Spoiler Alert: ucky photos

Happy Valentines Day!!!  It is not my favorite holiday.  I kind of think it is overrated.  The whole flowers and candy and buy me jewelry seems a bit much.  I would rather get flowers just because he thought of it than on a day he is told he is supposed to send them.  To me, that would be a bigger "I love you" than Valentines Day can provide me with. I have always bought the girls a box of candy and Rylee, who still lives at home got one this morning.  Jim and I are headed to a hockey game later today and are just sitting around being lazy today.  I should be using my time wisely and doing laundry or cleaning but I'm not.  Maybe I'll get ambitious and file my taxes. Might as well be optimistic.

I am not sure what possessed me to provide the following photos and descriptions, especially today.  Sorry.  This post is not romantic or lovely at all!  If you have a weak tummy or a bad gag reflex, you may want to just stop reading. Michelle-this means you!  They are pretty graphic.  No obscenity, just gross. 

I think I'm ready to show these, but let me remind you that they are awful!!  Last chance, in other words.

When I first came home in September, I had a pencil eraser sized scar on my right side and this monstrosity on the left.  I do not have a picture of the right one. This is the original drain tube hole on the left side but they had to slice it open because it got infected.  Shocker!  The tube was already not working and I hadn't left the hospital yet!  I had been in for a week and had to go back into surgery to have this opened up.  I was in for a total of 2 weeks this first time because of multiple infections; only one of which I entered the hospital with. 

Keep in mind that this is positioned in what I like to refer to as my "sit crease".  This scar is purple now as is the pencil eraser sized one on the opposite side.

So in November, I went in to have the tube taken out and ended up with an ileostomy bag because the doctors didn't pay attention to my claims of pain and now there is a hole in my small intestine that needs to be fixed along with my colon.  And 29 staples!  What you are looking at is the stoma, surrounded by the adhesive and the bag.  Jim took this right after we had put on a clean bag. The stoma is the dark red, obviously, and is really a portion of my small intestine that is threaded through a hole in my tummy.  It had no feeling, but was totally gross to me.  Every nurse was nice enough to tell me that I had a beautiful stoma.  I'm sure they didn't realize that I wasn't taking that as a compliment at all. 

By December, when I finally got to go in and have things reversed, I had been wearing a bag for 7 weeks. The adhesive from the bag, compounded with the stomach acid burns, left me with a oval shaped mess around the stoma.  When they repaired the stoma and got rid of the ileostomy bag I was left with another ugly scar.  In this picture, a full 8 weeks has passed and the ugly circle around the scar is starting to fade.  You can see, above the scar and staple marks, the faint circle from the adhesive/acid burns.   It was more severe below the stoma and will take longer to fade. 

 

I didn't take pictures right after the surgery in December.  The oval around the stoma was all scabbed over and gross and I couldn't handle it.   Currently the top of the scar is all pink and stretched out from me gaining some of my weight back.  The farther down you go they all turn purple-ish.  If you compare this picture to the one above, you can see how the scars have spread.

 

In a nutshell, this is what I am stuck with.  The doctor was telling me that these scars would fade to white.  I almost laughed out loud.  I scar horribly.  The scar on my knee from surgery 30 years ago is still pink and I can see staple marks from hip surgery 7 years ago.   These will be loud and proud for a very long time.  The tattoo I am thinking about will go (if you look at the photo above) to the right of the top of the long, vertical scar. 

 

I still haven't heard anything from the claims department at Sanford.  I am still hoping to get back a portion of my wages that were lost due to circumstances that may have been avoided if certain doctors had listened to me instead of telling me "that's just how its going to be".   We'll see, I guess.