The Best Laid Plans...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope that everyone is spending this special day tucked up with family and friends, enjoying all the wonderful trappings we've come to associate with Thanksgiving. I am doing the same, except I almost wasn't.

This past weekend was a soccer tournament for my daughter's U12 team. My husband and I arranged to get separate rooms, as I was going to host not only my daughter, but one of her friends in the hotel room. All started normally enough, with me not sleeping in the room Friday night.

As I stated before, this is not normally unusual for me. I tend to not be a great sleeper anyway, and especially not when traveling. Here I was, tossing and turning the night away, unable to get comfortable for some reason. When 6:00 finally rolled around, I scooted out of bed, crawled into the shower, and began my day.

The girls spent all day Saturday out on the soccer field giving it their best shot. Throughout that day, my discomfort continued to increase. Upon conclusion of the team meal at Roadhouse, I took the exhausted but excited girls back to the hotel room, praying sleep (and relief) would come. It didn't.

A nearly completed scarf kept my mind off the pain as much as possible.

By 2:00 my pain was so severe, I became convinced I was experiencing appendicitis. I tiptoed across the hallway to my husband's door and quietly knocked on it. When he answered, I explained my fears. With his help, we found a hospital for me to travel to, and I packed up a backpack, hauled myself into our van, and began the 18 mile trip across town to the hospital. AT 2:00 IN THE MORNING.

Sorry, I was a little high on all the pain meds, so my photo isn't the best. I wonder what I was thinking when I took it!

Upon arrival, I was quickly greeted and gowned. Sarah, the P.A. on duty concurred, and off to CT we rode. By this time, I was in extreme agony. Except it wasn't appendicitis. CT instead revealed that there was a mass of some sort near my right ovary. To confirm, I was whisked into an ultrasound room, where it was indeed confirmed that I had a seven centimeter cyst attached to my right ovary.


The radiologist searched carefully and was unable to find any signs of torsion, so they decided to release me to my newly arrived husband, medicated with two rounds of morphine, one of Toredol, one of Fentonil, and one more of some other pain medicine. It would have been lovely if at least one of those meds would have helped.

It was a rough two and a half hours home. My stomach had completely rebelled. I gave up. Brett somehow got me to bed, and I slept for the next 12 hours or so. By the time I woke up, I decided I wasn't going to let a little (or large) cyst stop me, so I proceeded to get ready to head out for Sarasota, which is where we were planning on spending the holiday. We were within twenty minutes of leaving when my personal doctor called me and asked me to come in.

I did. I repeated the same ultra sound, and he saw the same thing, except he wasn't convinced the cyst wasn't torcing. And then he said, "I'd like to operate on you this afternoon." I was speechless. Instead of heading out for a fun, family-filled weekend, we instead rushed home to gather what necessities we could and returned to the hospital. Surgery was scheduled for 4:00, and at 4:30, only 30 minutes late, I was in the O.R.

Waiting for relief.

I understand the surgery was routine. The doctor's suspicions were confirmed, as the cyst had torced at least seven times (not a good thing) but it was out of my body, and that was the main thing. Our family was able to head out to Sarasota only a day later. While I've definitely not been feeling well, I'm glad the surgery is behind me rather than ahead of me. I've enjoyed spending time visiting with family and doing one of my other favorite activities:

Believe it or not, it's a shawl.

So, this Thanksgiving is different than any other I've experienced. I am truly thankful for the miracles of modern medicine. I'm praying for healing, and I'm resting in His Grace. I look forward to feeling better and am hoping this never happens again. I pray that your Thanksgivings are filled to the full with blessing upon blessing!