After talking to my sister on the phone this evening I took my trach out to clean it. When I went to insert another trach back in the darn thing wouldn’t go in. I tried several times and it freaked me out. I called my sister in law and asked her to take me into the emergency room. While waiting for my sister in law and to be called into the ER the stoma started closing up and I noticed I wasn’t spitting out gunk and I could talk without having to cover my stoma. That freaked me out. I was still breathing. The part that freaked me out was the process it was going to take in order for the trach to get back in. I thought great another surgery. I am so tired of having surgery.

Turns out I didn’t need another surgery, but I think I would have preferred that to what they did end up doing. Doctor Reed, whom I do like because he was compassionate and trying to be gentle with me and his amazing nurse Sabrina whom I love because she only had to poke me once to get an IV in used some forceps type of thing to dilate my stoma in order to put the trach back in. I cannot begin to describe the pain I was in. I have been through a lot and this was the worse I had ever experienced. It burned, it sent jolts of pain. In fact, if you know me well and my tolerance for pain I was holding onto the nurse’s hand and my sister in laws hand while the doctor worked the forceps. I used all the mental energy I had to not grab the doctor’s arm and rip it off. I screamed and I cried because of the pain.

I am now home; it is now 1:40 in the morning as I type this. I now have some pain medication to help keep the pain at bay so I can rest. While I was going through this entire ordeal several thoughts came to my mind. One, I have an amazing team family, friends, caregiver, doctors, nurses, and God. This whole process of having 35 surgeries, going to the emergency rooms because of issues with my gallbladder, trach, or any of the other things that have gone wrong made me realizing how valuable everyone is in my life. I am not alone. Second, I loathe having a trach. Even though I loathe it, I am making peace with having to wear it. And thirdly, I am able to endure things. Even when the pain is so thick that I want to rip the doctor’s arm off or run and hide under some giant rock off the coast of Italy I stick it out and go through it. I needed to know these things because I have been in a funk the last couple of days because of my own fears stemming from what the heck do I do with my life. What path should I take? What does my next chapter look like? Who will the characters be? All those mind numbing questions. Tonight I believe I can move forward and I will be able to endure, move, handle any failings I might encounter, heartaches, and even disasters that flare up out of nowhere.

I am going to take my pain medication and sleep and dream…