May Update... a little late

May was a very hard month for me since my orginial surgery in Aug. of '08. I spent almost 3 weeks in the hospital and had 3 "mini-sugeries", 2 of them with 48 hrs of each other. I fainted twice during the month of May, both requiring trips to the ER. On my last visit, which was the last week in May, I was sedated for 24 hrs, so I remembered nothing of where I was or what was going on when I woke up. The only good part about both my stays, is that I have had the same Dr.'s care for me on the floor both times, partly because I've been on the same floor. May also marks 1 year since this stuff has been going on. My visits to the hospital have no longer become "let's try and figure out what's wrong" , I've had every test in the book and apart from opening me up and looking at me from that perspective, which no surgeon would dare to do, because I probably wouldn't live through that surgery (I've been told that). My visits have become "pain mangement" only. I'm loaded with various drugs, enough to make me comfortable, and then given a prescription for the same pain meds, come home, use them up, and go back, and it's become a very hard cycle to break.

June has started where May left off. Only this month things look a little more desperate. I thought that had found a pain management Dr. to go see, and it was a let down. I will be chasing some other leads come Monday morning, but every Dr. has a long wait, and while I can make an appt. for July or Aug. what am I suppose to do between now and then? I am in the point of my cycle where I am almost done using my at home meds, and apart from putting a pain patch on, my only other choice is to go back to the ER and start the cycle again. However, I think a new choice has opened up in a city close to me, and I have looked into going to an Urgent Care clinic staffed with an ER Dr. that might or might not given me a prescription for my pain meds, enough to keep me OUT of the ER/hospital and enough to last until an appt. with a pain management Dr. I don't know what he will do and if I will go. The clinic is run by the 1 hospital in my town that will not help me.

So, prayer requests for June? Pray that the pain will go away. Pray that I will have enough meds or that the meds will work better. Pray that I DO NOT have to go back into the hospital this month. My birthday is at the end of this month, and I'd like to be able to say that I stayed OUT of the hospital the last month of my 27th year. That would only make 2 months out of the last 12 that I haven't been in the hospital, but it's a goal that I have made with myself. Pray for peace for myself, as I have lost my strongest ally in my battle.

I thank everyone who has continued to pray through all of this. I have learned alot about prayers this past month, and now I look at praying in a slightly different light, but I still know that God has asked us to pray in our darkest times of need.

Emily