WEEK 3 POST OP

There is only one word that I can use to describe week 3 in this journey and that is: emotional. If you have ever been sick for a very long time, disease, cancer, ailment, you too can probably relate that it plays with your emotions BIG time. One day your up, the next you are down. One day you feel like you are going to conquer the world, the next you think that you are going to die and never make it. It is an emotional roller coaster when you have something big like this happen in your life, and somedays all you can do is cry. This week was it for me.

I was so depressed and sad, I didn't want to talk to anyone, and I couldn't talk to them without crying. I felt like I wasn't getting better, and I just wanted to feel normal again. I feel like I am not gaining and I am never going to get there. The thought of going back to work in 3 weeks scares the crap out of me b/c I can't even get off my pain meds yet, how am I ever going to make it at work in 3 weeks!!! I want to be the mom and wife I have always been. I want to run around with the kids, play catch, take them to the park, have them sit on my lap and snuggle, I want to lay with them in bed and just stare at them but I still haven't left my couch!!

My husband has been super mom thru all of this. Helping me with the dishes, the housework, the kids!! Taking them away, putting them to bed, washing their hair, taking them to church....again all the things that I long to do again, bless his heart, I owe him BIG time! I don't know what I would do without him. I left the house 3x, wooohooo, big deal, a whole 1 x more than last week. I had a visitor come to the house and she looked RIGHT at me in the eye and said she was sorry and started turning around, said she was looking for Lisa Jongsma's house and had the wrong house!!!! Do I look that bad??? Sure I don't have my hair done, I still haven't done it and no I don't wear makeup either when I know I am going to stay home all day, but that was pretty funny!! I look so bad that people don't even recognize me, so I apologize if you come over but I have honestly been to hell and back, the least of my concerns is how I look for the day!!

I spent one whole afternoon just bawling in the bathroom, looking at my incision....I felt like Jesus must have in the garden, and I just begged, "Please Lord, take this cup from me, I cannot do this." I can't take it anymore. I can't keep fighting, it has been soooo hard emotionally and physically I have been thru so much that I just can't do it anymore. Please end this misery, how am I ever going to keep going?

To say that this has been the hardest thing I have ever gone thru would be an understatement. Maybe I was nieve, really I don't know what I thought, I guess I didn't think it would be this bad, I have had many surgeries, scopes, sedated, intubated, been in ICU, critical condition, you name it, I have gone thru alot in my short life. I am a pretty tough cookie and have high pain tolerance, but this has been very, very hard for me. And maybe its because I have kids now, I am a wife and my heart longs to be with them and be doing all the things that I love to do with them. I will always call them my little miracles!!! I can't have children anymore and that fact has been very hard on me, but I look at the blessings that I DO have. I gave birth to 2 beautiful children and how I didn't die through those is a miracle in itself knowing this was brewing inside of me already then....I don't know what I would do without them, and God blessed me greatly.

To those that go thru trials of life, I don't know how you do it, if you don't have the Lord in your life. There is NO WAY I would have survived without HIM!!! I look at my daughters cross she put on my kitchen window, look at the saying on my wall that says "Each day is a gift" and I tell myself that I need to stop crying. I am alive, I should have been dead years ago and the Lord brought me this far He is not going to leave me now!!! He has a reason for all of this, He gave it to me, He Knew that I could take it and handle all that it has involved, and that I would grow and turn into what HE wants me to be. You can bet that I am NEVER going to be the same Lisa I ever was! This has changed my life, it has BEEN my life for over 2 years now!!! I went into remission and it came back, thats when it hits you the hardest b/c you know what it means and it means you have to go thru it all over again, that you are not really better when you thought you were doing so good! Scopes and dr. visits, blood draws, MRI's, CT's and maybe even more, yes this time, much more...major surgery on top of all the rest. I cannot tell you how much I pray that this is it. That this works, that it STAYS working, and open for the rest of my life. We don't know if it will. It hasn't ever been in people that long. It is a VERY rare surgery and I am lucky if I found 50 people in the whole US that has had anything like it done. I look at how much I have learned. How much the Lord has revealed himself to me and SHOWN me that HE is real, that HE is in my life. He has placed people in my life that love me and have helped take care of me and carry me along on this journey in prayer.....He has shown me how very blessed I really am, when I didn't even know it. He woke Lisa up and has shown her what real life means, to treasure each day, to waste no moment, to live for Him b/c all too soon, I will be gone from this earth and I won't miss it a bit because I now know HIM.