Such small things

October 29, 2009

It was either the 29th or 30th last year when I was finally discharged from the hospital after my second surgery. My mom had flown out so she could be at home with us for a while to help out, unfortunately my hospitalization was longer than anticipated, so we only had less than two days with her at home. They had discharged me the day before but I began vomiting on the way home and had to turn around and go right back to the hospital - same room and everything for another day. I was so frustrated.

I remember the day I was discharged Jeremy came home from the grocery store with a pumpkin and as he spread out newspapers on the floor in front of the couch I was sleeping on, he began carving it. I knew he was doing it to cheer me up. Halloween night I positioned myself on the couch so I could see all the adorable little trick-or-treaters coming to the front door as my mom and Jeremy handed out candy to them. I cried that Harper wasn't there to dress up in one of the baby costumes. I've never been a big Halloween person, but I did look forward to participating in the festivities with a little one in our brood.

Mom left on November 1st. It broke my heart to see her go. When she left, it meant Jeremy and I were alone with our exhaustion and our fears. I had my PIC line hanging from my arm and was getting IV fluids all night long, every night. Jeremy had to help me hook up the fluids. He was so diligent about making sure each port was sanitized before he'd hook me up. If his fingers even brushed against one of the sanitized tubes he would re-sanitize. The last thing we needed was for my PIC line to get infected (which did end up happening by the way - which caused hospitalization number-I-lost-count to happen).

A few days after my mom left, my sister-in-law Heather came out to help us. What a blessing. She cooked wonderful food for us to try to encourage me to eat. She went to my follow-up surgeon appointment with us. She gave me hour long foot rubs every night as I fell asleep, easing the pain with something nice. God bless her, she was willing to put herself in the middle of all our stress and sorrow to help us. I had so many breakdowns while she was here. She was in the back seat of the car on the way home from my appointment with Dr. V when she witnessed Jeremy and me arguing quite loudly about the fact that I had lost another two or three pounds. "It's not like I'm trying to lose weight Jeremy! You don't understand! I can feel the food coming out of my stoma while I'm eating. It's not particularly appetizing. And I'm scared that I'm not going to chew enough and get an obstruction. But I'm trying!"

"Well you can't keep losing weight Abby," his voice got louder and louder. He was so panicked. "You can't just waste away." That's what the argument was really about. Stupid me, I had put to voice the thoughts that were going through my head a while before: I can't do it any more. I wish I could just stop eating and fade away. But it really wasn't my intent to starve myself to death. I really did want to put on weight, but every time I put food in my mouth I had to force myself to chew and swallow. Food was stressing me out.

Man, just writing about this I'm once again reminded of the emotional burden that Jeremy was carrying around for me. It brings me to tears to think about him worrying that I was going to starve myself to death. I was always honest with him too about my desires not to live any more. I knew that if I was going to survive I couldn't keep those thoughts to myself, so I dumped them on him. "I'm not going to do anything to myself Jeremy, but the thoughts are there all day long." The pain was just too much - emotional pain, physical pain, exhaustion. And really, I dumped those thoughts on every member of my family too. God, the fear they must have all felt. I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry for putting my loved ones through that.

When I say that words of encouragement from friends and family meant the world to me, that is no exaggeration. E-mails, cards, voicemail messages, they all reminded me that there was goodness and love out there if I could just hold on. Sometimes now when I hesitate to call someone for fear I'll make a pest of myself, or debate about taking the time to stop and pick up a card for someone, I remind myself of how much those things meant to me and I end the hesitation. Such small things can be so powerful. We just don't even know, do we?