It’s been an eye-opening time

Not only has there been so much going on in the world, but there is a lot going on here at home too. I’ve had a lot of problems medically the past year and I’ve been going through a lot of testing and procedures. It’s been challenging because you can’t take your kids with you to doctor’s appointments anymore with COVID-19 regulations and I really struggle to find babysitting and available appointments in between dropping and picking up Tristyn from school and karate. The kid’s Nana is getting a knee replacement tomorrow (she’s my babysitter) so she’s going to be out for a month or two.

So I went in for an endoscopy and colonoscopy a month ago and they found I had gastritis, GERD, and a hiatal hernia (a large portion of my stomach is in my chest cavity instead of my abdomen). The only fix for that is surgery.

I had a CT scan done on my abdomen and pelvis to see if there were any other issues outside the stomach that were causing my rib and chest pain and they happened to find something completely unrelated to the issue they were currently looking for. They found that I have a rare bone condition called osteonecrosis of the hips (stage II). My bone is dying. The fix for that is a double hip replacement. It’s possible I have it elsewhere because my bone pain isn’t only in my hips. I also have bone degeneration in L5-S1. I meet with an orthopedic surgeon in a few weeks (the same one doing Mom’s knee replacement tomorrow).

I’ve had a lot of breathing issues that have been getting worse and I haven’t had any asthma testing for 20 years so they wanted me to see a pulmonary specialist and get retested. Sadly they discovered that on top of severe asthma I also have stage III chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Just, ugh. My pulmonary doctor wants me to get bariatric surgery to help the COPD. I’m going to ask my doctor if they can fix the hiatal hernia at the same time.

My doctor said I will be the bionic woman after all this. I sure hope so because I’m in so much pain all day, every day, every minute, you get the picture. I also can’t slow down because I have my family who would completely fall apart if I didn’t handle everything. It’s been a very isolating time because the magnitude of my situation feels really overwhelming right now and I have no support here.

I’m hoping by the end of all this I’ll feel better than I’ve ever felt before. It’s the long painful road of getting there that worries me.