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Today we ventured into the Indian Peaks Wilderness. I wanted to do one bigger hike before going back to work tomorrow 🥲

6.5 miles - the longest I have hiked since surgery so far!! I picked this trail on purpose because it is mostly flat. There’s only 450 feet of elevation gain spread out over 3+ miles which felt really doable. There were two short sections of steep downhill on the way back that were a little unpleasant, but it mostly felt great! Standing/walking feels mostly good for me now, but sitting down and standing UP seem to not feel super great and tugs at the muscles that are sore.

This hike is so gorgeous and the clouds seemed to clear away just for us. It was so foggy when we started but the clouds rolled out as soon as we got the lake, only to reappear when we got back down to the trailhead. The last three photos are from all the mist rolling in at the end! And can you believe that moose!? He was almost standing directly on the trail. I’ve never been that close before. I took a good zoomed in pic and got the heck outta there while 15 other people stood practically next to him taking photos! Wild.

Wow, being able to upload up to 30 pictures is incredible!? Gone are the days of trying to narrow it down to 10!? Fantastic. Love this for us. The last few days have been so busy and full which has been wonderful. On Thursday, I went for a little baby hike with my friend Kate in Boulder with Summit. We only went 3.5 miles and it was mostly entirely flat and it felt pretty good! My body only really hurts when I try to go downhill. I did feel pretty out of breath on the “uphill” which is strange.

Friday was Laine’s birthday and we spent the day out on his brother’s sailboat. We didn’t have much wind, but we still had fun! The weather was great and Laine even towed me around on a paddleboard for a little bit. I still don’t feel good enough to attempt to paddle (or stand on a paddleboard) but I did jump off the boat into the water and managed to get back in! haha

On Saturday we went to the Horseshoe Market (craft fair) with Bobbi and then went to the Adams County Fair in the evening. Laine’s friend got us in for free and we got VIP seats for… truck pulling which was interesting, LOL. I got to pet goats and ride the Himalaya (and ran into an old coworker!) so it was a great time.

I made Laine promise me that he would buy me an apple tree if I went through surgery because I was absolutely terrified to do it and I needed to be bribed and I really wanted an apple tree but they are sort of expensive. We have a peach tree but it is a baby and hasn’t grown any peaches yet and there are a LOT of apple trees in our neighborhood so I knew it could survive and thrive here. Yesterday we went to go our tree and Laine already dug the hole and planted it and it’s growing a baby apple!!!! I love it 😭😭😭

I went to set up my classroom yesterday and even though I didn’t do ANY of the hard work, I still somehow hurt myself. Laine did ALL of the furniture moving and even put up those fake bulletin boards (nothing behind them but wall!) and I still was very sore and felt this weird tugging/pulling in my belly button (where my appendix incision was but inside my body) that was painful. I feel much better today, but I went home and fell asleep from 7pm to 7am!!! I was so exhausted (and I left work at 4:30) I fell asleep with my jewelry on and didn’t even get up to pee in that whole 12 hours. Very very thankful to have such a supportive fiancé 🥰 I could NOT have done it without him!!!

You know that meme that’s like, “A new type of relationship first experienced by my generation is ‘girl I’ve been friends with online for 20 years’”?

I raise you: “Guy I haven’t hung out with or talked to in 6 years who now regularly completes friends quests on Duolingo with me”.

Attempted to go paddleboarding today and it was not a success 😂

I knew that stand up paddleboarding would be too much for me, but I often go and just spend a lot of time laying on my board or sitting or whatever so I figured I could do that. Wrong. There was a light breeze which made it impossible for me to go anywhere because I couldn’t paddle hard enough without hurting my sides!

Bobbi came to the rescue and attached me to her kayak and towed me to the shore, lol. Then we switched and kayaking was actually MUCH easier. I hardly needed to use the oar to get anywhere (I had to scoop and push SO hard on the paddleboard) and it was much faster and easier to steer. It’s still going to be another week or two until I can even do that without fear of hurting myself but it was worth a shot!

Also, I somehow pulled a muscle in my right forearm doing…. nothing. For real. Not sure how I could have hurt it BARELY paddleboarding and not my left? Very strange.

I spent a good chunk of time last night trying to find a hike that was:

• Less than 3 miles
• Close enough to home that it wouldn’t feel stupid to drive there to hike less than 3 miles
• Had really great views even for being so short
• Had a very small amount of elevation gain
• Dogs allowed
• Doesn’t required timed entry permits (sold out weeks in advance so impossible to get the day before on a Saturday)

Pretty much everything that fits those parameters is either in Rocky Mountain National Park (no dogs, timed entry), the Indian Peaks Wilderness (timed entry), or just too far away. But I found something!! All I had to do was hunt through Google Maps for hours! And it ended up as an added bonus being a place we had never been to before which I feel like at this point is nearly impossible especially close to home.

The road that led to this hike was a 4WD road which we knew but it was not popular and there wasn’t much info on it so we were hoping the Ford Escape could make it. We made it a lot of the way but not all, so we tacked on a little extra mileage. It was mostly flat though so that ended up being okay! The views were totally worth it and I felt okay because it wasn’t that long. Though we did go…. exceptionally slow. Laine and Summit really took one for the team. Summit only whined at me a few times for taking almost 3.5 hours to hike about 5 mostly flat miles 😂 and Laine was so supportive and stopped with me as many times as I needed to (and reminded me I just had surgery as often as I needed to hear it 🥹).

We did try to actually do a different trail - where the road came to a fork the left side went to a different lake but it was WAY too steep and I only made it 0.3 miles before calling it. Proud of me for listening to my body and not being too dejected that I couldn’t do it!!! The lake we did get to was so beautiful that I definitely wasn’t upset about not doing the other trail. And now that we know where it is, we can always come back!!!

colorado-wildflowers:

Went on a 3.6 mile hike with my friend Tessa today! That’s the longest I’ve gone so far since surgery. It’s a mainly flat trail so it felt pretty good. We didn’t have to stop and rest at all and I was able to go her speed. No pain in the incisions during or after, either. I did have really bad cramps much later tonight for no reason though (other than that I’m on my period but they came out of nowhere), so that was interesting and fun? 2 of my steri strips came off so I only have 2 left but they do NOT seem ready to come off any time soon. Laine and I also did a lot of this new puzzle tonight. 😊

July 18, 2023 - July 27, 2023: The first 10 days post op

Days one through five I did nothing. At all. I took my pain meds and I slept. Day three and four I walked around the house and made myself food but that was it. Sitting up was very painful the first few days and I had to adjust to trying to roll out of bed without using my core which was not easy!!

On day six, I went to the dog park with Bobbi and we walked a very slow and very gentle 2ish miles around the dog park with Summit. My incisions were really sore and I felt them rubbing around on my shorts even through the steri strips. By this day I was off of narcotics which made it really hard to sleep because I am a stomach sleeper and I still cannot sleep on my stomach. We went to see Barbie which was nice - to get out of the house and still be comfy. Day seven I went on a short neighborhood walk but my right side and my actual incisions were very sore I didn’t make it very far. I did some puzzle instead.

Day eight my crochet kit came and I started on that! I also went to my friend’s pool which was another nice and relaxing thing to do. Still having a lot of trouble sleeping. Still in pain most of the time at a 4-5 even with round the clock Tylenol and ibuprofen. Day nine I went to Red Rocks to see Noah Kahan!! It was a nightmare waiting for the shuttle to come and then having to still walk up 400 stairs (no exaggerating!) to my seat. But I was able to stand the whole concert except for one song when I was feeling kind of dizzy, and then I walked 1.5 miles back to my car - no shuttle at night. I felt okay but was VERY tired. I also got my period this day for the first time since surgery.

Day ten - yesterday - I took it easy after Red Rocks. Laine & I had a date day and got sushi and went to see Oppenheimer which was amazing! I also went to Kaiser to get a Toradol shot which I think did briefly help (for 12 or so hours)!

July 17, 2023 / July 18th 2023

Surgery day. I went in at 9am, surgery planned for 11am, estimated 3.5 hours. I do think it took just about that long. I woke up from anesthesia crying, which was a terrifying experience for me that I’ll probably have some amount of trauma from forever. I remember the nurse giving me a cup to drink out of and telling her I didn’t know how to use a straw, she was trying to get me to take a pain pill. I was crying and saying “ow ow ow” over and over again because I was in so much pain. They gave me fentanyl and then still released me an hour later. Laine is smiling in the photo because we are joking about me drinking soup through a straw because I always make fun of him for doing that 🤪

At home, around 10pm (5ish hours later) I was in so much pain that I could not stop hysterically crying. Even sitting up was so painful I could barely do it. Laine took me to the emergency room, and I sat in a wheelchair. It was almost impossible to even get in the hospital bed. In the ER I was given a LOT more medication. Fentanyl, morphine, and Toradol. I was able to leave a few hours later with a new prescription for oxycodone.

One of my worst fears about this surgery was that I would be in pain afterward and as a person who has lived in chronic pain for a very long time, it seemed VERY scary to put myself through it voluntarily. And it was awful. Things got better after I left the ER though and was able to sleep.

Long time no see, Tumblr! I didn’t stop posting here for any specific reason, just that it seemed kind of silly to me to post the exact same things on Instagram every time I posted that I did here because I stopped having a lot of words to really say.

In the last 6 months since I’ve been here I went on a week-long solo road trip with Summit to Arizona over spring break in March, spent a week in Italy on an international guided climbing trip in May, spent a week in Portland with all my Oregon besties in July (except Jill, but we’ll make up for that soon), and Laine and I went on lots of smaller/closer to home adventures in that time period too. I also quit my job and got another one still teaching Kindergarten in my same district. The frustration that I felt at my last job that ended in me quitting was a large part of why I stopped blogging here, because it was all consuming and I could not post about any of it.

One thing that’s remained constant over these last 6 months is pain. I’ve blogged here openly before about endometriosis (suspected) and the trouble I had for years getting a diagnosis or even anyone to listen to me seriously. It’s been an overarching theme in my life for as long as I can remember (as far back as my teens), but over time it just got worse and worse. It used to be that I would have extreme pain only for 1-2 days while ON my period and not every period. There was usually a good chunk of time in between. Fast forward to the last year, and I started to experience excrutiating pain with every period and then the last 2-3 months, I just was in pain all of the time. Pain, chronic fatigue, nausea, dizziness, etc. The depression associated with having a chronic pain condition and all the things it has taken from me was (and still is) hard to deal with. The anxiety too; I lived in constant fear of this pain. Not knowing if it would be extreme enough to ruin my plans. I took painkillers like they were candy all through my period in Italy praying I wouldn’t end up in a hospital in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, and I was crippled with the anxiety of having it on a 10 hour plane ride. It actually did effectively ruin my trip to Portland, as I spent one of my climbing days throwing up over the side of a cliff and the others just feeling nauseated and terrible in general, along with like usual: in a lot of pain that held me back from doing the climbs, camping, and hiking I aspired to do on the trip.

Well, reader: I have good news for you. After six long years of fighting Kaiser (and 10+ overall), I was finally approved to have laparoscopic excision surgery. On July 17th, I had the surgery, and my surgeon found so much endometriosis in me that I left with an extra incision (2 is normal, I got 3) and I also lost my appendix in the battle (though that was largely unrelated to endometriosis and my appendix was just… not right for who knows why).

I finally have an official diagnosis, a reason for my pain, validation, and a pelvic pain specialist who actually listens to me. I don’t expect that to be where my journey ends, though.

The recovery process after this surgery is long, especially if they find as much to remove as they did inside of me. The incisions are not the part that needs to do much of the healing, but the internal organs that they cut and burned endometriosis off of (and the hole where my appendix used to be… even though it was not a useful organ, they did remove an organ from me.) And even if the surgery does wonders for my periods and pain, it will not be a magic fix. Endometriosis is a lifelong progressive inflammatory disease.

I came back here mainly to use this space to share parts of the recovery process. Getting back into fitness (when I’m finally allowed) over the next many weeks, what my periods and pain look like moving forward, any new drugs (pain killers/birth control/etc) that I try post surgery, etc. So if that’s not really your jam and you don’t want to read about my lady parts in detail, feel free to leave now.

I’m 10 days post-op today, and I’ve been on a short hike (2.7 miles) and went to a concert at Red Rocks (if it wasn’t Noah Kahan, I wouldn’t have even attempted it) but there’s a long road ahead for me when it comes to being able to climb, run, do BIG hikes, etc.

I got my first period post-surgery yesterday, and the pain was very similar to what I’ve experienced before. I was told that this is normal for the first 1-3 periods after surgery as your body effectively flushes out everything that was done inside, and things start to stabilize. For the first time EVER, I was actually offered pain relief (thanks to my surgeon/the pain specialist!) and I got a Toradol injection today. Not to be super optomistic already, but I think it’s working!

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. 👋🏻 Nice to see you guys again!

I love being warm enough to climb in a sports bra in January.

My seasonal depression is temporarily cured.

It snowed a little over 2 feet in a week and a half between right before Christmas and a little after New Year’s Day. 6 inches, 10 inches, 8 inches, 3 inches. It just kept snowing. We had inside recess most of this week because the playground is buried, and the days we were outside it was blacktop only which is never much fun. Wet socks, whining kids. It had been cloudy every day too, and we are in a plow driver shortage (aren’t we in an everything shortage? It sure feels like it) so there are so many inches of packed ice and snow to drive over on every side street. It’s been a rough start to winter, to the new year. One of my favorite things about Denver is that the snow never seems to stick around for long. It’s warm, it’s so sunny, it melts away. The last week has felt like living in Baltimore again. Huge dirty piles of snow everywhere.

I was reluctant to try to go hiking today because I was worried there would be melting snow all over the trails too and I just wasn’t in the mood. Laine convinced me to go, and the trail we picked was actually almost entirely clear. Only a few sections had snow or ice. The sun was FINALLY out today. The sky was clear blue. It felt WARM. It felt like winter might be possible after all. I need these days as reminders.