Getting Comfortable

Just before Christmas last year, Aly had surgery for a Pilonidal Cyst. The surgery was intense; the doctor essentially recreated her buttocks. The hope was that by taking the area down to the bone and cleaning it out the cysts would be removed and the area would heal. Yesterday, Aly and I listened to the doctor as he explained that he will have to redo the surgery. There is one cyst that still remains and although we have done everything we can it just will not heal.

This morning as I was doing my Jillian Michael's Yoga Meltdown DVD, she (Jillian) once again said "Get comfortable with being uncomfortable". Since this is a DVD I did not expect it to change, but it was a good reminder about how life works. As I was bending and twisting, I was thinking how life is really about learning to be comfortable in spite of reality. There is no guarantee with anything and if you spend your life expecting to be comfortable all the time you will be disappointed.

Aly took the news of another surgery very well. Actually, she has been nothing but heroic throughout this entire process. She laughed through her early healing stages when she had to carry a donut to sit on at school, and she laughed even harder each time she ended up having two of her special "Butt pillows" pop. She would tell me it hurt, but she did not belabor her condition. She has kept her grades up and her attitude too. She did months of rehearsal and preparation for the school musical and pulled the show off beautifully. She went on a one week mission trip for high school students with our church, and very rarely questioned when this healing process would end. She was comfortable with being uncomfortable. As we look ahead to chapter two in this continuing saga, we find our young leading lady standing strong and feeling confident in her future as a healthy teenager. The only real moment of self pity came as we climbed in the car to head home from the doctor yesterday, when Aly said "Well, it looks like I won't be doing much swimming this summer".

Perhaps we are living our own version of making lemonade from lemons, because my counsel to Aly was "The upside is it will be warm out while you heal, so you can sit outside and read!" Regardless of whether we like the idea or not, reality is the surgery must be done so that she can get better. If this means a little more discomfort, we are up for it. We were just starting to get comfortable; it was time to shake things up a little. In just a little over a month from now, we will once again start the process of surgery and healing and we are ready…frustrated, but ready none the less.