The full story!

Hi there friends, I hope this finds you doing well! This past week I celebrated 5 years since my accident involving my left hand and realized I have never blogged about it...weird! I told a friend I would post about it, so I'm sticking to my word! It was Friday, January 14th, 2011 and it was a normal work day on the farm (I worked on a family farm back home in Alaska). Me and a few other of the workers were getting all of the machinery started, doing so involved pulling levers and tightening rods. I was on one end of a potato washer pushing down on a lever when my hand slipped and went fingers first into a moving chain. The chain began to feed my hand into the machine, we tried turning it off but it was jammed (with my hand). Things get a little blurry from there, but I do remember praying and begging God to have the machine stop. The machine didn't stop, but I will never forget hearing the word PULL as clear as day run through my head. I pulled as hard as I could (I actually had a bruise of a hand print on my arm from it) and just like that, my hand came out. I'll spare you all the gory details, but lets just say there was a lot of blood and I may have passed out! The next thing I remember was my brother in-law picking me up and taking me to the truck so we could drive to the ER. After hours in the ER, lots of pain medicine (we found out it takes a lot for me), X-rays, and stitches we came to the conclusion that I broke/crushed my index finger on my left hand and damaged some of my other fingers. From there, we decided surgery was in order and I ended up getting two pins placed in my finger to help it heal straight. A few weeks went by with lots of doctor appointments, Occupational therapy, and yet another surgery as I ended up getting an infection in my hand. A month after my first surgery I was able to get the pins out and start intense Occupational therapy, things were looking up. As time went by we realized I couldn't bend my finger to the full extent it should have been able to, so surgery #3 was scheduled so they could go in and break up all the scar tissue. A few months went by and they decided placing a permanent screw in the first (top) knuckle would be best since I completely crushed that part of my finger. After surgery #4 we figured complete healing would be on its way and things would get better, it wasn't till a few weeks later that we could tell that was not the case. See, my pain levels were not going down, in fact they were actually getting worse. I was constantly in pain, I wasn't sleeping due to the pain, and if my hand was touched or got bumped in certain places I would pass out because the pain was so server. The doctors ran some tests and diagnosed me with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, also known as CRIPS. All this meant was, the nerves in my hand were sending pain signals to my brain constantly and acting as though my hand was still being hurt. The normal treatment for this is going in for pain blocks, (where they stick a needle in your neck and put a block in your nerve system that is affected) and then usually some sort of nerve medication. I tried the nerve block twice but they didn't work the way they thought they would, and the medication they put me on gave me life threatening side affects. So pretty much, nothing was working. My doctor finally decided to run one last test to see how far the nerve damage went to see if removing the finger would help (if it went further up that would mean it was my whole hand). The test proved that most of my nerve damage was isolated to the index finger and that removing it would take most if not all the pain away (YAHOOO)! So you guessed it, my last and final surgery (#5) was scheduled. I don't think I had ever been so excited about going in for surgery as I was about this one! See, if I give you the complete time frame of everything, I was living in constant pain for a year and three months. Needless to say, I was ready for a change! April 5th, 2012 is the day I went into the surgical room with ten fingers and left with nine! I spent the night in the hospital as they wanted to monitor my pain since I had been living off of pain meds for over a year. Surgery went well and the weeks after proved that the surgery was the best decision as my pain began to go down (praise God). I will never forget the first time I saw my hand without the cast on though....there were lots of tears, as it was not pretty or "normal". To be completely honest, I locked myself in my room for three days. I was in shock, mortified, and just plain not okay with it all. It was ugly, different then what I was use to, and I was not a fan. It took a lot of prayer and seeking God's truth to start to turn my thinking around. As I look back, its actually kind of comical. See, I was dating a great guy at the time and he asked me to marry him in May, a month after my surgery. You know what that meant, right?! A ring, which meant the whole world wanted to have a look see...on the hand I was ashamed of... Lets just say, I had to get over it real quick! Its been 5 years since my accident and honestly, I don't miss my finger! I can look down to my left hand and see God all over it. If you think about it, I could have broke all my fingers or worse, lost my whole hand. I look back on that painful journey and actually thank God for it, because it was in those long, sleepless nights where my relationship with Christ grew leaps and bounds. I spent many hours in prayer, crying out to God in my pain. I can remember experiencing the withdraws from the pain meds and thinking I couldn't do it... I NEEDED the pills to survive, that's when God made it very clear that HE is enough. He was my portion and all I needed. I learned that even when I don't understand what He's doing, I can trust and take comfort in knowing that He is in control and He knows what He is doing. I learned a lot about God and myself through that journey and don't know where I would be without it happening. I now celebrate the day of my accident, as I know its a day when God changed my life forever (its the reason I live in Michigan-another post for another time). How do I celebrate? I eat potato everything on the anniversary of the accident! The moral of story, God can change your pain into something absolutely gorgeous if you let Him. I strongly believe that each trial we face can draw us closer to Him or pull us away, but we have a choice to make. We can fall to our knees and admit we can't do it on our own and let God near, or we can wave our fists in the air and tell God we got it and push Him away (option B results in more pain and devastation-just sayin). What will your choice be? Will you choose to draw closer to Him or push away? My prayer for you is that you drop to you knees and draw near. I also pray that you celebrate what God has done, even if it was really ugly and painful at the time. Lets be people who draw near to God and celebrate what He has done for, in, and through us.