Feeling better, back to the blog!

Well, last week was ROUGH to say the least! The timeline goes as follows

Tuesday am - check into clinic and surgery all set, I head off and am woken up a couple of hours later in the recovery room.  Dr. comes by and says the surgery was successful and everything went perfectly.

Tuesday noon - I leave the clinic in a considerable amount of pain not so much due to the incision but more to the fact that I had air trapped and my shoulder and right side of my ribcage felt like a knife stabbing me repeatedly.

Tuesday night - In a lot of pain still from the air, I had to sleep on the couch in the reclined position to get any sort of relief.

Wednesday - BY FAR the worst day for pain I could ever have imagined.  I could hardly breath and forget trying to move.  The pain had me in tears over and over.  Ryan was helpless and tried everything he could to help me.

Thursday - Friday I could tell the air pain was going away because my incision was very sore.  I thought I was feeling better.

Saturday - AWFUL day I started feeling dizzy, and "out of my body" this really had me scared. I also had a rapid heartbeat and my vision felt weird. Not only that we got stuck in a major rainstorm and when we got home heard the tornado sirens......let me just say it was pretty scary but kinda funny, especially since everyone was OK.

Sunday - I went to church and my brother and sister in laws house and felt OK but still had moments that "something was not right"

Monday - another bad day filled with anxiety attacks. I was really wondering why we did this.

Tuesday - One week post opp. I called my surgeon's office to tell them I was feeling dizzy and rapid heartbeat and they wanted to go ahead and see me.  I think they forgot to let my doc know why I was coming in because when I arrived she (a different surgeon than mine) looked at my incision and told me we could start trying to conceive and to call if we weren't pregnant in six months!!!! I flipped out and started crying and told her my symptoms, she checked my vitals and my blood pressure was a little high (its ALWAYS low) she told me to go to my regular doc to get checked out TODAY. I was terrified, absolutely terrified. So, I go to good ole doctor Taylor's office and he checked me and all my vitals were normal, he calmed me down and said I had allergies which was probably causing my dizziness along with some anxiety about the surgery. He is so calming and I felt better right after I left there.  So we went home and Ryan had to get out of town for a business trip that he already delayed to take care of me.

Wednesday was much better, in fact I probably did too much because today I am a little sore. I was able to take C to school, R to dance and then all the children to C's well visit.


C's well visit turned into a disaster really quick because I thought he was not getting any shots and he ended up getting three.  I have never seen him act like he did getting shots, he usually is pretty calm and doesn't need to be restrained.  NOT TODAY! It was so bad it took two nurses and me to hold him down as he is screaming, "noooooooo don't do this to me" "please stop, please mommy don't let them do this to me" It was so incredibly sad and the poor kid just wanted me to hold him afterwards.

Going back to the surgery, for a while there I was wondering why on earth had we done this.  I was very scared and worried about my health and I think it just continued to snowball into full blown anxiety and on top of that I knew Hubby was leaving and I knew I wasn't ready to be left alone with my kiddos until Saturday.  It wasn't until Wednesday that I started feeling good about what we did and I began to see a light at the end of the tunnel.  I can't begin to discirbe the full on support that we have recieved throughout this process. I can't imagine what I would have done without all of the prayers, meals, and phone calls.  I feel so blessed to be surround by such amazing family and friends (in "real life" and online)

I feel like this post is all over the place but I will get back into it in no time!

I would love to hear from anyone who has suffered anxiety attacks and how you got over them or deal with them.  You can contact me through a tab at the top of my blog site.  Thank you!

The reality is......

My tubal reversal might not work in the sense that we may not have anymore children

I know this. I understand that there are percentages involved and this could leave us without expanding our family. I am fine with that, we are fine with that. The whole point to having this done is so that HIS will be done. If that means that we don't have anymore children so be it, if that means we have more children, so be it.

One thing I haven't talked about yet is the "other" reason's we chose to have the reversal. One of the things I didn't anticipate going into having the reversal is possible side effects. I just knew that this was a permanent way of not having anymore children and at the time I was OK with that.

However having the tubal has cause major problems with my health, well not so much health directly but definitely with my quality of life. PTLS or Post Tubal Ligation Syndrome can be pretty rough. I had many symptoms of headaches, heart palpitations, dizziness, nausea, menstrual "issues" after my youngest was born. It was BAD so bad that I really thought I was dying of "something" I went to all sorts of doctors from regular to all natural to even a neurologist, i had a couple of EKG's, all sorts of blood work to test for everything. I even had a MRI on my brain because I thought for sure I had brain cancer.

ALL the test came back normal! Yes I should have been happy but I certainly didn't feel NORMAL. I felt awful, I would tell Ryan, "Please don't let anything happen to me" and he would probably think I was crazy.

Finally it hit me, I never felt this way before could it have something to due with my c-section or the tubal???? Maybe the doctor left gauze in me(I had them check for that too!) or maybe my body is not reacting well to what I just did to it.

So I got on the computer and started researching side affects of a tubal ligation. WOW the results were endless in .02 seconds I got about 76,000 results! OK this is what is going on with me, everything I read pointed straight to PTLS. It makes sense too, basically your body works a certain way and when you mess that up it gets all "out of whack"

So I get really excited about having this surgery, I pray that all of these symptoms will stop and I can be back to "normal" Who knows we may even be blessed with life again!

How did we get here?

I can pinpoint the exact moment I knew that I should not have had a tubal ligation. It was in the recovery room of my third c-section holding our newest addition Bradford. At the time it was a slight moment of regret, that would soon grow into the biggest most horrible ache in my heart.

I kept it a secret for a while because I was worried about the reaction of my husband. This secret caused a bit of depression and a hope that he would know what I was thinking. The funny thing about it is he did know. It turns out we were having the same feelings of doubt and regret and we were both too scared to say anything because of the repercussions.
Let me get this out there, you see Ryan and I are Catholic, It defines who were are as a family and is the forethought in every decision we make. So how can we come to the decision to even have a tubal. Well, I suppose there are many thoughts. 1. I had three c-sections in 3 1/2 years. 2. Throw in a back surgery in between my first two children and it makes for some pretty rough pregnancies. 3. Add a little influence...peer pressure you might say. And we were "done" But how can we make that choice. God knows what I can handle, he knows my path and if I am to live on the narrow path I must allow for God to guide me and not what I think is the right decision. We are having our tubal reversal because its not our say in how many children we are blessed with. We do not know if we will be blessed with more children or not but we do know Thy WILL be Done.

This might go without saying but this is our decision and I would hate for anyone to think that I believe no one should have a tubal or if you have one you should get it reversed. I am not someone to judge someone. I just want to tell my story because there might be someone out there going through some thing similar and I pray that my story can impact someone in a positive way.

New direction

"This is the start of something good"

For many reason's the Maxwell house is changing! We have made some big decisions regarding the future of our family and this blog will be the journey in words. For so many reason, Ryan and I have made the decision to have tubal ligation REVERSAL surgery. Wow there it is in words. It sounds so radical in my head but to see it on the screen makes it so real and gives me a great feeling. The reason's for doing this will be discussed throughout this blog, but i can assure you this decision did not come without a deep look into our spirituality and some tough questions.

The logistics of the getting to the surgery is what i am going to talk about today. You see, from early on in the process I came to realize this is a stat game, a situation of "likely or unlikely mendable"

When doing the research for doctor's you are immediately thrown numbers of probability based on your age, the type of tubal and the amount of time since your tubal ligation. Waiting for the phone call with the answer to the likely or unlikely mendable question was the most gut wrenching 14 days of my life. You have to have the surgery report sent to the new doctor and that takes every bit of 14 days to be received and reviewed. I spent my days running the scenarios i would say "you did this to yourself there is no way you are going to be given the opportunity to have it reversed" "What if my ob took out too much tube? I mean he is an older doc and maybe back then they used to take out more than they needed to" "Why would we even want a fourth child" to that my reply is "why not!" And then, the phone call. Of course I missed the phone call because I was dealing with one of my three little ones but as soon as I saw the voicemail my heart sank. "Oh here it is, the bad news I have been waiting for"

"Mrs. Maxwell, the doctor has received your records and has deemed you "likely mendable"

Likely mendable??? Am I broken, well yeah I feel that way most days. So to hear those words and then 78% chance of pregnancy I cried. I mean can't hardly catch your breath cried.

So here we are, the surgery is paid for ($6200, if you're curious) and on October 19th I will have my date with the knife. The next two months leading to the surgery I will be talking about how we got here and all the fears, joys, ups, downs of this process, not leaving out my Spirituality and my babies and husband.

After the surgery, I will be focusing on a renewed heard, second chance and working towards #4!!!!!!!!!!