Quite Busy

I keep promising to update on everything, and I will get to it... eventually.
It might take a few more days. In between moving back home last week, unpacking, dealing with one very blistery and itchy arm, and studying for final exams (this Monday-Wednesday), I haven't had much spare time on my hands.

Surgery draws ever closer - week after next. How odd it is to say that. Every time I have surgery there is that weird horrible countdown; at some point there is always a switch between  "x more weeks to go, still far off" to "omg only one or two more weeks. *panic and anticipation starts to build up*. There never seems to be an in-between stage where you don't feel like you have to wait a billion more years (gross exaggeration, I know) but you don't feel worried and afraid either. I wish it got easier with each successive surgery, but it doesn't. Not really. I am better able to plan things beforehand: activities to do while recuperating afterward, getting out the crutches and outfitting them with new padded parts, clearing the house of fall hazards, etc, etc. But the anticipation and nerves are still there. Each surgery brings a different set of issues and challenges to face. Especially the next one. It won't really fix anything. I mean, it will, because it will hopefully remove all the infected bone from my leg. But then it won't either, because I will be missing two inches of my tibia and won't be able to walk for at least three months. It won't be like the other surgeries - big build up to surgery, the surgery itself, followed by recovering and being better, healthy. There won't be much real recovery until after my surgeon reconstructs my leg at the end of the year, and even then it will take more time to see if the bone graft takes and heals properly.

And I don't feel confident about it. Last time a round, I felt like a patient. I was ill, in pain, etc. After being ill for so long, it took a really long time for me to start feeling healthy again, but I did believe that I would get better in the end, which did happen. And then right when you get life back on track - BAM, sick again. Feeling cruddy and tired for so long this year, and now with the PICC line and dragging my IV pump with me 24/7 I definitely feel unhealthy, a patient, again. It is an easy role to slip back into. I am used to it, been there too many times before. It feels like it is all I know. When I saw infectious disease mid June, we had a good talk about everything I have been through. She pointed out how I have been dealing with this for almost ten years. I was thirteen when I got the infection after a compound fracture. I turn 23 in two weeks. That is a long time to be ill. All my memories from before being ill seem far away and vague. And then I had this brief glimpse of normal for about a year (Summer 2013- fall 2014). Feeling better off antibiotics, energetic, graduating university, working, preparing for college for nursing. And then the symptoms of infection creeping back mid 2014, and the nervousness and worry slowly coming along with them, intensifying as time went on. I don't know. I don't know where I am going with this. I just don't see myself ever getting rid of the infection. Some days I have complete faith in my doctors and believe I will get better, but other days there is none of that. That makes me incredibly sad. Maybe it will change after surgery on the 26th. Maybe I will feel like everything will be ok again. If the PICC line and cutting out my dead bone and the reconstruction later this year don't work, I don't know what I will do. There are still options if this doesn't work. The next step would be a bone transport with an external fixator. So there are medical options if what we have planned now doesn't work. But I don't know if I have anything left in me for it. I feel strained and tired and deflated already and we have barely started this round of things. I feel caught between hoping for the best and trying to be realistic and a little bit a despair. I am just worn out. There has to be an end to this because I don't have the energy to do it anymore.

This is all very sad and morose.
I wouldn't blame you if you stopped reading.
It is goo to vent though.
Thinking about the good things in life helps - how proud I am for finishing the semester, maintaining my grades when I had every excuse to let them slip and just scrape by with minimum marks. I remember debating over reading week to quit the semester and have surgery earlier and repeat the semester next year. I am so glad now that I stuck with it. I would have been exhausted and nervous and preoccupied either way. At least I can say I accomplished something in the last seven weeks. I owe my mum lots of thanks for helping me get through it. I don't think I could have worked through some of my feelings and made it through the semester without her. And now, in less than three days, exams and the semester are done. Then my pre-op appointment Wednesday afternoon, and then home for good on Thursday. And hopefully the Minion movie with my brother at the drive-in next weekend!