Well…that didn’t pan out. I really thought I would post regularly. I did become more consistent with my personal journaling, and I started a storytelling project about my life for family, but I posted nothing on this blog since January. My Mom used to lament with a resigned sigh, “Best laid plans…” when something had not gone the way she intended.
Life has definitely been busy. It is just never dull around here. I remember wondering after our seventh child Ben was born, how long it would take until things “got back to normal” again. They never did. It took years before I realized that life was a series of new “normals,” one after another. Some call them seasons. In the tough seasons like those of poor health or great stress it can be hard to see any positives or hold out hope.
A lot has happened in the last year, both good and not so. I had back surgery in October and thankfully, it proved to be very successful. Two lumbar vertebrae were fused, remodeled and fixated, the disc between them removed and replaced with a cage of sorts that fills in with bone. It was a rough recovery process, but I have been in less pain from lumbar stenosis than ever in ten years! As I increased my walking time, which was crucial to recovery, my hips began to hurt more and more. I’d had a steroid injection in my right hip in the past with some relief, so we repeated the injections on both sides.
The left hip got better but the right got worse. An MRI showed that the ball of the joint was eroding because of no blood supply, this is called Avascular Necrosis or AVN. After a round of physical therapy we scheduled a total hip replacement in June. It was interesting but frustrating that the surgery was designated as “elective.” I guess the ball has to completely collapse, or one’s hip needs to actually fracture before the surgery is deemed urgent. There were months of waiting and scheduling while my AVN became more painful and debilitating. Regardless, it was another really successful surgery! The recovery pain was not as bad as the back surgery had been, but it was more disruptive because ambulation was affected for weeks. If you are considering it, I’d say that I would do it again in a heartbeat for the relief. And…it actually looks like I will need it again. The left hip pain is worsening, its ball eroding, so it is only a matter of time.
Around this time we decided to “go multi-generational.” Our fourth daughter and her family moved in with us. Their house will be sold, and then this house will be sold, and we’ll find something bigger for us all to move into. Moving them in and emptying their house was a busy and frenetic time. Luckily, I had a new hip and attacked the projects like the Bionic Woman. It was and is a fulfilling and exciting adventure.
The health gauntlet continued on with another biopsy for basal cell carcinoma. This time it was on my forearm–at least not my face. We caught it early and the surgeon simply cut an elliptical border around the biopsy site and pulled the edges together with sutures. It went fine–but it triggered lymphedema because of the lymph nodes removed from that arm in 2022. The treatment for that was wrapping my arm up like a mummy, causing my hand and wrist to swell, pinching a nerve which increased wrist and hand arthritis pain. Who would think that a hand and wrist could hurt so much? I got steroid injections at the base of my thumbs but it hasn’t given the relief I would have liked. The hand surgeon said it’s only time before he’ll need to remove the trapezium bones from each wrist because the have basically dissolved. Oh joy!
If you’ve read to this point, thank you. I am fully aware that it could be so much worse. I know that I am blessed to be alive at 63. When I whine, I do immediately think of loved ones. I think of young people who have cancer or other serious diagnoses, who have much more burdensome crosses to bear. God please be with them. Our sweet foreign exchange student from early on at the Abbey Farm is going through stage 4 cancer treatment. Please pray for her and her family. She is full of gratitude and perseverance; the treatment is difficult. She is an inspiration.
“Just keep swimming,” the character Dori repeated in Finding Nemo. “Do the next right thing,” Anna sang in Frozen 2 as she climbed out of a deep cave, laden with grief. Often I’ll repeat these two quotes like mantras. The next step, I realize, may not be a large or obvious foothold. It is often more like a wobbly little pebble that seems insignificant or futile, but never give up hope.
There is a well-known Christian poem called Footprints in the Sand attributed to a woman from 1936 named Mary Stevenson. Mary had a dream in which her life was illustrated as a walk on the beach with Jesus, footprints trailing behind them in the sand. Looking back, she asked Jesus why in the hardest of times of her life there were only one set of footprints. In the poem Jesus lovingly replies that he had not left her alone; indeed, when it was just one set of footprints, they were his, carrying her.
May Jesus carry us each through our most difficult and unexpected times, even if we do not recognize him.
