't need to run to the bathroom all the time. Really, I have not minded the colostomy much at all. Yes, it does get in the way at times, for instance sliding into a booth at the restaurant one time I managed to rip my appliance open and we had to go home. Sometimes the stoma bumps up against the kitchen counter, or I have to make sure when I carry the laundry basket I don't bump it. It took awhile to get the hang of managing it. At first I was a bit timid. The stoma is ugly, but it has been neat to have the opportunity to watch it work. I see God's handiwork. I am now thinking this sounds very silly, but that is how I think of it.

The boys said they want to double up on their work this week so they won't have anything to do on Thursday (surgery day). I hope they can manage it, but if not, they will be doing school work at the hospital. All of us have been a bundle of nerves in anticipation of the coming surgery which is only 3 days away now. Mark said his boss gave him a light work load because he can see that Mark is stressed about the surgery. When I think about it I get very emotional and start to cry. Everyday I keep my hands and mind busy. It is very hard to submit myself to surgery again after what happened last year. The error and the doctors are forgiven, but all the emotions, scars and trauma are still with me as well as my family. Actually, after the surgery that went wrong, I had two surgeries to fix me and those went well. So I am sure that with everyone praying this surgery will be a success also. I am hopeful that the hardest part of this surgery will be the emotions we are all re-living. Everything will come out that we worried ourselves for nothing and everyone will be telling us, "See, we told you it would be alright."

I am sorry if I am going on too much about this, it is just a big part of our lives right now. I hope that my writing about it will help others to have their faith strengthened. This is definitely a trial all of us are having to exercise our faith. The doctor did warn that he might have to give me an ileostomy, but he is pretty sure he won't have to do that, he just has to warn me in case something does go wrong. I have heard that some people are sorry they got reconnected, but I am praying that will not be my case. I pray that once everything gets back to normal I will be glad I did it.