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!