Category: Uncategorized

Well, I did it. I had RNY Gastric Bypass on August 28th. I would be lying if I said my life hasn’t totally changed. Between April 24th and August 28th, I lost 48 pounds. Since August 28th, I have lost another 31 pounds. While I am super excited about all of that, the difference in the way people treat me is kind of insane. Maybe it’s because I was small, then big, now trying to get small again or maybe it is because I just try to see people for who they are, not how they appear, but it has almost been disconcerting to watch how people treat each other lately.

I am perfectly aware that people have been treating each other horribly for a long time, nothing is new on that front. I just keep watching how people can say things about others or hold things against others that don’t matter. Sometimes I wish we all walked around without skin or clothes. Take away the body size, the looks, the outward identities that we put on like a set of clothes in the morning and we take away the things that humans tend to judge and get to the basis of humanity. Yes, I have lost weight. That doesn’t change who I am as a person. Yes, I wear smaller clothes, that doesn’t change my intelligence level. Yes, I move with less pain, that doesn’t change how much heart I put into everything and everyone around me.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. It has been showing up in my devotions and popping into my head. I’m guilty of it as well, but I am trying to not be. I’m trying to remember that there is humanity beneath all the outward appearance. People are the ones we are to leave regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual preference, football team preference, size, looks, the music they listen to, the car they drive, their age, their level of education, where they live, what they study, and the list goes on and on. What if, just once per day, everyone made a concerted effort to love someone who was different than they are? What would happen?

Why am I on this kick? It’s actually pretty simple. I don’t want to be treated better because I’m smaller. I want to be treated like a valued human regardless of my size. I’m tired of everyone being so mean to each other. We can actually have differences of opinions and still respect and be kind to one another. We can look different and still be valued. In fact, if we take into account that Bible verse about God making us in his own image, it seems like we might ought to look around at all the images God made. I don’t normally get very religious in front of people. Partially that is because I never studied religion, it’s also because I’m from the south and was raised that religion (and politics) is just one of those things you keep to yourself. That’s why this isn’t really a religious post. At least, it isn’t meant to be. It is meant to be a reminder that, regardless of someone’s size or any other outward appearance, they are still wonderfully made and deserving of kindness.

Maybe I am too much in my feelings this morning, but it is incredibly sad to me that we can’t look past the outward appearance to see the beauty that every individual brings to this world. It’s fine to not like things, but it isn’t fine to treat people shoddily.

To the woman that told me I was a fata** in Walmart the other night because I was buying marshmallows, I’m sorry you were having such a hard day. I also hope you have a great Thanksgiving week.

To the sports fans that treat each other ugly, I hope you are soon able to enjoy the blessing of watching sports without having to rain on someone else’s parade.

To the guy that hit my dog last week and kept going, I hope you got where you needed to go on time and that everything was ok. Don’t worry, Summitt is fine.

To the kids that talk ugly about each other in school, take a moment to think about all the amazing things that the people around you bring to your world. Focus on those instead.

To the people in this world (and I really mean to all of us) who treat others differently because of some prejudice that we hold against something, try closing your eyes and listening/appreciating the person in front of you instead of focusing on the imperfection that you see.

None of us are perfect, but think about how much more perfect this world could be with a little more kindness and understanding, a little more appreciation of the things that bring us together instead of focusing on what makes us different, a little more appreciation and love for our “neighbor” without judgement and harsh words. As we move into this thanksgiving week, I think I’m ready to spend more time being thankful for all the colors, sizes, shapes, and types of people in my life instead of looking at how we are different.

Sometimes something happens that shakes you to the core. This week has been one of those weeks. We started the week on a hopeful note. B had eighth grade night for wrestling on Monday night and won his match. I can’t believe we are wrapping up middle school for him. We all went out and got dinner and things were great. The team was pumped for the team championships the next night. Things were lovely.

Tuesday went pretty well throughout the day, too. I even got to be the fun Mom and haul a bunch of the wrestlers to the team championship tournament right after school. The kids were having fun, I was excited to watch them. I had a Zoom meeting that I had to do at 5, so I went out to the car to do that with the full expectation that it would take an hour and then I would head back in and watch the rest of the tournament. Little did I know what would happen next.

About 5:30, our assistant coach and one of the other moms came running out to the car to get me. I rolled the window down and muted the Zoom as the asst. coach kept saying we need you inside. I asked him why twice and then he told me B was hurt and they had called an ambulance. At that point, I unmuted the meeting, explained that my son was hurt and abruptly left. When I got inside, David was with B (along with coaches, an athletic trainer, and the SRO for that school) and just looked at me and said “Don’t look.” Now, if you know me well, you know that there are only two reasons David would tell me don’t look. The first is if something is so bad that it is going to cause me to panic (not just because it’s bloody, but because I know too much from listening to him all these years). In other words, if CPR is going on. The other reason would be something to do with eyes. I am one of those people that can hold other parts of your body that are falling apart, but I don’t do eyes. About the time I looked up, they moved the icepack/shirt that was covering B’s face. It was his eye. I think the words that I used to describe it when I called mom were to thin of Quasimodo from the Disney version of Hunchback of Notre Dame and then think worse.

B had taken a knee directly to the eye (what I would later find out was twice) and managed to keep wrestling. Then the ref saw his eye and called the match. An ambulance had been called (ask me sometime for that story) and we helped B out to my truck to wait on the ambulance. At that point he was pretty unstable and everyone thought we were really looking at concussion issues, but his eye looked like someone took a blue almost baseball sized something and put it on there.

His first ambulance ride got us to our local hospital, but David had already said that we would probably end up transferred to a trauma center (still all of us thinking we were dealing with concussion and maybe a possible fracture of the eye socket). We met him at the hospital (David and I were in separate vehicles). And when I walked into the ER, this is what greeted me. ****THIS IS YOUR WARNING THAT THESE PICTURES ARE GROSS****

Did I mention that I don’t like eye stuff? The hospital send him for a CT Scan, but the doctor seemed pretty hopeful on the front end because when he moved the eyelid, B could move his eye. What happened next is when this went to super scary for me. I am sure David has his own version of feelings as things went on, but when the doctor got the CT results, I started to get really worried. He said the good news is there is no orbital fracture. The bad news is that there is “significant” swelling behind the eye. Then he said we want to transfer you to the trauma center and we want to do it via ambulance. He tried to get a reading on the pressure behind the eye, and while he never told us what the reading was I would find out later it was written down as over 60. My understanding is that normal is 12-22. We began to wait on an ambulance to get to the trauma center, and btw everyone in our county needed an ambulance that night. They told us they were transferring us a little before 9:00. At 11:10 we got on an ambulance from a neighboring county and proceeded lights and sirens to the trauma center. One thing you should know about our trauma center is that it is amazing and always busy. Going in on ambulance doesn’t guarantee that there still won’t be a wait. When the ambulance got there and was getting ready to leave to take us, they asked what priority we needed to get down the road going. The doc basically said ASAP because they need to get the fluid off his eye. Now, as someone who has dealt with multiple swollen joints throughout her life, that means that there is about to be a big needle used to drain the fluid. Slightly terrifying, right? The medic and EMT were great going down there, and we even had a conversation about that the trauma center was packed and we may still be waiting a while.

We didn’t wait. We got there and they directed us to a room. Before they could get him in the room, the doc came and took him to the “eye room.” I rode on the ambulance to the trauma center, and David followed, so they had taken B before David even got back there with us. What very quickly transpired was lots of taking pressure of his eye, then bringing him back and explaining to us that the pressure was extremely high and they were going to do some more readings and call a surgeon to try to save his vision. The surgeon would take another reading and make a final decision. At this point it is 12:35 am, the injury happened at 5:30 pm the night before. B heard everything and starts to panic about losing his vision. He also had not had anything for pain or to eat (remember this happened during a wrestling match). David got them to bring him something to calm the panic and for pain and we waited on the surgeon.

Once the surgeon got there, he did some more readings, then explained everything to us. The number we needed to be under was 40. He was close. Since we had now gotten him calmed down, the surgeon wanted us to ice it and see if we could get it to go under 40 to avoid having to go in and cut the tendon to relieve the pressure. We got the ice on and waited what seemed like the longest 20 minutes of our entire lives.

Finally, and I mean that facetiously because they were so good about checking on him the whole time, the surgeon came back to do the reading. B had done it. He got the pressure down below 40. We were not going to have to have surgery. By now we have made it to about 2:15. We talk to the surgeon a little longer and he says we can go home one the ER doc discharges us, but we have to ice the eye every 2 hours and ibuprofen every 4 hours to try to help the inflammation go down. B also has to sleep in a reclined position instead of flat and if his vision changes or he starts getting a headache or nausea to immediately call the surgeon’s office and go back to the trauma center. The good news was that in addition to no surgery, B could finally sleep because of all the meds.

We were finally discharged about 4:30, and got home around 5:00 am. So where are we now? We are a little less than 48 hours after the incident. His eye looks awful still (pics below). We are still icing every 2 hours, and he can’t go back to school until he can hold the eye open for long stretches of time. We did take him by to see his teammates yesterday (briefly) and I think that was maybe overdoing it physically, but much needed mentally and emotionally. We know that our wrestling family, our families, our gym family, our work families, and our friends are the greatest people on the planet. We have felt love and prayers throughout all of this. It has been the most terrifying thing we have ever dealt with, and will continue to deal with, but the messages and prayers are keeping us going. We are also exhausted and trying to determine if our 13 year old is telling us truly how he feels or trying to be strong and not worry everyone. Also trying to get him out a little bit because the weather is gorgeous and we don’t want him to just sit in the dark, but weighing that with how much do we need to have him out because his body needs to heal. I’m sure that by next week we will be in the clear, but we will go back to the surgeon just to check. I’m also sure that a visit to the eye doctor is in our future.

I wanted to let everyone know what was going on, but this was definitely too much to put into a social media post, so the blog just happened to be the best way to accomplish this. Know that we are so thankful for the prayers, food, offers to help, and everything else. We love all of you. I’ll keep posting updates as things change, but we are thinking we are in the clear at this point.

I was watching Instagram stories this morning, and I came across this graphic shared by someone I follow:

As I sit here today, working from home because of a migraine and some wintry weather, this graphic spoke to me about the way that we normally think about Mondays. I am as guilty as anyone of starting to dread Monday on Sunday afternoon. In fact, I have seen several memes about how Sunday just can’t be enjoyable because it is Monday Eve.

This has really gotten me thinking about how much of the bad feelings about Monday are made worse by our mindset? It is interesting that I talk about mindset to my students, and even to my kids at home, but I still can’t manage to make it past those Monday blues. When I saw that graphic this morning, it really stuck with me that this would be a great way to try to change my mindset about Mondays. These are things we can do every day, but it seems like it is even more important on Mondays.

I also think it is very important to keep in mind the A from this graphic. It seems like most of us spend way too much time down on ourselves instead of acknowledging what we have actually accomplished. It has been far too easy in my life to look at the to-do list and see how many things I didn’t get accomplished during the day instead of acknowledging how much progress I actually made during the day. We so often try to give others the benefit of the doubt or try to make up the difference ourselves, when we have already taken on more than what we should have. Once we have taken on all the things, we beat ourselves down for not getting everything accomplished. Perhaps it is wanting to check everything off the list or maybe it is a quest for perfection. Either way, the tendency that we have to keep adding to the list and then beating ourselves up for not getting the list finished is extremely harmful to the way we think about ourselves overall. In other words, we really need to be giving ourselves a break instead of constantly striving for perfection. Don’t let your Monday Mindset be a negative start to your week.

Life is too hard for us to be continuously hard on ourselves. There are enough people waiting to knock us down or criticize us without us leading that charge. This week, I am issuing a challenge. Start your week with a better Monday Mindset and live the week being intentional about not beating yourself up over everything that doesn’t go wonderfully.