*diagnosed in 2016. Resharing my story to spread awareness. All posts are also posted on my blog. https://agwuochafamily.blogspot.com/
I posted a few days ago asking if you would like me to continue sharing my story past the month of October. The response was in favor of me continuing the story. Thank you so much for following along. Thank you for sharing your words of encouragement and your words of inspiration to let me know that my story is making an impact in a multitude of ways.
This part of my story is particularly painful to share. It was the part of my story that I was totally unprepared for. It was the part of my story that stripped me of every ounce of normal that was left within me. I was weak and worn out and had very little left within me. I was scared yet brave all at the same time.
Through all of this, God remained ever so faithful and He brought me through.
In my last post I told you that after I woke up from surgery the nurses tried to help reposition me in my bed because I wanted to sit up a bit more. In doing this we caused something to happen within my abdomen where something pulled the wrong way and I began to internally bleed. You could tell because my drains started to fill massively with blood on my right side. At that time though the alarm bells had not quite gone off and we just assumed that this was completely normal drainage. The next event that occurred was that my heart rate started to become Tachycardic. That means that it was resting at an elevated heart rate. In the picture you see below if you zoom in you will see that my heart rate was resting at 140. That is not good. I did start to come down with a mild fever as well that could indicate an infection of some sort.
One of the nights, I believe on the second night, my dad and sister in law came to visit me. My dad brought me cookies and basically gave them to the nurses because I likely wasn't going to be eating much.
That evening was particularly scary because just the very effort of trying to talk to them caused my heartrate to go up. I remember my dad going to get the nurses out of concern. I believe it had gotten as high as 155 beats per min just by talking. My sister in law was trying to coach me to think happy thoughts to try and relax me. They ended up having to leave early so that I could lay in darkness and basically not stimulate my body in any way. I was scared. Why was my heart racing? Why was I bleeding so much? Why was I going through test after test with little answers?
Since I was bleeding a lot internally my hemoglobin was going down quite a bit. Due to this I was given several blood transfusions. After a transfusion my heartrate would begin to stabilize. When I say improving I mean like lowering to 115 vs 140+
At one point while in the ICU I was compelled to reach out to a few pastors from my church. I was prompted by the verse by James 5:14-15. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up.
I had reached a point in this recovery where I felt like I needed intervention. I needed a miracle. I needed the "church" to show up!
After me reaching out to someone, I had the lovely Blaine Workman and Donald Tucker showed up to my room in the ICU and they did just that. They prayed over me. I kid you not, my heart rate came down. I am so grateful for the care they poured out over me. When you are going through such a serious situation it is beneficial to know that you are not alone. Often you can feel isolated. I did my part to make my need known and they did their part by showing up! These are great reminders to "show up"! Let those going through trying times know that they are not alone.
We later learned that I had a hematoma. My heart could not keep up with the blood loss which was causing my heart rate to go up. My heart was being overworked to try and keep up with the loss of blood. This only took a few days to figure out. Essentially the hope was that it would eventually begin to clot and remedy itself. It sort of did but not without complication.
While laying here in the hospital bed, you can imagine that my hair was in for a wild ride. At this point every strand that I had worked so hard to save was now in one big massive knot in the back of my head lol. My dear mother came to the rescue and did her very best to set me straight. Thank you mom!!
More to come tomorrow!!
Thank you for reading as this truly is a very vulnerable part of my story. Love you!! 
