Recovering

Okay time to break the radio silence that has engulfed my blog! *grin*

My keyboard feels foreign beneath my fingertips after all this time away. It's like riding a bike though, you never forget right? Plus I have SO many photos that I have wanted to share but just haven't been able to get here to post them :)

I guess it was probably a few days after my last blog entry on my homemade rhubarb juice back in June when I suddenly became seriously ill. At first I thought I had just caught a really nasty bug but when my one leg turned flaming red and swelled up three times it size and felt like it was on fire I knew something was terribly wrong. I was in and out of the hospital ER for a week getting IV antibiotics while they tried to figure out what had happened but when all the tests came back normal they ended up telling me that they figured I had been bitten by a spider.

Okay I can go with spider bite but my leg didn't go fully back to normal and I just didn't feel like myself. A lot of the time it was all I could do to get through the day without dropping from exhaustion and sitting at the computer was painful for my leg so the summer was spent unplugged which I must say was really nice :) When Hubby was home from work we did a lot of camping and I lounged beside the lake with my feet up while he took care of everything. He's so good to me *grin*.

It probably was mid August before I started feeling more energy and like my old self again and I thought, yay, it's finally over.... I was mistaken.

We were out camping at one of the forestry lakes about an hour from the city at the beginning of this month when I woke up one night shaking and having uncontrollable spasms. I felt like I was going to have a seizure and I could hardly talk. I woke up Hubby and he said we had to go to the emergency room immediately. The kids were sleeping but thankfully one of our friends and his son had came out that day to join us camping so we woke him up at 2:30 am to come over and sleep in our camper so that we could leave the kids behind.

The ride just to get back to the highway seemed impossibly long. I think Hubby thought I wasn't going to make it and we were so far from help. There is absolutely no cell service anywhere around here so he couldn't even call for help :(

A little over an hour later we arrived at the hospital and they told me I had a fever of 103.5 and the mysterious leg ailment was back. The nurses swarmed around me as I shook uncontrollably on the gurney taking blood, hooking up iv's and trying to get my fever and shaking to stop. I don't know when I finally fell asleep but when I woke up my fever had come down a little and they told me I was septic.

An infection (presumably from the first mysterious bout of illness in June) had run rampant throughout my system and was wreaking havoc.... and the scary swollen foot/leg was back. I spent the next couple of days in the hospital and then back home where I was put on permanent couch rest for 2 weeks and that brings us to now.

Yeah, it's been one heck of a summer and one I'm sure I won't forget anytime soon! I'm stuck with what I'm calling my elephant leg and in a couple of weeks they're going to run some more tests to see why the swelling isn't going down. They're concerned that it has now caused some lymph damage and I'm sporting a very stylish anti emboli stocking. Think Mrs. Doubtfire's hosiery LOL. Seriously not a pretty sight!

I apologize if you emailed me this summer and I didn't get back to you. My email inbox is overflowing with more than 12,000 emails and I'm afraid I'm never going to make it through them all. I think I'm going to have to cut my losses and just hit delete and start fresh so that I don't have a mini anxiety attack just looking at the number climb every day *grin*.

Please email me again if you did send me a message or had asked me a question that you would like me to get back to you on. I know that there have been some new comments the last couple of days on my fall felt leaves and I just wanted to say hi to my new followers and hugs to my long time faithful followers that have been waiting patiently to hear from me again :)

I'm going to try and keep up more regularly here again. It probably won't be everyday like it had been but definitely more than once every 3 months and I've got tons of summer photos that I'm going to try and post some of to. Like the rainbow cake I made for L's 8th birthday, how our chick's are doing (we're getting eggs now!) and our Michaelmas celebration that we did today :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Kicking Cancer in the Butt

♥♥ Thank you everyone for all of your prayers ♥♥

My dad had his surgery Tuesday afternoon and he did fabulous! The operating room was running behind schedule so we ended up waiting until just before 3pm before the doctor finally came out to talk with us and get Dad all prepped for surgery. Originally we had been told that they were going to go in laparoscopically to remove the cancerous section of his sigmoid colon but just before they took him the doctor informed us that he would be opening him right up.

Of course this is scary news when you have mentally prepared yourself for little teeny tiny incisions with minimal damage and all of a sudden there's much more involved. In the end it turned out to be a good thing though as the doctor was able to have a really good look at the colon, surrounding tissues and the liver. All of it looked great and the cancerous growth was only 1 centimeter in size!!! Can you believe it?! Praise the Lord ♥♥

I swear sometimes I think my dad has lucky horse shoes up his behind LOL. We were anticipating to find him in recovery with a feed tube up through his nose and the possibility that he would have to have a temporary or permanent colostomy bag and there we found him smiling. I'm tearing up as I type this because I was so scared to see what he was going to look like and there he was actually smiling when we went to sit with him and wait to be moved upstairs the the med surg floor. With the minimal destruction to his colon they were able to reconnect the two sections nice and neatly so there was no need for a bag or feed tube. Again praise be to Him as this is just such fantastic news :)

We finally got moved to the ward he will be staying on by 8pm and then we hugged him goodbye. Yesterday we spent the day with him and he was a little dehydrated from all of the colon flushing that he had done previous to the surgery and from not being able to take much liquid by mouth as they were afraid if he took in to much it might cause vomiting but by evening he was feeling much better. He was sitting in a chair and even took a little walk around the floor so he is truly doing great :)

He will be in the hospital for a few more days to recover a bit more before going home and the results from the section of colon they removed should be available within the week. They will tell us if there is any cancer in the lymph nodes and then define what sort of treatment such as chemo he may need at that time. I am being completely optimistic at this point that it has not spread!!

Thank you again for all of the prayers you are sending up for him. I know they are helping immensely and words cannot express how thankful I am to all of you ♥♥

Big (((HUGS))),
Rosina