Our Dream Come True

I know it's been what, 2 months? Well what's been going on. We got all of our household goods on April 10 and it was A-mazing to sleep in our own beds. Surgery was supposed to be at the end of April, but a more serious case presented itself and caused my surgery to be postponed. I ended up having surgery on May 9th and the doctors removed my entire thyroid and several lymph nodes. They had a pathologist in the operating room who confirmed that it was indeed cancer. The cancer had spread to my lymph nodes but the don't think it got into my blood or vascular system. But because it had spread to the lymph nodes, the surgery took longer than expected. When I woke up in the recovery I was completely out of it. All I really remember is that I woke up with a migraine, which they gave me medicine for. And I was really loopy. I remember they put my overnight bag on the end of my bed before they took me to my actual room for the night. As soon as the nurse put it on my bed and walked away, I sat up and took out my tablet and hugged it. Weird, right? I just hugged the darn thing and continued to drift in and out of sleep.

Once in my room I was reunited with Steven and he had brought my mom to the hospital. It was so nice to see familiar faces. Since I was in and out of sleep still, he took my mom back to the house so she could get some sleep. And what is it about hospitals and not being able to sleep through the night? It was a long night of random cat naps. Needless to say I was anxious to go home the next morning.

We were able to get the approval that we could leave that morning, but due to a snafu with a missed blood test we had to wait for a blood sample to be taken and get the results. Once they came back, we were free to leave. But that wasn't the end of it. I had 6 new prescriptions to fill so we headed to the base to fill them. They were able to fill them all except the pain meds. Not good. While the hospital stay was brief, I was still in a lot of pain. So while the other medicines were filled we headed to Target to fill the last. But, no go again. Target has been under renovations to make it a Super Target and the pharmacy was closed that day. Luckily the grocery store next door had a pharmacy, they had the medicine, and they could fill it quick. Once that was done we headed back to the base pharmacy and got the rest of the medicines. Thank the good Lord we were finally on our way home.

I had such a great surprise when I got home! Not only was my mom there, but Steven's mom too! She really is like my own mom and I absolutely love having her around. They also took the girls and got me some 'get well soon' goodies. It was great to sit in my own bed and rest while the girls, who are completely enamored but their grandparents, played downstairs with Yiayia and Memaw!

When this whole journey began way back in December in Turkey, I thought the worst part of it all would be the surgery and recovery from it was going to be the worst part. Boy was I wrong! More on that later.

-K