The other side

So my beloved husband is now having health problems.

He is normally one of the healthiest humans I know.  He exercises, he actually tries to GAIN weight, and avoids doctors like the plague.  

But when he was a teenager, he had issues with his urinary tract.  He had two surgeries to correct the tube that carries urine from the bladder out of the body.  Twice he needed emergency care because he couldn’t urinate.  

So its been 20 years since he’s had issues.  I honestly think that if I had not insisted on him seeing a urologist because of my suspicions of him having difficulty with urination, I would have found him on the bathroom floor one morning unable to urinate.

As we suspected, he has another stricture.  This one will take extensive surgery to fix. But this fix should be permanent.  

He is so nervous.  Surgery is 8 days away and he is a mess.  He can’t sleep, he’s going through the entire HR debacle, the pre-surgery tests.  The questions from family and friends.  And because it is such a sensitive area, especially for a man, I guess the anxiety is worse.  

It is hard being on the other side of things.  To see my husband so upset with anxiety, with the “what ifs”, with the anticipation of pain.  

I finally know what it feels like to be the one who doesn’t know what to say.  I’m pretty sure everything will be ok, but I remember how I hated it when people would say that to me because they couldn’t guarantee me that.

My issues dealt with my eyes, and with my entire body with regards to the fibro.  This is a specifically focused issue.  On a very male part of his body.  I have no idea what he is going through.  

So this is a learning curve for me as well.

He will be officially laid up for about two weeks.  Aside from my nursing skills that will be used to care for him post-op, I will try to put all the technical stuff aside and just be a caring wife.

So positive thoughts are appreciated.  Before he goes under the knife, we are taking our first family vacation.  All other vacations we have taken have been subsidized by my parents.  It has been greatly appreciated, but this one is the first one that we have been able to afford completely on our own.

So off to the beach we go next week.  We didn’t know about the surgery before we planned the vacation, that is just the way it happened.  

We will try to put the surgery on the back burner for a few days and enjoy the sand and the sun…

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Two months…yeah…that’s about right…

Yes, I moved.  It was as horrible/wonderful as I anticipated.

The past few months have been a whirlwind.  And in the whole moving process, I got locked out of my WP account.  And in the few minutes each day I had to sit down at a real computer to try and rectify it, I kept getting the runaround with WP.  I finally was able to get back into it today.

In addition to moving I was offered and accepted a full time position.  

I guess that is the true mark of recovery.  Returning to full capacity as a productive citizen.

This one comes with a caveat though.  I’m not working a true 9-5, M-F.  I’m doing weekends on-call at my hospice.  Meaning I go “on” at 5pm on Friday, and I am “on” until Monday at 8am.  I receive all calls that come in to the two offices in the area, and I am responsible for the visits, emergency visits, deaths, admissions that come my way.  I do have back up, and a fantastic support team.  Its like a condensed version of a work week packed into the weekend.

After a full month of working this way, it is kind of better for me.  Instead of my workdays spread out over five days, I get it all done in two.  I usually recover on Monday and then I have Tuesday through Thursday to spend with Sunshine and my husband.  I spend Friday gearing up for the weekend to come.  

Health wise I’m doing ok.  I started increasing my Lyrica by 25 mg in June, but the side effects weren’t cooperating with my schedule, so I abandoned it and I’ll restart it soon.  

We also found out that my husband needs a pretty extensive surgery, so he will be taking front and center in our health dramas starting next week.  It sucks.  I’m not happy that this is happening, but I do appreciate the opportunity to be giving back to him and to be caring for him as much as he cared for me over these past years.

So I didn’t drop off the earth, just been busy, and locked out.  Hope everyone is well!!!