An Anniversary of Sorts

Two years ago today

I had my hysterectomy.

The pain and fear that led up to it

isn’t anything I ever want to repeat.

They removed my uterus

and a fibroid the size of  a football.

LONG story.

Two years in the making.

Since I’m still having health problems related to it,

One would think that I’d have regrets

or that I’m angry.

Two surgeries later

with few  positive results

I have no regrets.

None.

I haven’t had any significant depression

or any suicidal episodes

since my hysterectomy.

My entire adult life was plagued by mental illness

and somehow the surgery set me free

I give ALL glory and honor

for that to

GOD.

Lately, I’ve been displaying some signs

of possible mania

so we’ve upped my meds…

but I’ll take mania over depression

any day.

God changed my life for the better

two years ago today

And he’s going to keep changing it.

I probably would’ve let today pass

without a word…

but I got an email from

the site God led me to

that helped me get through the whole ordeal.

Hystersisters.com, reminded

me of the anniversary

and asked if I had some warm fuzzy

story to share.

I would LOVE it if I had such a story to share

of total healing and restoration...

But my physical pain is still rather  chronic

And limiting.

Sure, some days I’m whiny and mad about it,

but it is what is.

That email, however, reminded me

of just how far God has brought me…

so I’m taking some time to write this down,

Because, who knows...

maybe this time next year…

I might have even more to rejoice about….

 

 

God Can, but Will He??

People keep asking me how I’m doing. Makes sense considering that this is my second surgery in a month. The problem is how do I answer them and still be telling the truth? Because I’m up, walking around, smiling and even driving… people want to assume that I’m feeling great. I generally let them assume that. I’d decided I wasn’t going to really answer with the truth unless the people who asked really needed to know the answer. I realized this morning that I’ve done the very thing that I’ve complained about for years!

I put on a mask.

Y’know… the “I’m ok. Everything’s ok” mask that people want you to don so that they don’t have to feel bad.  Only thing is, nobody has been forcing me to do that, I chose to do it myself. I’ve blogged about “the mask” many times in the past.  I had to wear the mask growing up. I had to fake like nothing was wrong. When my mental illness started to leak out like a toxic spill, I had to put on a mask just to get through the day. Zany college girls are cool. Crazy ones are not.

I guess I didn’t really start getting angry about the mask until I became a Christian. There I was — the manically depressed girl who sucked into the happy-happy joy-joy religion. I always felt like I had to keep my mouth shut because I’d been told that Christians weren’t supposed to grumble and complain… that we were supposed to “rejoice in every situation.” Since I had absolutely no idea how to do that and live at the same time, it just seemed easier to bottle everything up, put on the mask, and fake like I was ok. And when I’d see happy-happy joy-joy people actually rejoicing in their trials I’d feel guilty just before I got bitter.

As you can tell, I’ve yet to find the secret recipe for happy-happy joy-joy. The kind that comes out of a bottle doesn’t count. But I have finally realized that God does not really expect me to fake like I’m ok when I’m not. Don’t believe me?? Read Psalms. God never asked me to wear a mask. Sure, there are people who can get their arm chewed off by sharks and move on without missing a beat. I am not one of those people. I’m prone to whining, self-pity, and depression. It’s a daily temptation to give in to those things.

So this morning when I woke up at 3am, it didn’t surprise me that I could feel the mask tugging at my face. Yesterday was a pretty good day, but it ended with me sitting at home feeling self-pity. I’d blogged about the good stuff because I have learned that focusing on the good can chase away whatever imps trying to stifle all that happy-happy joy juice from flowing. I would much rather think about all the ways that God has blessed me and all the ways my life has changed because, if you think about it, what good does focusing on the bad ever really do?? Yet, I’ve  also learned that I can’t put on mauve colored sunglasses and completely ignore the bad. Denial is just as unhealthy as wallowing. If we did ignore all the bad… we could end up saying that after having a light snack with some friends, Jesus went out for a time of meditation in a garden and then spent his last day in town hanging out on a hillside! Bad stuff happens.

Stating the facts is not dwelling on the bad. It’s speaking the truth. It’s also letting people know how they can pray for you. Yesterday and for the last several days I’ve been wondering if the surgery did any good. I’m still in pain. Not the “I just had surgery” pain that required me to take Oxycodone four times a day. I’m having the constant/chronic nagging pain that had completely limited my life before the surgery. I know without doubt that the doctor removed all of the adhesions. I advocated for myself so that he used this stuff called an “adhesion barrier” that can reduce the likelihood of new adhesions forming so that I have a 56% less chance of them forming again. So why does it  feel like they are still there? I used to try to express to my doctor that it felt like my innards were sticking together… now I know that they were. It wasn’t all in my head. Bipolar Girl was not just imagining things. A year and a half of my life since my hysterectomy…which had been preceded by nearly two years of pain… and this surgery was supposed to end it.

The fact that I still feel it has had me questioning whether or not God has total healing for me. I’ve been afraid that every little thing I do or don’t do is going to contribute to the formation of new adhesions even thought I know that that’s not how they are formed. If they’re related to surgery, they generally form within the first 7 days. I was in the hospital for the first six. There is nothing I could have done to create new ones. But I had adhesions before my first surgery. I fall into a small percentage of people who can form adhesions spontaneously.

TMI ALERT: (Too much information)

Before my hysterectomy, my bowels had fused (adhered) to my uterus and the only way they could perform my hysterectomy was to cut out three inches of my intestines. Evidently, I’ve got sticky innards and my body is just wired to stick to itself. The surgeon said that if I continued to have problems that my OB/GYN should consider removing my ovaries. I am so tired of being cut open and having people take pieces out of me. I feel like that guy from the game “Operation.” I am so done having people cut me open.

On top of the chronic pain, my left leg now hurts  as a result of the epidural that they used. Again, not the 10/10 level pain, but it’s pain and discomfort that I didn’t feel before the surgery and I don’t know how to talk about it without seeming like I’m grumbling and complaining… so I generally say nothing. I don’t want people trying to tell me that I should be thankful that I can walk or that I should feel any number of things that I’m not feeling. I am thankful that I can walk. I am thankful that I had the surgery but I’m not thankful for the continued pain, numb leg, or my inability to sleep on my side without hurting myself. Sleeping sitting up sucks.

Yet I  decided this morning at 3am that I believe, by faith, that God could heal me. He can. I do not doubt that. I also know that healing might not be his plan for me. Hence the fact that some people do get their arms chewed off by sharks or have to cut their arms off with pocket knives. Stuff happens and it would be really naive of me to think that I’m exempt from suffering. Years of battling a mental illness tell me that I’m not. I’ve actually been pondering whether I’d trade this physical “illness” for my mental illness… and I wouldn’t. Mental illness can feel like a life sentence. I can and will persevere through this. Which made me think of those three guys in scripture(Hananiah (חֲנַנְיָה), Mishael (מִישָׁאֵל) and Azariah (עֲזַרְיָה) ) just before they were thrown in the fiery furnace:

O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods…   ~Daniel 3:16-20

My 3am revelation? If the God, whom I love and serve, does not choose to heal me, he will give me the grace sufficient enough to live my life fully without all the whining and self-pity. No matter what the next few months hold for me or how this turns out, I will continue to love and serve the Lord to the very best of my ability. I’m blogging this now because I’m tired of forcing myself to wear a mask. People are going to keep asking me how I’m feeling and I’m tired of half-truths. I can speak the truth; trust the Lord; and let people know how to pray for me — so if and when we see the answers, we can praise the God who heals all the more. Now if this is you, in pain…wearing a mask because you don’t want to let people know how you feel… stop.

What good has wearing a mask ever done for you? Take off the mask, trust the Lord, and let people in. That way, even if healing never comes… you’re closer to other people and you’re closer to God. I count that as a win.

Spiritual Adhesions: Anger

Anger was not the first emotion I expected to feel when I woke up from surgery. Actually, if I’m honest, it wasn’t. When I first woke up in the recovery ward I was just so flippin happy to have the surgery over that nothing would have bothered me. It didn’t even  really bother me that I couldn’t feel my legs. I know. I couldn’t feel my legs… I could move my feet, but I couldn’t feel them. The recovery floor nurses were just so nice that the warm fuzzy post-op afterglow continued as I was wheeled to my room. I only vaguely remember being wheeled to my room but that afterglow followed us through the maze-like hallways all the way up the elevator.

And that’s where the glow started to fizzle. My room was already occupied. “Occupy.” What an emotionally charged word.

I was all set to close my eyes and coast back to sleep on residual epidural fumes when jarring noise cut through my subconscious. The woman in the other bed had guests. I don’t even know how many, but they were loud. How rude! That was my first thought. That’s when anger caused the hazy glow to evaporate like a drop of water on a hot griddle. “LORD! How am I going to rest with all that racket going on over there??” It didn’t seem to matter to them that they’d just wheeled me in from surgery and that people who’d recently had their guts cut open needed rest… because they just kept talking and laughing. With each laugh my anger level jumped a few more points on the scale.

They’d brought me to the room around noon. My roommate had guests all the way up ’til 8pm — visiting hours are over at 8pm. I know. I checked. I was counting the minutes…only thing is – her guests didn’t leave! I was livid. The idea of trying to recuperate in such a noisy room was disturbing. Noise disturbs me. I live alone and I wear ear plugs most of the time because noise disturbs me.

That first day after surgery I’d had three guests all of whom kept their volume at a respectable level. That only fueled my anger. Why was I bothering to be quiet and respectful when the person on the other side of the iron curtain wasn’t caring about me?? My inner evil was coming out.

What disappointed me most wasn’t my roommate and her noisy guests. I was disappointed with me and my response to it. I felt certain that God was going to do something amazing in that surgery. He has changed me so much since my hysterectomy that I just knew that he was going to remove those “spiritual adhesions” he’d been talking to me about. I’d worked so hard during the prayer counseling to get to the roots of my rage and anger. Surely God would do something akin to a lobotomy and make me a kinder gentler person. I was supposed to come out of the surgery different.  The numb legs didn’t count. He was supposed to change me. But there I was… the same old angry me. That just made me even more angry.

I sent my friend a text: Roommate and her guests really noisy! Pray for my attitude.

Then I pressed the epidural button and tried to go to sleep. Trying to sleep with all that noise was impossible. I think I sent her two more texts like that before God finally intercepted one. The nurse came in around 9pm and asked her what was her pain level. They ask that every time they come in because it helps them manage your care. On a scale of 1 to 10 what is your pain? 1 being not at all; 10 being unbearable. I clearly heard my roommate say, “9″ and in that instant my attitude changed. I felt a compassion that only God could give. The last of her guests had finally just left (45 minutes after visiting hours were over)… and she was all alone with her pain. My pain (thanks to the epidural) had hovered around a 2 or a 3 all afternoon. I wasn’t really in any pain but if I was I would have wanted people there with me taking away the loneliness if not the pain.

God delivered the attitude adjustment my friend had prayed about. How could I be angry at this person? I didn’t even know her. Yes, I’d been annoyed by her guests and all the noise, but I felt an immediate compassion for her that I hadn’t felt before. The anger was gone. I wasn’t even mad at myself. I just needed to pray for her and I continued to pray for her every hour when the nurse came to check on our vital signs. Before going to bed I felt like God wanted me to introduce myself to her and tell her that I was praying for her… but I didn’t want to. There was an iron curtain dividing us and it just seemed weird. I didn’t want her to think that I was one of those holy-roller- bible-thumper Christians who always trying to evangelize you at every turn. Plus, if I’m honest, all of my anger wasn’t quite  gone yet . Petty woman that I am… I whispered it. I kid you not, I introduced myself to her in a whisper that only I could hear. Not what God had in mind but it was all I could scrounge up. It took the night long intercession session to make my anger evaporate completely.

When I woke up just after 6am, however, I was angered again! Visiting hours started at 6am and she already had a guest!  Was that how my recovery was going to go?? Noisy guests all day long? I was contemplating asking for a room change when an older lady poked her head around the curtain. Great. Now they’re going to start bothering me.

“What church do you go to?”

That was her first question to me! How guilty did I feel??  Turns out she had seen my bible on my tray table and once she knew what church I attended it turned out she was friends with my Friday Night Prayer Partner! She starts going on and on about how God put me there for her niece and would I pray for her. I was able to tell her that I’d spent most of the night praying for her… leaving out that God had used my anger to prompt me to pray.

But I think that’s when it hit me. No matter how much I might want it, God wasn’t going to do a lobotomy and change my personality. When they took out my girlie parts last year he was gracious enough to let the Bipolar go with it… but I think that was a one shot deal. If he removed body parts every time I asked him to deal with a personality flaw, people would end up calling me “Stumpy.” God’s going to help me overcome the fleshy parts of me. I may have anger issues til the day that I die, but anger does not have to control me.

I thought about the anger class I’d attended and all the stuff I’d learned in it. The number one point being that anger is a healthy signal that your boundaries have been transgressed and that you need to communicate. Anger, in and of itself, is not bad. If there is a legitimate trigger (and there was in this case) I have to step back and ask is my response legitimate (which, in this case, I thought it was)… but instead of communicating with her I communicated with a friend (the text) and then I communicated with God.

The conversation with the aunt led to the wall being removed. She pulled back the curtain and introduced me to her niece. I told her that I’d been praying for her all night and that I would pray for her if she wanted. I told her that I wasn’t one of those people who would try to cram Christianity down her throat and that I didn’t want her to think I was one of those creepy Christians. If she wanted prayer or anything else all she had to do was ask. Ironically, she wanted to know who had braided my hair. Since it took me all of the four day Thanksgiving holiday to braid it, I was rather proud of how it had turned out. Her son in bi-racial and she has no idea how to do his hair. I offered to do his hair for her since I’d be off work for a month and a half and I then I gave her my phone number. Yeah. Me. I gave her my number. If that wasn’t God I don’t know what was. Guess God wanted her to have my number so I didn’t delay or whisper my digits to her.

Good thing because they discharged her that day even though she was still in a lot of pain. I felt a compassion for her that I couldn’t have had the day before. Just before she left I prayed with her and I really meant it. Only God could have changed my heart so completely. Only God could have cut through that particular spiritual adhesion with the precision of a surgeon. Anger goes way back with me. All the way back to being ignored and teased in my noisy home growing up. I hated growing up in such a noisy family. Seven sisters and two brothers and all of them were rowdy and noisy. I spent so much of my childhood angry because of my  noisy siblings. The roots of my anger go deep. That God chose to handle it this way was WAY cooler than if I’d come out of surgery wearing rose colored sunglasses. Anger used to control me. God helped me see that I do have control over it. So what if anger is my natural first response to negative triggers. It’s the last response that really counts. My roommate will never know that I wanted to take a bedpan and club her like a seal on the beach because I communicated with God and trusted him. I needed to recognize my anger for what it was, give it to Jesus, and then be willing to communicate with her if necessary. This also makes for a way cooler story than “My roommate made me mad so I hit her with a bed pan!”

My heart is in there and it’s getting softer… God’s just got to remove more of the roots of my anger… and I need to be patient (a patient??) while he does it.

She Went on ANOTHER Adventure… and All We Get Is This Blog!

I am home from the hospital.
My house is insanely quiet.
I’ve got staples in my abdomen.
I’m incredibly tired.
My belly hurts.
No oxycodone ’til 9
I am tired.

That’s all.

Bipolar Girl Unplugged (AGAIN)

Ok… it’s finally here! Today is the day that I’ve been waiting for after a year and a half of pain, suffering, and stress! I’m having abdominal surgery today to remove the adhesions and I’m praying that God doesn’t just yank out the physical ones. There’s still a lot of spiritual and emotional scar tissue in me. I know it and I see it. I’m asking God to treat it like the cancer it is and remove it. Ok. I’ being dramatic. Adhesions are not  cancerous, but I want them gone. The surgery should remove them and sections of my intestines. And not that I like having surgery, but it is time to move forward and trust.

This particular trust walk comes at a price, however — I won’t have computer access while I’m in the hospital! And again, I say, “OH! The HORROR!” No blogging for at least a week?? Cringe. Guess God wants me talking to him first and then people in real time. While I’m gone… if you normally read my blog… would you please check out some of my older stuff? Makes me feel good to know that people are reading my work. I don’t want my blog to turn into a ghost town.

A thought crossed my mind yesterday: I am totally ready for this surgery. I started preparing two months ago and with the help of friends and loved ones I was able to do what God laid out for me to do. For years now I’ve been thinking about heaven and wondering am I ready. Y’know… like will I be one of those people who get left behind? Or, like it says in the bible, one of those believers whose love either grows cold or they get deceived in the end times. Depression can do that to you. I doubted God and even questioned whether or not I even wanted to be in heaven at times. Now, I do not have that fear. I am ready, my salvation is certain and now I’m starting to think beyond my own eternity. When I get out of the hospital I want to pursue this line of thought in a post, but I have to leave for the hospital in about an hour. I don’t have time. I’ll post again once God gets me to the other side of this Red Sea. Until then… be blessed and…

Ponder this: If the bible is really true and everything in it is going to happen as it is written… are you ready?

Weak One/Week Won

 

*WARNING: RANTING IN PROGRESS

This first week back to work after my surgery has not been bad. Physically taxing? Yes. Bad? No. I think I posted that the first day was a bit wearing on the nerves. Finding out that a coworker had died while I was gone was, and still is, hard to cope with. There has been a ton of paper work that I’ve needed to sift through from the substitute. She didn’t quite understand/follow my directions, so there is a ton of paper that she left that she didn’t need to. I have to sift through it to make sure some of it isn’t important but I haven’t had time. There’s also been a ton of papers to fill out for the HR department in preparation for my next surgery. I’ve had to sit in three long meetings at the end of long days when I would have preferred to be catching up on what I missed while I was out. And yesterday from the last four class periods to the end of the day, everything just seemed to be mashing my buttons. Since the doctor didn’t actually remove anything during my last surgery, I have all the original pains plus new ones from the surgery. The pain meds still aren’t helping very much, so I’ve ended my days exhausted and sore. I’ve also ended the past two days  angry and annoyed. Only to get home and see the jet skis parked in my yard and my anger would clock in at around 75. And to top it all off, today I have to sub for another absent teacher which chucks all my plans for my own class out the window. It also adds additional stairs that I have to climb and more walking that I have to do both of which equal more physical pain for me.

If I focused on all of that stuff this week actually looks worse than I thought when I started this post. In fact, as the week ends I feel like I am the weak one because I’m not ending my first week back standing on a mountain top singing “Kumbya” with Jesus. I cannot wait until the weekend and I’m counting the days until next Wed. because it kicks off our four day weekend. Grumbling much???

It’s a good thing I’m not just focusing on all of that stuff. Despite, or maybe because of, all of those things I’ve made it a point to spend time thanking God for everything he’s allowing in my life. The surgery created new pain? PRAISE GOD! They did the surgery and I now know what’s causing the pain. All the stupid paper sitting on my desk? PRAISE GOD that I have a desk and job. I remember well the stress of my unemployed days. All the confusing and time consuming HR papers getting me down? PRAISE GOD there’s a way to get paid while I’m temporarily disabled and ways to safe guard my job while I’m gone. The papers will be mailed out today and hopefully I’ve done them all correctly. All the things that have been making me angry? I haven’t been as angry as I would have been say… a month ago plus my stress and anger are not debilitating me. I’m still functioning at an extremely high level. I don’t just come home and blog or veg out watching tv eps on my laptop. I have been doing some really meaningful things in my evening hours. I know that the current stressors will pass.

Looking exclusively at all the things that are stressful or pushing my buttons is SO counter productive. Bipolar Girl might not have been able to wrap her mind around that concept… but I can. If I let it, all of this stuff could really depress and overwhelm me, but I’m tired of walking down that street. There are healthier and better ways of coping with stress and I’m practicing many of those ways. I’m also leaning pretty heavily on Jesus. In doing so I don’t lose sight of all the many ways God has blessed me or enabled me to bless others. So as my week ends… I shouldn’t focus on how I’ve been the weak one. I should focus on what God has done for me through it all. I should also focus on the fact that I’ll spend my Friday night at my church serving others in Jesus name… and when I look at it that way… I can definitely count it all a week won!

A House Divided: Knowing When to Leave part II

Ever since I wrote that post about the division in my church I’ve been wrestling about what to say in my letter to the elders. I’ve been praying. A lot. I’ve read more scripture in the last week than I’ve read in the last month. And not once did I think I was supposed to drop this. That’s how scars are formed. Wounds happen and instead of addressing them properly in the light of God’s word, we all too often slap on the dirty band-aid of denial and then we wonder why the whole thing turns into a festering flesh wound that is oozing all over the place.

Today I wrote a draft — five pages long. I really did try to be brief. I even hoped to edit it down. I wrote it and then I left it while I drove to my post-op appointment. I was nervous about my post-op. The bandage has still not fallen off my navel and I’m too squeamish to pull it off. Surprisingly, the doctor didn’t pull it off either. He looked at it; addressed my questions and concerns, and then sent me on my merry little way. This surgery thing has been very eye opening in more than the expected ways.

The way I see it, the meeting we had at church just before my surgery was very similar to my surgery itself. The doctor thought he’d be able to just go in through my belly button and cut out the scar tissue. It was an exploratory surgery, but he’d hoped to be able to cure what was ailin’ me. When he got in there he found that the scar tissue was worse than he’d expected and rather than cause more damage he closed me up and made arrangements for another, more skilled surgeon to take over. That meeting showed where some of the scar tissue was located in the hearts of the people who attend my church, but because of the exploratory nature of the meeting… none of the scar tissue could be removed. Some people think our church is in trouble. Me? I don’t see it that way. I’m excited because I KNOW that God heals. There is nothing wrong with my church that God cannot heal if we all humble out.

My abdominal surgery is on December 9th. A different surgeon is going to make bigger incisions in me and take out the scar tissue and anything else that needs to go… and I’m ok with that. It needs to be done if I am to be healthy. And that’s why I needed to write those five pages. It’s only when we speak the truth in love that love has the power to cover a multitude of sins. One thing that I learned growing up in a dysfunctional family is that ignoring the problems don’t make them go away and it is often the people who are the most vocal that have the biggest scars.

If I say nothing then I’m perpetuating the problem. The elephant in the middle of the room only sits and spins as people pretend not to see it. I sent my epic email to a friend to read first. I never send any of my “say what you need to say” letters without running them past one other person, but I am convinced that what I said did need to be said… so once she’s prayed about it for me, I am going to send it to the elders and our ex-pastor. I believe that with my own surgery and with the surgery that my church is undergoing the Divine Physician is at work and all is going to be well. It doesn’t feel good now and the pain killers aren’t doing jack, but pretty soon, the scar tissue in me and in my church will be a thing of the past. The pink elephant will have to go find another day job and clear conscience communication will be the norm rather than the emergency last resort.

Related articles

• A House Divided: Knowing When to Leave pt. I (theadventuresofbipolargirl.wordpress.com)
• Spiritual Adhesions (theadventuresofbipolargirl.wordpress.com)