So I accidentally wiped my whole hard drive yesterday when an update on my computer went wrong. Don’t worry, the only document I didn’t have backed up anywhere was the draft scraps of what I planned to shape into a memoir. It’s par for the course in my life, really. I’m notoriously bad with technology, but I have a super gracious coworker who took my computer for the day and managed to reset it to allow me to still use this expensive gift that’s barely four years old. In all honesty, I’m praising God that I’m typing this week’s update on my laptop instead of my phone because it was quite an exciting week.
Tuesday, as I mentioned last week, was my planned Botox appointment, and I got in some work in the morning, racing Chris to see who could get more stuff accomplished. I was ready to go when Brandi pulled up at a quarter to one, and we talked about how the Lord is refining me to love difficult people and to be a better representative of Jesus. I wheeled down the familiar hallway to the urology department at REHAB, and waited outside as the nurse told me she had to go find her coworker before we could start my procedure. In the couple minutes I was waiting, I was delighted to see Danai, my favorite nurse from my stay in REHAB, walk down the hallway. We chatted briefly before she had to go on her way doing actual work, and I was ready to start my Botox treatment.
Round three felt like a breeze, and I chatted in my limited German to the nurses hooking up an IV in my arm and all the fun probes down below. “The medicine isn’t in yet,” one commented as I closed my eyes and settled in. “Yeah, it’s all the same to me though,” I lazily replied. “Okay then, you can go to sleep,” she told me. I took a few nice deep breaths and listened to the snap, crackle, and pop of buttons, medical wrappings, and machines as they monitored my blood pressure and prepared all the other needles and whatnots that went on. A couple minutes later, I felt the medication kick in as my eyes felt heavier, and I took in slower, deep breaths to let the medication work it’s magic and let me sleep. Next thing I remember, the two nurses were helping me from the table attached to stirrups onto a now adjacent hospital bed. I closed my eyes again and opened them to see the clock at 3pm.
I blinked and fifteen minutes had passed, and a nurse was telling me something about two new medications I needed to take. Turns out that nasty infection I wrote about that first prompted me to ask for this Botox again because it ignited all my pre-Botox symptoms had left some lasting damage despite my Angocin and garlic treatment. The nurse said the doctor had found lots of redness and inflammation in my bladder and wanted me to take these two medications to treat it. One I could begin right away for just two weeks and the other I would need to wait to start until my antibiotic was finished and would have to take until the start of February. I don’t remember her telling me anything else, but a quick google search Thursday informed me I was on an NSAID for the inflammation and a long term antibiotic to clean out my poor abused bladder. But, hey, at least it’s wrinkle free now. I napped for another half hour before the nurse helped me out of the bed and into my wheelchair where I made my way into the entry and found Brandi waiting for me. I asked her if she’d be up for checking out who was on duty in my old station. We just missed Danai at the shift change, and I was super bummed to find out the patient I’d hoped to surprise with a visit wasn’t in her room either. Brandi and I made a scene with the fancy coffee machine that hates people and chatted for a bit with makeshift mochas before she brought me back to her house for the night.
I absolutely love her family who I have forced to adopt me, and I had a blast hanging out with them for the next twenty-four hours while they made sure I didn’t drop dead after going under anesthesia. We watched the first installment of Lord of the Rings and dreamed about me going to New Zealand next year.
Oh, yeah, that’s an important public announcement. I’ve vaguely alluded to searching for a placement for my totalization in Australia or New Zealand, and I recently sent out my Christmas letters letting people close to me know that’s where I’m actively looking for a sabbatical placement. I’ve got a single strong lead in New Zealand, and I’m hoping to know more about that the first week of January. I have a couple hopeful options left in Australia as well, but the NZ option has a lot of appeal for reasons I’m scared to name. In some ways, it’s too perfect, and I’m scared to hope too much that it happens because of how heartbroken I might be if it doesn’t work out.
But just as I’m going to put all my hope in a full physical recovery and ask you to pray for that, I’m going to ask you to pray with me that this New Zealand option would work out for me as well.
I’ve got a lot of hope even as I’m limping into the start of 2018, and next year has so much potential as a clean slate for a whole bunch of beautiful things to be written just like that eventual draft of my memoir that I’ll begin again (and maybe back up online this time).
