4th Post-Op-Iversary!

Four years ago today I had major open abdominal surgery to move my left renal vein down a little so it would no longer be compressed by my aorta and superior mesenteric artery (SMA), a condition I was born with but that doesn't manifest until your 20s or 30s typically. This condition is interestingly called the Nutcracker Syndrome, because the left renal vein is like a nut being cracked by the aorta and SMA. Symptoms vary but mine were extreme stabbing pain in my lower left pelvic area during menstration, caused by secondary internal varicose veins on my left ovary and the left side of my intestines and also chronic daily achiness from standing or sitting for too long. 

I feel extremely lucky to have had such amazing results after this surgery. The daily achiness virtually gone. The monthly menstrual stabbing pain minimized to a couple of painful hours rather than days. It was like I was given my life back. Early detection played a big part though. The first really bad pain occurred in January 2012, although I had started to feel increased nausea and dizziness the fall before that. Within 8 months, I was having the necessary surgery to open up my renal vein so that the secondary varicose veins could retreat or retire because they're no longer needed. Luckily for me, my body didn't have that much time to create millions of varicosities thankfully. 

I chose to have open surgery over having a stent placed in my renal vein because I knew I wanted to be a mom someday and the stent seemed way too risky with the movement of organs during pregnancy. I was not even married at the time but I knew in my heart that I needed to plan ahead for my future babies. I was however dating an amazing and caring man who is now my husband and father of our baby girl who is due in less than a month. :)

I'm also very thankful for not having a stent put in because my body told me shortly after the surgery how much it despises foreign metal objects by slowly spitting out each of the metal stitches that were placed during the open surgery. I don't know though if my body would have done so if I hadn't had a post-op infection in which the ER doctor, a week after being released from the hospital, had to reopen my wound and let it heal from the bottom up. This was to take about 6 weeks to heal, they told me initially. It didn't heal completely until all the metal stitches were spit out 4 months later. The wound had to be cared for twice or three times per day which my loving boyfriend did before and after work everyday for several months until I was strong enough to clean the wound myself. I couldn't bring myself to look at the open wound for about a month. It was very grotesque and upsetting. The pain of packing the wound with dry gauze multiple times a day was unbearable. This was to stimulate the healing process so the wound could heal from the bottom up, but boy was it awful! 

Soon after the wound had been reopened, one doctor was explaining the process and one term sounded like fireworks or something similar but my dear mom, who was caring for me after my surgery, couldn't remember the exact term so she called it a sparkler. And this is how my wound/scar got her name, Sparkle. It really helped to be able to call this big open area on my belly a nice name like Sparkle. She is still affectionately called that today, 4 years later. 

The whole healing process created a lot of anxiety and PTSD in me. Counseling and life coaching have helped immensely. And I'm so grateful to report that I'm now 36 weeks pregnant with our first baby and have had minimal pain, hardly any of which have anything to do with the Nutcracker or residual pelvic varicosities. My husband and I also feel blessed in a way to have experienced such intense pain together because I always said the pain was preparing me for labor and now we're only weeks away from meeting our sweet baby girl who we hope to have naturally at a birth center. I never thought it'd even be possible with my past medical history but everything shows that I'm healthy and my body likes being pregnant. I feel so lucky to be able to experience such awe in creating a baby human being and be able to carry her for nine months while she develops. In all our checkups with the midwife, the baby seems very healthy and is growing so well. :)

It's been a long road but we're now going to be parents within the next month and we're overjoyed with this incredible blessing! Happy, grateful tears stream down my face as I type this. What an amazing journey!

 

 

Maternity photos by Kristina Slaney of Family Work Life at: https://familyworklife.myportfolio.com 

Ecua-Gring@ Miracles

Four more months to motherhood—only 20 or so more weeks before we get to meet our little ecua-gring@! Wow! It’s hard to believe that I’m already 20 weeks along! But then again, we’ve done so much in the last 5 months. Picture this: just 5 months ago, my husband and I were visiting the magical coastal village of Canoa in Ecuador while on vacation. There was a soft breeze, beautiful waves, warm sand under our toes, great people all around, a sense of peace that came over us in this magical place on Earth.

Tragically this past Saturday Canoa and many other coastal villages and towns in Northern and central Ecuador were destroyed after a 7.8 earthquake hit. Over 500 didn’t survive. Hundreds are still missing. Many more are injured and even more have lost their homes and businesses. Hundreds of aftershocks have occurred in the same area since Saturday and one early this morning was 6.2 on the Richter scale! We pray the rescuers can find more survivors today and that the aftershocks finally stop. I just can’t imagine the terror and trauma the survivors are living right now. It has been an extremely emotional week, to say the least.

One uplifting thing though, despite all the devastation and tragedy, is seeing how the Ecuadorian people have united to support the affected areas. Lines of people in the major cities form to provide donated items and caravans of donations are on their way to the Manabi and Esmeraldas provinces, which were most hardly hit by the earthquake. The Ecuadorian community abroad where I live in the Seattle area have come together quickly to put together a fundraising event this Sunday so all the proceeds can go to helping the victims of this tragic natural disaster recover and rebuild their lives.

Blogs and articles have been written about donation sites for those who are far away and still want to help. I know it’s still not enough because the damage is so massive, but it does fill me with a little more optimism and hope for the future for everyone affected by this disaster.

And this very same week on the homefront, our baby has started to tap! I wouldn’t call it a kick or jab yet, but just two nights ago I started feeling a tap-tap from inside, especially after eating something sweet. I know the baby has been moving all around for awhile now but he or she is finally big enough to tap me! Our little ecua-gring@. And tomorrow we get to see our baby on the ultrasound to make sure everything is developing well and to find out the gender!

So many different kinds of emotions, and add pregnancy hormones to the mix and you have one weepy mama here. And on top of it all, the many things I have been meaning to start doing during my pregnancy are starting to catch up with me—prenatal yoga, reading all those great holistic pregnancy books, reading more about bilingualism and child development, learning more lullabies, taking birthing classes, preparing for my maternity leave at work, going on more romantic dates with my hubby, organizing the house, starting my coaching business—eek! And all this is supposed to take place in the next 3.5 months—holy cow! That’s not that much time, is it? It’s amazing how fast 40 weeks can go by. Truly it is! It also helps me think about prioritizing because that is A LOT to try to get done in such a short amount of time when I’m also working full time, when we have a busy social and family schedule, when I’m offering my first stress management class in the community on May 1^st, when we’ve had visitors from Ecuador and New York over the past month, when we sometimes just want to (and need to) rest and relax and have a little fun. So staying realistic about how much I truly expect myself to accomplish while I only have a little over a month left in the 2^nd trimester and then the 3^rd trimester begins! Wow! It’s all very exciting though!

It’s really hard to describe the vast range of emotions I’ve felt this week—the roller coaster of fear, despair, horror, sadness with the news of the earthquake in Ecuador, and then hope and gratitude for all the support of the victims, and love and excitement filling my heart for the new life developing inside me. Wow. This is life, huh? The full range of it. The good, bad, ugly, beautiful, and miraculous parts of life.

Click here for more information about my upcoming class on creative stress management.