Pain & Joy

Pain - is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. Joy - also refers to happiness - is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Today I learned about how we might not know joy unless we know pain. I love the definition I found on pain. It doesn't describe your body being literally pinched between an engine and your body having over 7 broken bones and having to wait for help, not knowing what was going to happen. I received a CD of my accident photos. I can't say I was excited to see them. But I felt that it would be good for my healing process. I tried to open it up on my computer, it wouldn't let me. I told myself that as I looked at these pictures, I would remind myself that I am a survivor and that I made it through. Two of my dear friends are facing pain. Some of the pain I relate to very well. I have been there with drains taking my body fluids away from my burns in the ICU. Extreme pain that I watched the clock tick by ...in order to have more pain medicine, in hopes to take the edge off. I had extreme heart ache pain when I went to the ER 7 times not knowing if we would keep Livi with us long enough for her to survive. I know the pain of having your most long-waited dream, become a long- drawn out nightmare. To my two friends. There is not enough medicine to ease your heartache, fear or pain. Life is full of pain. However there is also joy. Joy comes in the little things. Treasure and soak in the love you feel. Breathe each moment and take it in to remember the heartbeat and the life you give and the life you have. I think for me my Joy has been in empathy. Before my accident I tried to feel how others were feeling. Now I know - in heart-wrenching emotion how certain experiences take your breath away. Joy - comes to me in knowing that I am there for them. I will do anything. I wish I could take their pain away, but I think I would rob them from the joy - that they will have in their own due time. Then their joy - will be shared in them being there for someone else. Here is to my friends M&L - I pray for you. I am here for you. Thank you for sharing in my pain. May we all fight the pain and live to discovery the joy in all our lives.

Knees

On Wednesday I had another doctor's appointment. I feel like I live at the U of U ortho center. I see three doctors there on a regular basis. My foot doctor, my trauma ortho doctor and my sports medicine doctor. Everyone knows me by my first name. I even brought the ladies at the front desk chocolates to make up for the time I screamed bloody murder when my toe-joint stitches came out!!! My foot doctor was pleased with my progress and I was excited to hear that I am not going to need any more ankle or toe operations. Here is the bad news always.....My trauma ortho doctor thinks that I have torn my PCL in my right knee as well as my left knee. Word on the street. Here I come Mr. Sport's Medicine Doc. (By the way - he is cute!) I am not the only one that thinks so!!! In two weeks I will find out if both my PCL's on my knees will need surgery. That would make my body in total - surgeries 14 and 15. So when little Kai Kai and I sing "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes." I think, "Oh no....here we go." Maybe I should sing PCL tears, femur breaks and pinned toes. May we all sing. May we all know it okay to be frustrated and want to give up sometimes.

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

I haven't blogged much. Life is still happening. Life still goes on. I feel like I am in torn in many different directions. My life my whole entire life changed after the accident even including now what I like to listen to on the radio, what I watch on TV. It is amazing how in one second my life changed forever ..... for ever. In three months it will be a year since the accident, but I live with it every day of my life like it was today. Little reminders of how I wobble when I walk and probably always will. How family members have to get home to put their kids to sleep and how I have an empty nursery, with no baby needing to go to sleep.

Somethings never get easier. Somethings I think will never get easier. It is still fresh. It is still raw. I am doing better at putting on a happy face, but come to realize I might never really have a happy heart.

One thing that does make me happy is the pictures that our wonderful photographer Jen Holt took when I wasn't even out of coma to have pictures of our Livi to bring us such peace and such happiness and comfort.

Another thing that made me happy was meeting Barb Smith with channel 4. She is an amazing woman with a very sensitive heart and a wonderful reporter.

May we all find reasons to live.

Unborn child saves her mother's life and give reason to live