I realize it has been a very long time since my last post. Scott's open heart surgery was by far one of the hardest things the two of us have ever had to go through. Literally the day of his surgery as I was waiting for updates and praying and hoping everything would be OK, my nose started running more and more and more. By the end of the evening, when Scott was out of surgery and recovering in the ICU and in so much pain, I was feeling more and more tired, headachy, and having sinus pain. I knew something was not going well with my body. My brother in law stayed with Scott and I went home. I took a Covid test after coming home to sleep that night, and sure enough, I had Covid. So Scott spent the rest of his recovery in the hospital with other family members by his side. A day or two after I tested positive for Covid, kids started testing positive for strep. We had 2 with strep and me with Covid about the time he needed to come home. I was so stressed. His mother and oldest sister were so vigilant in visiting him and helping him to feel loved and watched over while I was home dealing with the sickness, and I am so grateful for their dedication to helping him, but it was awful to have to stay away the entire time he was at the hospital. And when he got home, I had to be so careful for a few days because I still was testing postive for Covid, even the day he came home. We were airing out the house, lysoling bathrooms, changing sheets and blankets, laundering everything...quite the struggle. We managed to keep everyone else healthy, keep him from getting it, and he has been recovering since. He can now hike and move and lift and do most things like normal, with the exception that his chest is still somewhat tender where the wires are underneath the skin, and his stamina is not quite what it used to be.
Scott's oldest sister is a nurse who is actually normally part of the open-heart surgery team. As such, she has a lot of information and was able to provide a bit of assistance to help set things up, and she gave us some idea of all that was going on behind the scenes. It was interesting to hear about all the things that came together to help Scott have a successful surgery, from the people on the schedule (who she specifically chose so that Scott and I would have amazing nurses and doctors) to the supplies they needed for this specialized surgery. I have been struck a lot with the idea that there are often so many things being orchestrated behind the scenes that we don't know about, can't understand and can't see, but they are there, helping our lives whether we realize it or not.
There are still other aneurysms we have to worry about and keep an eye on in his body, and we don't know yet why this is happening to him. His arteries just have a natural tendency to want to tear or bulge, which is really not a great thing.
Shortly before he went in for surgery, we went to the temple together. There are many different temples, but they all serve the same purpose, to help do God's work. We make special covenants and promises and learn about our potential in the temple, and we assist in the work of other people who have died. Those people are still alive in heaven, but have no body, just a spirit. Those spirits can choose to accept any of the temple work done for them, or not to accept it, choice is something we very strongly believe in. The temple is also a place where we can go to feel closer to God, to just sit in quiet and peace and pray, meditate, study, or whatever needs to happen. I had a really beautiful moment as I was in the temple that day. I poured my heart out to God, trying to help him understand how scared I was about Scott's surgery, about our finances if he lost his job or died or had a long term struggle with health, I prayed about how we were going to take care of our children and send our son on a mission with all of the obstacles we were facing. At the end of my prayer, I simply asked for Heavenly Father to help me know that we were in His hands, that he was on our side helping with all these things I had spent so much time talking to Him about.
Before leaving the temple, I prayed once more, and grabbed a nearby set of scriptures. I felt that whatever scripture my eyes fell on was going to help me through this difficult time, and give me peace and answer to my prayers. I opened to 3 Nephi 13 (and honestly I was instantly skeptical because that is a part of the Book of Mormon where the Savior is visiting the Nephites, and I wondered how that was going to help me with how I was feeling) but my eyes fell to verse 32, which says "For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." My soul was pretty much just drenched with comfort, it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. He knows. My heart felt it clearly. He knows.
There have been lots of ups and downs. Healing is not a linear journey. Nights were very hard at first, and there still are occasional bad ones, where Scott struggles to sleep because of pain or stress, but mostly things have leveled out for a bit. I have felt over and over that God knows what we are going through, that He loves us so much and has a hand in so many of the details of our lives that we just don't always see and understand.
Since I could not be at the hospital as Scott was recovering, we tried to think of some way that he could see us and we could show him love and support while also keeping him and the other hospital patients and staff safe. We came up with the idea to create a few sidewalk chalk messages where we knew Scott could see them, and he came to the window and watched us. He was able to walk over to look at those messages whenever he practiced walking, and we also wrote some notes to thank the amazing caregivers at the hospital. It wasn't as great as being able to see him face to face, but it was what we could do in the moment. You can see him looking down from the window in one of the pictures. The words "You are loved" are written facing the window he could see us from. My mother had come up to help during the time Scott was recovering, and since I got Covid, she ended up staying with my sister and brought us meals regularly. She met us at the hospital on the day these were taken, and was there with lunch so we could focus on getting the messages written and then get out of the cold. Again, there are so many pieces in the background that we don't always think about, but God knows.
