Thankfulness.

My sister and I the day before I went home.

I'm thankful for so many things today, but a big one is that I'm alive.

   Last April, my appendix ruptured. And I got sick. Really, really sick. And some of the nights I spent in the hospital I wondered if I was going to die.

   It all started when I got this killer stomachache. It was one of those stomachaches that you get when you ate too much, or when you have the flu and your body is fighting against you. It hurt, but I would be okay. It would pass.
   A few days later I threw up. And I felt better. Because I just had the flu. I'm the type of person who wants to know why I'm feeling bad. I hate feeling sick, but I feel better knowing why. So I breathed easier that day even though I vomited multiple times.
   A few days later, I had stopped throwing up and started to feel a little better. I was eating a little, and the stomachaches had ceased. I was on the mend. It hurt like crazy to lie down, but I figured my body was just sore from all the vomiting I had done.
   Saturday night, though, the pain of lying down grew so intense that I wanted to die. My ears started buzzing, and for a few seconds, which felt like hours, my vision was nothing but the fuzz you see on a TV screen when you have bad reception. But in a few minutes, I was fine. I felt better. I could breathe. I was okay.
   Several days later, I wasn't doing better. I could barely eat anything. It's not that I wanted to eat, but I was scared. I couldn't eat. It's a feeling you can't explain until you've felt it yourself. So my mom too me to the doctor. And that's when they told us to go to the ER. Now.

   My heart started beating on the ride to the hospital. I had only set foot in a hospital building a few times, and the only time I was admitted in one was when I was born. I was scared. Really scared.

   The next day, I had surgery. The only thing I remember is the taste of the anesthesia, which lingered in my mouth and lungs after I woke up. It tasted plasticky, like a cheap beach ball. I woke up groggy. I wanted to sleep for hours, for the rest of  my life. But they told me to stay awake, so I did.

   When we got back to my room, I wanted out of the hospital. I wanted to go home so bad that it hurt. I'm very much a homebody, and this was the longest I had ever been away from home.

   I got better. My white blood cell count was going down, and they were telling me that I would be able to go home in a few days. I was so dang excited when that day came.

   But the nurse came in and told me that my count had gone back up. I couldn't go home, and I would need another CT scan. I cried the rest of the day.

   A few days later, they found out that I had an abscess on my liver. And those words still make me cringe. I had to have a "procedure" to get rid of it.

   And a few days later, I was allowed to go home. But I wasn't out of the woods yet. Because I wasn't responding well to the oral antibiotics, I had to get them through a PICC line, which, if you don't know, is like a long IV that leads to your heart. I had to have it in for a good six weeks.

   I'm so thankful that that's all behind me. And I'd be lying if I said I don't still get scared when I get a stomachache or start feeling under the weather. But you know what? God will carry me through whatever it is that's coming for me next.

--Mandy