365.

A year ago today I woke up filled with nerves & incredibly anxious but also very confident in the decision made to have moved forward. For over a year before I had lived in pain & tried every non-surgical option.

Sure, today I could sit here & second guess that decision knowing the outcome. But, I never believed that I would be in that tiny percent of someone whose life changes but not for the better.

I came out of surgery with my foot being completely reconstructed from my calf muscle down to my toes. It was within three days, that we became fearful that something was not right.

The first trip to the ER was for completely uncontrollable pain. I described the pain as feeling as if they were drilling up the bottom of my heel….before I actually knew that they had drilled into my heel when restructuring it.

For the next few weeks, I continued crying out in pain. My foot felt like it was on fire, it felt like electric currents in my foot. I could not touch my foot without screaming, I could not take a sock off. I also had the wound at the back of my heel that would not heal.

Eventually there was another trip to the ER where they sent me home giving me a double dose of morphine shots. When that did not touch my pain whatsoever, we had a bad feeling. This led to a follow-up with my surgeon explaining to me I had a rare nerve condition & he would send me on to a pain clinic.

Long story short, two days before we closed out 2017, I had been diagnosed with some horrific disease of my nervous system that I had never heard of but had no cure. Say what? Complex Regional Pain Syndrome {CRPS}. Four words that changed my life.

From there we tried so many different prescription medicines & constantly experimented with the dosages. We tried a total of seven injections. Nothing worked. I  had moments that I cannot even begin to find the words to describe them.

There were many moments where part of me had begun to lose hope. There were times where I was laying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night with pain so severe that I had become physically sick & was trying to hide this from my husband to protect him. I had moments where I traveled through my days hiding the tears in my eyes due to the fire in my foot from everyone around me.

Despite all the fear, the fight, the failed medical attempts, the only thing I knew that I had control over was my MIND. I had the choice to lay around in my pain & let it control my life or I had the choice to live my life with a very grateful heart.

Yes, it was so difficult for me to get out of bed every morning feeling as if there was this little devil living inside of me. But, at the same time, there was so much for my heart to feel the overflow of gratitude from. In these past twelve months, I got engaged to AND married the man of my dreams; a man that has shown me what true UNconditional love really is; a man that never let me feel alone on any of the ugly days. My daughters were both healthy, doing amazing, growing up, accomplishing so much & learning to be even kinder & more loving because of what they learned from this season; yes, they certaintly had many moments of struggles & anger at mom’s disease too.

But, really there was so much beauty even in the ugly.

Hard seasons come in our life. I knew it was my choice what to focus on in this season. Why this season entered my life, I do not know, but I do truly believe there was a reason for me to travel it & someday I will understand it all.

I am now on day eleven post my DRG Stimulator & although we are still taking it all one day at a time & I will be back soon to share my surgical story from this experience, there was something today that I  have to share.

For the past year, I could not stand the air to touch my foot. I mean, I slept with a sock on my left foot every single night. It would come off just as I stepped in the shower in the morning & a sock came back on right after I got out. Air made me scream. But also, blankets or sheets could not touch it. I slept half-way down my bed so I could hang my foot off the end of my bed & away from the chance the blankets could hit it.

Last night I crawled into bed with my pain in my foot at probably the lowest level it has been in a year so I put my big, ugly, bulky sock under my pillow. I told my husband that I was going to test it & see how long I could go before I had to put it on, but we were already thrilled that my foot was UNDER the blankets right at that moment.Last night, for the first night in a year I never put a sock on my foot.

Excuse me now while I literally have tears running down my face from that sentence.

Until Next Time~