Update on me

I've been feeling:

scared

worried

helpless

Allow me to introduce ya'll to the pain on my right side. A pain that I first felt during my late pregnancy with Coral. A pain so sharp it literally made me crumble to the floor. Everyone assured me that it was fine. That the baby probably just moved funny. Against my better judgement, and really having no clue what pains were normal during pregnancy, I let it be.

A few months after Coral was born, I had that same pain. I laid on the couch for a day before Andrew finally convinced me to go to the walk-in. You see, I don't like going to the doctor. I feel like they are always looking at me with judgement, or looking at me like Im completely crazy or something. So when Im not feeling well, I leave it until Im practically on my death bed before I see the doctor. But, the hubby made me go, and the doctor sent me home with a prescription for heart burn. Now I know Im no doctor, but I knew it wasn't heart burn. First of all, I had heart burn throughout my whole pregnancy, so I knew what it felt like, and this was not that. Secondly, the pain I was feeling was on my upper abdomen, across my belly button, and all the way around to my lower back. Yah, not heart burn. 

The next day I felt worse, so I sucked it up and went back. The doctor this time told me it was gallbladder disease. FOR SURE he said. Not a doubt in his mind. He just wanted to send me to get an ultrasound done to confirm it before he booked me in with the surgeon to get my gallbladder removed. Two weeks later, ultrasound done, the doctor called me to say he actually doesn't think its my gallbladder, and that he has no idea what is wrong with me.

Feeling discouraged, I left it. I mean, the pain was bearable, as long as no one touched me on my right side or back (doing so would cause me to once again collapse on the floor). I left it for a little while longer, then left it some more. Finally two weeks ago, I couldn't take the pain, and made an appointment with our family doctor.

When she saw me, thankfully she didn't make me feel like I was insane. She believed that I was in pain, she was just perplexed at what was triggering this pain. Her conclusion- a hernia (which you can get from pregnancy). She would make an appointment with the surgeon for me.

So I waited. 

And waited.

And waited.

The waiting was the hardest part. Along with the hernia came so many other complications. Would we be able to have more kids in the future? Most things we read said no. If we were able to have more kids, how long would we have to wait post surgery? So many questions, and the more we read up on it, the more we got discouraged.

Finally after a week and a half, my doctor called me with an appointment to talk to the surgeon. October 5th. Wow. Thats a long ways away. I did some more research, and started to doubt that it actually was a hernia that was causing all this pain. Everything I read said that there should be a visible bump where the hernia is. Or if you couldn't see it, you would definitely be able to feel it. Also, hernias are apparently not suppose to be all that painful, and I, was in constant pain.

So, on monday, Andrew and I made the decision for me to get checked out by a hernia specialist. There is a hospital downtown Toronto that deals only with hernia patients. Examinations are free, they take walk-ins, and they will tell you on the spot if you have a hernia or not. After a long wait, and being examined by two different doctors, the conclusion was that it WASN'T a hernia. The doctors had told me exactly what I already knew, that I had no bump, and that hernias don't cause a lot of pain. They did however recommend that I figure out what is going on sooner rather then later, since they both had to hold me up while pressing on my "sore spots" so I wouldn't collapse on the floor in pain.

Relief? A little.

Mostly because the dream of me having more kids seemed within reach again.

But that relief didn't last long.

Ok if its not a hernia, then what is it?

At least when my doctor said, "its a hernia", I felt like we were making progress. But now were back to square one. No guess as to what it could be. No idea why Im feeling like this. 

Let me tell you, its a scary feeling.

Its terrifying knowing that your body is failing you in some way, but the doctors have no clue what it could be.

Its infuriating.

I don't understand why, instead of just guessing what's wrong, the doctors wont get some tests done. Blood tests maybe, x-rays, ultrasounds. All four doctors that I have seen, have all said one thing in common, that something serious is going on in my body. Yet if they are so sure that it is something serious, why is no body acting on it? Why do I have to wait five weeks from the time I saw my doctor, to the time I see the surgeon? 

So now I wait until October 5th, where I will see a surgeon, and she will take another guess as to what could be wrong with me. I hate this kind of guessing game. In the mean time, I feel like crap. I feel helpless as Andrew and I just sit in limbo land, not knowing what's wrong with me. I feel scared, that I have a beautiful daughter to take care of, and while nothing is being done, her mommy is slowly getting worse and worse. 

Thank-you to everyone who has been praying for us. God is good, and we trust that we are in his hands.  We just ask that you continue to pray for us, as the unknown is quite scary. It may be something as small as a pulled muscle, we don't know. But pray that the doctors will have wisdom, and that we will soon know exactly what is wrong, and then we will be able to focus on getting better.