When I opened the back door to let Hana in, my heart sank as I realized Kitty was missing. I turned to Jason and asked if he had let her in, but of course he hadn’t because if he had, she would have been snuggled with him on the couch. He jumped up, grabbed his crutches, and went outside to see if she was just being stubborn and hiding because she didn’t want to come in. We both quickly realized that she was not in the yard. Crushed, we were trying to figure out what could have happened or when she disappeared. Keep in mind, Kitty is a small terrier-dachshund mix and our fence was four feet tall, so it isn’t like we had a consistent problem with her easily escaping. Adding to the panic was the fact that just that morning, I had taken her collar off with her ID tags on it because she was shaking and making noise, which was waking a recovering Jason. There was a football game at Hughes Stadium that day, which was not far from our house, so there were a ton of people in the area parking their cars and walking to the game. Our biggest concern was that an intoxicated college student reached over the fence and stole her. We recruited our neighbor, as Jason couldn’t walk anywhere, and spent more than two hours looking for Kitty. I returned home to see my husband sitting on a rock in tears, feeling as defeated and as hopeless as I did. We were scared, frustrated, and quite honestly, devastated.
We called animal control, printed out a few fliers to distribute, and sat on the couch pondering our options, as I sat literally sobbing. The thought occurred to me that I hadn’t even prayed about this and went on the search essentially alone. I said to Jason, “Maybe we need to pray about this.” I took it a step further and called our friend Richard in Denver, who had taught us both quite a bit about trusting God. I told him of our predicament, thinking he would scold me for worrying about something as meaningless as a dog but, as always, he was kind and tender. He reminded me that God loves me, and if it hurts me, it matters to Him. He counseled me to simply pray and trust that God would lead us to our sweet dog. When I got off the phone, I did pray, but I must admit, it was an irreverent, selfish, demanding prayer in which I told God that if He didn’t find Kitty and get her back home by dark, I was never speaking to Him again. Jason prayed as well and out I went again to search.
As I walked out of the townhouse again, a group of rowdy college kids were out front and I asked them if they had seen a stray dog. One of them said, “Yes,” and proceeded to describe Kitty and tell me that several HOURS prior, someone was holding her and asking this group if they knew who she belonged to. I was relieved that she hadn’t been kidnapped from our yard, that someone was searching for her owner, and figured that eventually she would be at the local pound. Relieved, I started back to the house to tell Jason when I heard a whimper from the garage of the house I happened to be standing in front of. “NO WAY,” I said to myself! As I approached the garage door calling her name, she responded with a familiar bark. I was hopeful, but still skeptical that I just so happened to be standing in front of the right house. I put my hands under the garage door to see if I could pry it open (delusional, I know), but I was able to break the seal enough for her to put her little brown paw out and give me the opportunity to know it was her. I ran and got Jason, who hobbled over and confirmed that it was her. We were beyond relieved, but didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know if she was hurt, or had water, and we wanted to get her out.
Unfortunately, nobody was home. I snuck around back and confirmed that the peoples’ back door was unlocked, but Jason insisted that I not go in. This is the difference between our personalities and it shows how attached I had gotten to his dog. He is very patient and wanted to wait for the owners to get home. I was willing to risk jail time to get my dog. Notice that Kitty was now MY dog, at least in my heart that day. By this time, it was after 3 p.m. I went and grabbed two chairs and we sat outside of this house for several hours until a truck pulled up.
When the couple arrived home and got out of their truck, puzzled by the fact that we were camping in their driveway, we asked them if they happened to find a dog. They smiled and said, “Yes, we have a stray dog, but we didn’t find her.” They explained that someone drove down the street, stopped in front of their house, and asked if they recognized the dog. Apparently, she had made her way to Hughes Stadium, was almost hit by three cars, and then proceeded to jump in this stranger’s car when she stopped to help her. This woman who rescued Kitty wasn’t from the area, so she couldn’t keep her or take her to the Humane Society. This couple agreed to keep the dog in their garage and take her to a vet the following Monday to see if she had a microchip. The homeowners proceeded to compliment us on how well trained she was and knew her commands. Jason and I, though very proud, were confused because Kitty never listens to us, though she does indeed know her commands. We were reunited with our dog, and had her tucked in and ready for bed, just before dark.
We were so thankful when we realized that she could have been hit by a car and wasn’t. Though there were many options, the person who rescued her “happened” to drive down our street and drop her off with someone who was kind. We were most grateful that the circumstances allowed us to be reunited with Kitty that day, as requested; otherwise we would have had a sleepless weekend. Most of all, we were thankful that God led us when He was asked, even if the request came in the form of an irreverent demand, for something most would consider unimportant.
Still being confused as to how she escaped in the first place, the next morning we put her in the backyard again while Jason stood outside the fence and called her. We watched in both horror and amusement as she climbed up the barbecue grill and leaped over the fence with ease. Being the social dog that she is, we figured that she heard the crowds of people going to the football game, and bored because she was in the backyard alone, decided to go make friends. We simply moved the barbecue grill so she was unable to escape, and scare us half to death, again. I know it may seem silly, but Kitty, Hana, and my new dog, Roscoe, represent what I now know was a persistent prayer of my husband’s: that my heart would soften to the idea of a pet.
CHAPTER 10
SURGERIES GALORE
Disclaimer: This is a personal and intimate story and not for young, or prudish, readers.
I was seventeen years old, fresh out of high school, and had begun my journey at a trade school learning avionics. In 1994, I started having weird pains in my left groin area. I couldn’t really explain what it was. It was just a tingly, icky pain. It wasn’t debilitating, just painful. I made my first trip to the gynecologist and various other specialists, but nobody could find anything wrong. This went on month after month until long after I graduated. I had started a job where I was contracted to assist in the installation of air phones in commercial aircraft for a well-known carrier. The stress of changing to a shift that had me working from 1 to 7 a.m., and the manual labor component, only exasperated the pain. After this contract was completed and I was waiting for a new job, I decided to get to the root of this and get back to the doctor. The only problem was that I did not have health insurance anymore, as I was no longer qualified to have coverage on my parent’s plan, so all of the appointments were out of pocket. After several attempts to find the problem, and with my doctor knowing that something was wrong, he decided that an exploratory surgery would be the best option. “That should be fun,” I said to myself, especially as a very young woman with no health insurance!
Keep in mind this is many years before I believed in Divine intervention, so there was no prayer, but it will show God’s involvement in my life, even before I knew Him. It just so happened that an insurance agent at my primary care doctor’s office heard of my predicament and gave me a call. When he realized that I had been an independent contractor, he told me I could qualify for a group policy and they could not deny me for this pre-existing condition. Ironically, I later learned that I should have been paid as a W-2 employee, not an independent contractor, but the company error worked to my advantage.
My surgery was scheduled immediately. I went into this procedure giving them fu
ll permission to fix whatever they found. I woke up a couple of hours later with a very painful right side. Even in my grogginess, I was concerned that an error occurred because, after all, it was my left groin area that had prompted the exploration. I remember laying there for quite some time thinking that I was now one of those stories where the hospital accidentally sent me to the wrong operating room and now I was missing an organ. To my relief, the nurse finally explained to me that they didn’t find anything wrong on my left side, but on my right side they had found a large hernia that I was apparently born with. They determined that either I had a small hernia on my left side that they could not see, or the pain on my left was referral pain from the now repaired hernia on my right. I was relieved to know that there was no major problem and that they had at least found something. Little did I know that the repair of the hernia was an incidental issue and would later prove to have nothing to do with the pain in my groin, but thank goodness it was fixed and cost me nothing more than a small deductible.
I will fast forward to September of 2007, to my honeymoon in Maui, with the love of my life. I had been raised to wait for marriage for sexual intimacy and, for many reasons, I did. I was thirty-two when I got married and was looking forward to this component of life. So was my husband, who had respected my desire to wait for almost two years. However, I knew immediately something was wrong. My friends had given me the heads up that the first time having sex can be uncomfortable, but it was beyond that. It was as if someone was sticking a fire poker in me. I had never experienced any pain like that in my life. Though we were finally able to “seal the deal,” it was a miserable experience. Our honeymoon was filled with amazing fun: SCUBA diving, hiking, horseback riding, and more, just not the normal honeymoon fun.
We initially thought the problem was just stress or lack of being able to relax. We were faced with some other tough situations immediately after we returned from our honeymoon, so our sex life was essentially put on the back burner. After six months of this nonsense, and a marriage that was now filled with unexpected tension and frustration, I made an appointment with my primary care doctor. I explained to her that intercourse equated to total hell and even the slightest initial touch was excruciating. She confirmed this when she attempted an exam. It was determined that the vaginal pain seemed to be isolated to the left side and only in certain spots. She didn’t have any real solutions except to send me to a specialist and to prescribe numbing cream.
The gynecologist who I was referred to was oh so helpful, let me tell you. I always love it when a male doctor tells me to, “just relax,” especially when I am the one sitting naked on butcher paper, surrounded by scary metal instruments and foot rests. After an exam, he came up with a brilliant solution. His exact words were, “I don’t know what is wrong, but perhaps we should remove some skin and see if that helps.” “What?” I said to myself. “This guy doesn’t know what’s wrong, but he wants to remove my vaginal skin. Uh … no thanks!” I told him I was not inclined to do that, got dressed, and left frustrated. I wanted answers, and I wanted healing.
This issue continued for almost two years, and though my relationship with my husband was still solid, it was a big problem. The numbing cream solution also had an impact on him, as you can imagine, and he was sick of it. The fact that he knew it was an actual medical situation that we could not figure out kept him from being angry at me, but it was frustrating. After a lot of conversations about it, we decided to proactively start praying together and sincerely believed that God wanted better for us and would guide us. I also joined a prayer group and found strength in the support given by other women and a few men in the group who bashfully prayed for my body.
One night in the spring of 2009, Jason came running down-stairs, telling me to turn the television on. There was an interview being conducted by a popular talk show host on this very topic! As we watched together, several married couples were describing a situation that mirrored ours. What was the most helpful for both of us, was the husband’s perspective, and the understanding of the hurt and disappointment that this issue caused for them. While this show offered no solutions, we took note of the uncanny timing. When I asked Jason why he was randomly watching a talk show geared towards women, he responded with something along the lines of, “I wasn’t. I was in the bathroom and heard the television, which I hadn’t turned on, and it was on this channel.” Hmmm, I hadn’t turned the television on either.
Shortly after this incident, I was walking up our stairs and that old familiar pain in my left groin returned with a vengeance. It was so intense, and shooting throughout my body, that it hurt to even step down on my foot with full weight. It lasted for a few seconds and stopped. Sitting on the steps, I had an epiphany. The two had to be connected. All of the pain was on my left side, both vaginally, when Jason and I tried to make love, and now when I was simply trying to walk up the stairs. After a useless trip to urgent care, I called my primary care doctor and insisted that she order a CT scan. She did, and there was nothing found. Urg! Another round of specialist appointments, and an MRI revealed nothing either. Seriously?! At that point finding an enormous tumor would have been better news than finding nothing. We were beyond exasperated.
One evening, right after the useless MRI results, I was sitting in total silence and the random thought came to my mind to call my younger brother, who was in medical school. It seemed a bit awkward, but at this point, I would do anything. I explained the circumstances and he was supportive, but puzzled. He told me that if he thought of anything he would let me know. Literally, the same night, he sent me a text message and told me that a friend of his from medical school had stopped by his house, and my brother shared my predicament with him. It “just so happened” that this individual had recently finished a rotation with a female pelvic pain specialist in Denver, and he assured my brother that if this guy couldn’t figure out what was going on, then nobody could. I got his name, confirmed that he was a network provider on my insurance, and made a call the next day to start the process.
Once I got confirmation that I had made it through this doctor’s screening process, I followed up and wanted the next available slot. When I was on the phone, the appointment setter initially told me that it may be months to get in but, “ironically,” an appointment opened up for three weeks later, so I jumped on it. I had a really good feeling, and the feeling was confirmed a few days later when I made a visit to a physical therapist. I told her about my upcoming appointment with Dr. John Slocumb. She literally put her pen down and said something to the effect of, “Heaven must have opened up for you. This guy is a legend and I know him personally, but usually can’t get my clients in for six months.” I later learned that this doctor had just come out of retirement because they could not find a suitable replacement for him. I was never more excited to visit a doctor.
When we went in for the appointment, Dr. Slocumb asked me many qualifying questions, and read the paperwork that I had pre-filled out. Being the impatient person that I tend to be, I finally asked him if he had any idea what was going on because I couldn’t read him. Very casually, he told me that he knew exactly what was wrong, and though he didn’t need to do an exam to know, he would, just to confirm. I was excited and Jason was too! While I will limit the details of the exam, he confirmed that I had a nerve injury that was following a nerve pathway starting from my left groin all the way down to my vaginal area. The injury caused inflammation in my glands and damaged the tissue. This explained why nothing showed up in the MRI or CT scan, as nerve injuries don’t reveal themselves in pictures. When he learned that I had chicken pox at age sixteen, he explained that this could be the likely culprit, considering my symptoms started shortly thereafter. Chicken pox is part of the herpes virus, which notoriously causes nerve injury. The groin issue had subsided for many years, but when I became sexually active, my nervous system wasn’t having that and everything went bonkers! And yes, that is a medical term … bonkers! He told me that a surgery to remove the gl
ands and do a vaginal skin transplant had a 95 percent success rate. He did warn me that 25 percent of the time, a follow-up surgery was needed to remove more damaged tissue, but I could handle those odds. I signed up for surgery, did the pre-op that day, and was relieved for a solution.
My first, and yes I said first, surgery was scheduled for July of 2009, just three weeks away. By the end of December of that year, I had three surgeries removing glands and bad tissue. The biopsies of the glands showed that I suffered from both chronic and acute inflammation in the area, which explained why touching equated to torture. By the time I was introduced to Dr. Slocumb, he could not even do a one-finger exam, as my muscles interpreted touch as a threat and clinched.
One of the things about this process that I valued is that Dr. Slocumb had other women, who had already undergone this procedure, speak to those who were preparing for the surgery. I talked to someone before my surgery and spoke to several afterwards. I came to learn of the horrors that I avoided. Some women had upward of twenty surgeries and, in some cases, had body parts removed, all in the name of trying to find the problem. I am thankful I dodged that mess. I am also so grateful that the door opened for me to find one of less than a handful of doctors in the United States who could both diagnose the problem and perform the surgery and he happened to be near my home. As my body has healed and my intimacy with Jason has become what it should be, I remain thankful for the multiple sets of miracles and protection in the process.
Audible Hallucinations: A Free Spirit's Journey In Discovering WHOSE She Really Is Page 4
