It’s been exactly one year since my surgery. 2017 was a year of healing, risk, growing, trying, falling, getting up, and getting up some more.

In our next season of life, after we had our first child, we had friends, who were a married couple, move close to us. The wife worked with my husband and we started to get to know them when they started living 6 minutes away. They hadn’t had any kids yet, so they soon became our, “hey can you watch our kid,” couple. We loved living life with these friends.

We bought a townhouse for our first home, just before we got married. One of my husband’s former co-workers lived in the complex and she introduced us to a few neighbours as soon as we moved into the complex. We became friends with 5 other units of families within a short while and started to live a life of community we had never experienced.

For most of May I dealt with autoimmune flare-ups as my body tried so hard to fight a head cold that just didn’t want to leave. My body was fighting germs as much as it could, but in it’s fight mode, it started going overboard and attacked my good cells as well. All together, the symptoms did not stop me from doing all the things I wanted to do, but the main symptom of fighting these issues was exhaustion. I’m so happy that my body has recovered from all that!

I used to have an acquaintance in my life that I would see regularly and after interactions with this person, I would spiral for two days replaying the words exchanged in my head. For the purpose of this post, I’ll just call him "Angry Acquaintance", for now.

It’s now been one year since I had a visit to the ER that ended up being a 5-day stay. I think of the year and all that’s happened and I’m so thankful for so much physical healing. While I started thinking about my medical progress I started to think about my heart, and it’s progress too.

It has been a fun and crazy few weeks as I planned a few surprises to celebrate my husband’s 50th as epically as I could. As we are in the one-week between his birthday and our anniversary, here is a bit of our story.

Since March 1st, I’ve driven to 11 auditions, 19 medical appointments (5 not for me), 5 birthday parties, and about 6 play dates. I got through Spring Break!

I’ve healed quite well and am just dealing with some issues that will take about a year for complete recovery. The main concerns have passed, so now it’s just dealing with the chronic pain and soreness from internal scarring and back issues. I’m getting regular treatments that are helping. I’ve gotten back to doing 100% of the things I used to do around the house and I was able to convince my husband that I was ready to resume two of my part time, on call jobs, as well as some volunteering at my kids school.

I was one month away from turning 17 when I arrived in Taiwan. I had decided after finishing high school, that I would go live in Taiwan to be with my maternal grandparents and get to know them.

Last year I participated in a group book study, which accompanied video teaching for a book called “Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't” by Drs. Henry Cloud & John Townsend. A few chapters in, I started developing an over sensitivity to the word “Safe”. My first personal revelatory reaction during the study was, “Oh my gosh, I’m not a safe person.” But as the study continued, my next thought was, “Oh my gosh, no one is safe.”

I lost a lot of blood during surgery and my blood pressure became dangerously low. I was given two units of blood in the O.R., two more in Recovery, and then two more before I was discharged.

I am trying to recover while being aware of my pre-existing conditions physically and emotionally. The struggle in my emotional healing is with navigating through forgiveness while re-establishing trust in the relationships in my life that need repair. I’m trying to find the boundaries I need to balance what’s “safe”, while moving on in healing.

I am trying to recover from surgery while keeping in mind my pre-existing health conditions. I mentioned that I have an allergy to anti-inflammatory meds in my last post. The allergy is actually connected to some minor autoimmune issues that I have.

I had a follow-up with my family doctor who received the reports regarding the details of my surgery. The surgeon was worried at one point that she had possibly nicked my bladder and other connections and had an urologist come in to the OR to examine my bladder and kidneys. The urologist confirmed that everything looked fine and I am thankful.

I started this year with scheduled surgery on my calendar. It was going to be a very common procedure and we prepared as much as we could. Friends signed up to deliver meals, I had rides and pick-ups for school all ready, and everything was to go as planned. Except it didn’t.