Good Tuesday

Taylor had his second surgery today.

It went well!  They did the "Ileostomy Takedown" and Taylor is so happy.  He no longer has an ostomy bag and now he just has to get used to the new reconstructed "plumbing" as he recovers from this surgery.

I'm so glad we are at this point.  SO grateful.  I was so nervous about the first surgery, and we got past that point.  I was nervous about the period between surgeries, and we've passed that point.  I was anxious for the second surgery, and we have now completed that.  Now... Taylor just has to recover from this and as long as there are no complications, he can begin to exercise and get strong and fit and healthier than he has been in many years.

I feel like posting a bunch of recent photos:

Mercedes and I visited the Payson Temple on Sunday 

Mercedes had a sleepover with Taylor and I in our family room two nights ago

My superman

My favorite bathroom wall heater

Yesterday Mercedes and I went on a date to the Orem mall

We love our dates!

Mercedes sitting with me in the bathroom early this morning while I got ready to leave for the hospital

Happy Taylor, just after we arrived at the hospital this morning.

We are so grateful for the nurses and hospital staff here at St. Mark's.  They have been amazing.  And we are especially thankful for Taylor's surgeon, Dr. Row.  He has changed our lives.

Taylor

Taylor's second surgery is scheduled for this coming Tuesday.  Four days away.  That was even sooner than I was hoping for and we are oh so excited.  After that, if there are no complications he will recover and get back to life at last.

We were so happy to have the first surgery done but the past six weeks since have been very difficult, for Taylor especially.  I was the most nervous about this period between the two surgeries and I am so glad it is now almost over.

I cannot wait to see Taylor thrive again.  It's been a very hard few years for him.

He is amazing.

And I love him so much I could burst.

Angels

Remember how our car broke down four weeks ago?  Well Taylor's mom, dad and brother drove all the way from northern California last weekend just so that my father-in-law and brother-in-law could work on our car until they could get it running again.  They worked on it for four days and just when they were down to the wire on time, they fixed our car and it was up and running!  Taylor and I couldn't express the gratitude we felt, and still feel.  They worked so hard and were determined to get it running, no matter what it took.  They are amazing.

Today Taylor, Mercedes and I were headed north to Salt Lake City for Taylor's scan, the scan that will tell the doctor whether or not Taylor is ready for the second surgery.  So in other words, it was a very important appointment!  We stopped in Orem first to drop Mercedes off with our sister-in-law BJ.  On the way, however, I noticed the steering in the car was getting very stiff and by the time we got off of the freeway I knew something was very wrong.  By the time we pulled into a parking lot right next to our destination, the car couldn't be driven another block.  We popped the trunk and it turned out that we lost the belt to the alternator and power steering pump.  We were relieved since it seemed like a simple fix but that didn't help our immediate situation.  We HAD to get to Taylor's appointment and the clock was ticking.  We took Mercedes up to the apartment to BJ and Taylor's brother Jonathan loaned us his car so that we could continue to SLC.  So even though our car was suddenly inoperable we hardly missed a beat and were able to make it to Taylor's appointment on time.  Just like four weeks ago, our car broke down in the PERFECT place.

 I know that we are being looked after.

After we brought the car back to Jonathan and BJ's and picked up Mercedes, my mom (who was already planning to head to Provo/Orem) picked us up and we got a ride back home to Payson.  This evening Jonathan fixed our car and he and BJ brought our car back to us tonight.  I can't thank them enough.  They watched Mercedes while we went to Salt Lake, let us borrow their car, they fixed our car, and then brought it back to us.  Oh, and while they were here this evening after bringing our car back, they pulled out a laptop that they didn't need any more and gave it to us, complete with case and a yellow bow. I am now using this laptop to write this blog post.

Family members from both sides of our family have been our angels, and we could not do any of this without all of them.  And like I said before, we know that Heavenly Father is blessing us.

Tomorrow we head back to St. Mark's Hospital in SLC to meet with Taylor's doctor and talk about the scan.  If everything looks good, they'll hopefully schedule the second surgery and we can begin yet another long awaited chapter.

Mercedes and BJ making cupcakes!

Our New Year

Getting checked into the Hospital 1/2/1014

Life here has been pretty busy.  Not because we are running here and there (well maybe I am), rushing around town, etc., but because Taylor has been in intense recovery from his surgery.  We are quickly learning that major abdominal surgery is, well, major. 

Waiting and getting prepped for the surgery 1/2/2014

 Thankfully, now that he is 3 and a half weeks out things have settled down a lot.  His surgery took place on January 2nd, and then I believe we came home from the Hospital on January 10th.  I stayed with Taylor the whole time with the exception of a Sunday morning and Thursday morning to shower, repack my suitcase and visit with Mercedes at home. 

Our little visitor

More beloved visitors

 

The view from Taylor's room (and all of my stuff)

A snowstorm that took place during the stay

Getting ready to go home!

We were so happy to finally come home because we missed Mercedes so much.  But along with the excitement of leaving the hospital was a lot of anxiety felt by both Taylor and I.  It was similar to becoming a new parent and taking your new born baby home from the hospital for the first time, with the added nervousness of post surgery wound care, a scary ostomy bag to figure out and a lot of pain and other things to keep an eye out for.  Watching for signs of infection, dehydration, extra bleeding, extra drainage from incision sites, monitoring bodily fluid input vs. output, among others were all things that kept us on our toes, particularly in the first few days after coming home.  Not having nurses and monitors around 24/7 was nerve-wracking.  Thankfully, we had a home help nurse assigned to Taylor and she has come several times a week to check his vitals, give advice, etc., and that has been a huge help and relief.  We've called her multiple times when we had concerns and she is available practically any time. She is awesome and she has been a big blessing for us.  The third night we were home Taylor started to develop a small fever.  We phoned the nurse and she wasn't too alarmed at the temperature because it was only borderline concerning.  But she said to feel free to go into the ER if we felt it necessary, as it is always good to stay on the safe side of things.  So just after 9:00 p.m. I took Taylor into the ER here in Payson.  We were so worried it was an infection, and the memories of Taylor's 3-day ICU stay with a temperature of almost 106 two years ago kept running through our minds.  Thankfully though, all of the tests came back negative and he was able to go home around midnight with the relief of knowing things were alright.  The next morning his fever was gone.

Taken by Mercedes

We were so happy to finally be home with this girl!

His pain has decreased so much since the surgery and now his biggest obstacle is just exhaustion.  That will probably linger for months, including after the second surgery but he WILL get his strength back eventually.  He gets up several times a day (not including trips to the bathroom) and walks around the house to get some exercise but that's about all he can handle for now.  He does still have pain and muscle spasms, but it is much less than it was right after surgery.  And compared to the Ulcerative Colitis he had the day he went in for his surgery, he is doing SO much better.  The night he came out of surgery he went on and on about how grateful he was, because despite the major surgery pain he was having from having his colon removed, his colitis was GONE.  For the first time in years, he no longer has that sick feeling that lingered because of the colitis.  The change was as immediate as the removal of his colon.  That's what it took.  We still can't believe the Ulcerative colitis is finally gone.  It is such a blessing, and we are so excited to move on with our lives.  But the months ahead will still be a lot of work.  Within the next month or two Taylor will have his second surgery which will include another 6-8 weeks of recovery but then he'll be good to go.  He won't have an ostomy bag to work with and he is looking forward to that. 

Movie night with Taylor's brother Jonathan and his wife BJ

Mercedes and my dad walking to church while I stay home with Taylor

So yes, the past month has been quite a rollercoaster with a lot of high points and a lot of low points physically and emotionally.  One highlight was watching Taylor communicate right after his surgery while still having heavy sedation coursing through him.  He was hilarious and honestly very flirty and quite romantic.  With ME, not the nurses. :)  But the nurses were sure cracking up, and so was I.  Unfortunately I didn't record any of it but I plan to with the next surgery.  One thing he said was "You are SO BEAUTIFUL," in his extremely loopy voice.  I said, "How can you tell?  Your eyes are closed."  He said, "I can see you in my mind.  You're wearing a blue sweater."  (I was).  Then he opened his eyes and looked at me and said, "Whoa...  You're even more beautiful in real life!"  He was wondering what was in his nose and I told him it was the breathing tube (oxygen).  To that he said, "I want YOU to be my breathing tube."  I was cracking up!  He made comment after comment for probably an hour.  Another highlight, or technically low-light, was that our car broke down right next to the Salt Lake Temple after Taylor had a follow up with his doctor a week and a half ago.  We ended up being stranded for several hours waiting for a tow truck and all I could think of was "I need to get my husband home!  He needs to hydrate and lay down!"  As crazy and STRESSFUL as it all was, Heavenly Father really made the conditions around us the best I could have imagined.  If you're going to break down anywhere, the crosswalk between the temple and the conference center is the place to do it.  Very nice people and views.  And on top of that we had my mom with us because we were dropping her off to meet my Dad who was already there doing MTC presentations there near the temple.  My mom took Mercedes to the bathroom and got food while we dealt with the car, and my dad dropped by between meetings to give a couple of minutes of support.  And honestly it always helps a girl emotionally to see her dad at a time of crisis like that, even if for just a few minutes.  We worked things out so that when the tow truck came to get the car, Taylor, Mercedes and I drove home in my parents' car and they would get a ride home with some of my dad's co-workers.  So as hectic as it all was, the situation was perfect.  Getting our car fixed is still in the works but Jonathan (Taylor's brother who just moved here from Cali with his wife) and Taylor's great uncle towed our car last week from a shop in SLC to a place in Provo.  Thankfully, we're mostly homebound so we'll survive without a car until it is up and running.

Despite the fact that we hardly leave the house, life has felt a bit crazy but we're happy the first surgery is over and that Taylor is getting closer to the 2nd one.  We just want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has helped us through this.  Your prayers have benefited us so much and we are grateful for all of the help and support we have received.

Dinner and a movie

A common activity for the time being

 We are looking forward to the rest of this year!

Our new year begins tomorrow...

Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Taylor and I will be on our way to St. Mark's Hospital in SLC.  He will go into surgery sometime after arriving and then he'll begin his journey to being healthy again.

I almost can't believe the day is about here.

We're nervous.  Well, very nervous.  Removing a Colon is a pretty big deal.

I think I'm almost as nervous about taking Taylor home when he's completed his hospital stay.  For me, it's kind of like when you're a first-time parent and you're taking your brand new baby home for the first time.  I just hope I can care for him the best that I can.

Thankfully the surgery WON'T be "old school" and it'll be done laparoscopically so his incisions will be smaller than they could be, but he'll still have a lot of healing to do internally and externally.  So really, that part will not be fun.

This week is the first week in over two years that Taylor is not longer taking immunosuppressants.  Up until several weeks ago he was taking three different immune suppressing drugs.  Some of the nasty side effects from those drugs are already beginning to subside.  I'm so relieved.

I'm sort of a fanatic when it comes to planning and preparing for events and I tend to make multiple lists to organize myself.  I started a packing list for the Hospital about a week ago and after that I began to make a list of things I needed to get done within the week before leaving.  My "Day before leaving" list is as follows:

"Take out garbage
Clean out fridge
Finish/put away laundry
Return Redboxes
Buy wipes
Clean out fish bowl
Print photos and write letters
Wash bedding
Clean
Pack
Wrap Jonathan and B.J.'s present"

Half way there!

I don't know what we would do/have done without all of the help of family and loving friends.  My mom will have Mercedes while we're gone, which makes living in their basement very convenient for the situation.  We are so grateful for the help of my family, and Taylor's family.  We're so grateful for friends, ward members, and neighbors.  We couldn't have done all this without all of you.

Today my amazing Visiting Teachers brought us a Hospital Care Package, complete with a design magazine for me, gun magazine for Taylor, games, chocolate, and a coloring book and crayons for Mercedes.  It's things like that that make hard things a little easier to bare.

I'm actually really looking forward to the time I get to spend with Taylor at the hospital.  I will be able to focus 100% on him when he'll need it most.  But it will also be hard.  My heart feels torn because I always miss Mercedes so much when I'm staying at the hospital.  She is a strong girl though and will have so much fun with Grandma Jenne that she'll probably hardly notice we're gone.

I can't really find the words when I want to describe how I admire Taylor.  He is so strong.  I look up to him so much (not just literally) and I often can't believe that he chose ME to be his wife.  He is the love of my life and i am so excited for him to be well again.  I feel like the luckiest girl.

Looking forward to 2014!

Hello Everybody

I think I'm one of the worst bloggers out there.  Or maybe in a better light I'm the BEST worst blogger out there.  Either way, I DO get around to blog every few months or so.  Oh well, life's crazy.

Love these crazies.

Okay so updates.  I think my last post was about how all of our immediate plans kind of took a turn for the worst as Taylor got really sick again and we were just waiting for medicines, etc.

We waited...

Photo credit goes to Mercedes on this one.

But in the end the medicines didn't work like we had hoped.

To make a long story short, we, meaning Taylor and I and his doctors have decided that surgery is the next and final step.  With as major as it is, it brings us barrels of hope.  Those we know who have had the surgery live normal lives, meaning zero Ulcerative Colitis symptoms.  Which makes sense because you can't really have Ulcerative Colitis if you no longer have a Colon.  There are some cons to having your colon removed, like having more frequent bowel movements for example because you don't have a colon to absorb water.  There are other little complications that can happen but the good far outweighs the bad at this point.  It would have been great if the medicines did work but we had a lot of other worries about Taylor being on all of those heavy meds for the rest of his life.  We feel like the surgery is the surest way for Taylor to be back to normal health again.

We have so many feelings about the surgery including nervousness, anxiousness, not looking forward to the hospital stays and all of the surgery recovery time but overall we feel like Taylor (and our family as a whole) are getting a life back.  We are very excited and very grateful.

On January 2nd Taylor will check into St. Mark's Hospital in SLC to have his colon removed.  The recovery stay at the hospital will be anywhere between 3-5 days.  Hopefully there will be no complications and he can go home by that point.  He will have an Ileostomy bag while his body recovers for 6-8 weeks at which point he will go back in for a second surgery to have things "reconnected."  I'm not going to go into details about the whole process but if anyone is interested in learning more, just google Colectomy and you can learn loads. ;)

A little visual for some extra understanding. :)

After 6-8 more weeks of recovery, and adjusting to life without a large intestine, he will be symptom-free for the first time in many years.

I can't even tell you how absolutely wonderful that sounds.

Now we're just praying, hoping and praying some more that everything will go smoothly in the weeks and months to come.  Again, the whole idea of the surgery is nerve wracking, especially for Taylor, but we are very anxious and excited to get it all done and over with so that we can move forward in life.  We are so grateful.

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Have a super merry Christmas!

Falltime

It has been six months since my last post, and frankly blogging has not been one of my priorities.  But lately I've been feeling the need to post, mainly for myself.  Life takes crazy turns, to say the least.  Speaking of life in general, General Conference was absolutely wonderful.  Having a young one makes listening sketchy at times but what I did hear was nourishing to the soul.  And I need to place emphasis on Elder Holland's talk.  His words spoke straight to my soul and I desperately needed to hear them.

When we moved to Utah at the beginning of the summer we were filled with excitement and the thrill of feeling like we are finally moving along in life.  Taylor would start the Police Academy in the fall and by next summer he would be ready to be hired as a Police officer and we would be ready to move on ahead with our plans that we have waited for seemingly so long.  His health was great, although there would be a day here or there that his colitis acted up but overall we were positive and confident.

The summer wore on and Taylor's health just wouldn't give him a break.  By the end of the summer his Ulcerative Colitis was beginning to get worse and we were getting more worried with each day that passed, knowing the Police Academy was right around the corner.  September arrived and after Taylor's first day at the Academy he had an appointment with his new Gastroenterologist here in Utah.  They placed him back on the steroid with the hopes that the bleeding (which had begun that same week) and the diarrhea (which had started weeks before) would quickly go away and he would get feeling back to normal.  By the end of the second week of the Academy Taylor was so sick he could hardly get out of bed, except to use the restroom which was about once every hour, or more.  He had lost about 10 pounds in a week and could no longer get himself to go to class.  Up until this point we we hadn't really considered that the Police Academy wouldn't be happening this year.  But our biggest fears were being realized not only because we would have to wait yet another year to set our plans into motion, but Taylor was getting just as sick as he was two years ago, and we hoped that would never happen again.

The doctor scheduled a colonoscopy for Taylor which took place last week.  After the procedure the doctor came in and said without reserve, "Your colitis is horrible." He said they would start Taylor on Remicade IV infusions and in several months if he isn't in remission they will perform a colostomy, as in remove his colon.  Taylor and I have known about this surgery and as terrible as it may sound, especially to those who have never heard of it before, we know a lot of people who have had their colons removed and have had normal lives after.  Meaning they have no more Ulcerative Colitis.  With the options the doctor gave us, we were relieved.  My biggest fear going into the colonoscopy was that the doctors would take Taylor through a rollercoaster of trying different medications with many months of trial and error, waiting for Taylor to get well again.  But the condition of Taylor's colon drove them to decide to jump to the final levels of treatment for the problem.

This past week we've just been waiting for Taylor to start Remicade, which should hopefully be early next week.  We really hope and pray that the Remicade will get him well again, and if it doesn't, there is the surgery.  So now we wait.

I need to start off by saying that our little family is so blessed.  We have been given so much, and in our trials we have found comfort in our love for each other, in our love of our Savior and in His love for us.  Our struggles have brought us closer together as a family and closer to Heavenly Father and his Son.  But in these faith building experiences I also find myself struggling with my faults and feeling so weak.  These past two years have presented some great trials for myself, Taylor and Mercedes.  The decline of my husband's health two years ago followed by many months of recovery, the heartbreaking loss of a pregnancy last fall and the speedy attack on Taylor's health again making him drop out of the academy this year has placed the word PATIENCE right into the center of our souls.  It is a learning curve which I still feel very far from grasping fully.

When I'm trying to fix Taylor something to eat and Mercedes is hanging on me or having a melt down or just needing me I feel my grip on patience slipping.  I put Mercedes in her room to cry out a little tantrum of hers and I'll close the door and walk away, crying myself...feeling so overwhelmed with the burden that has hung over us.

 I don't know if there are specific reasons for why we are having the trials we do but I do know that Heavenly Father wants us to come out of them better people than we were before.

Conference this weekend has been nourishing to the spirit and soul, and has left me with a great deal of comfort, and a lot to think about.  Elder Holland and President Monson gave talks that particularly stood out to me, and as it was for others, I know it was a gift from God sent to comfort me as well.

Included in many of the things said was this quote by Elder Holland.  "Though we may feel like we are a broken vessel...we must remember that vessel is in the hands of the divine potter."

I know that Christ lives.  I know that because he died for us and was resurrected, we get to take part in the resurrection someday where our bodies will be perfected.  I know that life is hard, but I'm grateful for it, because without hard things how could we possibly become like Heavenly Father someday?  I love His gospel and know that it is true.  And I know that with trust in Christ we can be happy, no matter what.