So, here we are. It has been 5 months post trache and things are going well. It was a little bumpy for a bit. As is common, I ended up with a bout of pneumonia. Almost everyone gets it right after the procedure. A few days in the hospital and it was taken care of. Then, not long after that, a bacterial infection. Thankfully, a round of antibiotics took care of it. From then on it has been pretty quiet.
As I said in my last post, my adventure with getting the trache was indeed that. The craziest thing was that during the recovery, Texas experienced a phenomenal winter storm. With it, came a variety of obstacles that were unexpected. Streets were shut down. Power outages. Freezing pipes. We were not even completely safe in the hospital. Three times , I had to be relocated due to water leaks. Two of the times I had to be “bagged”. In other words, someone had to manually breathe for me with an ambu bag. Not fun. The experience in recovery left me a little traumatized. With clinicians who had poor people skills. To covid restrictions that presented some tough obstacles. We managed to get through it all.
Bringing us to today. Why go through it? Why put yourself through the pain, the uncertainty? Just to stave off the inevitable? I will tell you why I did it. Because I still have fight in me. I still have a will to live my life. And most importantly, I want to live with my family and see them flourish. Yes, I can’t stop the fact that my time will come and this disease will win. Until then, I plan to keep fighting.
This past week, I did something that I probably would not be here to do if it were not for my decisions to have life extending procedures. I traveled from Texas to California via car. The reason… to watch my oldest son take his wedding vows and welcome a new daughter in law to our family. If that is not worth fighting for, I don’t know what is. I will keep fighting to have more of these life experiences with my loved ones. Next will be my middle son’s graduation from college. After that will be my daughter.
I realize that everyone has a different threshold for what they are willing to endure. Many factors come into play. This is what I choose. I don’t make my decisions lightly. I take everything into consideration. In the end, I choose to keep fucking fighting.