Change of Plans

Remember in my last post how I said in the military things can change in a second? Guess I should have knocked on wood or something...
We've had a couple frustrating/stressful days. We spent 12 hours in the ER yesterday. Ben woke up hurting really bad about 2am. We tried all our usual things- put the tens unit on, put the heating pad on, took some pain meds- but nothing was helping. So at 3am we left to head up to Tripler. We got there about 330, and sat there for the next 12 hours. They did the normal tests- blood, urine, etc. Of course everything looked normal. A bit dehydrated, but who wouldn't be after not being able to eat or drink anything for that long. They also did another CT Scan with contrast (he had the exact same thing done 3 weeks ago). And to no surprise, there was no "significant changes." It did show he has a kidney stone on the right side, but that wasn't noticeable compared to the pain he was having on the left. After that, they called General Surgery for a consult. We already had an appointment with them scheduled for today, but the ER wanted their opinion anyway. After consulting with 4 different surgeons, they decided there wasn't anything worth operating on. So they sent us home with some Hydrocodone and said to follow up at our appointment today where they would give us the profile we need to start the med board. We finally got home about 530pm (we hit rush hour traffic and had to stop and get food and gas on the way). The puppies were super good all day though. We had left them in the house thinking we would only be gone 3 or 4 hours. I was very happy to come home to no mess. It's so nice knowing they are that well house trained.
Then this morning we headed up to the hospital fully expecting to just get the profile. After going back almost an hour after our appointment time, the doctor made it quick. We told him about our time in the ER yesterday (because of all the surgeons they consulted he wasn't one of them), and he pretty much decided then and there that he is going to operate again. Really didn't even give us a chance to say yes or no or even ask questions. He then left the room to see when he could do it, came back with a date and sent us over to the appointment office to schedule our pre op appointment. So Ben's have surgery again on July 11th. Totally not what I was expecting this morning. Especially since it was the same surgeon we saw two weeks ago who said he didn't think surgery would work and didn't want to do it, and after 4 surgeons said yesterday that they wouldn't do it. Then all of a sudden someone wants to do it. It's a bit frustrating.
I'll admit I wasn't happy this morning after finding out they are doing another surgery. This will be number 6 in the past 3 years, number 2 in the past 6 months. The difference with this one is that they are going to use an adhesion barrier after removing the adhesions. Hopefully that will prevent the adhesions from coming back and we won't have to deal with this problem anymore. It would be nice to see my husband not hurting any more. But even with the barrier, we can't be 100% sure that the adhesions won't come back. At least if it doesn't work we can say that we've tried everything. So while I'm not totally thrilled that he's having another surgery, I think it's what needs to be done. After talking to my mom this afternoon I'm feeling better about it. The reasons I was telling her for not wanting to do it were sounding kind of stupid once I thought about it. And those that know me know that it doesn't take much to stress me out and make me worry. So naturally I worry that something will happen with the baby (like I'll be put on bed rest or she'll come early) and that Ben won't be fully healed yet. Or worry that this surgery won't work and that the adhesions will just come back worse than before. Or what if it does work, will we still be able to get out or will they keep him on active duty (we still have a little over two years left on his enlistment)? So really it just raises a lot of questions and "what if's" that I don't know if there are any answers for. And I may or may not have just been having a pregnancy moment this morning...
So that's where we are now. Having surgery puts off the med board longer, and we'll have to wait and see if it even happens at all now. We're back to the wait and see point now. Have to wait and see if the surgery is going to work. That will determine what happens after that. So I think it's going to be a few months before we know anything else. Hopefully he'll have some relief for at least that long. But we'll keep you updated as we find out what's going to happen from here on out.