Witchcraft?

OK… Interesting discussion I saw on another site today…

Someone is facing some surgery for female issues, and has lost so much blood and is so anemic that the possibility of a transfusion is there. She told her doctor absolutely not, that she will NOT have a transfusion. When pressed, she said it’s because it “reminds her too much of witchcraft and demon worship” to have someone else’s blood in her.

WTF?! Are you serious? As if the blood has a freakin’ PERSONALITY? As if it doesn’t have the same lifespan as normal blood cells, and will be replaced by her own circulatory system as her strength is regained? As if the Evil Blood Cells and her weakened blood cells would mate and create Demon Spawn Blood Cells? W?T?F?!

My God. These people who fear everything — how do they leave their homes in the morning? That’s what I don’t get. Bizarre.

Back in the Saddle (ha ha)

I scrapbooked last night. It was wonderful. I got 5 pages done, except for journaling. FIVE! That’s pretty good, considering I was running around being social and enjoying the house full of women for most of the time. 🙂

Steph, you mentioned wanting to see my scrapping stuff sometime. Ya wanna make an appointment? Your schedule is crazier than mine, so you pick it.

Will talk to Jerry about the wisdom of a Wilde Outinge on Friday… He’ll be back tonight around dinnertime. I wanna go, but I don’t know if my butt can handle it. 🙂

Hoodwinked

Alice and I have Wednesday mornings alone, which I love. The nursery at church will watch her free of charge from 9:30-noon if I need to run child-free errands, but usually I don’t bother, and we just have a nice morning together.

Today she’s toddling around the house, enjoying the fact that Helen’s not yanking her arms or taking toys away from her. And she comes over every minute or so for a hug. She is an incredibly affectionate child.

A few minutes ago, she found her apple green fleece hoodie (an LL Bean hand-me-down from her big sister), which is one of my favorite child-related purchases ever. We got 2 winters out of it for Helen, and will likely get 2 more winters out of it for Alice (after we FINALLY wrenched it out of Helen’s hands — she had a snitfit the first time we got it out this year, because she insisted it was HER coat even though it wouldn’t cover beyond her elbows anymore). Nothing like 4 years of solid use to make it a very well-spent $30. I love LL Bean.

But I digress. She brought me the hoodie, and tried to put it on. Which basically means that she rubbed it over her head until her hair was all standing straight up, and then she handed it to me. It took us a while to master the peculiar dance of getting her oriented properly (and the coat oriented properly) to put it on her right. She wanted the hood up, and she wanted it zipped. And she walked around for half an hour like that, an apple green elf eating little squares of cheese and turkey pepperoni slices.

Tee hee.

I love that little coat. I will probably cry when they both have outgrown it.

Crackhouse Trip Thwarted

Well, I went to my appointment with the surgeon, and they were backed up (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I’m punny), so I didn’t get in to see him until 11:20ish or so. I had a tutoring appointment at 11:35, which I was about 10 minutes late for. So I didn’t get to go to get my thread. Until 4:30. So I DID get it. I just didn’t get it when I had anticipated getting it.

ANYway.

This is an update on my recovery progress, not really a thread report. Since I know you guys would MUCH rather hear about my ass gash (say that three times fast) than my thread inventory.

So. Two weeks ago, the surgeon was “concerned” because there was a “communication” between my wound and my colon that might turn into a fistula and require additional surgery.

    There were three scenarios possible:

  1. It could heal up all by itself, closing the communication, and I would require no additional surgery or anything. This is obviously the best case scenario.
  2. It could heal partially, causing a smallish fistula, but I would still have control (known as “continence” in the medical world). This would require a small surgery and not a long recovery to close the communication.
  3. Or, worst case, it could heal into a large enough fistula to cause me continence issues, and though I’d have muscle control, I’d also have some… uh… leakage issues. So basically I’d have to have a re-incision of my entire original incision, except for the muscle repair part of it. Which would be another 6-8 weeks of recovery.

So. He wanted to see me every week to monitor progress. Opening it back up didn’t make sense, in case it WAS going to heal up fine, but if it became obvious that it was going to turn into option #3 above, he was going to recommend just going back in and opening the incision again. So it was best to monitor how I was doing. I was instructed (two weeks ago) to keep having nightly Sitz baths and taking all of my laxatives and eating mostly soft foods and lots of fruit, and to pray for the best. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do, aside from keeping things as clean as possible, to help the results. It would just do whatever it was going to do, and the only thing to do was wait.

And, not being a freakish worrier, I just did what he told me to do, since that was the only thing I can control. I’ve had at least one Sitz bath every day since the surgery, sometimes two. I’ve been very neurotic about packing the wound with gauze and keeping everything as clean as I possibly can. I have been a VERY good patient, all things considered (and especially considering my hyperactive personality).

Well. Today, he checked everything out, and determined that the communication is MUCH smaller than it was two weeks ago. And looks like it’s going to close up on its own. He said he didn’t want to promise anything, but that it really looks to him like we might be done with the big nasty surgery. So at worst, I might be looking at option #2. But in his words, he’s “cautiously optimistic” about everything, and he said that things look GREAT. And my control, even on laxatives, is better than I used to have.

The only big life change that I’m going to face is that forever and ever, I will have to have some sort of fiber supplement (Metamucil or whatever) to help things along, because when he sewed the muscle back together, it obviously lost some circumference, which means it is much more snug than it used to be. Which means MEGApain if I get constipated. And I need to drink LOTS of water, and I’m thinking that prunes will become my new favorite snack. Okay, fine. I can do that.

Wonderful news from the surgeon, though. What’s that? A light? At the end of the tunnel? I think I see it.

God bless that surgeon, and every staffer in his office. Those are the nicest people I have EVER dealt with in my medical life. Wow. I cannot speak highly enough of them.