May 13......D-Blog week was the week that I was going to jump back into blogging. Here it is the very last day...and I here I am. Actually, it's quite appropriate for how my life has been since January 12.
January 12 is yet another day engraved in my mind forever, much like Jada's diagnosis date. A game changer for our family. January 12 is the day that Jeff was involved in a horrible car accident in the middle of nowhere Alaska in 20-30 below temperatures.
He was coming home from Delta Junction (95 miles away) in a Subaru station wagon driven by his friend and co-worker, Luke. They came up over a hill and were going down the other side, when a truck in the opposite lane passed another vehicle in a no passing zone. It was icy. Jeff and Luke had nowhere to go, so Luke turned the car sideways and took the full force of this big truck. What they didn't know, was the "other vehicle" was an ambulance, coming back from Fairbanks. God is so good. Jeff and Luke had immediate medical attention....that doesn't even happen in the middle of a city! The entire left side of Luke's body was broken....from a concussion on his head all the way down to a broken ankle. Jeff was able to walk with help from the car to the ambulance...but was experiencing intense internal pain. He had indeed bruised his colon and broke some vertebrae in his back, and had a concussion.
Jeff was admitted to the hospital and the dr. told him that his colon would most likely perforate...and it did. Two days after the accident, I was getting ready to head to the hospital, and Jeff called. His colon had perforated in the middle of the night and they were prepping him for surgery. The surgery lasted somewhere between 3 and 4 hours and they ended up removing a foot of his colon, leaving him with a temporary colostomy. He ended up being in the hospital for 8 days, healing and learning how to care for his colostomy. Luke just got out of the hospital a few weeks ago, still with broken bones that are healing.
The weeks that followed were all a blur to me. Jeff had business trips to Chicago (because....oh...by the way....the same day he was in the accident he also found out that he got a new position with his current company) that he had to take and then the kids and I took a trip to Iowa to see family before spring break hit all around the country. Traveling stand- by is something you just don't want to attempt at certain times of year!
Somehow, April rolled around really fast. At the beginning of the month, Jeff had an MRI done to see how well his colon was healing. After the initial surgery, they told us it would be 3-6 months before they would re-attach his colon, depending on how well he healed. Well, the MRI showed some good stuff, so he was scheduled for surgery on the 27th of April, a few days after Jada's 6th birthday.
Now...we are on the other side of surgery. Two weeks post-op now and he is completely ecstatic to be done with the colostomy bag, but healing from this surgery has been extremely painful. His surgery lasted two hours...an hour and a half of it was spent cleaning up the scar tissue from all of the abrasions that happened during the accident. His dr. told me that healing was going to be slow and difficult...he told Jeff as well, but for some reason, Jeff thinks that it ought to be moving along a little faster than it is! :)
Lessons learned from this..... 1)Friends and family are CRUCIAL parts of your life. Jeff's sister and husband flew up from Anchorage after the accident. His dad flew up from Iowa to help with the kids. And my church family provided us with meals for two weeks plus I could call any one at any time if I needed anything. I could go on and on with the things that people did for us. It blew my mind. 2) I will never again take my husband for granted. Our marriage has been growing stronger over the years, but this has shoved it forward even more. He is God's perfect gift to me and he completes me in everyway. I don't want to walk through this life and raise our children without him. 3)Diabetes can take a back seat! Blood sugars haven't been perfect (but really...when are they?) but Jada is doing great. I've learned to trust other people with her in ways that I never would have before.
So...this has basically been our life, with diabetes on the side. Accident, surgery, recovery, a little bit of normal...then more surgery and a whole lot of recovery. Life should be getting back to normal for us soon. I'm starting my summer schedule at work...going to nights rather than my typical early mornings. School is out this week...the weather is amazing (after a VERY cold winter) and I'm ready to get back to my real life!!
