Monday, December 31, 2007

5% ???? 5%!!!!



So I am home! I went home yesterday (Sunday) and today is New Year's Eve. I am currently eating (yay!), sitting, taking vicatin, reading, watching tv,attempting to have a bowel movement (yes I said it-that's the reality of your life when they take out your 22 foot long small intestines and beat them up), and trying to learn to walk and move again. Sleeping on your back is really not my thing. Thank you for any and all encouragement...I need it! Being at home especially is harder because nothing is in one place so I have to move a lot more and sadly my bed stays in one place. This induces lots of new pain I haven't encountered yet. I tell you these things to inform you of the reality of what I actually deal with daily right now, not to complain. And my mind has been blown by the sovereignty of God, really. My doctor told me yesterday before he casually walked out the door that there is only a 5% chance of this happening twice to someone, and a 5% chance of it ever happening at all. WOW. Well, 1) it's happened 2) it's happened TWICE! I don't have a clue as to what it means, but I do know that the sovereignty of God is all over that. It pretty much blows my mind to think about. Please pray for healing-at 3 weeks I'll have 50% strength, and at 6 weeks-i'm cleared to play NFL Football (literally, my doctor said that:). I'm trying to figure out when the best time to go back to work is too. I'm going to miss at least a week, but we move around a LOT so we need lots of wisdom on the when. And also, I am not sleeping through the night very well. I think those are the main ones. If you are in Dallas I love visitors. We can sit and talk! I want to see the Lord move while I'm at home too, not just at the hospital with all the new friends I made, but in my house. And it can seem kind of defeating at times. Anway, here are the last 2 pics from yesterday and today! (Maybe I look better?:)

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Day 7: A week ago today...


This time last Saturday I was headed to the gym with my sister Chaney. We ran and did crunches. Today? Today I can get out of bed myself and walk up and down the hall 8 times in one day and go to the bathroom myself. Funny how life changes just like that! But ya know, this has been such a hard and yet gloriously humbling week. I've had to be completely dependant. My parents are champs, one of them has slept up here with me every night this week. I couldn't do anything when I came out of surgery at all. Today is a momentous day because I got FOOD. Well really "liquid diet" for breakfast. But still, I haven't eaten since last Saturday! So this morning? Jello never tasted so good. Jello, chicken broth,some icey thing, and apple juice (which I love!). I really love jello so i was excited that it was the first food i got to eat. I think the stomach has been more than ready for it:) Then I found out i get my staples out today! My stomach has a 5 inch long scar that runs vertical to my belly button with staples (like you use in a classroom) holding my stomach together along with many stitches. The staples come out today! Don't worry, there's no anesthesia...I still have little dots on my stomach from last time they took them out when I was 7. This is essential to happen for me to keep healing. When they told me this morning they were taking them out, I got really nervous. Then immediately the Lord reminded me that this is so how we are with him. He wants to heal us and completely redeem us but we are so okay where we are in our completely pathetic state that we are willing to just stay wounded so we can stay comfortable. He came to set us free and we just want to stay where we are. So good. Then my precious Daddy (Mark, not my heavenly dad) read to me from the Bible like he and mommy have done so graciously all week. My parents are awesome. Today the sun is absolutely gorgeous. Surprisingly I have a really good view of Dallas which is good. DO NOT READ IF YOU GET GROSSED OUT EASILY:) My doctor just came in and told me that during my surgery they took out my intestines that were basically in a blanket of scar tissue. They took them out of me put them on a table and "beat them up". Then they put them back in me once they got the kinks out. He told me another astounding fact but that will be a new and different post tomorrow! And I might get to go home tomorrow! This is the today picture...i need to wash my hair-i'll get my nurses to work on that:)

Friday, December 28, 2007

Day 6-O Glorious Day!


So today, I feel so blessed. I've gotten some GREAT visitors and cards and everything...highlights were unexpected visitors my lovely roomie Ashley Baldridge and Mr and Mrs Butch Smith in towns for a wedding. Such blessings! Thank you for the flowers too! I love those! Recent Updates: I got my NG tube (Nasal Gastric) OUT for GOOD! It went from my nostril in previous pictures down to my stomach and was just not a pleasant experience. It got put in wrong the first time so i coughed up blood, the 2nd time it was bleeding and had a hole in it, but don't worry, 3rd time's a charm:) but now, IT'S GONE! I've never said praise the Lord so many times! I can fully breathe! I still have my IV, morphine, and my gigantic scar (well, cut, it's still healing), and MAYBE, just MAYBE, I get food today!!!! I haven't eaten anything since Saturday (this is completely the Lord let me tell you, I LOVE food). The Lord has just reminded me with all this semester, he is in control, nothing is too hard for him...if he wanted it done in different timing, he would do it that way (prayer is essential too, but that's another post). Ashley Kinnard sent me the best thing last week that is so applicable to this:yay for Jesus and his timing! She was talking about how the Lord tests us, and he's interested in sanctifying us, and God doesn't waste his tests on us. So good. It's a Piper article, but I'm too out of it to find the exact reference at the moment:) So that's the update! Currently, i'm listening to Andrew Peterson's Christmas Album, glorious, and Simone Watts is on her way to visit! Enjoy my new lovely pic:) Trust me, I know I look yuck:) I like to take strange pictures too...

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Day 5 in Good Ole Presby Hospital...and counting!


Hello there! This is my picture today, straight hair! Today is Thursday, AJ's birthday! I got to the hospital about 11 on Saturday night, and went into surgery Sunday morning...Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. word. I'm starting to get rather hungry but can't have food and get my nose tube out until I pass gas...probably tomorrow. But you know, my only constant, the only thing i can count on is the Lord's consistancy and sovereignty in all of this. I got sick at the exact time i was home, i could've been a million other places-praise the Lord i was home! I can't count on men but on the Lord and the wisdom, knowledge, and capabilities he's chosen to give my drs and nurses. Even though I do hope for my situation to keep changing, and it most likely will, the Lord is my rock. He's been affirming himself in every way possible, not that he even needs to, and showing me his grace, even when i feel like i should be "allowed to feel sorry for myself" in the hospital over my christmas break. Silly me! I am so thankful for how this has played out, and as it will continue to, and he is increasing my faith in so many new ways. I'm still on morphine so this might be coming out funny. In other news, my best friend Elise is engaged! And feel free to come visit my hospital if you're in Dallas, I love viistors:) Thank you body (as in you people). I am blessed by you everywhere!

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Tubes Tubes Tubes.


this is what i look like right now! just for you do!

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Hello from the Hospital!

So about 17 years ago, my colon got twisted in a knot. I was in 2nd grade. I felt like I had gas that whole night and found out otherwise at the emergency room the next day. Fastforward to this past Saturday morning I ran 4 miles. So Saturday night, I felt like I had gas, then I started throwing up....and lo and behold, I had kinks in my small intestine aka blockage in them. So Sunday morning I was admitted to have surgery at Presbyterian in Dallas on my small intestine. They took them out, unkinked them, and put them back in. Now it's Tuesday Christmas Day and I"m just hanging out in my room at the hospital. I'm really out of it still-sorry i've been on morphine since sat evening and just got access to my computer. Amazing friends like my HOPE group, an email from butch, and some of my fellow Dallas believers and Dallas ministers have been visiting me. Such a blessing. If anyone is actually reading this, please pray for my walking, my intestines healing, and this nose tube that goes through my nose to my esophagus. My parents are so good and have been with me the whole time and my sisters have visited a lot. The visitors have made my day! And my roommate just walked in!!! I love Ashley! The Lord is SO good. I'm dead to the world but am so filled with thankfulness:) I've been living off of Psalm 34 the last few days. Feel free to call my cell phone-someone in my family will answer. Merry Christmas! One day at a time! And Psalm 146 and 147 are so good too.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Home. Home. Home.

I'm sitting in our living room at home. Real home. Where mommy and daddy are. I've lived in this house since I was one. We lived here while we remodeled it to fit all five of us. I've never changed bedrooms. I see my dad washing dishes (yes he's awesome) through the window in our kitchen as I write this. A window that used to look out into the backyard. I just got home a few hours ago from cstat, which is very much home as well. I sit in this house and all these memories come to mind from over the years. When the air conditioner leaked in my room, Dad tried to nail the soggy sagging ceilling back up and it fell on him, leaving a gaping hole. I had to live in chaney's room for weeks! Our den is a beautiful blue color (I am a blue fanatic) and I think about how we almost didn't paint it this color and painted it lime green instead. Trust me, we made a good decision. Or this summer when I had 15 of my favorite people over for dinner. So fun! I picture all of us sitting on the floor because we had no furniture that week. But more than the building of my home, the actual structure, is the essence that is home. The people, my family, both blood and of Christ, that inhabit these walls, whether visiting or actually living here, these are what make me love home. I love people. I love family. Don't you know this is just mere symbolism of our homecoming to heaven one day? How I long for that day! Such a beautiful picture that just struck me. As much as I love coming home to rest and just be, this is how heaven will be one day. We get to just BE with Jesus. And it never ends. Glorious.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Daddy's Little Girls

So it's been entirely too long since I've written. I think I've had a slight brain block which is now gone. Good! I love to write! While thinking about Christmas, someone asked me what my favorite Christmas tradition is. Hands down, such an easy question in the Nall household. Typically, my mom does the Christmas present shopping but it always says it's from my parents-typical in most houses I would say. Well having 3 daughters with no boys until last year, my dad decided he was going on a mission starting when I was about 15. My family is kind of obsessed (just slightly) with the outdoors and all that it entails. Therefore, we adore REI, pointblank. It all started as my dad got inspired at REI to buy all of us thermo-compasses one year. They tell you direction as well as temperature. Handy little contraptions. The next year, again, he was inspired. Pocketknives. The trend continued until it just became tradition in our house. As much as I'm blessed by anything anyone chooses to give me, the presents from Dad and REI are always favorites. He also wraps them himself. My dad is cool I tell you:) Last year he bought me a bison ball of chalk for climbing, which is shaped really awkwardly, and he wrapped it, as is (or was). Anyway, we like the outdoors and our Daddy (and of course mommy too:), thus we are Nalls. The outdoor gear exchange is always exciting! What's your favorite Christmas tradition?