Monday Morning.....

I am sitting here this morning drinking my chai tea and contemplating how best to sum up the past few days. It is slow going....not that I am impatient or restless. Truly I am fine. It is just hard to watch Daddy feel energetic and then pay for it so hard.

Since my last post, he has been very worn out. Saturday my cousin took him to the military base pharmacy to pick up his medication refills. I don't quite understand why the military pharmacy rules DEMAND that he be present for those refills when he is not even on any pain killers. They are in the process of moving everything around on base and changed the location of the pharmacy. It ended up being way too much walking for him. By the evening and through most of yesterday, he was so weak that he could barely talk above a whisper and not in a complete sentence from being so winded. I had to prod him more than ever to get nourishment and medications into him and we got more than a little behind.

He asked me to hook up his IV pump into the port located on his arm yesterday and talked me through it. At first I wished I could get a hold of my cousin (the ICU nurse) and felt panic. But I knew God was right there with me and I didn't need to make it a huge deal. I felt very proud of myself to be able to do that IV bag from start to finish. Later when I told my cousin what I did, she gently scolded me. She had no doubts that I was careful in being super clean and sterile but she was worried about doing a nurse's assessment to make sure he isn't getting too much fluid. Then she backed off and chose to give me a few guide lines in assessment to look for so that I can keep doing it on my own.

We are very blessed to have my cousin so close by. She stops in every day to check on him. The hospital has been VERY gracious to allow us to do these fluid bags at home because she is here so much. If it weren't for that grace, we would be at the hospital every day getting Daddy re-hydrated.
Daddy was so very sick last night. It hurt to hear him retching so hard and long in the restroom. At risk of being overly graphic, I have to explain what is going on with him besides just the general idea of treatment. Because the tumor is in his throat, as the treatments kills those bad cells, gravity takes over and everything drains into his stomach. He has learned to clear much of it out through his gastric tube but there is still a portion that sometimes must come up the other way. I am very grateful that the doctors placed his feeding tube as a bypass straight into his intestine so that he doesn't lose his nutrients.

Once he showed definite signs of improvement, I left for a bit of a walk. My pockets were loaded down with mp3 player, cell phone and pepper spray and Daddy insisted that I carry his walking stick to ward off any of the neighborhood's large dogs. I enjoyed walking and looking. Children were playing like they were all quarterbacks for the Dallas Cowboys while adults were taking down the last of the Christmas decorations. Being in "big" country, I couldn't help but laugh at the idea of a truck in every driveway.

My mp3 player.....I started off with a bit of Yoyo Ma and then switched over to soaking. I love all of the songs but I have a current favorite. Every time I hear it, I see rain. I don't mean rain like grey sky rain though. It is so hard to describe but it is like a bright liquid gold that God is cleaning everything with.

I did find a christian bookstore the other day and picked up two more of Louis Giglio's Passion dvds. I am hoping Daddy will be awake enough to want to watch them.

Thank you for your prayers and encouragement.

Have a God filled and blessed day today.