Week 2 continued 

The rest of the weekend with Brittanie went pretty smoothly. I hadn’t thrown up and thought I was finally in the clear. Boy, was that a joke. Late on Sunday night I started throwing up again and this continued for several days. Later in the week we called the doctor in St. Louis, hoping to figure out what was wrong. They changed my medication and gave me anti-nausea medication. But it didn’t work. The worst part was I wasn’t feeling any pain in my hip but I still felt horrible. Even worse:  whenever  I threw up, my hip would start hurting because I was doubled over in pain. I was not supposed to bend over.

Because of all this, I still wasn’t sleeping well. It had been over two weeks and I couldn’t sleep for more than 3-4 hours at a time. I still wasn’t able to get out of the bed by myself and I hadn’t left the house since coming home from St. Louis. All of this led to major depression. Thankfully, my mom took notice and we attempted to leave the house for the first time at the end of week two. The process of getting into the car was hard and took forever getting down the stairs and out to the driveway, but it was worth it. We went and picked Alex and Grace up from their practices; it felt great just to be in the car and seeing things outside.

By the time I got home I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was to sleep. It was about 6 PM when I got home so I took my medication and went to sleep. But by 10 PM I was throwing up again and never got back to sleep.

Week 3

More of the same: I was still throwing up. No matter what I ate or drank, I was throwing up constantly. Drink water _ throw up. Eat crackers _ throw up. Eat real food _ throw up. It just never stopped.

The depression was really starting to kick in. To put it lightly, I’m a people person. I love going out and talking to people and being around people. Staying in my bedroom for two weeks and not seeing anyone except people who came to see me was really hard.  So Thursday I convinced my mom to let me go to the bank with her. She goes to the bank everyday to make deposits for our business, so we know all the ladies in there really well. They had been asking about me so I was excited to go.

It took us awhile to get down the stairs and out to the car but we were on our way.  When we got there we got the walker out and I attempted to walk outside for the first time. I made it in the bank fine and everyone was excited to see me. After standing in there and talking for ten minutes I told my mom I needed to leave. I was completely wiped out. I knew that I had lost strength but I really learned just how much. Just standing there was very tiring. And by the time I got home I was almost asleep. It was really difficult to get back into the house and back up the stairs, but it was worth it.

The throwing up however, continued. I had begun to take my medication every 8-12 hours hoping it would make the throwing up stop, but it didn’t. Yet we did learn one great thing: no matter how long in between medication I went, my hip didn’t hurt. So the doctors tried something different. On Sunday they put me on Tylenol 3. Obviously it’s not a heavy narcotic, but it could still help me if I needed it. This proved to be the smoking gun because I didn’t throw up again. So by Tuesday morning I hadn’t thrown up and I was able to eat some real food for the first time in three weeks. I had put on some weight before the surgery because I hadn’t trained in three months. But since the surgery, I had lost 12 pounds. I was down to 128! My mom was really worried about me.

We decided to go to Sunrise Café, my favorite breakfast and lunch place. Walking from the car went great and so I knew I was stronger. I managed to spend an hour in there eating and talking to the owner (Mirdad) and the waitresses. This is where James Martin and I used to go after Saturday practice. It brought back lots of memories. It was a great time. I knew this was a turning point!