Josie

29 Sep Josie

It only takes one. One day. One hour. One minute. One second to change your life forever. Mine happened in less than a day by something even the best doctors can only describe as “The Perfect Storm”.

It all started with what I thought was a late season flu. It started at 3am on that specific April day. I called into work because who wants to be at work when you feel miserable? By noon I had developed a terrible pain in both of my thighs. I thought they were just Charlie Horses since I hadn’t been drinking much that day, so I thought they had developed due to dehydration. I sat in the shower all afternoon as the heat was only subside the pain, if only for a minute. I suffered through them for the next 6 hours until my husband came home and convinced me to go to our local ER.

Two hours into my ER visit, my first diagnosis was made and Careflight to Dayton was being arranged. Original diagnosis, Sepsis. They believed my organs were shutting down. My husband called my parents and they were there within a half hour. Three hours into my ER visit and my left leg began to turn black. My doctor came in to re-evaluate and my diagnosis was changed. I went from having Sepsis to having Necrotizing Fasciitis. The “Flesh Eating Bacteria” in Lehman’s terms. Four hours into my ER visit and my care flight to Dayton was canceled and I was now going to be flown out to Columbus. Six hours into my ER visit and I was care flighted out.

I could tell you everything about that 20 minute flight. The twinkling lights of all the small towns and big cities. The sound of the helicopter. Everything. I can tell you how much my blankets flew around when they pushed me off the helicopter. But the second those elevator doors shut to bring me down to their ER I can tell you absolutely nothing. Nothing for 2 weeks. I can only recall one small moment in time where my husband told me that “I lost my leg but it was all going to be ok”. And let me tell you. He wasn’t lying. I was ok. And I still am ok.

My husband and I were unaware of how serious this was when we left our local ER. It wasn’t until my husband went back to my ER room to grab something we had forgotten and seen my nurse sitting there crying when he truly realized how bad it was.

My husband rode with my mom to Columbus. They had made the 2 hour trip in just an hours time. They knew time was of the essence. The surgeons were waiting for my husband and Mom at the door to sign the consents and to allow him to see me one last time before sending me into a long and hard surgery. A surgery that I had only 5% chance of making it through. They originally tried making me an Above the Knee (AK) amputee. After surgery they brought me to the SICU where I continued to decline. Within an hour I was heading back into surgery because they had not gotten all of the infection. I went from an AK to a Hip Disarticulation. At this point, they had stopped the infection in my leg. A colostomy was put in place to help prevent infection in my amputation site. Necrotizing Fasciitis is rare but the form I had had only been seen 3 times in the US with mine being the 4th. None of the priors had survived this deadly, fast acting infection.

A few days later I began to decline again. But this time my right arm was swelling and was hot to touch. The infection had spread to my arm. Amputation was a threat but by the Grace of God, they were able to save my arm but had to take quite a bit of muscle and tendons to do so. I then began to improve.

After two weeks in the SICU. 24 surgeries. A breathing tube. A NG tube. A central line. An 8 week catheter. Four weeks on the burn unit. Two weeks in rehab, I could finally come home to my husband and little boy. A little boy who would be turning one years old in a weeks time. A little boy who had forgotten who his mom was.

Even after going through all the surgeries and recovery’s and rehabs, the hardest part, by far, was coming home and having your baby boy not know who you were. He would cry when his Dad put him near me. He refused to say “Mama”. I couldn’t care for him the way a mom should be able to. I couldn’t be alone with him as I couldn’t even pick him up. It was just heart breaking. I had to bribe him with M&M’s just to get a smile out of him. But thankfully, time did heal this wound. Eventually he started to come up to me without having to be bribed. Then came the smiles. And then the hugs. And then best of all, a word every mom loves to hear, my sweet baby boy called me “Mama”!

My rehab continued over a year and more. I had learned to use my less functioning hand more and more everyday. I had learned to walk with my prosthetic though I preferred to use a walker. I returned to work 6 months after I had originally gotten sick. And best of all, 8 months later, on NYE, I found out I was pregnant with my second child…

Our parents, friends, & family were wonderfully shocked. So glad that we were still able to grow our family but still so worried because our plates were already so full and now we were adding more. This child was not planned, but God must’ve knew we needed this sweet little baby.

In September of the year following my amputation date I gave birth to a beautiful 9lb 1oz baby girl. It was a Tuesday that I gave birth and we came home on a Friday around noon. It was a beautiful and busy fall day. We had lots of friends and family stopping over to see our new addition. Our world was brighter and more beautiful.

My husbands parents came over a little later on that particular Friday. A neighborhood friend had just left and they wanted to see their newest granddaughter again. Around 9pm, I had thought I had lost control of my bladder because I had felt a big gush. I casually went to the bathroom where I found a very large pool of blood. I tried I clean it up, but the bleeding wouldn’t let up. My husband happened to come to the back of the house a few moments later and I called him into the bathroom. We both knew something was wrong. We left the kids with my husbands parents and we were off to the ER. Again. But this time I knew how serious it was. This time was much scarier. I had more to lose. And I’m saying all this after losing an entire leg the first time.

My bleeding had picked up dramatically. I had soaked through a large maternity pad and a towel within minutes. My husband was giving our vehicle all it had. We made it to the ER just in the Knick of time. My husband parked directly in front of the doors grabbed a wheel chair and brought it over to the passenger side, all while I was telling him I was about ready to pass out. He rushed me inside and banged on the ER door until someone could open it just wide enough for that wheel chair to fit through. Somehow, my world never went dark. I still can remember each minute of that night.

As they laid me on the table and began taking my vitals, all I could think about was my cousin who had passed away after childbirth less than a year prior. She was the same age I was right then. I kept thinking about her husband. About how my husband would take care of 2 kids on his own.

I heard them say my blood pressure was 40/20. They started an IV and started transfusing me with blood. After multiple sticks, they finally were able to get a blood draw for lab. My hemoglobin was 3.1 instead of the normal 13.5. I was hemorrhaging. I was calm but I was afraid. My husband was afraid but comforting. Again, he had called my parents in. My husbands describes it as “he knew it was pretty bad when the doctor left a man who just had a heart attack to come help me”.

I was then transferred to a trauma room where they inserted a central line so they could give me even more blood. Careflight was called even though a storm was rolling in. I passed a very large clot, larger than a softball, just before care flight arrived, and by some Grace of God my bleeding had began to normalize.

I was transferred out to the Valley where I was told I had the potential of having to have a hysterectomy. And all I could think of was what my husband told me before I left. He told me to do whatever they said, even if it meant taking it all. He’d rather have me then another baby ever. Thankfully, my bleeding was back to normal and no surgery was needed. I was watched in the PICU for 2 days and then sent back home to rest and recover with my babies and husband.

Life is hard. Our timeline is so unpredictable, and complex, and wonderful, and ugly, and uneventful, and so eventful we could cry one way or the other. But a timeline is made up of a series of events. The line that joins the beginning and the end of us. The most important line that goes on our tombstone. Every event that leads up to a peak or a Valley on our timeline was put there for a purpose that we never know about until the next thing happens.

I could’ve became disabled when I lost my leg. But all of my highs and lows before that moment taught me how much of a fighter I was. It didn’t take losing my leg to teach me that. I already knew that. I was brought up that way. After I lost my leg, I became a person that had the ability to carry even the largest of burdens on one leg.

I could’ve stop having children after I hemorrhaged. No one would have blamed my husband and I. But my desire to be a mom overpowered any fear I could possibly have had about it happening again. I used my resources and pooled together the best possible team to make sure it didn’t happen again. I made sure that my story didn’t stop after the valleys on my timeline. And it didn’t. Even after all the ugly, the world became a bit more beautiful this past July when we welcomed our third child, a girl, into the world.

If you are still reading this, thank you. I hope you have developed the desire to make the most out of your timeline. To never let the peaks be dulled by the valleys and to never let the valleys plateau and become the norm. But I would like to leave you with 2 thoughts….

1. Everyone has scars. Some are just more visible than others.
2.The idea of one doesn’t just apply to time as it only takes me ONE leg to move mountains.