Pre Surgery

I want to start laying out something that's been on my heart for several months, something I feel called to do.

The best way to explain is to lay out the events that led to the revelation.

That month between August 4 and September 3 was probably the sickest I have ever been in my life.

I was literally bleeding to death slowly and didn't know it.

My hemoglobin dropped from 10.1 to 6.9 in that time. My heart worked extra hard to get oxygen into my body. My body temp slowly dropped to dangerously low points.

I was tired all the time. I would sleep 8-10 hours every night and then take a 1-2 hour nap in the morning and a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon. When I was awake, I could barely keep my eyes open.

I couldn't walk across the house without getting winded. Doing anything, cleaning, laundry, taking a shower left me struggling to breathe and so tired I had to rest.

I froze. I've always been hot. I barely wore coats in winter. But during the hottest part of summer, I was in sweats and long sleeves. At night I was so cold, I'd snuggle up to my husband and add three blankets to my side of the bed. If I had to get up, I would shake and shiver for 30 minutes before getting warm.

I didn't leave the house. I didn't go to church, no bible study. I didn't even go to the store much and rarely alone. I was dizzy a lot and rarely drove.

The physical part was tough and probably a good sign that I was sick.

It was the mental part that really shook me.

Being down that long took a toll on me. I felt like I was going to die. I was weak in all ways with no answers or belief it would improve. I stood in our garden with my husband and told him something serious was wrong. I begged him to not let me die here.

Toward the end of that month, I started to hallucinate. It started with seeing animals, like cats, that weren't really there.

By the last week before surgery, they had gotten far more detailed. They felt like dreams, but my husband would often speak to me and I'd know I wasn't sleeping.

A lot of them involved this vision of Jesus that was always fixing or caring for something.

The day of surgery, we left for the hospital just after 5 am. All the way to the hospital, I watched two giant men walking in front of us with a child swinging between them. The men were dressed in brown and the child had a blue sweater on and a knit hat.

I told my husband about it afterward. He was sweet, but did say there was nothing there.

After being so sick, my perspective on many things has changed. The doctor said that the surgery saved my life and I believe that.

Before I got so sick, there were several changes in my life that I had felt led to to make. Change is hard and some of them would be hard. I put them as far out of my mind as I could because I just didn't want to make the sacrifices and hard choices. However, this experiences has brought them back  front and center in my life. I'd no longer have an excuse. I'd no longer be able to ignore these things that were so heavy on my heart.

So that's where I'm at today. Not ignoring what I already knew.