2023: Hospital Free!
In 2023, an amazing thing happened. I didn’t have a single hospital stay. Not one. “Um, Lori, that’s not newsworthy information,” you may be thinking. “Most healthy people aren’t inpatients over the course of a twelve month stint. What makes 2023 so special?” I’m glad you asked, because over the span of 2018 through 2022, I didn’t miss a year without serious hospital involvement.
Mid-2018, I had a cyst the size of a baseball removed with my left ovary, uterus, and fallopian tubes. Endometriosis also found itself no longer welcomed in my body, so the doctor removed it, as well. Later that same year, I broke off a piece of bone in my right foot and required a second surgery to stop the excruciating pain. (To this day, we don’t know what caused the break.) I wrapped up the year in an air cast.
In 2019, I ended the year again with a four-day hospital stay, this time for supra ventricular tachycardia (SVT) and a heart rate of 200BPM for 90 minutes. It took Adenosine to shock my heart back into rhythm. The ER doc actually did a happy dance, because the IV-injected meds worked on the first try. The experience lead me to several specialists and many more tests. My electrophysiologist, top in his field, couldn’t figure out why my blood pressure remained high or what I could do to start living a healthy life again. (Spoiler alert: it took them three years to finally pin the problems on my lungs.)
In 2020, I had my first vertigo spell. Again, no rhyme or reason. I couldn’t open my eyes or lift my head off the pillow, so an ambulance had to be called. Not knowing what had caused my life to spin out of control, the doctor ordered a brain MRI to rule out tumors or any other probable cause. Thankfully, the scans showed nothing remarkable. However, between vertigo end of October and then being rear ended at a stoplight almost two months later, it took almost 14 months before I felt safe being behind the wheel. Dependence on others became a real thing, and I fought mental and emotional battles waiting for life to balance itself out.
In 2021, I stepped outside my protective bubble to attend a family member’s funeral and caught Covid during my travels. The illness almost cost me my life. Had God not intervened, acute respiratory distress would’ve taken my life on August 1, 2021, but God’s grace prevailed.
August 2022: It took doctors almost a year to date of diagnosing me with Covid to realize I had Covid-induced asthma. I had woken middle of the night from a deep sleep with hypertension and heart rate over 100BPM. This is what landed me with a four-day hospital stay while tests confirmed their suspicions. Of course, having survived a year of undiagnosed asthma prior and watching several friends die, I wondered why God had saved me and not the others. Recently, I’ve come to terms with not knowing. Some things we’ll never understand this side of Heaven, and that’s OK. I still choose to commit this gift of one more breath, one more day, to loving others for Jesus.
What is so special about 2023? After being a Covid long hauler for more than two years, I witnessed a miracle firsthand when my CT scan in December 2023 came back clean with no signs of permanent lung damage or scar tissue from Covid. Say what?!? You heard that right. God made our bodies to heal; and, let me tell you, I’m one incredibly grateful recipient of a love so amazing and real! ”Then He sent them out to tell everyone about the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.“ Luke 9:2 NLT