I hope everyone was able to enjoy Mother’s Day weekend. It made me so happy to see my Nana spending time with more family since she is vaccinated. Hopefully the light at the end of this long tunnel is getting closer.
It’s been hard for me to pick up a book let alone write a blog post during the past couple of months. I was back in the hospital recently and just haven’t been feeling myself. I started going into Boston for reconstructive surgeries at the end of November and everything has been going well up until a couple of little hiccups recently. I have one more surgery this coming Friday and once I’m healed I’ll have to start treatment for the Vasculitis again. I’m trying really hard to push forward but I feel like my body is at it’s breaking point. Luckily my doctors think I am fine to go through with this upcoming surgery since it’s minor and then I will take a much needed hiatus from the hospital. Moving forward, my surgeon wants to do everything in small steps. I really trust his process and just have to be patient. If you would have told me in 2019 that I would still be dealing with this wound in 2021, I probably would have had a mental breakdown. On the bright side, I’ve made a ton of progress and my back already looks 10 times better than it did back in the fall when we started the process.
I was a little nervous to get to this part in my mom’s journals. There was a lot of guilt that came with being in my position. Some days it seemed like I had the easy way out because I would go under anesthesia and my family had to sit and wait and hope and pray, especially on this day. My mom took a leave from her new job, my dad was trying to work from my hospital room, my brother ended up moving down to Charlotte from NYC, and my sister was flying in a lot from NY. I knew they were scared and stressed and I can’t imagine being in their position.
At 7:41AM on February 14th, 2019, I was on the way into the OR not knowing when I would wake up again and not entirely confident surgery was going to go as planned. If the flap didn’t take, then I would lose my right latissimus muscle and still have a wound. The doctor also was not positive which vessels he would use to connect the lat once it was covering my wound. The goal was to use the artery in my left armpit and if the vessels were too small he would try a mammary gland and possibly have to use an artery from my calf as a sort of extension chord. I had just learned this information the night before so the thoughts were swirling in my head. Luckily as you’re being wheeled into the OR you get “happy juice” through the IV (aka versed) which eases your nerves.
At 6:37PM my doctor walked into the waiting room to tell my family he connected the flap to the artery in my armpit 4 times but after about ten minutes it would flatten and clot off. He told my family he would try one more time and if it didn’t work he would have to try for plan B. At 9:45PM I was finally rolled into the surgical ICU (SICU).
Three days later, I opened my eyes and saw my sister and then immediately looked under the covers at my left breast and calf and saw no extra incisions. She told me that plan A worked! I was still on the vent and couldn’t talk yet but I was so happy. For the last three days I was sedated laying on my right side with my arm hanging up in a sling attached to the ceiling and I wasn’t exactly stable. My white blood cell count, blood pressure and temp were all very high so they put me on antibiotics. My sister told me my face was so puffy that I looked like I was attacked by “tracker jackers” from the hunger games. Thank you Megan (lol).
This plastic surgeon was willing to do anything to make sure this flap took. I was to be bed ridden in the SICU for a whole 18 days. I was now in a tiny room with barely enough room for the nurse to move around and only a little window that I couldn’t even see out of. Those first few nights awake were really hard. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and 18 days sounded like a lifetime.
When I first heard my mom talk about that moment in the waiting room when the doctor said he would try one more time, it almost didn’t sound true. My whole life I’ve been pretty uninterested in religion but I was raised Catholic. My mom is very religious and told me they all held hands in the waiting room and prayed for my artery to stay open. Twenty minutes later, the doctor came out and said it worked. Hearing about this moment reminded me of the power of prayer. I definitely believe I had a few angels looking out for me that day.
Dear Vasculitis 