Doing Battle, Week 53

Early last week Shaun and I sat down with our calendars (my paper one, his electronic one) and figured out when we were each working, who was going to run kids and when, what appointments we had and finally ending the weekend which included five soccer games and lots of family time. It was my off week and we had a good plan!

 You can make many plans but the Lord's plans will prevail. Proverbs 19:21

Our plan started out well. By Monday I was able to take over the kids and some household responsibilities so Shaun was freed up to work and deal with some of his irons in the fire (This man is quite remarkable.) and I was able to make some progress on a special project for work.

All week I was a little low on energy, never really feeling a "bounce back" from treatment and by Thursday I was running a fever. I laid low in the afternoon and went to bed early. I woke up feeling functional and went about my day but by early afternoon I was running a temperature again. When I could, I crawled into bed and finally let Shaun know he needed to come home.

He got home, got kids where they needed to be and then gently insisted that we go to the ER. We've been told time and again to do this anytime my temperature goes above 100.5. I was at 102. Although we got right into a room, I will make a long story short and say that we were there six hours. They did a whole work-up, including chest x-ray, blood, etc. In the end, everything came back clear or inconclusive, as many of the cultures take days to grow.

The ER doctor reached out to the oncologist-on-call at Sloan who said they would admit me for 48 hours and put me on IV antibiotics if I was in New York. I declined, opting instead to go home and rest and stay away from germs.

Saturday morning I laid low and the visiting nurse came. Shortly after she left, the hospital called saying one of the cultures had come back showing there was bacteria in my blood. She strongly urged me to go back to the ER to get admitted. I called Shaun, who was picking up Avery from her soccer game on his way back from an apartment building, where someone's bathroom ceiling had collapsed because of a leak above in the other bathroom. I packed a few things and hung out with Aiden while we waited for my mom to drop off Amanda from her soccer game and Shaun and Avery to get home. Once we were all together, we walked the half mile or so to the hospital on a lovely late-afternoon day. (Admittedly, we have some work to do on the family selfie!) (Another side note: Shaun would like our OBX peeps to be aware that more people died this year as a result of selfie accidents than shark attacks. ;)

Once checked in we did more blood work and a CT Scan. Another six hours in the ER until they admitted me and moved me upstairs. Shaun and the kids stayed with me for a bit and I hope they will remember it as the night we all walked to the hospital (where they were all born, Shaun included) and they got to play games on the iPad and look at Instagram on my phone. After a bit Shaun took them home to bed and Amy took their place. We hadn't had time together in so long. It was nice.

Currently, I'm in a reverse isolation room (no roommate! ;) and have been on heavy-duty IV antibiotics since Saturday night. We've been waiting for results to come back and this afternoon we got the news that it is both a C-diff and Staph infection. Very treatable but very good it was caught early...I'm so thankful Shaun made me take action and not wait it out.

Among other things, this means my chemo treatment can't happen this week, which is discouraging. I always say, the only thing worse than getting a treatment is not getting a treatment. It messes up the plans I'd made in my head for what I would be well for and what I could participate in and it stretches my end date out further. This wasn't part of the plan.

Feeling a little like we were boogie boarding and got pulled under and we keep trying to right ourselves and get to a standing position but the waves just. keep. crashing. This is hard. The intensity of it, the longevity of it, the confusion of it, the toll it takes on other areas of our life. Shaun had to answer the question from Aiden, Is Mommy going to die from cancer?

The harder it gets the more fervently I trust that God is in it all. He's the only thing that makes sense.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! 1 Corinthians 13:12

If you walk by my hospital room, you just might hear me singing:

We bring our expectations
Our hope is anchored in Your name
The name of Jesus
Oh, we trust the Name of Jesus