Maybe I should rename my blog. I've had a hard time keeping it up lately...in case you haven't noticed. I'd say I have a good excuse, but not for the amount of time I've missed.
Let's sum up the last forever.
So it's been a year! Wow. Crazy how time flies. I think about writing all the time, but something always seems to come up and take over my thoughts of writing. Well NOT TODAY! Since last year, a lot certainly has happened. As for me, major events in my life go as follows:
November of 2012 I started to feel really yucky all over. I just was constantly tired, I didn't ever want to get our of bed and had zero energy. I was sort of thrown in to a bit of depression in that time. It lasted for a few months. I was missing work and school more than I was able to go and spending the days laying in bed while Scott was at work and school. One fine day, shortly after my 21st birthday, Scott was headed out for work and literally 10 minutes later I found myself on the floor of our apartment riving in pain. I called my mom, she told me to try and calm down, see if it went away in the next few minutes. When it didn't she told me to take a bath because, "A nice warm bath always makes you feel better." Luckily, my sister Kara was in town during this ordeal. I ran a bath, still in tears and extreme pain, let Scott know what was happening and that I would keep him posted. My mom had informed Kara of the situation and she didn't hesitate to find her way over to help me. She is a CNA and her husband is a firefighter and knows anything and everything you could think of about health and medicine. She came over with her husband on the phone and she did an assessment. Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that I needed to go to the Emergency Room because it was acting like appendicitis. Awesome.
Kara is driving me to the clinic, I'm on the phone with Scott who is now on his way back from work and we are all kind of freaking out. The pain has gone down, but any pressure in the area really pushed my (extremely high) pain tolerance. When I get to the ER, they put me through the CT scanner and the results they gave me that day were this: "So, it looks like you had a cyst rupture in the lower right area of your abdomen. You have some fluid in your pelvic area which may be the burning sensation you are feeling. We do see that you have two stones in your appendix, but honestly most people live their entire lives with stones in their appendix."
Cool! I'm okay. If the pain doesn't go away in the next couple days, come back. So a week went by and I was feeling....alright. Not my best, still really tired and exhausted, but no sharp pains. That was short lived. Christmas break came and went, the winter semester started and there I was in my family doctor's office asking him what I should do because I was still having some pains in the lower right abdomen. He pulled the results of the CT scan they did nearly two months ago at this point and asked me, "Were you aware that your appendix is swollen about 2 centimeters larger than normal?" Scott and I looked at each other in a sort of shock. "Noooo. We did not know that; they didn't inform us."
Backup for just a second. Appendicitis is a serious, serious health issue. If your appendix ruptures, the acids can kill you in a matter of minutes. Health emergency. Appendicitis typically occurs in a matter of days; I've been walking around for months with a swollen appendix.
Okay. My doctor at that point gave me some heavy pain meds and told me he was going to call his friend who specializes in Appendectomies (removal of the appendix) and let me know what to do. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Okay." The next two days were truly agonizing. I couldn't sleep I was in so much pain constantly. But it always went away in a half an hour so I didn't worry too much about it. Not until the night it didn't stop. It was 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, I woke up in tears, work Scott up, took some of the pain meds my doctor had given me and tried to push it off. After an hour of just being in pain, I finally called it out and Scott took me to the hospital. I called my parents and my sister and let them know. They shot me up with some morphine (awesome stuff), put me through a CT scan again and told me that I was on the top of the list to get the surgery done. The doctor in the ER that took the results of my scan was baffled that I didn't have this surgery when I came in two months prior to this trip. I was a walking time bomb. All in all, I learned that I had chronic appendicitis. Not just for those two months, but for years. The condition is very rare and my doctor hadn't seen a case of it yet. So I guess that made me feel okay about it all. I was special!
So November through most of January I was sicker than ever and absolutely miserable. But, I survived that and survived those school semesters involved. So I hold myself high for that because it was not an easy ride.
The next most exciting adventure of my life came on Valentine's Day. I seriously have the best husband in the world. He is so worried about holiday's and gifts and getting everything just right. It's incredibly sweet and I love him so much for how much thought and care he puts into everything. Valentine's Day really was so simple this year. We didn't do anything too fancy; we spent the day together, came home after our usual day and Scott directed me to our bedroom. He had hidden my present under my pillow. When I lifted my pillow I found a simple, handwritten note folded in half. It talked about the time we'd had together so far, how much he loved me and how nervous he was to take the next step in our lives. But that even though he was scared, he knew it would be worth it. What was folded into the note was my birth control pills emptied out. Cue insta-tears. He had taken the rest of my birth control pills, emptied them out and told me that he was ready to start trying to have kids. I was ecstatic! Best.Present.Ever.
So here we come to June. It's been a long few months of trying and not succeeding. But finally, the test came out positive! We went to the doctor, found out that we were 5 and a half weeks along! UNREAL! We were nervously excited. It was weird to think that we were growing a human being to raise as our own. But we knew it had to be a sheltered excitement. We had just experienced a terribly sad miscarriage in our family and we didn't want to get our hopes up until we were past the "danger zone"
So you guessed it. We passed the danger zone. We have a healthy baby girl growing, swimming and kicking all over inside my tummy. It's a feeling so hard to describe, but it's so wonderful. As of today, I am 25weeks2days along. It's hard to believe that I only have 15 weeks left! I keep thinking to myself, "I was just AT 15 weeks, and now it's the countdown?!" We're very excited about it, very happy to bring a darling life and spirit into the world.
You know what's funny about the whole thing? A few things, actually. First of all, everyone keeps asking me, "So have you thought of any names yet?" And I say to myself, "Well, duh we've thought of names. Am I going to tell you what they are? No.....because it's secret." Something else that's funny to me is that I don't actually feel like I LOOK that pregnant. Scott assures me every day I say that, that I truly do look pregnant, but really, I feel like I have a lot to go until people just look at me and think, "Oh, yeah. She's definitely pregnant." Rather than thinking, "Hmmm, she could probably lose a few pounds." Haha. That's what I feel like! Oh well I guess. I know I'm pregnant, so to all those who look and me and think I'm fat; shame on you. The last thing that is more weird than funny is the fact that people, complete strangers really do just touch your tummy. Granted, I'm in the BYU Women's Chorus and they all know I am pregnant. But HELLO!? Would you be okay if someone you didn't know just came up to you, rubbed you tummy for a second, giggled, then walked away? The answer is no, no you would not. It's weird and invasive. So far, that's the only "stranger experience" I have had. But like I said, I feel like I don't look all that pregnant yet. I'm sure that will change. If the stranger touching thing gets to be a problem, you best believe I will be wearing a sign that reads, "Yes, I am pregnant. No, you may NOT touch my tummy."
I'm not known to be the most tactful personal on the planet; rather, I'm quite candid. I see no problem in it....most of the time haha.
On a different note, something crazy that happened not to us specifically, but definitely effected us. In a matter of a week both Scott's dad and my dad got in a car accident of some sort. Ted, my father-in-law, was riding his road bike home from one of his boys' track meets in Michigan and as a car was turning left, Ted ran into the car. The details seem a little confusing to me, but here is what I understand: Ted was riding on the side of the road and hadn't noticed that traffic had stopped to let a car turn left into a post office, because of the stopped traffic, Ted was unable to see the car turning left and they collided. Ted was unconscious (actually listed as 'unstable' at the scene) and taken to the hospital. After the scans and assessments, they concluded that he had a few broken ribs, two vertebrae in his neck that were cracked, a bone fragment floating in his back (we're assuming from the broken ribs), a nasty cut above his right eyebrow and a shattered eye socket. He's also learned in recovery that his shoulder (assuming his rotator cuff) is hurting as well. The miracle of this all? No surgery required at all. He had stitches on the cut above his eye and had to wear a neck brace for a few weeks. But really, seriously a miracle it wasn't any worse.
The story for my dad is a little different. First of all, he was riding his motorcycle. Insta-danger raise. Scott and I had a concert the night of the accident, which fell on a Friday. My mom was in Ohio visiting family for baby blessings and wasn't going to be back until Sunday. Our concert fell in the time frame of the BYU Football game, which was disastrous, so my dad recorded it, and Scott and I planned to go up to Alpine to watch the game and spend the night with my dad. While Scott and I changed and packed our things for one night, my dad head off to beat game day traffic home. We ended up being about 10 minutes behind him on the road. We got halfway there when my dad called me. I answered as usual, "Hi Daddy" but was replied by a stranger woman's voice, "Is this Hannah?" I then heard the sirens and broke down. I didn't know what was happening, but my dad was not on the other side of the phone and I heard sirens. The woman assured me that everything was okay, my dad was conscious and that's why she knew to call me. She told me that he had been in an accident with his motorcycle and was being taken to the AF Hospital. I called Scott immediately since he was in a car in front of me, and told him what happened. He calmed me down, called my mom to let her know what happened, and asked if I was okay to drive to the hospital which was about 10 minutes down the road. I said yes and we took off. My dad was in serious pain and in shock. It was really hard to see him that way; shaking, scared, hurting, frustrated. What happened in his accident was this: It was 9:00 p.m and dark, he had decided to go to Domino's to order pizza and was going to have us pick it up on our way back behind him. The intersection he was at (he was going west) had just turned yellow and he decided to keep going. Immediately, he knew that was the wrong decision. A car coming east, turning north (left at the intersection) had their blinker on and started to turn left. After starting, the car stopped so my dad thought they had saw him, but when the car all of a sudden kept going, my dad pushed his brakes, and slammed into the car. He thinks he was only going about 5-10 mph because he ended on on top of the car hood and stayed there. His bike was drivable and our neighbor, Dave, drove it home after coming to the hospital to console me, give my dad a blessing with Scott and make sure that everything was okay. He we are about three weeks later and we now know that my dad has only a torn rotator cuff (3 out of the 4 ligaments and tendons that hold it together are completely torn) and what we thought was a torn ACL is seeming to be something else torn in his knee. That is it. That's all that he came out of from a motorcycle accident. He decided to give his bike up to the insurance company after the accident and stick to cars.
There you have it. The craziest week of our lives right there.
Aaaaanndd. That's where we're at. Just hanging out, doing our thing. Being pregnant and keeping up with family. I WILL keep up because life is about to get real exciting in the next little bit. Lots of stuff going on, a lot of changes in the Christensen world. But you know what? Even if things get hectic and a little lost, we just Keep Moving Forward
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