The End of the Nightmare.

The flicker of the television that played all night was like a mobile to an infant. It provided entertainment while settling in to my couch recliner that was my bed. I drifted off into a deep sleep, and when I woke. It had seemed that once again this discomfort decided to rear its ugly head. This was it. It was the morning that everything changed. This was it, it had been enough long ago and now the pains redundant ways were to be solved no matter what that entailed. While my mother was in her office making all the necessary calls that she so lovingly did. It was like she was the president when she would call the hospital. Never mess with a Momma and her cub. I could hear her on the phone "this is the 6th hospital visit! we have been living this for too long, something is wrong!!" she proclaimed. I sat there watching the news, it was all I could do to contain myself as I called my dad at work. I didn't even have to finish my sentence before he interrupted in his deep teddy bear voice "let me clean up here and I'll be home". The hospital knew I wasn't going to be able to wait the countless hours it was going to take for them to admit me through the Emergency Room so they sent us to the Salem Hospital, where they gave me pain and nausea meds until a room cleared up in Portland at OHSU. It was like clock work, every nurse that entered the ER room in Salem wanted to know my story. As if they had all been paid to say "You poor thing! You just want this over with don't you". I always responded with "you have no idea". My dad and I drove up for that last visit. We knew that something this time was going to have to happen. We couldn't go on with continuing this musical hospital room escapade. We held each others hands like we did on almost every night. Something I know on the inside brought him to tears just with one touch because, for that moment I was his little girl again that two year old that ran to the door every time he got home from work. He saw "his whole reason for living" frail. Something which he knew me not to be. In faint voices and long pauses before finishing my statements I asked "what's your favorite memory of me?" he looked at me and quickly turned back to look at the road. He took his left arm and placed it on the window of the car propping it up like an arm rest and let his finger fall on top of his eyebrow as he blinked several times trying to contain his emotions and responded "all of time I've ever spent with you is my favorite. Seeing you ride out there, was fun!...(wow is he really saying this to me? he was having fun? God damn it. I ruined it!) we were all having fun out there and this was an accident Candace, it is not your fault. If you were a car, I would take you apart and fix you but I can't do that! This is it we're not leaving until we find out what is going to happen. They are not going to force us out this time, we all just wanted you home so that we could take care of you and if we allowed them to force us out it was only because we wanted you home so bad!" I didn't say anything not only because I knew I couldn't hold in my emotions the way I needed myself to but the pain was getting so bad I felt like I was going to pass out and never wake up. I just said "I'm so glad you're my dad" and let the tears fall as he continued the road we traveled more than our fair share of times. Upon arrival we did the same thing we always did, got settled into our room had the doctor come up and assess and start the same medications I had been on for almost 2 and a half months now. In the days to follow I saw the worst of my condition come out. The outbreaks of pain that would get so bad I would have 4 and 5 doctors in my room at a time. They thought the pain medicine I had was not strong enough. They brought in to me a large syringe that looked like King Kong in all his glory it was completely relative to the size of him in a Plexiglas box. Attached was a thin piece of tubing that connected to a green button that I called the "Iron Man button" I was allowed to push the button every 25 minutes for a pain dose administration. This worked, for a few hours while I was AWAKE that night when I had fallen asleep I had let the pain get ahead of me and I shot up out of bed crying. Talk about a scene, here we go again with these doctors. "What is going on?! Why can't we just keep the original pain dosage and schedule I have been on until the surgeons can decide what to do with me??!" I asked my doctor. "Well, the body tends to create a tolerance to medication after you have been on it for a long period of time like you have been and we just thought you might like to be in control of the pain medicine when you needed it instead of having to call a nurse in to get the dosage" "YEAH! That's fine and great for when I'm awake and have 25 minutes to wait for my next dosage! This is not working you have to do something NOW!!!!" I yelled while whipping my tears away from my face. I had several days of new teams coming in to meet me which consisted of The Pain Team docs(yes, that's really their high school dodge ball tournament name), The Psychology Team(due to my traumatic experiences and panic attacks during the night) The Pulmonary Care Docs(for my lungs since I had been immobile for so long) and The Surgeons/Trauma Docs(they were all basically one team pretty much the popular jocks of the whole hospital). Oh the politics of it all! Every morning when the doctors would round I would have an emotional melt down, I was depressed. I was pissed off, and I had every damn right to be! My pain regimens were switched around multiple times a day, I never had any doctors come in and explain to me what was going on or what I should be expecting to be seeing or doing that particular day or the ones to come in the future!! I sat there day in and day out in my room asking everyone just like I did when this whole accident happened that same repetitive question that had changed from "Am I going to be alright?" to "What is going to happen?". Never did I think in all my life I'd almost be begging for a surgery. I wanted out of this pain so bad that I was willing to do whatever had to be done. If that was them cutting me open with a butter knife and sewing me back together with Gorilla glue and a flame thrower that was what I would accept and I'd sign any form they needed. One particular doctor that would come in every morning said the same thing to me "Hold tight" and would pat me on the leg every morning. Hang tight? I've got your hang tight!! We were nearing the 11th day of this stay, my parents and I went for a walk. I had to get out of there. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, no doctors would tell me what was going on, I had to gain some sort of hope back because mine was out of the window! We paced the hallway on the 9th floor that went out to a balcony where you could see the skyline of Portland at night. Breathtaking, absolutely remarkable. All at once I felt like I could breathe, even thought the pain I had was still alive and kicking. I didn't seem to care much because I was standing. If I was standing, I was breathing, I was taking in this larger than life real moment, and I had the love and support of my family. That was all I needed. They believed with their whole heart that this was going to fix itself, all of the information the doctors had given us that I had seemed to lose sight of they remembered and held onto that. That was there gold, they kept a tight grip onto the positive that they could and they gave me a pep talk one comparable to a half time tied football game. The type of talk that makes you want to come out of your skin and use all of your anger all of your hope everything you have harbored deep inside of you and pull it out! To produce such a character that whatever could have possibly been blocking your way you'd grow so tall over it, it would seem so small. That night and the night to follow, something happened and it wasn't magical it wasn't painless and it was not easy. The pain had gotten to an all time peak of bad. The doctors could do nothing but practically watch me go through my pain stricken nights of endless screams and cries of despair. Pacing the floor of my hospital room overhearing them say that surgery was what was going to happen early or not, we were going to have to make the attempt and hope something came of it. I've never been a really spiritual person, but after that 3rd morning when I woke up. I felt nothing. Nothing bad, nothing bad at all. I was, hungry. I was in shock. Complete and udder shock. I hit my nurse button, the way I would when I was in pain. The nurse walked in and she was in just as much shock that I had color in my face and my eyes were open and not squinted with pain. "How are you feeling?" "I'm,okay....." "Really?" She said surprised. "Yeah, really!" I said firmly. She knew exactly what I was thinking without even saying it! She called the doctors in on that Saturday morning. They all were shocked and pondering what was different what made this morning any different than the last 41 days. They drew blood, and ordered films the only way we could really get any answers that we so badly wanted and needed. A morning I had expected to hear of surgery prep, even at my 92lb state and all the added risk of going under I had prepared myself the night before to hear, instead I heard talks of hope and intrigue. We waited that whole day, just waiting like we knew so well how to do. It was almost harder to do today than any other day. We had more at stake there was something so much more to this day than any other. We asked every couple hours what the results were of my X-Rays. Meanwhile, we kept our walks and pep talks going knowing that something magical did really happen among all that pain I had felt, that maybe just maybe that was my obstruction correcting itself the way they had told my parents they can do. We waited until the next morning before we received any answers and it was during the morning rounds. That doctor that I had that would always tell me to "hang tight" and tap me on the leg sang a different tune this particular morning. This was the end, and it went like this.. "Your films show to be resolving or completely resolved. They show immense progress and seem to be less distended." My mom and I looked at each other almost smiling but almost concerned. Did we just hear that right? Also, what in the hell does that mean? which we asked next. "So, what does that mean?" my mom nervously giggled. "It means with the films we took yesterday it shows that the obstruction is completely gone" We couldn't wait, we burst into tears right then as if we had just won an Oscar. We smiled and hugged each other so hard I felt my face get red from the lack of circulation. While whipping my eyes I reached out to offer my hand to my surgeon, he took my fingers and swept his thumb over them as my nurse smiled at me. It was over, my horrible journey was over.