2022: The Highs and the Lows

I thought I would make an update, even though I "retired" from blogging several years ago. I get emails from random strangers every now and then from people that used to follow my blog, and they tell me how much they miss it. That always makes me feel a little guilty, but I just felt like I said everything that needed to be said, so I hung up my blogging hat! Anyway, here is an update with the highs and lows from the year:

2022 started off on a rough note because I got sick the last few days of 2021, and I actually had to have my mom take me to the Emergency Department in the middle of the night. The good thing about going to the hospital in the middle of the night was that we didn't have to wait in the waiting room (even though it was pretty busy for 3 AM), but the bad thing was that we got NO sleep that night! The long story short was that I had a double whammy: influenza and pneumonia. I was having trouble getting a deep enough breath, hence the reason why we went to the ED in the middle of the night. I absolutely hate being in the hospital for a multitude of reasons, so spending six days in the hospital wasn't the way I wanted to bring in the new year. I had to be on oxygen for several days to keep my O2 saturation above 90. I kept having setbacks that prevented me from being well enough to go home, and they thought I would have to go home on oxygen. On Friday night, January 7, I feel like I was miraculously healed, and when I woke up on Saturday, I finally felt well enough to go home.

I spent the rest of January and all of February recuperating and hiding out. I didn't go anywhere! COVID was raging, and I did not want to take any chances of getting sick again and landing back in the hospital. 

In March I decided to seek out an ENT that specializes in trachs to try and get help for a problem that started around 2018. Around that time, I'd started noticing air leaking out of the stoma, or hole, in my neck that my trach goes in. The problem grew worse and worse over the past few years, and it really started impacting my life in a negative way. I could breathe okay and I wasn't short of breath; however, so much air was leaking out around my trach that it was making it even more difficult for me to speak than it already is, since the air was leaking out my stoma instead of going up through my vocal cords. (I haven't been able to speak "normally" since my accident, and it can be really difficult to hear me since I speak so softly.) 

I found a wonderful ENT that I really like, and she seemed very knowledgeable. Again, the short story is that there hasn't been an easy fix for this problem. My doctor doesn't really know WHY I started having this problem after having a trach for so long with no issues. I had surgery in April, May, and July to try and fix the issue. During my first surgery in April, my doctor did a bronchoscopy after I was sedated, and she found a stenosis (narrowing) of my airway, so she didn't continue with the surgery. Instead, I had to go get a CT scan of my neck, so she could determine what was causing the stenosis. I went back and had surgery again in May to open up my airway. My doctor thought that would fix the problem, and I was so hopeful. However, the air leak problem returned a week after the surgery after the swelling went down. I went back for more surgery in July, and this time my doctor did a stomaplasty to make the opening in my neck a little smaller. As with the surgery in May, one week post-surgery the problem returned. My doctor has also done some treatments in her office where she removes my trach and uses a needle to inject "filler" into the tissue inside my stoma to plump it up so that the air can't escape. This has helped somewhat, but it isn't permanent, and it reabsorbs and loses its effectiveness. Is it too much to hope for a permanent fix?! Not being able to speak loud enough to be heard is a handicap in and of itself. This issue is still ongoing.

Several of my sisters and their families came to visit over the summer, and that's always something I greatly look forward to. My 19-year-old niece, Kate, stayed with my mom and me for two months over the summer during her break from college. She made some money, my mom and I had extra help and companionship, so it was a win-win all the way around. With Kate around, she and my sister Chandra were able to stay with me and take care of me so my mom could take a couple of trips. She went to go see my grandma in Minnesota in June, which was wonderful, since my mom hadn't been able to go see her since 2019 with all of the COVID restrictions at the retirement community where my grandma lives. My mom was also able to go to Texas in July to be there for my oldest niece's wedding.

In August, I had surgery again to remove some kidney stones. I've had problems with kidney stones ever since I became paralyzed, and I always dread having surgery to remove them because it's frequently complicated. But it's a necessary thing, so I went into it hoping for the best. I've gotten some bad infections after kidney stone-removal surgery in the past, so I asked my doctor if I could stay overnight and have 24-hours of IV antibiotics, just to cut down on the chance of me getting a post-op infection. The surgery went great, and I was moved to my room. Long story short, my blood pressure plummeted and they couldn't get it to stabilize, so I had to spend two days in the ICU. I did get a post-op infection, just as I feared. I was in the hospital a total of seven days, and I had to get a central line so I could finish my 14-day course of IV antibiotics at home. Have I mentioned how much I hate being in the hospital?! The beds are incredibly uncomfortable, I don't have all of the things that make me more comfortable and my life easier, the food is not good, and it's just SO boring! Fortunately, my mom always stays with me the entire time. Nurses do not have the time or know-how to take care of someone that needs as much care as I do.

While I was in the hospital, my grandma from Minnesota was feeling poorly. She went through a lot of tests, and she was ultimately diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died exactly three weeks later. She was 93 and she lived an amazing life, and my grandpa died in 2019, so it was her time to go. Still, we all miss her very much. My sister Sharon came up from MS in October so she could help our sister Chandra take care of me, while my mom and her husband David went to my grandma's memorial service. The three of us sisters had fun together, and I'm so glad Sharon could come so my mom could go celebrate my grandma's life with the rest of our family.

On November 7, I became an aunt for the 27th time when Chandra had her third baby: a little girl named Rosalie Rae Coleman. (Rae is my mom's middle name.) Rosie is beautiful, and we couldn't be more happy to have her in our family. On November 17, I commemorated the 19th anniversary of my car accident. I was 19 at the time, so that means I've now been paralyzed for half of my life. Crazy!

In December we enjoyed the holidays. We went over to Chandra's house after church on Christmas Day, and had a wonderful time. Sharon, her husband, and their six kids visited for five days after Christmas, and we had a blast.

2022 was a very busy year filled with way more appointments than my mom and I would've liked, but it wasn't all bad, and we feel very blessed. So long as God is on our side—and He is—we can conquer ALL things! 💖