Here's the Latest on My Crack-ed Head...

See what I did there?  Hahaha, *snort*, you’re welcome.

If you're looking for part one click here
If you're looking for part II click here
 

So here is the long awaited update.

Let me start off by saying that I am so humbled by the amount of people that genuinely just care about me and have gone out of their way to ask how I’m doing.  You’ll never know how much I appreciate that.  Please know that your prayers are not going unnoticed, know that they’re highly valued, they’re felt, and still so needed.

I want to get the medical junk out of the way so we can talk about how I’m really doing.

Medically, I’m about the same.  My appointment with my surgeon did not go as I had planned.  I had higher expectations for that appointment than maybe I should have.  I fully expected to walk out of there with a surgery date, a recovery plan, and an expected date back to work.  What I walked out of there with was a plan for more painful test, absolutely no answers, confusion, disappointment, and a little bit of a broken heart to be honest.

I know that sounds crazy to be a little broken hearted over not hearing that I’ll have to have brain surgery, but that’s what happened.

Turns out, I need to have another MRI (there are no words for how overjoyed my highly claustrophobic heart truly is at this knowledge) with highly dense contrast (read: pukey) of the brain and a mylogram.

Let me explain what they’re going to do with this mylogram {click here to see what it is} they’re basically going to inject dye into my brain stem and into my brain so they can see all the teeny, tiny, little crevices…They will then take pictures – super thin cuts of my brain.  My surgeon is looking a CSF (cerebrospinal fluid aka brain fluid) leak and/or an additional fracture in my skull. 

Please, please, PLEASE be in agreement that they will be able to identify the cause of my pain from these tests!!!

Okay, now on to the stuff I really want to talk about.  People are constantly asking how I’m doing- how I’m handling all of this.

Honestly, I’m handling this about as you’d expect.  I have good days and miserable days.  The day of my disappointing appointment with the surgeon when I left with more questions than answers, I fell off the planet for the day.

I’ll be transparent enough to admit that I do not handle disappointment well at all.  I really don’t.  I walked in with a list of questions for the doctor regarding surgery and walked out even wondering if I would have surgery at all.  It was awful.  I can see now, and honestly, I could see then, that he’s being extra thorough- which, come on, you want in a surgeon, but I really thought this was a cut and dry deal.  Probably because the surgeon I saw 15 years ago lead me to believe it was so.

I will say this- the MRI I had 15 years ago had contrast and showed a leak, the one I had a couple of weeks ago did not and did not show a CSF leak; contrast is sometimes really important.  I hate contrast but felt it was important for this MRI- first of all, it makes me really nauseated and I’m a really hard stick for even the most practiced nurses; secondly, I didn’t want to have to do this again.  My neurologist didn’t feel it was necessary.  He also didn’t feel it was necessary to give me valium for this first MRI.  Lesson learned.  I freaked out and turns out, I need contrast for you to see my brain really well. Hopefully we won’t go down this road again.

So back to the huge disappointment.  I crawled into a hole, I’ll call this my ‘what the hell happened to my plan’ hole.  I was not happy and I told God I was not happy.  He’s a big boy, He can handle my disappointment, I was scared, and I was angry because now I have to go through a battery of really awful tests.  So I got alone with God and cried out.  I yelled.  I threw my disappointment at Him.  I threw my ugly at Him.  In return, He gave me a question.

Do you trust Me through your pain?

That’s really the bottom line for me.  Do I really trust that His plan is better for me than the one I have for myself?

Do I trust that He has my absolute best interest at heart?  Do I trust that He does not get glory from my suffering?  Do I trust Him completely in the midst of my worst pain and during the least of my understanding?

Yes.  Absolutely.

This is the God who rescued me {Psalm 18 - Good Stuff!!}, who continues to amaze me, and who in the pit of my pain and despair hears my cry, and meets me exactly where I’m at.

I realize that this is actually not about me.  I want to be healed, I don’t want to live this way.  If I truly honest, it’s driving out of my mind some days; the pain, the medication, the fatigue and weakness, the anxiety of all these procedures and new doctors, and just the uncertainty of what the futures holds is overwhelming most of the time.

It’s so funny, I have more people comment on how incredibly strong I am.  I’m not.  I’m so not.  Rest assured, it is not my strength that you’re looking at.  John says it best: I must decrease so that He can increase. {John 3:30}

What you might see is someone who is smiling, who is crackin’ snarky jokes, and laughing, what you don’t see, is all the time that I spend on my face crying out in my Daddy’s presence begging for this to be over.  You don’t all the mornings that I stand in the shower and just pray for the strength and the energy to finish getting ready and to have the ability to go to work and effectively do my job that day.  You don’t see all the evenings I go home and eat cereal and lay on the couch because that’s all the energy I have left for the day.  You don’t see all the tears I cry because I don’t have a husband to help share this burden. I have an amazing support system, but it can’t take the place of a spouse.  You don’t see all the times that I debate on whether or not I go to the hospital for an injection because I just can’t handle the pain anymore or not. All of this, and I still trust that my Father is a man of His word and I will be healed.

I share all of this with you not because I want sympathy, that’s the last I want or need from anyone.  I want you to experience my faith.  

I do my best to be transparent before you all because I know that there is someone out there who maybe is on the fence on whether or not it’s safe to trust God with their circumstances and I want to always encourage people that it is safe.

He is always safe.  He hasn’t disappointed me yet.  It may not always be comfortable, but He didn’t promise me comfort, He promised to never leave me, and He hasn’t.  He has taken me deeper than I’ve ever imagined, I’ve experienced new depths of His love and comfort than I even imagined existed.  I trust Him with my whole heart, with everything that I can see and more importantly, with everything I can't.  I trust Him whether I feel like it or not.

Faith is like exercising, the more you do it, the easier it gets.  Well, I assume it’s like exercising, I don’t do it very often, but I’ve heard it gets easier with practice.

God is good, and I absolutely trust Him.  He goes before me.   He has made the crooked places straight and it is all in His timing.

If you remember me in prayer, please be in agreement that the answer will be clear on these images.

Thank you and be blessed!

Pamela

I can be reached at Pamela@ACreativeWord.com

Check out our website: www.ACreativeWord.com