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What God Has Done For Me, pt. 1

Today, I am proud to announce that I will have been virtually pain free for 9 months on July 12. Many of you know, I would come on here every few weeks or months and be in agonizing pain, or on heavy painkillers and incoherent while in agonizing pain. God has touched my body (and my life in general) in amazing ways this year, and I want to share those things with you.

There are two goals I have had for my entire life. One was to become a teacher, and the other to become a mommy. I have accomplished the goal of becoming a teacher, but the mommy goal is waiting on a very special man. I used to talk about wanting 10 kids... then it went down to 6... now it is firm at 4. If I marry my fantastic boyfriend, I will have to beg him to let me have 4 instead of just 3... but that's neither here nor there :p The point is, my biggest desire my whole life has been to be a mommy. I decided at a young age that I did not want to use any form of birth control when I get married because I will have a child when God wants me to and no amount of birth control could change that. I could hardly wait to start my period because it meant that I had the ability to bear children (although I quickly decided I didn't like that part of womanhood after all), but I soon developed issues with my cycle. I would be one month on, two months off, three months on, a few more off... and so on. At first it was not worrisome because they are never regular at first. However, mine never regulated. Soon I began having fits of rage and bouts of extreme exhaustion. My back would hurt badly all the time. I never attributed those things to be connected, but later found out they were.

Fast forward a few years, and I am 16 years old. I am a junior in high school and have just had a horrific year. I watched my grandfather die a slow death and lost many, many friends and relatives to the grave. Things were finally on an even keel when I woke up one morning with an awful stomach ache. Of course, I assumed it must be the flu, so I stayed home. I took a bath and it didn't get better. I slept for a few hours and it didn't get better. I could hold food down, but my stomach hurt. Soon, the pain seemed concentrated on the lower right, so my mom took me to see a doctor. I was diagnosed with my very first ovarian cyst. I received the talk about how this is all normal, lots of women get them, yada yada yada, it would go away in a few days. And it did. But it came back in a few weeks. And a few weeks later. And a few weeks after that. I was getting them every. single. month. You men out there have no idea the amount of pain I was in. Women... you know. I have been told that it is equivalent to childbirth (don't know for sure... haven't been there yet...). When they burst, I was unable to move for a couple hours because of the pain. My mom and I had a long talk with the doctor and finally came to the decision that I needed to go on the birth control pill. We decided on a low dose because none of the women in my family have been able to use the pill effectively. Things were great after that... until they weren't. Over the next few years, I was in and out of the ER and the doctor's office. They kept adjusting my birth control dose. Too low didn't stop the cysts, too high caused migraines. My world crashed around me when I was told at 18 years old that I had PCOS and may never have kids of my own.

I remember when I was being sent off to college, the pastor called me to the front of the church to pray over me. Members of the congregation gathered around me and laid hands on me to pray for the next steps in my life. The pastor's wife laid a hand on my stomach, and I knew in that moment that someday I will have a son. I didn't know how, but I knew it was going to happen.

My college years were difficult to say the least. I spent much of my academic career begging my professors for extensions and begging my bosses for grace when I had been in the hospital or flat on my back (more accurately, curled in the fetal position) in pain. I think I went to class 5 times in November of sophomore year because I could not make it out of the dorm. My friends would help me up the stairs to eat since I couldn't walk. I also became financially independent from my parents in that time, so I had to pay for my own hospital bills. $350 isn't much, but to a 20 year old college student.... that is a HUGE amount of money.

We finally nailed down a pill that worked, and I was pain free for a few months. Pain during that time was attributed to a severe bacterial infection (a whole other story), stress (the body produces a chemical that reduces the effectiveness of birth control when you are stressed), and a medicine change (I was switching migraine medicines). I decided it was time to permanently move out of my parents' house and started living with my grandma. I had a better paying job and things were looking up. But then..... I got sick again last July. I started calling in sick to work most days. The days I did make it to work I had to leave early. A couple times I wasn't even able to make it through 5 minutes of my shift. I went to the doctor because the symptoms did not get better after 2 weeks like a cyst does, but worsened instead. I thought maybe I had another infection. The doctor ran bloodwork (which showed no infection) and two ultrasounds (neither of which showed a cyst or fluid indicating a ruptured cyst). She finally decided that I must have endometriosis, which is a worse diagnosis than PCOS, and started the process of scheduling a surgery. I called my mom and she booked a train. That is when I really saw God start to move.

I went in for my pre-op appointment and we ran into issues with the surgery. My insurance had a $5000 deductible, which meant that we had to pay a large sum up front. As I mentioned before, I was a college student and paying my own way. My parents could not afford to help me because of my brother's health issues (another story), so it looked like we would have to cancel the surgery. But here's the thing... this was on August 30. My insurance plan rolls over September 1. September 3 was Labor Day. We decided it would make the most sense to have the surgery after September 1 because it would meet my deductible and then I would have a year of coverage. That is about all I understood at that time because I was on round the clock vicodin. Somehow during that pre-op, we went from having only half of the $750 surgeon fee to having the full amount, which allowed us to continue with the surgery. The doctor agreed to operate on a Tuesday morning so that I could have the surgery as soon as possible. I went home and fell asleep, and my mom woke me up that afternoon to tell me that the surgery amount was paid in full. Every cent. The surgeon cost, the radiology, the anesthesia, everything. Not only that, but since it met the deductible, I have had 100% health coverage since that time. Talk about provision!

Better than the money, the surgery results came out that I do not, in fact, have endometriosis. I should be able to have a healthy baby. So what was causing all that pain? Um.... the cure! My body cannot break down the hormones in the birth control, so while the pill was stopping the cysts, it was causing it's own pain. I stopped the pill and haven't had the pain since. This is truly a miracle. I did not have to take a single day off work this year. I have paid off all doctors' debts. And I have become a teacher... something I wasn't sure I'd be able to do if I were in pain all the time. All I can do when I look at this past year and where I am at now is praise God, my healer and redeemer. He is my provider!
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Bumble Bee
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