I am doing just as they said...staying home with the cath in...giving my bladder time to heal and rest.  I have a call into the doctors office this morning to find out what my next step is.  I am supposed to get this out today I think but I have to hear from them soon...not usually something they are too good at.  I am feeling good as long as I have my pain meds in my system.  When they wear off I am not too bad but still sore enough that I am still taking them.  I am finding that getting toxins out of your system is something that we take for granted!  If you cannot do it then you feel pretty gross pretty quickly!  Keep on praying please...I am almost there...

When was the last time you slept all night without having to get up to go to the bathroom?  I cannot remember, can you?  Last night we went to bed at 8:30 or so and I just got up at 8:19.  My bag was full (2250 cc's)but I didn't have to get up to change it until now.  Wow a full night's sleep...I should feel great today.  I only woke up once to take more pain pills and then I was back out again.  I am sore at the incision spots and where my port is, is starting to itch...a good sign.  I plan to lie around today and tomorrow and allow my body to work the way God designed it...to heal itself.

We made it home and again it is sweet to be here.  I have a cath in place and they plan to remove it Monday or Tuesday.  It was the doctors opinion that I have a better chance to heal if it stays in place rather than in and out everytime I have to void.  I agreed and off we went.  It is a relief, though still a nuisance, to know that I will be voiding without having to concentrate and sit for hours.  I plan to sit around the house...all the kids are gone.  Two at camp, the other two on a mission trip.  I have until Friday to heal without interuption. Things are much better but please continue to pray that all will heal up quickly and smoothly this week.  I love you all!

Would it surprise you to hear that I am in the hosptial as I write this?  It shouldn't.  You know I couldn't have a surgery without some kind of complication.  It seems that the surgery worked soooo well that I cannot go to the bathroom.  I was admited and have been trying to go for the past 24 hours.  Each time I try first then they go in an drain what I couldn't.  It started out that I was going about 50cc's and they would take 1000cc's.  Now I am going 400cc's and they are draining 550.  Please pray that my body will do what it is supposed to so that I can go home.  We are tired. 

The surgery went well. The waking up was much smoother than last time.  However, there has been a slight complication.  I cannot go to the bathroom on my own.  I have been trying to relax all day.  They finally drained my bladder of 1250 ccs.  Now I feel so much better!  But since I cannot do it on my own yet I will be staying the night.  My doctor will be in tomorrow to find out what the problem is.  They had kind of prepared me for this...by asking that I bring an overnight bag "just in case."  I did and so I am here until I can go on my own.  Two of my kids leave for a mission trip in the morning early.  I hate that I will miss the send off but nothing can be done.  The good news is that the incisions they made are not giving me too much trouble pain wise.  I am sore and will probably be more so to next to days to so...but once I can go I think this will not be too bad of a recovery.  Keep praying..

That old foe fear is back.  I guess it goes with surgery and medical things.  I am remembering waking up from my last surgery.  It was scary because I was awake in my head but my body was totally asleep.  It was like being trapped inside myself.  I know that is probably normal but at the time panic would rise because no one could tell that I was awake.  I determined that I will always talk to people in comas because of this experience.  I don't want to do this surgery...but I have to.  I know it is not as major but irrational fear doesn't care about that.  I am probably most worried about the IV.  Last week they tried to get blood from me and I still have a bruse.  That vein is no good for tomorrow...so that is one less chance they have to find a place for the IV.  And I guess that deep inside if I really look at it, I am secretly worried that he will find something bad.  I think last years surgery and the fact that it was supposed to be one thing and it turned out to be much more has me anxious.  I know, I know...be anxious for nothing but enter everything with prayer and supplication.  I am trying...I really am.  That is a hard scripture to live out!

I keep thinking that tomorrow night at this time I will be through!  My bladder will be fixed and my port will be out!  July 7th is my one year anniversary of my diagnosis.  Can you believe it has been one year?!  In one way it seems soooo much longer than that...in another way it seems like it all happened so fast.  I choose to focus on the positive not the fear.  I will be fine and all will go well tomorrow, I keep professing that over myself.  But if you feel like praying I'd be grateful!

One side note...Aaron got his drivers license today!  That is a whole different kind of fear altogether!

Fourteen years ago yesterday I was having a little blonde haired, blue eyed baby boy.  I remember it as if it was yesterday.  I was having contractions every morning from 4-6.  One morning I told Bill that "if we go to the hospital when I am having contractions they will keep me."  So we got up and went in.  I was expecting the contractions to stop at 6 as they always did, but they didn't!  I kept on walking and by lunch William was born.  It was probably my easiest labor delivery.  He was 9lbs. 14 oz.  Sounds big but he was actually smaller than Aaron so he had no trouble getting here.  Aaron still likes to say he paved the way for his brothers!  To think that next year this time William will be getting a learners license in a scary thought.  How do they grow up so fast??? 

We took two kids to camp yesterday.  They will be gone for 2 weeks.  It was a fast turnaround to come in on Wednesday and then take them to camp on Sunday.  I have been up to my ears in laundry and we are all struggling with being on Georgia time.  I don't know why, but coming east takes so long to adjust to.  The boys were excited to get to camp though so that made up for the trouble of getting ready.  They already made new friends and reconnected with old ones from last year.  William signed up for a drumline class....should be interesting.  They will have fun and hopefully will not even think about me or cancer or surgery or sickness.  I want them to have fun and be kids while they are there.

     I hate to say it but I went for my pre-op and found myself struggling with resentment.  I hate the fact that I have come back from this amazing trip to Alaska into a medical situation with my body.  It is funny how quickly we go back to thinking that this life is our own.  I did not like being back at a doctors office, or a hospital where I had to wait for someone to stick me with a needle.  I want to be finished, and today I realized that I am not.  I had to hear all the stuff about surgery next week.  The realization that I will have to be put to sleep and be on pain medicine again became clear.  I know that this surgery is minor compared to what I have been through, but I found myself angry that I have to do it at all. 

     It took a concentrated effort on my part to get back to the go with the flow, flexible state I had to live in during treatment. Once I got over the imposition of having to wait, I was happy to see that I could go back to that state easily.  My resentment was short lived as I began to see that my life is still not mine to control.  It was a refresher course to see how much I have retained of what I have learned.  I pray that I will allow God to again do the work he has for me and that I will respond with peace, resting in his hands.

We made it home!  Home sweet home!  I loved our trip and wouldn't trade it for anything but I am glad to be back in my own house.  The laundry has begun...William and Peter leave for camp on Saturday. My mission is to have them back on east coast time and all their laundry done by then.  I have already started the laundry and I am trying to make them stay up to 10:00 tonight.  It could be tough though since we barely slept at all last night on the plane.  It will take several days to get back to a somewhat normal routine...I am tired...happy tired.