MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011
Give Me Experience-Trystan
WOW, life just comes atcha sometimes. Recently I posted a blog about getting away from life's trials. After this post, I received dozens of emails asking me to tell more about what happened with Trystan. One person left an anonymous comment that made me believe it was Trystan ....Over the past few years, I have posted so much personal stuff about my life, and people will sometimes leave an anonymous comment. Still, those have never bothered me because I understand and can appreciate if they want to express to me how they feel without revealing who they are. Thank you for your comments. By the way, I look forward to seeing them; if it was you, Trys, I hope your life is going well. I continue to pray for you; if it was not Trystan, I hope you will understand why I am cautious.
With a lot of prayer and consideration, I decided I would blog about some of the details of what happened with Trystan and how we came to find out she was not being truthful. Please know that I, in no way, shape or form want to re-live this again, it has been a terrible experience, and I am still trying to make some sense out of it. With that being said, I also want to make some awareness so that others will not have to go through this actually; most of you are much wiser than I am and would not allow yourself to be put in this situation, but if you know someone like me have them read this if you feel they are.
Those of you who know me well know that I am not a complicated person, I say things like they are, and everyone knows where they stand with me. However, I open my life up to people because I love people and want badly to help and be there for anyone who needs it.
I started this blog before I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I've always been a journal writer, but as I get older. As our family gets bigger, I felt it would be easy to journal about our family and to be able to check in with a family who lives out of the state I live in.
After my diagnosis, this blog made it easier to express myself and share the details of my journey with the VILLAIN. Little did I know it would impact many women also treated with chemo and radiation. Those women have touched and strengthened me in ways I could not explain. They are women who genuinely understand the struggles of being a mom, a wife, and juggling the effects of the VILLAIN taking over our lives. I also thought it was essential to journal my entire journey, every detail so that women could know precisely what a person goes through when they get this type of diagnosis. Also, for my children, who don't really read my blog, to one day read and understand my diagnosis just in case, heaven forbid, they get diagnosed with breast cancer. Their chances are higher due to Eric's mom and I having breast cancer.
I've loved the connections I've made with women worldwide, experiencing the same emotions I have. One day I received an email from a woman who was undergoing chemo. She only had 2 more rounds and wanted someone to talk to. I began to email her, and the story was heart-wrenching. She explained how she and her 2-year-old daughter were in a car accident 5 years ago, and her daughter did not survive. When Trystan came out of the coma she'd been in for five months, the doctors told her about her daughter Paige, dying in the accident, and that her husband committed suicide when he was told his daughter was dead and his wife wouldn't make it through the night.
She then endured months of rehab, learning to read, write, walk, and talk. Now she was living with the VILLAIN. I cried when I read that email. I could not believe anyone could endure what she had at such a young age. I remember praying that night, asking the Lord to please relieve Trystan of her pain from chemo and strengthen her with FAITH and HOPE, just like I had been strengthened through my experience. I felt a connection with her, something I had never felt before, and I continued to keep up with her progress. When she had her last chemo, I celebrated that day with her. Our conversations became daily and were emotional and humorous.
I think it's safe to say we trusted and admired each other. Trystan shared with me that not only was the VILLAIN a big part of her life, but she was also dying from kidney failure and needed to be admitted into the Mayo Hospital in Rochester. My heart went out to her, and I continued to talk to and email her daily. One email I sent her was me telling her how I wanted to start a non-profit organization for women with breast cancer who do not have insurance. Through the contacts I have made with all these women, I realized many of them do not have health insurance, and many states will help them pay for treatments but not for reconstruction, so I wanted this non-profit to help those women get the reconstruction if they wanted it. I asked her what she thought about my idea, and she was very supportive and tried to help me.
She explained that her family was not close, and her brother and sister-in-law have 15-month-old twins. She told me her brother was the drummer of the band REM, and I had no idea who they were.
She explained that when she was in a car accident with her daughter, Honda had given her a massive settlement for her payout (200 million). She said it was the second highest payout ever from the Honda company.
She then told me she would donate a million dollars to my non-profit you can imagine how excited I was because I knew this would help to jump-start this organization and get the help to women immediately. She told me about an organization she has. She bought a home in Hilton Head on the beach for children with terminal diseases to go with their families for a week. She then sent me a magazine article she was featured in about her organization and the fundraiser she did for it in July of 2010. REM. Loretta Lynn and several other performers came to Hilton Head and did an all-day concert. She told me she would help me organize my first fundraiser and that she had all these connections to help me. I explained my gratitude to her, and we started planning our first event.
Her stay in the Mayo hospital was long and dreary. We talked every day, sometimes for several hours, I just did not want her to be alone, and I enjoyed getting out of my little cancer world and helping to cheer her up. Trystan asked if it was okay for her doctor (Dr. Williams) to email me and give me updates while she was in surgery. That night Dr. Williams began emailing me about the severity of Trystans health. I was told Trystan's kidney was only working at 20% and that she needed a kidney transplant.
Trystan asked me if I would be willing to give her a kidney. After discussing it with Eric, we decided it was the right thing to do. However, I was unsure about my health condition and whether I would be a good candidate. Her doctor assured me she knew I was a match and that God had brought her and me together for this reason. During this time, I was also having some issues and needed to see my gynecology oncologist, Dr. Magtibay.
She and I talked about everything with each other. She told me about when she was in John's Hopkins Hospital for kidney failure. She was blessed to get a kidney from a donor; however, while she was in the ICU, a nurse physically abused her by putting a drug into her IV, which made her paralyzed, but she was awake and aware of everything going on, he raped her and vaginally cut her up, she was rushed to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale for vaginal reconstruction surgery, and her doctor was Dr. Magtibay, with the assistance of Dr. Williams they were able to "fix" her. Still, the trauma from this event has never left her. She could not sleep and was deeply emotionally scarred from it. Dr. Williams begged me to try and get her to discuss it with me since she had never had any therapy and refused to speak to anyone about it. I prayed as to how I could help her.
Being sexually abused, I felt like I could talk to her more freely about it, but I knew this would be emotionally draining on me as well. I have never discussed the details of what happened to me as a child, teen, and young adult, nor did I want to start now. After all, I had put all that stuff behind me, except for one little thing, when the doctors told me they wanted me to get a hysterectomy, it always scared me and brought up some past issues. This is the reason for me never agreeing to that surgery until now. I began to talk to her. I told her a little at a time, hoping she would open up to me. During this interaction with Trystan, my children were apprehensive about me; they told me that they felt something about Trystan was not right and that I needed to let go a little and get more information about her. This was difficult to hear because I enjoyed having someone to talk to, especially someone who could understand what I was going through. (I forgot to mention that she and I had become friends on Facebook early on in the friendship also) Several times she was near death, her brother would text me and ask me to please pray for her. I had been emailing Blake and telling him about Trystan; he emailed me one week and suggested we have a family fast for Trys, so I suggested it to her brother; at the time, Trystan and I had just had surgery on the exact same day in January, but she never came out of her sedation.
I explained that we would start the fast in the evening and close the following night, 24 hours with no food or drink and lots of prayers. The next day she woke up--it happened to be on my birthday--I had posted that the only birthday gift I would care to have would be for her to wake up--and she did. All of this time, she was supposedly in the hospital.
Dr. Williams was emailing me and having me update her "Care Page," which is available through Mayo Clinic, so every day, sometimes, several times a day, I would update the page so all her friends could keep up with her recovery-or lack of. I received emails and comments on my blog from Loretta Lynn and her brother and sister-in-law. Just when we thought she was strong enough for me to come and visit, Dr. Williams emailed me one night and said that Trystan needed some vaginal repair done and that she was going to call Dr. Magtibay at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and ask him to do her a favor and fly out there for a couple of days to do the surgery, she told me that her and "Paul Magtibay" were friends and colleagues and that he "owed" her for some things she had done for him. Any of you who have followed my blog should remember that Dr. Magtibay is my gynecology/oncologist. Dr. Williams told me that when Trystan was abused at Johns Hopkins, she had to be flown out to Mayo Clinic in Phoenix to be operated on by Dr. Magtibay. She asked me to never discuss this with him as there is a dr/patient confidentiality problem with her discussing all these things with me.
In the meantime, I received an email from Blake telling me that a woman in Scotland named Shannon had emailed him and said to him that she was in fear of me being hurt and that he should tell Eric right away about Trystan being a fraud (the same thing happened to her) except that she did not have cancer. Shannon had a child who was autistic and did not have the money to help pay for his medical bills.
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