1 year ago...(part 2)

from Tim's perspective...

Starting 12 months ago, Clarinda broke her arm, while at the same time we had a 6-month old that she was nursing.

Then, in October, I got a once-in-a-lifetime fluke case of pancreatitis, a disease caused most frequently from severe alcoholism. And not only did I get pancreatitis, I got a severe, life-threatening case. I was in the hospital for 8 days. And, just for fun, all of this happened while both sets of parents were out of town on vacation.

Then, in December, I got a second once-in-a-lifetime fluke case of pancreatitis. This time wasn't as bad, and I only stayed in the hospital 6 days.

Then, in January, we found out my gall bladder had developed microscopic gall stones (which couldn't be seen by CT, MRI, X-Ray, or ultrasound, all of which had been done on me), and that some of that had just so happened to dislodge and travel down into my bile ducts, where they clogged said ducts, causing the pancreatitis. A fluke incident, if you will. To top it off, there was a 3% chance that I could develop pseudocysts from my pancreatitis, and I developed two. Said pseudocysts then started acting up in December, which is what caused the second hospital stay, which was not in fact pancreatitis, it just looked like it at the time.

So, later that month, I underwent surgery to have my gall bladder removed and both pseaduocysts set up to drain permanently into my digestive tract. I was in the hospital 7 days, including the Super Bowl (but hey, I WAS in the party room, so at least there's that).

In February, while recovering from said abdominal surgery, I developed bronchitis, leading to lots of deep coughing, which is pretty much the worst thing that a person can go through after just having abdominal surgery.

In March, after my recovery wasn't going as well as planned (I was still losing weight, at one point down 47 lbs from first being admitted in October), it was discovered that I had developed a pair of abscesses in my retroperitoneal. After being sent straight to the hospital, it was discovered that one abscess was responding to antibiotics, but the other was not, so I had to have a JP drain inserted in my back. After analyzing what was coming out of the abscess, it turns out that the abscess was totally unrelated to my surgery, so it was just a fluke. I was only in the hospital 12 days this time, but I got to go home with the drain still installed. At this point I was up to 34 days in the hospital.

In April, while Clarinda was trying to get her birth control prescription renewed, the pharmacy was unable to get in touch with the doctor for over a week. When they finally did get everything worked out, no one told her, so she went a month without birth control pills. No big deal, since I was in the hospital for part of that time, then recovering. Well, due to fluke circumstances, we ended up pregnant.

Later that month, as it became time to stop taking my antibiotics and pain killers (the drain was gone by now), I found that my body had become addicted, so I had to detox from pain killers over a 2 week period.

Then, this month, during an ultrasound, we found out that we lost the baby.

And all the time, I just keep thinking, "Hey, Job had it worse."