Christmas in July at Rapid City Hospital

Usually it is I who takes the quirky pictures to post on my blog, but this time it was Jonathan! He just couldn't resist getting a picture of this scene for all our posterity to enjoy--"Christmas in the hospital!" he crowed. It was July 17.

 

I was slightly unimpressed, getting through just one more step that the medical system deems necessary for pre-surgery. But at least the silly red socks kept my feet warm, and the green compression leg wraps were supposed to help keep blood from clotting in my legs during or after the surgery. 

I should be thankful for that, and I was. 

As for me, I was so unnerved and scared about what I was facing that I was already nauseated even before the anesthesia, hoping desperately that it wasn't the same sickness Jonathan had several days earlier, which we are almost certain was food poisoning. 

We had arrived at 6 in the morning, only moments ahead of Mark and Kristal Becker, interim SIM president, who had driven all the way from Cincinnati to come and support us this weekend as well as attend the 1-year memorial for Beth Montour. They prayed with us after we got checked in, me between Jonathan and Kristal, all our arms around someone on either side. At the Pre-Op waiting area, a black lady who checked in ahead of me, turned around and said, "I saw you guys praying together, and I'm agreeing with whatever you prayed--in Jesus' name!" 

 

The day before, I'd had an appointment at nuclear medicine area of the hospital, where I had to be injected with some sort of radioactive substance that was supposed to travel to my lymph nodes to light them up blue for the surgeon, who planned to take at least three for testing. I got through that dreaded procedure and felt better to be on the other side of it. 

We had hoped to drive Needles Highway, just for distraction, but as we started up the mountain, it was so foggy we just turned around. Making the best of things, Jonathan took us out to El Sombrero for a very nice supper (despite that I froze in that frosty temperature inside). And after that, I asked if we could just drive through a pretty section of town to admire the homes and flowers and lovely yards.

There are always risks with any surgeries, and the surgeons had been very forthright about them. I did not know but what this would be the last time I would see anything but bleak walls of a hospital room.  

We drove by wrap-around porches, English-type house smothered with ivy, and a riot of clematis climbing a yard arch, to say nothing of various flower boxes and beds complete with everything from Shasta daisies to day lilies.

 

 

Now, however, I was about to be wheeled to the surgery room. Two blue-coated guys came in, looking sober, even grim. They introduced themselves, one being a second anesthesiologist. It seems two anesthesiologists are necessary for my procedure, and I said I was pleased to meet them, whether it was true or not. The nurse I'd had earlier came in as well, cheerful and chatty. Unless it was another nurse. I went through so many nurses, doctors, and nurses aids in my stay at the hospital that it was just crazy. Anyway, this chatty nurse was obviously trying to distract me from any worries, and down the hall we went--but not more than a few feet before I had the bright idea that Jonathan needed to take a picture of the group of us. And it had to be before we went through the double doors ahead, because Jonathan would be left behind. 

"For my blog!" I explained. 

And wouldn't you know it! Those guys did not  just slow down so Jonathan could rush ahead for a picture, they stopped. And they didn't just stop, they literally backed up, and don't you just love the smiles we got on their faces!!!

When I saw this photo later, I was almost in heaven. Those unsmiling faces that had come in to get me, probably not exactly glad about another lady facing this kind of surgery, had lit up for our picture!

"I have seven children and eight siblings and other people I blog for," I explained as we squeezed through one double door after another, zooming around corners and down this hall and that.  

And then we were in the room, and I saw that long, narrow table that I had to lie on, looking like a gurney. They cranked up  my bed and told me to move over to it, and I did, trying to adjust my open-to-the-back hospital gown as I did so. I said something about how when I had my port surgery, they wouldn't let me move over on my own. I had to be pulled over on a sheet!

At least this time, I had the dignity of being allowed to move over myself.  

"We will take good care of you," the nurses and anesthesiologists promised, all over again. 

I lay there whispering secret prayers to my Jesus, Who alone knew exactly how afraid I had been. And yet, now in the moment, all I could say was, "Jesus, I'm trusting You!"  

And as I watched the buzz around me, I wondered if there was anything I could say about Jesus.  

"After all this is over," the chatty nurse asked cheerfully, in an obvious effort to distract my worries, "where would you take a trip?"

I wasn't thinking about a trip.  I was thinking about Jesus. And I opened my mouth and said so. 

I just said, simply "I was actually just lying here telling Jesus that I'm trusting Him."

There was a sort of agreeable gulp and gasp of approval, and the anesthesiologist was telling me to take big, deep breaths. 

And I was out. 

 

God was worthy of being trusted. The surgeon, who, along with the plastic surgeon who expected to have to patch me up later, had been concerned that I was so thin she wouldn't be able to sew me up after the mastectomy. She was expecting to possibly leave an open wound (under bandage, of course,) but had let me know I might be spending the next 6 days waiting for skin margins to heal enough that the plastic surgeon could then do a second surgery with skin grafts. Instead, she kept getting "clear" preliminary reports back from the skin samples and lymph nodes she was sending to the pathologist. Because she did not have to keep cutting skin away, she was actually able to sew me up!

"No way!" the plastic surgeon gasped, as my surgeon face-timed him for final advice and input (all while I was dead out, of course, but she told me later). He could not believe she had been able to do it.

Granted, it had been a stretch, pun intended. But two and a half hours and several layers of skin sutures later, I was waking up in the recovery room. 

Surgeon, anesthesiologists, and nurses had witnessed a miracle with the lady who was trusting Jesus! 

"Blood loss was minimal," Dr. Ashlea Semmens told me later. She was very pleased with how everything had turned out. With my history of low blood pressure, that was a good thing.    

God and the surgeon and nurses had indeed taken good care of me.