Once I was home and had seen my surgeon on several occasions, I was constantly being told that it would get better, I just had to be patient as nerves take time to heal. I could only hear these things so many times, where I finally came to the conclusion I was not getting any better. I would need to learn to live a new life.
Not only did I need to learn to live a new life, but so did my family. They had lost the Mother, Grandmother, Wife, Daughter and Sister I had been. I was gone and what was left was this damaged body that I could not learn to live with. I cannot tell you how many times I contemplated just ending it. Thinking that it would be so much easier to just end it for me and my family. I know that is the cowards way out, but it is so hard at times, and only living it would you understand.
I am very lucky I have a wonderful husband that is there for me. He is the one person that sees it all. He sees when I am curled up in pain and cannot sleep for days on end because it feels like I am being hit with a taser gun over and over. He has walked behind me when my bowels lose control, when myself and the floor, and everything around me is covered in feces. He silently and lovingly just cleans it up and tries to calm my tears and hysterics. I can honestly say that he has seen all of the worst things you can imagine, yet he is still here and for that I am thankful. Even though we have no intimate relationship anymore due to my having no feeling plus the fear of infections, yet he's still here, as he has stuck to his vows like no man I have ever seen. He really meant the part in sickness and in health.
The two people it is most difficult for are my Daughter and my Grand Daughter. Before this surgery I had watched my grand daughter 3 to 4 days a week from around 9 to 5 each one of those days. My daughter sees me and I walk and she does not understand that most of the damage I have suffered is invisible to the naked eye. If you see me, you will look at me and think "Well she looks fine to me" and I think its very hard for my daughter to get past that visual. She does not see me having to stick a straight catheter in my urethra each time to empty my bladder. Or putting on rubber gloves to pull out the feces. She does not see me when my bowels lose control and I am covered in feces, she does not see when I am in so much pain I want to die, she does not see I can only walk so far before I am in severe pain, as I avoid her on these days. These are the things I hide from her. I don't want to burden her with this, because I know how hard it is to live with.
I know it is also hard for my grand daughter She notices that her "Nana" is not around as much, that she does not climb on the jungle gym and go down the slides, she notices I don't run and chase her, she knows all the things I don't do anymore, but shes 3. Shes 3 and most likely she will never remember the Nana that I swore I would be before she was born, the one that took her somewhere special on most days I had her, so she would know the love I have for her. What she sees now is this other Nana, the one that cannot go to the park and run, the one that cannot pick her up for hugs and kisses because of the pain, the one she is lucky to see once every week or two and never by myself, because god forbid if something happens, she would be alone with me. This is who she will know and remember, not the woman who vowed to show her the love and playfulness that she deserved from a 45 year old Nana. She will never know that young woman.
No comments:
Post a Comment