Keep on

First of all let me say thank you to all my “sisters” who have lately been so encouraging. I really truly believe that God is answering my prayers through you guys! If ever you feel God nudging at your heart to text a friend, message them or stop by their house to say “Hi”, please do it! 🙂 It very well might take that friend’s love tank from 0 to 100 just by your words. This is what many of you have done for me.

Here is my attempt of giving a synopsis of the last couple of weeks. . .  In my life right now, days are so different from one day to the next. Today has been good. I woke up with a peace and a joy about things today. I showered, fed and laughed with my daughter and took off towards the hospital. The roads were at times slightly dangerous and when I went sliding on the backroads, I laughed at the adventure of everything. I grabbed a coffee and a lunch at Horrocks and was on my way. Chris was feeling pretty decent when I got in and was getting a blood transfusion. He informed me that his hemoglobin was low- 6.7 down from 8.4 the night before. I knew it, he was bleeding internally. Right away I liked his nurse. She has one of those contagious personalities, hard not to like. Despite it being Saturday he got started right away on having a parensentesis done to take out all the fluid in his abdomen (This was mostly blood of course). Afterwards, Chris felt pretty good with the 6 1/2 lbs (3 liters) of blood out of his belly. Can you imagine, a 2 liter plus another half of one, sitting on your gut, no wonder he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t want to eat. Then he went down to do a tagged rbc scan to find where he was bleeding. During this Chris had to lay still for an hour. In the meantime, his nurse, procedure tech and I told stories about our kids and shared pictures. It was like the girls night I missed out on the night before only with nurses I had just met.

Yesterday was a very different story, not a good day to say the least. Chris had a pretty difficult night from Thursday to Friday. Thursday he had 2 blood transfusions and Friday he felt horrible which is very weird considering that blood usually makes you feel better not worse. He puked up some blood and we decided we better go to the ER. We got there at 10:30 a.m. and did not get admitted to a room until 10:00 at night. In those 11.5 hours Chris tried pain medications and nausea meds but could not find any relief. His heart rate continued to climb; 127 . . . 142 . . . 155 . . . 178. He was sitting up but not walking around. The high heart rate was exactly what happened before, I knew what he needed, he needed blood. I talked to the nurse and resident Doctor who came in, I asked if they could check his hemoglobin again but because it was at 8.4 when we came in, it wasn’t a priority. The ER was busy and everything was very slow. It was very emotionally draining for both of us. I would help Chris try and get in a comfortable position, grab his bucket quickly for him to spit into because he was feeling nauseous, and then give him a back rub to help him relax on the padded slab with wheels. I was able to go get some lunch at 2:00 when he was relatively comfortable but the rest of the night I stayed with him. We tried music, we tried going to the bathroom, we tried foot massages, we tried TV, we tried every pain med he was allowed to have, we tried sitting in a chair instead of laying but it wasn’t until 9:00 at night that he finally felt some relief from a beta blocker that was given by a second nurse. Driving home I was exhausted but our marriage, our love for each other grew that night. Chris told me before I left that mentally he could not have survived that night without me. I prayed for peace and comfort for the both of us, I prayed for patience and wisdom. I prayed for strength and God answered.

This has been a good feel of really the last couple of weeks.  Good days and hard days. Days of hope and days of pain. I have realized that my biggest fear is being alone. The fear of loosing him physically but even more the fear of loosing precious days with him mentally and emotionally. The loneliness can be overwhelming at times, and unfortunately its not something that anyone can fix. The confident, fun, engaging and awesome personality that is my husband is just not there most days. Even on the good days, theres no energy left for him to talk kids, life and us after explaining his condition, symptoms and past treatments to 20 different people. A week and a half ago, when he was in the hospital, I had this realization as he was laying there in the bed, and I was knitting in the chair beside him, that we were like an old married couple who were perfectly content to just sit with each other in silence. This really made me smile. I am being given the chance to grow old with my husband.

Even now I know I will have days of joy, love and laughter, and then “I can’t do this anymore” days. This morning I read 1Peter 4. Verse 19 I read over and over again. “So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you.” This gave me tremendous strength. Its like his voice telling me, “Keep on! I will never fail you. Keep going!” It would be very easy to be bitter or allow someone else besides God to fill the loneliness. Allowing another person or other things to fill the emptiness is in our human nature and it is perfectly reasonably and acceptable according to most of the world. Gabby is an incredible joy I have in my life right now but she is not my everything and she cannot fill what only God can fill. Pray for me as I am looking to God every day to be my source of comfort and strength and meaning.