I don’t have access to what everyone else has written; but I have a general idea of how it works and what has been done (thank you, Redeemed)

I know it’s been a while since anyone has posted here. There are a lot of complex reasons that would be really too hard for me to explain. but it’s been a mixture of a bad reactions to a new medication our general practitioner tried to help relieve some of the pain, Gretchen being out a super long time (Our internal world depends more on her than we all realized until she was out so much.), and surgery that we were anticipating with dread and really needing Gretchen to help us prepare. We shouldn’t have worried. God had is all in control. The surgery was this morning and we all made it through the event just fine. (Oh yeah, I forgot that we have been fighting a manic episode, too.) We are still waiting to see what the recovery time will be like. The doctor expects it to really knock us down for at least a few weeks; but today was astonishingly easy. Most likely because of the prayers that have been prayed by many wonderful people God has brought into our life, but also it may be somewhat “normal” for the first day to be lighter before the hardest part hits. Ha! Leave it to us to do something “normal” for a change. Anyway, all that is just guessing. What we know is that both of the doctors involved expect it to be really rough.

I’m also guessing that I will stay out for a while. That seems to be the pattern for the past couple years or so. It’s very different than the way it used to be – people switching frequently everyday. If that is correct, I’ll have lots of time to tell my side of the story. I wrote some short (very short) stories about what our pregnancies and births have been like. I’ll have to modify them a bit, but I’m thinking I’ll post some parts of some of them, anyway.

Oh yeah, technically my name is not Beth, but Beth is the name we are using for any/all personalities who are out and want to post but don’t want to say our real name (or maybe might not have a name except the birth name – that’s a super long story, but basically it means that some of us don’t have a personal name we identify with “self”. It can make things kind of tricky and confusing at times; but the bottom line is I will try to come up with a way you can tell that it’s the same (or different) personality than who posted the previous time under this name. Right now what I can tell you is that I haven’t posted anything else on this blog, so if there are any other posts by anyone named Beth before now, it wasn’t me – it was someone else who either doesn’t have a personal name to identify themselves by or else doesn’t feel safe to share what that name is.

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything. I forgot what a terrible speller I was and how bad I am at typing. The last time I wrote anything it was on a typewriter (or maybe paper) and there wasn’t anything like spell-checker. Whoever came up with this invention was a genius! I don’t feel nearly so dumb or embarrassed by what I write.

I’m going to quit for tonight, but most likely I’ll be posting again real soon (depending on how this post-op recovery goes).