Where I'm At

So it has been four days since I last posted and here is where I’m at.

Prior to my surgery I had to have a two-hour phone call with my nurse to go over my medical history. She was an incredibly nice lady who told me all about every single one of her own past surgeries, as well as many other details about her life and family. Near the end of the call I asked her how much pain I would be in / what was the recovery time for my surgery. She wincingly said, “Ohhh,” then spent the next fifteen minutes educating me on the pain I was going to feel. She informed me that I was young—“You’ve don't know what real pain is”— and that I wasn’t going to be able to prepare myself for the pain I was going to experience. She pointed out that I have never broken or sprained anything in my life so I am completely naïve and unaware of real pain. She informed me that eight different surgeries have taught her that pain can be literally overwhelming—Morphine and Percocet are only capable of making the pain manageable. Needless to say, after I hung up, I was a little terrified.

The day of the surgery came and all went well. I got to the hospital by 10, was checked in by 11, and was in surgery by noon. They brought me in to a room where I was told to take off my shirt and immediately five different attendees began applying random medical instruments to my body. At this point my heart was hooked up to the monitor so I audibly heard my heart rate increase rapidly for a minute, but, after a quick mental pep talk, it soon decreased. My doctor was hilarious and literally before I knew it I was waking up in a completely different room.

Once fully conscious, I felt the need to impress the nearest attendee with how coherent I was. We joked around and I asked him if I was high. “I don’t think so, no,” he informed me. After he saw my disappointed look I told him that I had just been looking forward to the new experience. He informed me that the high you get from running is actually stronger than the high you get from morphine. “ISN’T THE HUMAN BODY AWESOME!” I exclaimed, and that’s really all I really remember from that conversation.

After passing in and out of consciousness for the next couple of hours, the nurse finally came in and told me that as long as I could pass the final test I could go home. Challenge accepted. I very proudly (too proudly) aced the “can you pee” test and was cleared to go home only six hours after surgery. I was given two weeks worth of T3s that I was instructed to alternate between them and Ibuprofen every three hours. I took one pill once I got home and decided that was it; I'd been on painkillers for almost two years straight and I was pretty done with them. I fell asleep within a couple hours of getting home and slept 12 hours straight.

Flash forward to last night. It has now been almost four days since my surgery and I have been very apprehensive. I am a strong believer in not allowing myself any false hope, so I have been very tentative about the whole process. My surgeon informed me prior to going under that if this did not work we would just have to try it again. Two years of disappointing doctor’s visits have left me sadly wary.

As I prepared to go to bed tonight I instinctively reached into my pants pocket, expecting to feel the same pills that I have taken every night for almost two years. I suddenly remembered that I had emptied my pockets, and for some reason, everything just hit me then and there:

I haven’t taken a single painkiller since the day of the surgery and have not felt ANY pain.

I was supposed to wait a week before taking off my bandages but they just fell off, revealing nothing but a tiny little hole that is not even sore to the touch. No bruising, no swelling.

I have slept through three whole nights without waking up screaming in pain.

I went from cautiously apprehensive to a bucket of joyous tears in a moment of lucid euphoria. I just lay there and cried, reveling in the phenomenal beauty that was a completely and utterly pain-free leg. Where five days ago I was waking my mother up with screams of aching discomfort, I was now attempting not to wake her with muffled whoops and joyous hollers. Praise God! Despite it being 2 in the morning I grabbed my shoes and ran outside. I tried not to strain my hip, but I couldn’t help but run down my street, embracing the feeling of my feet hitting the wet pavement. The fact that someone could have been watching my sniveling, skipping, lap of victory was completely overshadowed by the fact that I was feeling a joy so pure and a relief so incredibly long-awaited. I couldn’t feel a single stab of pain in my leg and it felt good.

The lyrics of one of my favourite worship songs from last summer immediately came to my mind:

Our God is Greater

Our God is Stronger

God, You are higher than any other

Our God is Healer

Awesome in Power

Our God! Our God!

A tiny, tiny part of my heart still wants me to be cautious. It’s true; this may not be over. There may be more check-ups, more tests, and possibly even more surgeries. But for right now, as I’m lying in my bed typing this, I’m just going to sit in silence and soak in the divine solace that is my pain-free leg. I am blessed.

Selah.