Things have been emotionally rough and raw lately.  Lot’s of things are in transition.  Relationships in flux.  And I’m still stuck in the hospital (33 consecutive days and 39 total days in the hospital by my count).  I’m trying to think of it as being 39 days closer to being released from the hospital.  It doesn’t work that well though.  But cheery flowers like these ones I got from my Great Aunt and Cousins brightened my room and my mood.

Tests a trickling in and no definitive diagnosis concerning the cause of my brain stem inflammation is yet emerging.

So I was especially pleasantly surprised to receive this cuddly visitor today.  It was just what the doctor ordered.

In the midst of confusion, I often turn to poetry to help capture my thoughts.  I wrote this one in about ten minutes, and I rather like it.  An emotional moment forever frozen like a bug trapped in amber.

A Place For Him

by Lauren Soffer

Life can be wild
Wonder is lost on this child
So she goes it alone
As she makes her way home

But the time she tripped
And she didn’t fall
A silent scream
Yet He heard the call
Still She goes it alone
As she makes her way home

Not ready
Not ready to let go
Not ready
For a hand to hold
Cause even crying all alone
At least she knows
It’s all she knows

Life can be wild
Wonder is lost on this child
This girl must
Grow up
Not a child anymore
Stand up
Reach out a hand
Lift up
Her heart till it holds
Always
A place for Him

EDIT: Last night my friends Spencer, Kristi, and I had a blast in my hospital room writing music to my lyrics.  Here’s a REALLY rough take of it – complete with my voice still completely hoarse from an allergic reaction and nasal from having a feeding tube up my nose.  Hehe.  So forgive my lack of ability to hit any of the notes right now, but I at least wanted to give you the idea.

I’m scared about tomorrow.  Tomorrow I have to get a feeding tube put in.  But let me back up.

My liver function has been declining.  But now my GI doctor thinks that my liver problems might be from the oral antibiotic they had me on for my kidney infection, so I of course stopped that.  (My kidney infection seems to finally be better at least.)  With the liver my doctors want to wait 2 weeks to see if the levels normalize with me off the antibiotic.  If not then I’ll need a liver biopsy to determine what is causing it be it Autoimmune Hepatitis or something else, and we’ll go from there.

Over the last couple days, I’ve tried to eat clear liquids again and all I get is more pain and nausea.  I tried for the last time today, and I still had the same horrible nasuea and pain.  So tomorrow I’m going to have a feeding tube put in.  We are going to keep me on tube feeding for a WHOLE MONTH!!!  Why?  To really give the pancreas a chance to rest and calm down.  That means no eating for a month!!!  Ugh.

In the past, we would have just upped my dose of Prednisone to calm down the Autoimmune Pancreatitis, but now the side effects of the Prednisone are causing me too much harm and my doctors are afraid of raising it even more.

So tomorrow I will get a Nasojejunal Tube (or NJ Tube) placed.  It will go up my nose, down by throat, through my stomach, and into my small intestines.  It will allow me to get nutrition without aggravating my Autoimmune Pancreatitis.

So why am I so afraid?  Well for one thing you have to be under anesthesia for it.  Secondly, last time I had a feeding tube placed I woke up afterward into a nightmare.  I had somehow been exposed to latex which I have a life threatening allergy to.

I woke up feeling like I was drowning.  I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was going to die.  I kept coming in and out of consciousness, but each time I awoke there were more doctors and nurses around me.  They couldn’t stabilize me in the Recovery room and had to move me to the ICU and put me on a machine to help me breathe.  I spent the day and night in the ICU recovering from the incident.

Since I found out that I was getting another feeding tube I have been having flash backs to the incident.  I am very nervous something similar will happen again.  Luckily the hospital is a lot more latex free than it was when this happened a few years ago.  But even so, I am having a hard time staying calm about it.

But if all goes well with the feeding tube, and I am able to tolerate the tube feedings well, they might be able to send me home from the hospital on Saturday.  If not, then I don’t know when I’m going to make it out of this place.

It’s already been 14 consecutive days and 20 total days that I’ve spent here in the hospital, but I’ve got to keep the faith!  I know I will make it out of here eventually.  In the meantime, my friends and family have been wonderfully supportive.  I owe them so much.  And when things are at their worst, I’ve been calling upon God to help me through.  He has been such a constant source of strength, comfort, and support.  I lived so long without God in my life, but now I don’t know how I’d get by without Him.

In the end, I just have to deal with things as they come.  Things are what they are, and I know that with my own inner strength and God’s help I can get through anything.  I could cry about it (and sometimes I do), but I’d rather laugh and make the best of things.  Because life is too short.

My growing collection of flowers from friends and family.

Though I am a Novel Patient, patience isn’t my strong suit.  But patience is what is required of me right now.

My kidney infection has triggered a flare of my Autoimmune Pancreatitis.  I’ve completely lost my appetite and am having severe upper abdominal pain that bores through to my back.  Luckily I am at the hospital with all my specialists including my Pancreatic specialist.  In terms of treatment, my doctors are really afraid to give me more Prednisone (a steroid) while I am still fighting this infection.  Plus they don’t want to undo my progress in tapering the Prednisone.  So the treatment is to keep me completely off anything by mouth – no food or even water – for several days until this hopefully calms itself down again.

So they are keeping me here through the weekend, and I get to practice being patient.

I am plain tired of it all though.  I am tired of being in the hospital so often that it becomes so commonplace to my family that they hardly bat an eye.  I am tired of having IVs and PICC lines hanging out of my arm and being covered with bruises from botched attempts at them.  I am tired of being woken up in the middle of the night to get my vitals checked.  I’m tired of all the medications and the side effects.  (A new fun one from the IV antibiotic is blurred vision.)  I’m tired of being bored and lonely and alone in the hospital.  I am tired of being so tired.

I wrote a poem just now:

In The Hospital

In the hospital
Knowing only pain
And loneliness
Poked and prodded
Woken in the night
Woken in to a nightmare
But this is no nightmare
This is my life
So I search
For a beacon of hope
For a way to get through
And make this trial a tool
To grow and evolve
Past the loneliness
And past the pain
Poking and prodding
My soul into change
Though I dream
And I hope
For health
I cannot wait
So one day at a time
In the hospital

On the upside, I get to take a shower tomorrow.  A REAL shower!!!  I can’t explain how much I’m looking forward to that!

Also my church has been amazing!  They’ve been calling and texting and most importantly visiting me.  It’s been awesome to have such a source of support for the first time in my life!  Their visits have broken up the monotony and made it so much easier to be patient.

And patient I must be – a novelly patient patient.

Relationships are complicated enough, but adding chronic illnesses into the mix increases complications exponentially.  In fact, being bitten by the love bug leads to all sorts of symptoms, side effects, and potential complications.

It’s been a long time since I’ve let myself like a guy.  So imagine my surprise to find myself with a good old fashioned crush on someone.  But I have all the symptoms of a crush.  Fluttering in my chest.  Racing heart.  Warmth in my cheeks.  Funny feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think about if he might like me back.  But it’s also brought up a lot of confused feelings – some not so pleasant.

I feel so inadequate because of my illness.  Why would he want me when he could have countless girls who are whole and healthy?

Dating me would mean dealing with all my limitations that even I don’t want to deal with – side effects if you will.  It would begin with setting the date pending me feeling up to attending.  Not being able to keep plans because of my illness has caused problems even with my closest friends.  Breaking a date wouldn’t exactly be the way I’d want to start a new relationship, but the possibility is a reality that would come with dating me.  Then when he’d pick me up we’d have to lug my wheelchair or walker on the date.  The first thing I want to explain to him would hardly be how to assemble my wheelchair.  At dinner he’d get a full education on my eating difficulties as I filled the waiter in on my food allergies and took pills with dinner that would allow me to digest my food.  Sounds like a pretty mortifying first date in all honesty.

I worry that I wouldn’t be able to do his favorite activities with who ever I date.  I can’t even do my favorite activities anymore.  I can’t go hiking or horseback riding or play tennis.  What if physical activities are an important part if his life?  How would I ever share that with him?

And then there’s the issue of feeling inadequate due to my appearance.  I’ve put on 150 pounds from being on steroids (Prednisone) to control my autoimmune diseases.  Though I’ve now lost a small portion of it, I still feel so physically unattractive.  Not to mention the horrible acne and hair growing in strange places the same medication has also caused.  I so desperately want to be thin again and have clear skin again if only so I will be physically appealing to guys again.

Then if things do work out after the initial shock of dating someone with chronic illnesses, there’s still all the complications that can arise down the road.  What if he gets tired of dealing with the day to day struggle of my illness?  If we someday get serious and get married, the reality is that having children and even sex itself can be difficult with a chronic and painful illness.  If we did have children, would I even have the energy to raise them?

I know.  I know.  Now I’m getting way ahead of myself.  But I don’t really know what else to say.  It feels like nothing I can say will explain how horribly inadequate my illness makes me feel.  I barely have the energy to be a good friend sometimes let alone a good girlfriend.

I hope that someday I find someone who can look past my illness and see me.  But until then I can’t help wishing that the love bug didn’t even bite me in the first place.

Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.
Genesis 13:17

He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.
Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?
And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.
John 5:11-13 (King James Version)

Sunday was a small miracle in the grand scheme of things but not so small to me and a miracle none the less. It was a day that I thought would never happen on many levels. One thing that I thought would never happen was get Baptized, but Sunday was my Baptism. Another thing I thought would never happen was walk at my Baptism, and yet I have gone from not walking from for over a year to no longer using my wheelchair at all in the last three weeks.

I’ve been hesitant to talk about my faith here as its a touchy and divisive subject for some, but I figure this is my blog and my faith has become a major part of my life. I share every other aspect of my life here. I would be remiss if I left something so close to my heart out.

But my faith wasn’t always so important to me. I was raised Reform Jewish, and though I was Bat Mitzvahed, Confirmed, and even assistant taught Religious School at my Temple, I never felt connected spiritually to that faith. So in my more recent adult years I’ve been searching for a faith that helped me feel close to God. For a while For a while I was going to the Universalist Unitarian Church in my area, and though I liked the people and the services very much I still didn’t feel that closeness to God that I so desperately needed.

So when Melissa invited me to join her for services at her at our local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I thought it was a long shot but worth at least checking out.  I had already learned a lot about being Mormon from her during the time she’s worked for me, and she had suggested I could get a blessing for my health when I went to church with her.

I was totally unprepared for what I experienced; I felt God for the first time in a very tangible way.  I knew right in that moment that my search had come to an end.  That I had found what I had been searching for.  I decided to start investigating the church and taking my Missionary Discussions that I would need in order to covert.  My blessing also said that through faith I could be healed.  It has been amazing how true that has been.

Over the following week I started feeling better than I had in a long time.  I decided to capitalize on the opportunity and try walking again for the first time in over a year.  I started with just a few steps.  I expected for the recovery process to be slow going.  I expected that it would take months to build up enough strength to walk more than a few steps at a time after over a year of being in a wheelchair or bed full time.  But I have been praying every night and the improvements to my walking have been exponential!  And in just three short weeks, I went from my first steps to ditching my wheelchair completely!

So Sunday I was Baptized, and I walked the whole day – including down the steps into the Baptismal Font and up again.  My Dad and his girlfriend Wendy were there which made my very happy.  My Mom chose not to attend which was the only sad thing.  It was one of the very best days of my life! And with it I have found such peace and happiness the likes of which I had never known.  Words cannot describe how grateful I am.  It has been such a relief and such a comfort.  I truly believe that through faith in Christ I have begun the healing process!  And I am so thankful to Him for this and for the closeness I now feel to God.  Through Him I have found what I was looking for and more than I could have ever imagined.