As many you may know, I have had a rough last 6 months since the plane crash on Aug 1st. As a result of that horrible incident, two Christian missionaries, each with 4 children and a wife, died and for some reason that only God knows, Rob and I walked away. I personally had some significant injuries, a broken collarbone, an L3 compression fracture, a small fracture on my right index finger, and a paralytic ileus. The L3 compression fracture was the most serious of the injuries. My 3rd lumbar crunched about 40% and burst away from my spinal cord. If it had burst in the other direction, it would have most likely cut my spinal cord and I would have been paralyzed from that vertebra down. Numerous doctors have told me that I am a walking miracle.
Ironically, the spinal injury has not been the culprit of my pain these past 6 months, the paralytic ileus and digestive system have been. A paralytic ileus is where your entire digestive system shuts down, usually for a short period of time. In the hospital in Africa, I was in intense pain for a week because nothing in my digestive tract was moving and I vomited everything I ate. After a day or two, the doctors put a tube down my throat so that I would no longer vomit bile. After a week of the worst suffering I have ever been through, things started to flow and would not stop flowing for days. I was on the toilet for hours at a time and had to constantly wear diapers. For that first week, I could barely do anything on my own, including bath myself. After two weeks, I finally felt capable of leaving the hospital. The only thing still bothering me were these intense cramps, but since I was able to walk and eat, I figured it was time to go. I had no idea that those intense cramps would still be around today and the cause of them still unknown. Daily, particularly at night, I have bloating, cramping, and random pains in my abdomen, nothing but not eating makes them go away. I am writing this blog from a coffee shop in Atlanta, 30 lbs. lighter than when I left for that crazy adventure to Africa. For the last three months, I have been here with family trying to help me recover.
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