The Kelsey's

I’ve had weeks like this before.  Some of them in the hospital, some of them on a couch with crutches.  I’ve been put under and cut on 6 times now.  That’s probably a little above average.  And this time it wasn’t a medical emergency.  I could still walk, I didn’t have to limp.  I could still go to work and about my business, I wasn’t doubled over in pain.  But I had hernias.

I checked the Internet and studied up, were there exercises I could do, was there dietary changes I could make to reverse or affect this?  All sources indicated no.  They would either stay the same or get worse.

With our current health insurance we have an annual deductible, so doing something early in the year made sense.  The question was whether it would be this year or some future year.  No one knows what the future holds, and we had started to rebuild our savings, so we went forward.

The recovery has been coming along.  I found out that the only thing keeping me from being able to drive or go back to work was the use of the prescribed pain meds.  I stopped taking those on Thursday.  It hasn’t been unbearable (not like getting my wisdom teeth pulled – saying no to pain killers there was a big mistake), but little pulls here and there are always a surprise.

I’ve also read and heard a lot about people not being satisfied with mesh installation.  Recurrent pains, mesh that rolls up or balls up and creates pain or numbness.  So I was torn (no pun intended) about going ahead with it, but I opted to.  Now every time I feel a sharp pull or tug I wonder if it’s just healing happening or if the mesh is messing up.  It’s going to take time to know for sure.

The Kelsey homeschool has been on spring break to “celebrate” dad being “in the way.”  So I don’t think that things have been too disrupted.  I did have to request an early exit from church as I was feeling pretty worn down.  But I can’t think of anything else that’s been a challenge.  I’m sure I could interview everyone and get some more examples, but they aren’t up so – it’s just me!

The debate is continuing on whether I will start back to work early (i.e. on Monday) or if I’ll wait all the way until Wednesday when I told my employer that I would return.  I guess it just depends on how the healing process goes.