A heart full of love

Today's my birthday.  I'm 32 years old.  It's only fitting that I share this information today.  I have a hole in my heart.  Apparently it's been there since I was born. I'm having a procedure today (happy birthday to me!) that will find out more -  ( how big the hole is, what they can do to repair, etc).   But what I do know is 32 years ago today, all 7lbs 5 oz of me came into barreling into this world.

Believe me, yesterday when I got the primary results and the inital news about this I was devasted.  I literally was out in the waiting room on the phone crying for my mom.  And like my mom and dad have done for past 32 years, they dropped everything and came to be by my side.  They call it parenting.  I call it fu$king lucky to be born into their arms.

After several hours of crying, dropping F-bombs like a sailor and why me-ing, I collected my thoughts and realized how incredibly lucky I am.  Here I am -  a cancer survivor, masters degree holding, marathon finisher, wife of a great husband,  daughter of the most loving parents, younger sister of the most fiercely protective older sister,  and mother of the most beautiful baby girl in the world.  Surrounded by loving family and friends everyday for the past 32 years.  I'm so lucky.  Yes, my 32nd year isn't starting off the way I would hope but I'm strong, I'm feisty, and I've never felt like piece of me has been missing.

My heart is whole.  

**I'll keep you all updated on my results.

Check-up

I'm not dead. In fact, I didn't even wake up during surgery, feel the pain of my skin being torn apart, or have any sort of sleep paralysis. Hollywood has lied to me yet again. What's next, the Barden Bellas don't actually win nationals this year?

Anna Kendrick... you're America's sweetheart.

Anyway, I was going to give an update with a brief synopsis of what my time off and recovery were like, but I wrote that out, and it was pretty boring. I've decided that I'm going to impart wisdom instead; lists are way easier to use when trying to organize your thoughts. Without further ado, here are the top four life lessons I've learned in my last four weeks of recovery.

4) Know your limitations.
A surprising lesson I learned over my two weeks at home: there are limits to the amount you can walk around your neighborhood before 1) reaching certain levels of insanity and 2) developing intense foot pain that far exceeds your post-op surgery pain. Petie and I learned every nook and cranny in our neighborhood within a week of recovery. After the first or second day, I downloaded an audiobook (The Girl on the Train... the next Gone Girl, it is not, but it was entertaining). If you're walking over 90 minutes a day, you need an audiobook. You also need Dr. Scholl's insoles. After a couple of days of exploring the neighborhood, I got to a point where I could barely walk around on our wood floors without wearing a slipper. I looked like I had a Michael Jackson complex except on my feet (nay, foot).

My slipper is not nearly as flashy.

3) Nature, you cray.
Despite the limitations of my body, the skin on my stomach was literally torn open and separated just below the waist, a large piece removed, and then put right back together with glue and stitches.... looooootttttsss of stitches. Within three hours of being glued and sewn back together, I was walking up the stairs to bed.

Well, the second image in the March of Progress most accurately describes how I was "walking" on the first day.

That's pretty amazing, in my opinion. The body's natural ability to heal itself is incredible. Additionally, I never knew how many rabbits and deer lived in our neighborhood prior to those long walks with Petie.

Why must I join you for this?

It was like a Disney movie, and I was a princess. Wait, no... I was Gaston, as you see...

Seriously, who's the real jerk in Beauty and the Beast? The beast kidnaps and imprisons Belle. Gaston leads the march to save Belle in her obvious state of Stockholm syndrome. YOU TELL ME WHO THE HERO IS IN THAT STORY. Uh, where was I?

2) Set reasonable goals.
I'll admit, I got a TAD stir crazy during the recovery process. I was limited to lifting 10 lbs. That's roughly three Peties or 1/3 of a Grace. You feel pretty useless after awhile, but my goal was to be able to lift, at least, Grace weight within two weeks. I was told more than once by my doctor that was a bad idea because you could easily ruin results and injure yourself just by incorrectly lifting something. So, I did what any stir crazy person would do and found ways to circumvent the rules, ever so slightly. I might not have been able to lift Grace into her crib, but I was able to change her diaper if given adequate time to sit down on the ground. I wasn't able to get her onto her changing table, but I was able to move a footrest to the changing table and lift about 1/3 of her bodyweight while she scaled the changing table. By not attempting to hurt myself within a week or two of surgery, I am currently able to achieve my longer-term reasonable goals of being back in the gym within a month lifting moderate amounts of weight. It's humbling to be where I am right now with my lifts, but I'll be back to normal in a few months, and that's alright by me.

1) I get by with a little help from my [family and] friends.

I wouldn't have been able to recover as easily and as well as I did without my family, friends, and medical staff's support. Especially the support of Allie and Grace, my local nurses. Without these two, in particular, I would've been a lump in bed easily mistaken for a pillow. There was a time the evening after the surgery where I was laying in bed, unable to do a hell of a lot, where I was joined by my in-home staff.

It's selfie-o'clock.

They were clearly worn out from my constant requests for electrolytes and sandwiches.

What can I say? I had an insatiable desire for lemon-lime Gatorade and chicken salad.

I cannot thank them enough for putting up with me until I was able to get out of bed with little assistance. I was also humbled by the amount of people that reached out to me to ensure that our house was not falling apart, that we wouldn't get HOA notices saying our grass was too fall, and we had easy-access meals ready to go. So, a big thank you to everyone who helped out in my time of need. I owe you all baked goods.

Well, I hope these life lessons have been enlightening... so, wanna see some pictures? In addition to all of this wisdom taking up space in this big ol' brain of mine, I've created an album of the pre-op/post-op process including a compilation picture. Granted, there hasn't been enough time to see a ton of progress, but you can definitely see a difference between pre-op and week 4, so I'd consider things a success. The pictures show me shirtless, so if that might bother you or an employer, you've been warned. Enjoy. If you want to see pictures of the actual surgery taking place... yes, ones where you can see my insides... I have those, too. If you want to see those, you sick... sick person... just shoot me a message. They're awesome.