I am still swimming through the gamut of emotions, thoughts, and what needs to be accomplished and what I can do while walking down this road. Yesterday, Monday, the 5th of December became a roller coaster day. I don’t know how many of you read my status on my Face Book page, if you have been reading it then you will know that I had an appointment at the University Of Washington to see a surgeon about my throat issues and you know what else, I started two new classes in my college academic career. I got up at 4 in the morning, read through both of the syllabus’, answered a discussion question, answered the teacher question, wrote out my biography for each class and then got out the door by 6 am where I trekked to Seattle with my amazing sister in law Kris. We made it with 15 minutes to spare only to be told the doctor is running twenty minutes late. We thought, we can handle that. Well while I was filling out the paperwork for my appointment the nurse came out and said they have to cancel my appointment and reschedule because the doctor was called away on an emergency surgery, while she was getting me another appointment, a few minutes later she came out and said there is bad new and there is good news. The bad news the patient died and the good news he can see you now. Can I just say that my emotions were on a roller coaster ride? My heart is out for the patient and their family and I am happy I get to see the doctor. This was only the beginning of the ride that I experienced. In the mean time, I gave the nurse all the paper work and the CD of my previous ct scans done through this long process and Dr. Mulligan looked through it and he determined that it was a close call between his expertize and the expertize of Dr. Hillel, so he decided that I needed to see Dr. Hillel. Well Dr. Hillel couldn’t see me until Dec 22nd, but lucky for me, the wonderful Dr. Mulligan and the nurses determined that I needed to see him sooner rather than later, so they walked me to Dr. Hillel’s office and talked to their nurses and staff about me and got me in that day. Yes, I had to wait a long time, but I was glad to get it done. The last dilation I had in October with Dr. Anderson did not do anything and it is getting to the 90 percent mark where I sound like a moose. They call this strydor. The experience with Dr. Hillel was amazing, amazing because I got to see the inside of my throat, they stuck a long larynxscopy instrument down my throat. Imagine a long fishing pole type of thing with a camera and a light at the end of it. This thing goes down your nose, the first time I had this instrument down my nose I had no numbing medication and let me tell you, it feels so weird having this skinny thing go down your nose, it doesn’t hurt, it just feels so weird. It reminded me of the Alien movie and being probed. Luckily, Dr. Anderson and Dr. Hillel used numbing stuff and it was a lot easier. I got to see my voice box and what it looks like and my throat looks like a sea snake. And the best is Kris and I now know what I look like on the inside. You get a different perspective of yourself when you can actually see the inside. The whole day wasn’t too bad, there was some humorous moments, for examply seeing some amazing art work in the lobby, even funny looking art work to boot. Dr. Hillel determined that instead of a stent, they thing cutting the bad section of my throat out and sewing the two good pieces together would be my best bet. Can I just say this, I am scared to death of this whole thing. He explained to me that it is like with a hose and you get a bad spot in the hose, you cut the bad part out and connect the two good pieces. It is successful, it takes two weeks to recover, usually. You know that is not the part that bothers me, it is the anesthesia part that bothers me the most. Yes, the cutting a piece of me out is scary, but what got me the last time they cut out my scar tissue was the larynxspasm I had and so you know what is on my mind. You know it is bothering me when in my dream last night I dreamed about my dad sitting on this beautiful throne and my siblings and I were all around him. My dad died in 2004 and so I don’t dream of him often, but I love and miss him a lot. He was a magnificent father that I had. He choose to be my dad, he adopted me into his fold and loved me anyway. Anyway, back to my dream, he was sitting on this throne and my siblings and I were standing around him asking him questions about Jesus. To me my siblings questions were frivolous and didn’t mean much to me and I don’t even remember what their questions were. My questions were “is Jesus as amazing and wonderful as he claims to be and will Jesus really be there for me during this whole process? Well my dad stood up from the throne, grabbed my hand, looked me deeply in my eyes and he said to me YES he is. He will be there for you. As I am writing that last sentence I am crying, but at that moment I woke up right away and I felt at peace with this whole thing. Last night, I came home around 10:30 PM feeling number by my experience yesterday, numb because the whole day was a mesh pod of turbulent problems that came up and then just as suddenly the answer was there. I know for a fact that God’s hand was on the whole thing. I am amazingly blessed by many great people in my life. That doesn’t mean that I am not feeling petrified by the prospects of getting my throat cut out and sewn back together or the dilation with new doctors, or okay how am I going to get my school work done and what is that going to look like, but before I decided to go to school I did make a plan of action to take when or if this happens. I am following the plan and it will be okay.
If you feel inclined to pray for me, these are my specific requests, one that this dilation will last until June 24th when I have my last day of school before the summer break. It will take two weeks to recover from the throat dissection, but in the mean time I want to pray that the dilation will last until then, so I can breathe and be function-able for a long period of time, this will be 6 months.
Thank you for reading, praying, standing, and supporting me through my journey.
Please wait...