I'm sitting in a hospital waiting room right now at BJC. My uncle had to have surgery--the gastric sleeve. He's been battling his weight all of his life. The only time he has been able to lose weight was when he went to military school. So after years succumbing to an eating disorder and then adding alcoholism onto to that, he's not in good shape health wise. His weight ballooned to about 600lbs. A few years ago he wanted to have the gastric bypass surgery and they told him that he needed to lose 100lbs. Well, he didn't lose it. I don't know what was going on in his life at that time, but his drinking increased and instead of losing the weight, he gained even more. In 2019 he called to ask me if he could come live with me. At that time I was a little hesitant because I was still in remodel mode and the only sleeping area in my house was the family room which I was sleeping in. So there was going to have to be some changes to my living arrangements. I wasn't too keen on him coming, but he's family and he was in need and when I've been in need I've had people help me and I wanted to see my uncle healthy so I was gonna make the changes. But, things didn't go as planned. He ended up falling and the fire department had to be called to get him up. It was so humiliating. Then he became homebound. He wasn't able to walk like he used to. He needed homecare to help him.
In December he asked me if I could transport him to his doctors appointment and the dr told him that if he lost 100lbs in 3 months he'd do the surgery. This was December 2019 and my uncle was 586lbs. In January he was about 602. He was gonna come live with me February 1 so that he could get a handle on his eating habits, but then his sister got sick. But despite that something clicked and he lost about 80lbs by March 13. The doctor scheduled the surgery for April 23.
Then.....
The pandemic put a stop to life as we know it.
This dampened his spirit. This and the fact that his sister was put on hospice and on March 26 she lost her battle with heart disease. He was slipping back into his old ways and I was doing what I could to encourage him. I understand the struggle. I don't have an eating disorder, but I fighting off strongholds in my sexual character. The struggle is real!! But God is BIGGER than the struggle. And I've been trying to convey that to him. The word of God has been freeing me from the torments of hell and it can free anyone, but it takes consistent work. Jesus died for our sins and if we confess and believe in Him we are saved and have our place in eternity with him, but living the kingdom life here on earth is a whole different thing. Salvation is one thing. Sanctification is a whole other ball game. Salvation is free. Sanctification requires sacrifice. The flesh must be crucified and the crazy thing is that we live in our flesh. So we have to discipline it daily and sometimes minute by minute, until God gives us the strength to no have the ungodly desires.
Anyway, I've been trying to help him understand this and sometimes I think that he thinks he has to have the power to do it himself. But we can't live this life in our own strength. God is a jealous God. We have to depend on Him, but we want to be independent and our pride gets involved and we want to work really really hard to do it ourselves.
So April 23 came and went and he was getting discouraged. The day after his sister's burial, April 9, he got some blood work results back and his potassium was high. He was nervous and called me. We talked and he felt better. They did the test again and it was better. But then he started retaining fluid. This concerned him and then he ended up in the hospital.
Kidney disease....stage 3.
Heartbreaking.....
We didn't know what that meant for his surgery, where the kidney disease came from? He was scared. They mentioned cancer and some other causes. We both were concerned.
He got out of the hospital and had to have more test run to determine the cause and as we waited his doctor schedule his surgery for June 4. So I'm here today because he had his surgery.
I wasn't able to sleep all last night. I think I might have fallen asleep after 1am and had to be up at 5:30am to get on the highway to come to the hospital. I beat the ambulance to the hospital and they wheeled him back to surgery around 9:45am. He told me that his surgery would be about 2.5 hours long. But before surgery he had to have his blood taken again to test his potassium because it had been too high. They gave me a pager that tells me updates and I can watch the screen to get updates also. I saw on the screen that he was in pre op so I thought everything we going smoothly. Then it said, surgery in progress. So I started the countdown. He should be out by noon, 1pm at the latest. One oclock came and went. Then I got a message on the pager that said surgery started. WHAT? I went to the front desk and they explained to me that "surgery in progress" means that he's been transported to the operating room. But sometimes it takes about an hour before they start the surgery. The "surgery has started" message was to tell me when they started the first cut. Ok. so now I'm looking at 3-4pm as the end time.
Around 3:15pm the message on the screen said, "close." Then the front desk sent me a message to come talk to them. The staff person said he was taking me to "consult."
I got nervous....
I had just seen a doctor in the lobby come out to talk to a woman about her husband's progress. He was having some type of surgery done to his privates. The dr mentioned his scrotum. So when the person took me back to the little room, my anxiety skyrocketed. I couldn't breathe. I had to take my mask off because my heart was racing. I was pacing in the little room and when the doctor came in I told him I didn't like the little room. He eased my mind by telling me that they are almost done. The reason they took me to the little room was because there were some minor complications.
They had a hard time getting the breathing tube in, but once it was in the sleeve part went fine. The dr said his liver was huge, but he had no problem moving it out of the way to get to the stomach. Midway through the sleeve process the breathing tube was coming out so they had to stop. When I talked to my aunt who was a respiratory therapist she said she's never heard of that problem before. She said that maybe they didn't put it in right and that may have been because of his weight. But he made it through and now he's in recovery.
I'll be getting back on the highway soon because I can't see him due to COVID-19. I hope he's able to talk tomorrow because I want to talk to him....
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