It's Been a YEAR!!

WARNING: THIS IS THE LONG VERSION OF ADAM'S HOSPITAL STAY FOR MY RECORDS :)
On Saturday it marked a year to the date that Adam went into the hospital with HORRIBLE pain in his stomach. We had NO idea what was in our future at that point. It has been quite the year. I am not sure how Adam would describe it but for me it was a little slice of (excuse my wording) Hell!! But also a whole lot of growth and strengthening which I would describe as getting closer to Heaven. Here is the timeline of last years events.
August 30th: He started feeling really bad
August 31st: Came home from work early (he was acting CLEAR in the head so I could not fathom that he was actually sick because when you are sick with the flu or something it makes you sort of out of it... I am horrible!!)
Sept 1st: Stayed home from work, pain was getting worse(I thought he was overreacting). We had our friend Trent, who is a P.A., come for a house call and he tried to help him but we were all sort of puzzled
Sept 2nd: REALLY not feeling well and he got a blessing.
Sept 3rd: We tried a lot of things to get the pain to go away... NOTHING worked. I thought if he just had a good bathroom go he would be fine. Of course he had nothing in his guts to get out cuz he hadn't eaten much of anything solid for 3 days at this point. He told me he wanted to go to the hospital at like 12 (and I was like "whatever", so I laid the kids down at our friend Amanda's house. He decided to hold off and see if sleeping would help any. It didn't. Finally around 4 we went to the hospital.
I have to admit at this point I was sure we needed to be at the hospital but I was really not aware of how high his pain was. When they got him back there and assessed his pain he told them it was an 8 or a 9. WHAT!! I had no idea. They gave him a shot of Morphine as soon as his IV was in. At this point I was feeling so terrible that I hadn't believed him and started to really worry about what was going on inside him. (he has a blood clotting factor that he is on blood thinners for and I worried that it was something like that).
*He got a cat scan
*results came back pretty fast that it was Pancreatitis. We didn't even know how to say that word let alone spell it or have ANY idea what that meant or how you get it.
*Nurse that told us said, "You usually get it from drinking too much"... um ya he has never had an alcoholic beverage before. "oh well then it is probably something to do with your gallbladder and they will probably have to take it out" UM NO... I won't let them do that (I had heard some horror stories about having your gallbladder out and was certain it would never come to that!!)
*He was admitted to the hospital
*AMAZING PEOPLE IN OUR WARD offered to completely help out with our kids. THANK YOU EVERYONE!!
*We waited around for the doctor, who never came.
*Meantime he was moved off morphine and given something that is 10 times stronger called Diladed. It was then that he was finally able to sleep a little.
*I went to get the kids at 11 from Merri's house and we went home to sleep.
*I don't really remember the next few days but recall only that I went to the hospital 2-5 hours a day to "help" him but felt that he was pretty much in a drug induced sleep state and I felt like I wasn't really help at all so I would leave to take care of the kids.
People at church asked me how he was and I thought he was feeling fine as long as the drugs were in him (the deal with Pancreatitis is you have to just WAIT for the inflammation in pancreas to go down which meant he was pretty much on water and some clear liquids for like a week. There is NOTHING they can give you or do that will stop the inflammation, it really is a waiting game.)
By Sunday nights visit it was clear that he needed and wanted me around ALL THE TIME. Which meant 24 hour care for our kids. I arranged that with the help of the amazing sisters in the relief society and my own sisters.
The Dr. told us that he needed to get up and move around that laying in bed was not going to help him any. This was almost an impossible thought for Adam. He was hurting all the time at this point. The Diladed was to its maximum legal dose and he was still not able to really relax. He had to go 2 hours between doses and he would wake up with 30-45 minutes left before he could get another dose. So our this became our routine...
Diladed into his IV
Sleep restlessly for and hour or so
Get the nurse to unhook his cords (which always took forever) so we try to go to the bathroom and walk around
Walk the halls
over and
over and
over and
over
the whole time he would be in pain, I would be on the brink of emotional breakdown and we just had to keep moving forward.
He would burp loudly while we walked the halls trying to get some of the trapped gas out of his stomach (this is actually what caused him so much pain, his stomach was so full of trapped gas.)
Get back to the room
go to the bathroom again
help him lay down
call the nurse
W A I T for the clock
finally another dose of Diladed
and it all started over again.
24 hours in a day, only 12 doses of liquid relief... tired, tired, so so tired.
Not just fatigued, exhausted emotionally, mentally, I hardly need to say physically. We never knew when the final relief was coming. It just kept being the same day after day after day.
I slept on the little couch they had in his room. I was so grateful to by his side to help him even at 3 in the morning and again at 5 and again at 7. He said that when I was not there he felt panicked and even more uneasy. As soon as I would show up a wave of relief would come over him. I cannot tell you how much closer this experience brought us to each other and to our GOD. Even as I write this tears come when I think of how much Heavenly Father loves us.
There was a moment in the hospital that was quite pivotal for me. It is personal and sacred but I share it because most of my "blog" readers probably aren't going to read this long post and those who do deserve to know my feelings. It was in the hours between Diladed doses that I had an awe inspiring experience. My husband was in severe pain. Almost crying. My strong wonderful husband was almost brought to tears for pain. AND THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO TO HELP HIM OR CHANGE HIS CIRCUMSTANCE. I thought of our Father in Heaven and His Power and His wisdom and His Omnipotence. He could do something to help my husband, but he wasn't. I knew He would if it were best for my Adam. He certainly would. But He saw greater wisdom in the experience than I could. I then was so very aware of a tiny part of what He must have felt when His own begotten son was in the Garden of Gethsemane going through the most anguish anyone has ever had to endure. A father who LOVED His son with everything that He had wanting to help Him and make Him better and TOTALLY having the power to do so. But for the greater plan... the plan of salvation, of happiness of REDEMPTION, he not only stayed His hand from helping our Savior ease His pain, He even saw the wisdom in painfully withdrawing His spirit from Jesus for ONE PURPOSE. To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of MAN. I cannot even imagine the feelings our God must have had at that point. KNOWING He could help His PERFECT son, but that if He did, He would lose all of His other children in the process.
Right then I knew and still know, MY FATHER IN HEAVEN sees the whole picture. He knows what will make us stronger. He wants us to LEAN ON HIM AND HIS SON. Only then are we strong enough to go through anything and everything. He loves us.
Adam was in the hospital from Friday the 3rd to Saturday the 11th. 8 days of "waiting" for something to improve. He had many procedures done to see what was taking so long. The results were always... Wait and see. It was horrible. But the love that deepened between us and God was and still is amazing.
Adam's Dad and sister Mariah came down on Thursday night to be with Adam. Bill took turns walking the halls with Adam and Mariah took care of the kids for us. I know that his whole family would have been there in a heartbeat had circumstances allowed but having Bill and Mariah there was a comfort for all of us.
The next 6 weeks were pretty much a routine for Adam as well. The pain was still there but could be managed on a narcotic instead of Diladed. I slept on an air mattress in the loft for the first two weeks. Finally, seeing I would be there longer I had a friend Mitch Borden bring over a mattress my sister wasn't using. I slept there for another 2 weeks. The whole time hearing Adam get up in the middle of the night and walk the bedroom for relief of the gas in his stomach. I would go in every once in a while and help him out or keep him company.
The night I got to move back into the room was surreal. He felt well enough to sleep mostly through the night except for a few downstairs excursions to walk around so he wouldn't wake me.
I think in total he missed 8 weeks of work and was still reluctant to go back because of pain. But he did finally. They were so good to work with him on all his sick time off.
Now it has been a year and he deals with pain everyday. He just isn't himself yet. He did end up getting his gallbladder out about 2 months ago and that went well and he recovered normally.
We are going to start an herb regime next week to strengthen his digestive tract and pancreas. We will keep you posted.