My prolonged absence has a few causes.  Some were beyond my control.  Some were not.   Let me explain.

It all started with my website being hacked.  I’m not sure why someone thought it was a good idea, but they did.  Not only did they think it was a good idea once, but after my wonderful brother (web guy extraordinaire!) fixed everything, those unkind hackers did it again.  Whoever they are, they are decidedly not my favorite people.  May they never find my site again.

The hacking came just as my summer was about to start in full force.  If you know anything about me, you know my summers are the craziest part of my life.  Breathing room is at a minimum.  It’s pretty well consumed with some of the best people on earth–TCKs.  I started at the end of May with my interns–4 of the 5–and getting ready for the summer.  We stitched.  We talked.  We planned.  We even goofed-off a little.  We made multiple trips to the airport.  We had a great time.  And then summer started.

Once we got going, we went, and went, and kept going.  We started with a home assignment week and 15 kids under the age of 9.  In fact, there were only three over the age of 7.  That’s a lot of pandemonium.  It’s also a lot of fun.  It’s especially a lot of fun when everyone can be the boss of their own feelings.  That was immediately followed by orientation, more home assignment.  I had a trip to TCK-PFO in NY, and two emergency trips to FL.  After our last home assignment debriefing, I took off to the mountains to help out at a Transition Seminar for TCKs returning to the USA “for good.”

Transition Seminar was a lot of fun.  It was nice to be able to interact with the kids without having a lot of responsibility for anything that happened that week.  The only bummer of the week was that I  started to catch a cold.  My body has a tendency to let down it’s defenses as huge amounts of responsibility and stress decrease.  It was pretty evident that week.

As the week went on, the evidence that my body was in trouble grew.  I woke up on Friday, leaving day, with a fever.  By the time I reached my house that noon, I was sick.  Really sick.  High fever, not keeping my insides inside sick.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at an urgent care facility where they tried to pump me full of fluids and some meds.  They did it, but it didn’t seem to make a huge difference.  They sent me to the local emergency room that evening.  After multiple tests, an even higher fever, and more of my insides refusing to stay put, they declared I had a virus.  They told me to go home, stay hydrated, sleep a lot, and take Tylenol every 4 hours.  They also warned that it would be about 2 weeks before I started to feel better.  So, I did what I was told.

I set my alarm for every 4 hours, made sure I drank something every time I woke up, and felt progressively worse.  By Saturday evening, my left ankle started to get hot.  By Sunday morning I could hardly walk.  By Sunday noon I was back in the ER.  By Sunday night I was in surgery with my amazing surgeon from last fall who doesn’t generally practice at that hospital.

An abscess had developed on my Achilles tendon repair from last fall.  In the operating room, they determined it was a staph infection.  Thankfully it was treatable.  Unfortunately, I didn’t respond to the antibiotics as well as everyone hoped.  A few days later I was back in surgery; my leg was cleaned out again, and I got some new antibiotics.  Thankfully, I responded well.

I’ve been out of the hospital for almost a month now.  I just started walking three days ago.  Recovery has been slow and mostly steady.

My blog is up and working again–and so am I!  I’m looking forward to where what’s ahead.

What has been going on with you over the last few months?

photo courtesy of  kandyjaxx