A surprise visit from Aubie is the perfect medicine

What do you do when one of the things you've loved since you were a child shows up at your doorstep with a bouquet of flowers to wish you well as you're recovering from brain surgery? Well if you're me then you turn a bright shade of red and are speechless - which is uncommon for me.

This is what happened on Feb. 17 when my dad opens the door and Auburn's mascot, Aubie, is standing there. I felt like I was about 7 years old.

Part of that was because I was about that age when I met Aubie for the first time.  I come from a big Auburn family - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents - all have ties to the city of Auburn and Auburn University. As a kid, I remember going to A-Day with my dad and brothers, and we also got a chance to meet the team and get their autographs. While my brothers were excited to meet the quarterback or wide receiver, the highlight of my day was getting a photo with Aubie. As I've grown up and attended Auburn for school, I've seen and encountered Aubie several more times. I've even interviewed friends of Aubie while working at the Plainsman, the university's magazine. But all of that didn't make my encounter with Aubie at my house any less exciting or less surprising.

The surprise was set up by my aunt and uncle, Skip and Susan. They had thought about having Aubie visit me while I was in the hospital, but decided against that since you never knew how I would feel each day after the surgery.  So the story my parents used to foul me was that Skip and Susan were coming to spend Friday night with us because they wanted to see how I was doing after the surgery. I was excited to see them as we always have fun when they're in town. The only red flag that should have clued me in that something was up was that my dad suggested I wear an Auburn t-shirt since "Skip and Susan were coming to town." He specifically asked me if my t-shirt with the old Aubie logo was at their house - it wasn't, but he was pleased with my national champions t-shirt. (Dad never provides suggestions as to what I should wear). But wearing Auburn stuff around Skip and Susan makes sense. They're our tailgating buds, and as I said earlier, we're a Auburn family.

Skip and Susan arrived for lunch, and my mom, dad, sister-in-law Jessica and my lil nephew Tripp all had lunch together. Tripp was decked out in Auburn gear too, wearing a hat that Skip and Susan had bought him for Christmas. Shortly after lunch, it seemed that everyone's phone was ringing, but I still had no clue that the entire gang was conspiring behind my back. Then dad said he heard the doorbell ring and asked me to come to the hall and close my eyes. Not being one that is keen on surprises, I covered my eyes.

When I was allowed to open them - there was Aubie standing at my front door. As you can tell from the pictures, I turned bright red with excitement.

But I have to be honest. Not only was I beyond excited to see Aubie pay me a personal visit. I was overcome with love and thanks for my family who had worked to organize this great surprise. These past six-plus months have been filled with a lot of set backs, tears, pain and confusion - but what has been a constant has been the love and support I've received from my family and friends. I can't thank them enough for all that they have done for me - and the visit by Aubie was icing on the cake.

Aubie hung out at with us for about an hour before he had to run back to Auburn. It was so much fun hanging out with him. For a Tiger that doesn't speak a word, he has great gestures and movements that made it easy to carry on a great "conversation" with him.

I think the only one who wasn't excited to see Aubie was my lil puppy, Isabelle. While she is a huge people puppy, I think she was a little frightened by a large tiger in the house. The only pictures we got with her and Aubie, someone is holding her steady while she's trying to run away.

Aubie was very impressed with our "Auburn" room in the basement. He spent time exploring all the Auburn items we had, and even tried to "steal" the glittery Auburn hat my grandmother bought me when I was little. It did look good on him though.

And Aubie was very comfortable taking pictures with Tripp, my 6 month old nephew. Tripp is half Auburn tiger (my brother) and half LSU Tiger (my sister-in-law). Hopefully hanging out with Aubie gave him a head start in leaning more to his War Eagle side.

I can't begin to say thank you enough to Skip and Susan for organizing this. This was a great surprise and the perfect medicine as I'm on my road to recovery. I will always remember this day as a dream come true!

War Eagle,
Ashley

Finally I'm off the roller coaster and regaining my life

On Valentine's Day 2011, I woke up about 4:30 in the morning with horrible pain in my hip. After having had one before, I knew without a doubt it was a kidney stone. I called my mom and she rushed me to the hospital. I was right and the kidney stone ended up having to be blasted to pits as it wouldn't pass naturally. I thought when that was all over, that it would be the worst health trouble I would have to deal with.  Boy was I wrong.

The good news is I now feel that I'm getting off this roller coaster of hell and regaining my life - one little bit at a time.

I've been home from the hospital for a week - even getting released from the hospital was a trial. The surgery to put my skull piece back where it belongs was on Wednesday, Feb. 8 And I love my surgeon - he did a great job with the scare on my head that you can barely see the stitches or scare. The surgery was fine - it was the recovery that almost killed me. For three days after surgery I was fighting horrible pain in my head. I knew it was a migraine, but many people at the hospital just thought I was not dealing well with the pain from the surgery. I didn't know how bad the first surgery hurt because I was kept in a deep sleep for a couple days afterwards. So this time, for three days I lied in my room with the lights off and I would tell everyone to shut up. The smallest noise felt like my head was going to explode.

There is a funny/amazing story during this time. One night my mom went to watch my nephew so my older brother could come see me. While Franklin and my dad were sitting in my room - not talking at all - I kept screaming about how there were too many people in my room, they were too loud and they needed to shut up. My dad kept telling me that there were people in my room other than him and my brother. What we found out later was that my mom was at my brother's house praying that God would send his angels to surround me. So while my dad thought I was dreaming, mom is convinced the people I saw were angels. Only I told them to be quiet cause they were too loud. My parents still give me a hard time about that.

After suffering with a migraine for 3 days, they finally diagnose me with a migraine and give me new meds to addresss the migraine. That was such a huge relief to go from pain from the surgery and a massive migraine, to just slight pain from the surgery.

But our adventure out of the hospital wasn't over yet. Over the weekend, the nurses came in to give my parents masks to wear. Apparently my white blood count was so low that if I got sick, I really didn't have anything to fight it. So I was stuck in my small little hospital room while everyone who came in had to wear a very uncomfortable hospital mask.

We finally got to Monday and all of my six doctors were clearing me to go home that day. I was excited because I was bound and determined that I was not going to spend another Valentine's Day in the hospital. But one of my doctors didn't want me to leave until I got another 2 pints of blood transfused (this would be the grand total of 7 pints of blood transfused during this hospital visit). Apparently my blood level was like at 7.4 (anything below 7 is not good, 12 is normal) and he was worried about me leaving without a bigger supply of blood in case I had another Crohn's flare up. I was fine with that, until it took all day to get the process even started. They started the first pint of blood at 5 p.m. It takes 2 hours for each pint and then I had to wait an additional 2 hours afterward for them to draw labs after the transfusions.

It was 11:46 when I got in my mom's care to drive home and 11:55 when I walked in the door of my parent's house to go to sleep. It was close, but I met my goal of not spending Valentine's Day in the hospital.

Now I'm home trying to recover. I go everyday to the infusion center at Kennestone to get IV antibiotics to make sure the staph infection doesn't appear  again. They give these through my pic line in my right arm. Wednesday is the last day I'm suppose to go, so hopefully they will remove the pic line then too. And I have stitches in my head and staples on my stomach where they stored my skull for the last six weeks. Those will be removed on Monday and hopefully I can start transitioning back to work after that. One more step in regaining my life!!!

It's been a long, painful, emotional, scary journey these last few months, but I know without a doubt I've been loved by so many family and friends. And I've been covered in prayer by people around the world.

This past Sunday, when they called for testimonies, my parents and I walked up. As I do a lot of public speaking for work, I normally fine with speaking to large crowds. But as I walked up to the stage, I heard whispers of excitement and claps of praise from the congregation. And after my dad spoke, the entire congregations stood up. I was overwhelmed and had a hard time just saying thank you to the hundreds of people in the church, many I don't know, who have been praying for me these last six months.

As my mom has said, my body might have failed me, but God never did!

And the horrible roller coaster ride continues...

Hey Friends and family,

Some of you already know this and others have heard rumors. So I'm here to set the rumors straight.

Yes I am back in the hospital. It once was known as Kennestone hospital but at this point I'm thinking it should be called Hungerford Hospital. It all started on Monday morning when I fainted in the bathroom and hit my head really bad. This was after I spent the entire weekend suffering from dizziness and horrible headaches. I spent the weekend in the darkest part of my parent's basement.

My face looks horrible (I look like I lost a fight), but the good news was I didn't hit my head where there isn't a piece of skull. But while I was in the ER on Monday I started bleeding due to a major flare up with my Crohn's disease (my big trigger is stress and the week before with the staph infection is likely the trigger). So yes I did hit my head and I did start bleeding a lot in the ER but they weren't all in the same. I've heard that there was some talk that I was bleeding from my brain, but that didn't happen.

I was given 5 pints in blood transfusions on Monday (you have 8 pints in your body) and moved to the ICU.

I am now in the step down area feeling a lot better. But it sounds like I'll be here for a little while longer. I know have about 6 different doctors and their latest idea is to hold me at the hospital through the weekend and look at putting my skull back together early next week. This way they can monitor me for any more Crohn's flare ups (which was made worse due to the blood thinner that I am on). And continue to give me meds for the staph infection. Otherwise it sounded like I would go home for about a week only to return again.

Now with everything that has gone on so far, I won't totally believe it's true until it really happens. Basically I won't believe they're going to do the surgery until I'm on the table and they're telling me to count backwards from 10. But I really hope it happens. This surgery has been pushed up, pushed back more times than I care to remember.

Emotionally, I think I'm just trying to deal with everything. I better today than I was on Monday. But this has been a horrible roller coaster that I can't get off of.

And I'm bored beyond belief in the hospital. All I can say is there is no good day-time TV. I'm open to visitors, but on a limited bases due to being in the step down unit from the ICU. Just call, text or e-mail me before you come - PLEASE!!!!

So hopefully this will put the rumors to rest. 

BUT THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR PRAYERS, ENCOURAGEMENT AND LOVE - PLEASE KEEP IT COMING. I NEED IT!!!!

-Ashley