Make The Ordinary Come Alive

            

You Can Homeschool With a Chronic Illness

MERRY CHRISTMAS to each and every person who reads my blog!! 

And most of all...HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET JESUS!!!!!

This has been a long year, with both good and bad, as I am sure we all can say.  In the past 16 months, I have had 6 surgeries, 8 hospital stays (including a rare kidney infection and blood clots in my right leg.)  I also had a basic routine colonoscopy at the end of May, which showed that I had Stage 2 Colon Cancer, that if it hadn't been caught when it was (which I give ALL praise to God for pointing us on the right direction), my colon and intestines would have burst within 2 days, my oncologist told me, and would have been dead with no one even knowing I had cancer.  So, now this required the removal of 3/4 of my colon, and 5 ft. of intestines from the right side of my abdomen!!  (Mind you I had already had a tumor in my uterus removed, a hysterectomy, a belly button hernia removed, my gallbladder, and my appendix removed.)  However, now my body started rejecting the stitches on the outside of my stomach from the cancer surgery, for some unknown reason, requiring my surgeon to cauterize each hole that popped open.  Just as I was feeling really, really good, and having lost 53 lbs., I developed a hernia from the surgery, and required a mesh net to be sewn into my abdomen.  Thinking that was all done, and this time my stomach was stapled closed with 14 staples, and this time that part healed well, but my body started rejecting the inside stitches holding the mesh net in!  UGH!!!!  So since then I have had 2 abscesses with staph infections that needed cleaned, packed twice a day, bandaged, and with little to no bending, lifting, etc., for going on the past two months.  I still have a small opening for drainage now, and will until Jan. 2nd.  I am believing in Jesus precious name, that I am completely healed now!!!!  That has made for a long 6 months!!  The cancer surgery was at the end of May, when this part all started.  I am healing slowly, but surly, and though my body is very worn down and from the stress of it all, I am on Deplin for my MTHFR now, 50,000 units of Vitamin D, Biotin, Progesterone, Kelp, and Probiotics, not counting the other meds for the Fibromyalgia, low thyroid, etc.  In time, I will be as healthy as a horse, as the saying goes!  :0)  I want to thank my SW, bffff, true sister, and her family, for opening up her home to me to take care of me each time I was going through all of this, packing my disgusting stomach, making sure I ate healthy, and making me rest and not overdo it!!!  So I owe a HUGE thank you to Tammy Smith Cooperrider for all she and her family have done for me when my husband and sons weren't able to stomach the gross severity of it all.

In the meantime, I was blessed to not only homeschool our 5 kids still at home (well one being our granddaughter), for our 23rd year, and using Charlotte Mason philosophies to do so, I also was blessed to be able to have taken the online college course, "True North, an in-depth study of Charlotte Mason's theories, philosophies and ways of seeing children as the true people they are."  It is based on Charlotte Mason and her way of teaching.  It has been a year long course, and I am blessed to say that I have made new friends within our class group and with our instructor, Sheila Carroll.  This has been a VERY important course to me this year!!  And not only have they been patient with the cancer, fibromyalgia and all, but have been there for me through prayers and encouragement every step of the way.  Thank you guys!!! 

Here's to an AWESOME, GOD BLESSED, GOD FAVORED year...2015, here I come!  And go to my other website at:    http://www.mytruenorthtocharlottemason.weebly.com