Brave Enough To Be Bliss

“You wanna know the truth? If you’re gonna have a long -term relationship with somebody. This is something people don’t talk about ever, but I’ll say it. You better stay attracted to them. You better have physical intimacy with them. And if you don’t maintain that pa rt of your relationship like you keep dating, like man, you start keeping it spicy all the time, physically I’m talking about. What starts to happen over time is you start living with just your friend. And in most relationships, I have a lot of friends, I don’t want to lay next to them every single night. I’ve got a bunch of really good friends that are male and female and I don’t wanna be married to them. And if you allow your spouse to turn into just your friend that you lose that intimacy that physical c onnection. And so I think that’s one part of your evaluation. How often you touch each other? Do you hold each other’s hands? At different stages of your relationship physical intimacy can look different ways. I doubt at 80 years old we’re going to be doing what we do now. But I’m going to be dancing with her in the living room I hope.” Matt Rife Within the first few months of becoming Vice President of Strategic Planning & Business Development for a health system, I was told to work on finding an ideal buyer, as the owner wanted to divest. I had taken the job thinking I was going to help create a turnaround for the system, so I had a lot of growth ideas that were quickly irrelevant. But knowing the charge, I proceeded to do what the job required. After suffering from migraines for nearly 30 years, I was getting very weary and once again began searching for any potential solution. Kylee was old enough that she had started coming in to check on me to see if there was anything she could do to help, when all I wanted to do was to help her, so that made me start searching for a solution. I never wanted her to see me in that kind of pain and misery, so I always tried to pretend that it wasn’t as bad as it was. But sometimes, if I was in too much pain, I c ouldn’t even fake it. I would have had any type of surgery just to increase the time I was able to spend with her. Most of the time I tried to make it through the workday but that just meant by the time I got home I was completely incapacitated. To me, that felt very unfair to her, so I just had to do whatever it took to get some relief. Through the years, I had been to every type of specialist and headache and pain center, tried alternative medicine options, and taken every type of preventive and pain medication available but sadly, nothing worked to even take the edge off. While I had migraines at any time of the month, the worst week was always when I had my period, so in my mind, if I could reduce or ideally eliminate those, I would gain 12 weeks of actual living each year. I talked with a gynecological surgeon, and she agreed it was a viable option and a minimally invasive total hysterectomy was scheduled for mid-December. I figured if I had it shortly before Christmas that would give me additional time to recover with the holidays and a bit less hectic work schedule. I believe the surgery was on a Wednesday and I was told I could return to work the following Monday. I had to do a bowel prep the day before the surgery. It wasn’t going well as I couldn’t get much of the prep solution down without throwing up. I ended up with a migraine and then at about 4 p.m. I got a call from the surgeon’s office that they hadn’t been able to get the surgery pre -authorized. I had called the office several times to make sure it had been and had been told everything was in place and it wouldn’t be a problem. So, when I got the call that late in the day after all the prep problems and with a migraine, I was very unhappy. I contacted my employer’s benefits leader and explained th e situation since the surgeon was also employed by the health system. Because we had a self-funded insurance plan, she was able to get approval from the CEO for the procedure to be covered and they would continue to work on the authorization process, but the surgery could go ahead as planned. That was a huge relief and by the morning everything had worked out and I was able to proceed with the surgery. I still had the migraine, so when I arrived in pre-op, they gave me something to try to help me rest since pain medications never worked anyway. I don’t remember much from that timeframe, but what I will describe is what was told to me by my husband, daughter, and father. They were all in the waiting room when the surgeon breezed through very quickly and said everything went fine, but didn’t allow them to ask any questions. They all had an uneasy feeling about it, but assumed maybe it was just a personality issue with the surgeon. I went home the next day, but I wasn’t able to urinate, and my abdomen was quickly becoming distended. On Friday I was t aken to the surgeon’s office and was tested for a urinary tract infection (UTI). My husband had to go to work, so my younger sister stayed with

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