The operation affected the entire right side of my body. My muscles were practically non existent, I was super skinny some 50kg (110 pounds), I couldn’t swallow because of the breathing tube during the operation and I couldn’t walk. I didn’t know this would be the case, I thought I would have the tumour removed, rest up and get out of hospital. That was way too much naivety and wishful thinking. I had to overcome each and every one of these areas and it wasn’t always pretty or easy to do.
My body was a little bent to one side (weird I know) and had to be straightened up. This happened because during the operation I was lying on my one side the whole time and caused me to be a little hunched on that side, plus that side was swollen for a while too. I had a great physio (physical therapist) who would come in each day and help me get back on my feet. The first time I walked was with a zimmer frame (walker)! I found it quite funny partly because I never thought being a young 19 year old that I would ever need to be dependent on one before, I actually needed it to keep me up! I remember thinking to myself, ‘So this is how they work!’
My physio wanted to get me off of the zimmer frame as quickly as possible so that I don’t become too reliant on it. When I walked it was slow and I needed someone to hold me up as I didn’t have enough strength in my legs just yet, plus I got tired very quickly. It took time but I made a choice everyday to get up and my mum would help me walk around the ward, swinging my arms and not walking like a cripple.
I had a feeding tube in because I couldn’t swallow. I was plugged into a machine that basically fed me pretty much constantly but at a slow pace, all the nutrients you needed - plus I had a cannula in (which I called my octopus because it had many different tubes leading from the one in my arm) giving me some more of whatever I needed. So whenever I needed to go up to the bathroom I had to wait to be unhooked from everything. One time I was super desperate to go, that as soon as they unplugged everything I got up real fast and started walking too quickly for my state and not in a straight line and started to fall when the nurse caught me before I hit the ground! My mind was so renewed and confident of the complete healing of God that my body still had to catch up. My mum was a little surprised that I could move so fast already! But I had to take things slowly and get used to walking in a straight line, up the stairs, around corners and judging spacial awareness. It took a couple of weeks to be perfect but I got there in the end (sometimes I still bump into my friends when walking but it's not that often).
The next big challenge was eating. Apart from having the heaviest dose of antibiotics that can be administered in a hospital, my eating was holding me back. I got frustrated at times, it's a thing that we are born into this world doing, something that you don’t go to school for, it's something that comes naturally to pretty much everyone. The tiniest amount of water could make me choke and it wasn’t all that great when you have a feeding tube as it would bring that up too and it was not a nice taste. This was tough. I constantly had to commit it to God and again and again, take it step by step. Every other day I would try and take just a tiny sip of water some days were successful, some days weren’t. About two weeks into not eating I was told that a Speech And Language Therapists (SALT) were coming to see how I was getting on. She came in with a lot of cool gadgets to test how I was doing. They had to put a camera down my nose so that they could see what my throat was doing when I tried to swallow, they wanted to make sure that my breathing airway was closed so that I didn’t get anything in my lungs. She dyed some milk blue so that it was easier to come up on the screen. (FYI Milk is easier to swallow than water as it is thicker) It worked! I could take a sip and swallow it fine, but when asked to take a gulp that was a disaster as I was choking all of the place and gasping for breath, it was very dramatic for something so small! But I didn't let that discourage me, I was thrilled in the small victory that I was able to even take a sip! To me that was still worth celebrating over.
The following day, as the doctors were making their routinely rounds they came to my bed along with 6+ people talking about me. It was weird because they would always look at you but you couldn’t always quite hear what they were saying. sometimes it was the most exciting part of my day as it was an update on how I was doing. They discussed were I was at with eating but this one nurse, who wasn’t the best caring person in the world decided to give her point of view on how things went the day before, she said ‘It didn't go well, she choked and it wasn’t a successful outcome’. I was fuming on the inside, I swallowed a sip, A SIP!! I piped up and shouted Hey! for the doctor to come over, he looked a little surprised that I did but he came. I said that I WAS able to swallow even though it was a little, but the nurse was persistent that I would still need a feeding tube. The doctor paused looked at me then said to that nurse ‘Get her something to eat’ I was SO happy to hear that I was going to actually eat something. The nurse reluctantly got me orange jello and fed it to me. I think that was a little bit of a kick in the teeth for her as she stood there saying I couldn’t eat!
From then on it was still a bit of a struggle as it would take me over an hour to eat a small amount of food, and it was very painful for my back muscles every time. I would do the simple act of bringing the fork to mouth and it was so painful. There were times I would just cry because it hurt so bad and I couldn’t afford to take any more medication on top of what I was taking, my mum had to feed me most of the time in the beginning, but I had to push past the pain because the only way the muscle will retain its memory of the action, is to repeat it. So many meals were eaten through tears of pain but I wouldn’t give up.
My diet mostly consisted of Oreos, milk and macaroni cheese (they served the best I have ever had in my life in the hospital!) my aunt always got me sleeves of Oreo cookies when she came and saw me, my mum once caught me with a wrapper of an entire sleeve of Oreos (that I got earlier that day) just before dinner. But I assured her I would still eat my dinner, I love food and the fact that I could eat again! It was the first time in months that I was eating properly again and it was such a wonderful sensation, like I had never tasted before and then all of a sudden I could and it was wonderful. It was still a tough thing to get used and took about 2 ½ months to eat properly, like I did before.
The God we serve is a good God.
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