In 2000, I under went the 52 debreadement surgies of the tibia bone, a second and third total knee replacement, untold hospitilizations, daily trips to the hospital (the place in the world where I hate the most)!

What was fun about this journey was I developed guts like no other time in my life. I put signs on my door that read: 

 If Your Are Coming In to Tell My I Am Dying, You're Too Late!

If You Are Thinking About Telling Me I am Dying, You Are Fired!

If Your My Doctor and You Don't Know What To Say,  I Need a Different Doctor!

When You Enter This Room Bring HOPE or don't come In

I had the guts to fire doctors and residents to a total of 19 off of my caseload and off of my medical treatment team. I left nothing to chance or assumption.

A lot of the medical staff didn't like me and I was fighting to hard to the chance to dream again that I didn't care.

What sits in my heart still are these moments.

At home standing in my kitchen with a can of tomato soup. I had been so sick from all the antibiotics and the side affects and having so much trouble from the head injury that I didn't know how to open the can of soup. I didn't have the associations to the can opener or to a pan or to the stove or turning it on! Standing there alone I knew I was sicker than I had ever been in my life!

One other moment in the haze that peeks through is:

Having a total knee replacement after praying for most of my teenage years for one, and then facing loosing it. I am a very pictured individual. I picture things in my head. For example: (If I wanted to walk what would it look like, what would I be doing)! Somewhere along the way when I gave up hope, I also gave up dreaming! So sick, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, I realized with complete dismay I couldn't dream! When exactly did I give up dreaming, don't know. But this day, I couldn't even picture what it would be like to put both feet on the floor. I felt so scared. Not because of being sick but because of what I had given up and because of how much more I was already will to give up without a fight. I knew in my heart I had to find a way to change this. I did want to live but I wanted to life with dignity, with quality of life (outside of this hospital I had been in for 7 months) so where was I going to start to make this happen and how could I do it in a way where I would bring others with me?

Then, after healing coming into the new orthopedic surgerons office (I had fired the previous medical director of orthopedics at the most major hospital and sued her for medical malpractice, medical neglance, and about nine other counts) I had been in a wheelchair from 1998 to 2001 and I decided one day I was going to walk. I can to the big office in my fancy new red electric wheelchair (which he helped me get) and my loft strand crutches were in their holder. I turned to get them out. The first wispers from the staff at the front desk: "You better get the nurse manager, I don't think she is suppose to be doing that." The second conversation was a staff whispering (loudly) around the corner, "Kirsten is getting up to walk, she can't do that her leg doesn't have any bone left." The third confersation between nursing staff and a couple of interns was panic, "What room is the doctor in, he needs to stop Kirsten before we get sued too."

Well, all of this just made me more determined then they could have imagined. On legs that felt like jello and wobbled just as much, I grabbed my crutches, latched my arms and them and I stood. The staff insisted on grabbing me and trying to force me to sit down. This is what I said.

It should not matter to you that I am up and walking. How many times in the last nine months have you told me I was dying? How many times did pitty reflect in your distance? How many times did you smile, never looking at me, always my leg and them walking away?

Now, it is my turn. If it makes you more comfortable you can put a walking belt on me and call a Pt in but I will walk all the way down this all today! It does not matter to me that you don't have the time. I do! It does not matter to me today that you don't have the faith that this can happen for me because I do. I woke up this moring and I knew in my heart that I was giving up because you all had each in your own way given up on me.

I will not give up I almost shout! I will fight back and if you can't support me in believing I can get well, then get off of my caseload!  If you can, I welcome your support!

 I am standing not realizing there are about 45 different staff and staff members and called others that I knew in different departments to come over. 

All of a sudden, I look up and at each person's face and I make one more bold move. I look at each staff and doctor, I approach each one and I ask, are you on board, can you shift to believing in this miracle or not. Those that could I shoke hands with and thanked.

I took my first step. I was scared out of my mind. What if I really couldn't do this, would everyone give up again. So, I took my second step.

This was hard. My feet were dragging. My legs were so week. By my heart and my arms were strong. God was with me in my heart and in my body. I kept telling myself outloud, put one foot in front of the other. I know you can do it. So, this started my walking down the longest hall of my entire life. It took me two hours to walk 150 feet.

The best part of this walk was when I was all done, the staff and the patients aplauded and carried on like no one's business. When I am discouraged like now. I can carry each person with me in my heart. I can hear the aplause then the impossible happens today! That makes for a remarkable part of this scary journey.

I am traveling a journey of a different kind. I have now had 103 operations. This is a fact of MRSA in the bone for me. I have hospital acquired MRSA. One ficious super bug.

In 1998 I was goingto college classes and I was hit by a drunk driver. I lived that was the hard part-so every one says. I had a closed head injury, all my ribs were broken in so many placed. All the bones in my face were crushed, my teeth were fractured and broken as was the hard palet in the roof of my mouth. My neck was broken, my back was broken in two places I when my head looled to the side, my knee bones and all were laying on the ground just out of reach.  It took rescuers almost 6 hours to get me out of the wreckage.

You see, I was already disabled from Polio as a child. This changed my life. Then I had emergency surgery on my leg and three weeks later I had a raging infection. 

 It was two years before the doctors at a major teaching hospital in kansas city diagnosed the MRSA.

I know what it is like to be bedridden for three years. To be so sick that people are scared and have gone away because they done want to get the infection too. I know what it is like to know in your head, heart, and soul that you are dying and no one talks to you about it.

In 2000, I was home alone sitting on my couch and after all the years of pain and isolation, and the doctors ignoring my being sick, finally one of them draws labs, looks at my leg (which was deep purble and about 10 times the size it should have been) she pushed on the front and the bone goes out the back! I will never foget what it was like being so sick and so detached that I wondered and had to ask what the bone was doing sticking out of someones leg and did that person know? Well, surprise! It was my leg and I could feel anything.  Then the doctor wrapped up my leg and sent me home.  But three hours later, her nurse called me at home to tell me that if I was not back in the hospital within the next two hours I would die!

That's a real shocker! (OK, sorry about all the sarcasim, but sometimes when I write about this journey I am somewhere between rage and incredible sadness and the only way I know how to cope with how hard this journey has been is to let someone it out through my writting)!