Marriage is tough. It's a statement that seems to be spoon-fed down the throats of the single folks, like if you're married you're a part of some secret club that only married people know about. I used to hate hearing people say that to me before I was married. And yet, I find myself saying it all the time to the single people around me.
When I was single I thought people were telling me to sort of warn me or prepare me for some impending doom on the day I got married. Now that I'm married, I know that people say it to encourage themselves to keep going, keep fighting, keep loving, and keep moving forward. In other words "marriage is tough" really means "just keep on truckin'".
I love Chief. I really do. I love him more than I ever believed myself genuinely capable of loving. But the past week, I didn't feel as much love as I felt resentment, jealousy, and hurt feelings. Isn't it crazy how quickly the joy of love can be twisted and turned to something awful?
You see, with Lolli's hospital scenario, the kids' sicknesses, my sickness, Chief's sickness, his schooling, his Army work, and our overall busy-ness, I have barely spent any time with Chief. He comes home from work, eats dinner with us for 20 minutes and starts school, or counselling statements, or creates classes for work, or does ten thousand things for the Army. Then when he finishes that, he plops himself down on the couch and plays games on his phone, fiddles around on the internet, or falls asleep.
Now, I realize that his busy-ness is not that big of a deal. I know he could be involved in much worse things than working hard for his family. But I have to be honest, I don't do well when I don't connect with him. I become depressed, insecure, grumpy, my thinking gets foggy, and I just lose my overall cheeryness. It's really quite pathetic that the absence of a connection with Chief does all of that to me, but I have to say it's the negative side of being genuinely in love with another human being.
Today, Chief and I had an incredibly busy day of errands to do. In a moment when he was checking the air in my tires, my heart swelled with grief and sadness and the negative feelings disappeared. He works SO hard for me and I have only been thinking about myself, and not about him are the thoughts that flew through my brain. Wow. Sucker punch to my wife gut.
So how do I respond? I need to get over myself. I need to stop being so completely self involved. I need to put myself in his shoes, and imagine how completely overwhelmed, over worked, and drained he must feel. I need to think about his best interests, and not my own. Isn't that what marriage is supposed to be anyway? I look out for him, and he looks out for me.
I hate when my heart displays its ugliness.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
My Confession
For those non-Catholics (NCs) out there, confession is considered wicked. Confession is considered to be a time when you go to a human being and that human being says "Okay. God won't hold you accountable for this ever again." and you're good to go. For NCs, this is blasphemy. When I sin, I sin against God and God alone, and He alone can forgive my sins.
I spent years fighting against the understanding of this action. And I can honestly tell you, I never in my wildest dreams would have believed that I would be going to confession. But God brings people into our lives when we need them. They are human versions of His spiritual arms and they come and bring good news. Sometimes that news is hard to swallow, or difficult to hear, or requires an incredible amount of arguing and challenging, but good news is always good news, even if the choices one must make after hearing it, hurts.
Many of you know that my husband and I are converting to Catholicism. This was not a decision made lightly, and I have told some of my Catholic friends that I fear I will be joining by the skin of my teeth. I argue. I challenge everything said. I know the Bible (I am always learning more), and I know what it says and I won't just be coddled or BSed into buying into any sort of group mentality. When it comes to God, I believe it is absolutely wicked to do that. God is my beloved, and I will not ever allow myself to be joined to anything that speaks falsely of Him.
That is the ultimate reason why I had to leave Protestantism. It just never added up. If 20,000 different "protestant" faiths are teaching 20,000 different perspectives, only one of them can be right (one says you can't drink, another says you can. One says dancing is a sin, another requires it. etc etc etc).
Forgive me, I'm not writing an attack on Protestantism.
Confession is not about the priest. The priest has nothing to do with it. Confession is about you and God. Confession is about pouring light into the darkness that sin creates. Confession is exposing the secrets that Christians carry around about their sin. Confession is saying out loud, to another person, what you have done. Our sins are already forgiven before we see the priest. Our sins are forgiven by Christ. Confession is an environment where you are in front of another human being and saying "This is my sin. This is what I need to work on. This is how I want to grow and change."
It's beautiful. It was the most terrifying experience of my life. To sit in front of a person that I hold with an incredible amount of admiration and tell him my sins, was agonizing. In my previous church, sins were discussed (in general terms) but never exposed. Everyone walked around with the facade that they were open about their sins, but never once in all my years of leading Bible studies and small groups did I ever hear a person say "This is my sin. It is wicked and destructive. This is how I will stop doing it." Sin was discussed in past tense terms "I was an alcoholic. I was a drug addict. But I'm free now!"
So I sat down, face to face, and I poured out my sins. I poured out my broken heart. I poured out the agony that my spirit faces when I betray my Beloved. I poured out myself and I was accepted. I was forgiven. My priest said "Do you believe, I mean really believe that your sins have been forgiven? Christ has wiped you clean. KNOW that you are forgiven. No more shame." I think in his wisdom, he knew I didn't. He knew that even all the times I've asked God to forgive me, this aspect of myself never really believed He did. The shame of my wickedness I carry around like a second skin. I am worthy of nothing.
When I left confession, a woman I didn't know came up to me and hugged me. She said "You are glowing!" And I can't explain to you why I felt so much lighter walking out of that place. Maybe having another human being tell you that God hears your broken heart and has forgiven you is incredibly more powerful than I could have imagined. Maybe pouring light into the festering wounds of my choices is more healing than I could have fathomed. Maybe I have finally understood that I am forgiven.
The grace I have discovered humbles me. The love that is displayed is abundant. This is my confession.
I spent years fighting against the understanding of this action. And I can honestly tell you, I never in my wildest dreams would have believed that I would be going to confession. But God brings people into our lives when we need them. They are human versions of His spiritual arms and they come and bring good news. Sometimes that news is hard to swallow, or difficult to hear, or requires an incredible amount of arguing and challenging, but good news is always good news, even if the choices one must make after hearing it, hurts.
Many of you know that my husband and I are converting to Catholicism. This was not a decision made lightly, and I have told some of my Catholic friends that I fear I will be joining by the skin of my teeth. I argue. I challenge everything said. I know the Bible (I am always learning more), and I know what it says and I won't just be coddled or BSed into buying into any sort of group mentality. When it comes to God, I believe it is absolutely wicked to do that. God is my beloved, and I will not ever allow myself to be joined to anything that speaks falsely of Him.
That is the ultimate reason why I had to leave Protestantism. It just never added up. If 20,000 different "protestant" faiths are teaching 20,000 different perspectives, only one of them can be right (one says you can't drink, another says you can. One says dancing is a sin, another requires it. etc etc etc).
Forgive me, I'm not writing an attack on Protestantism.
Confession is not about the priest. The priest has nothing to do with it. Confession is about you and God. Confession is about pouring light into the darkness that sin creates. Confession is exposing the secrets that Christians carry around about their sin. Confession is saying out loud, to another person, what you have done. Our sins are already forgiven before we see the priest. Our sins are forgiven by Christ. Confession is an environment where you are in front of another human being and saying "This is my sin. This is what I need to work on. This is how I want to grow and change."
It's beautiful. It was the most terrifying experience of my life. To sit in front of a person that I hold with an incredible amount of admiration and tell him my sins, was agonizing. In my previous church, sins were discussed (in general terms) but never exposed. Everyone walked around with the facade that they were open about their sins, but never once in all my years of leading Bible studies and small groups did I ever hear a person say "This is my sin. It is wicked and destructive. This is how I will stop doing it." Sin was discussed in past tense terms "I was an alcoholic. I was a drug addict. But I'm free now!"
So I sat down, face to face, and I poured out my sins. I poured out my broken heart. I poured out the agony that my spirit faces when I betray my Beloved. I poured out myself and I was accepted. I was forgiven. My priest said "Do you believe, I mean really believe that your sins have been forgiven? Christ has wiped you clean. KNOW that you are forgiven. No more shame." I think in his wisdom, he knew I didn't. He knew that even all the times I've asked God to forgive me, this aspect of myself never really believed He did. The shame of my wickedness I carry around like a second skin. I am worthy of nothing.
When I left confession, a woman I didn't know came up to me and hugged me. She said "You are glowing!" And I can't explain to you why I felt so much lighter walking out of that place. Maybe having another human being tell you that God hears your broken heart and has forgiven you is incredibly more powerful than I could have imagined. Maybe pouring light into the festering wounds of my choices is more healing than I could have fathomed. Maybe I have finally understood that I am forgiven.
The grace I have discovered humbles me. The love that is displayed is abundant. This is my confession.
Spirit
Mike and got married, quite quickly, right before he left for his third deployment. We became pregnant with our oldest child almost immediately after getting married (quite possibly even our wedding night). Literally five days after discovering we were going to have a baby, he left to go to Iraq. I was in a new state, a new city, a completely new lifestyle, and a thousand changes were coming at me a mile a minute. My best friend left. Back in those days, there wasn't the internet in Iraq. There was very infrequent phone calls. The main mode of communication was snail-mail and even that was sparse and somewhat unreliable. Don't get me wrong, it was nothing like WWII days, but it wasn't the same as how things were when we finally left Iraq for good.
Everything in my world was changed. My entire life plans, my entire life everything was completely turned upside down. I was never "supposed" to be able to get pregnant. I was far from every single person I knew. So much so that I called a local church, and a sweet, sweet woman (who didn't even know me) came with my to my first doctor's appointment.
I am a Bryan Adams fan. I like his music, a lot. I had heard he did the soundtrack for a movie about a horse, Spirit, and without ever hearing it I bought it. This music spoke to my heart in every way. It conjured up images of my husband and played, musically, everything I was feeling. Adventurous. Like a fighter. Broken. Trapped. Forsaken. In love. This music gave me courage. It made me braver. I had no idea at the time, how much courage and bravery I would need in the months to come. I had no idea...
While listening to Spirit, Lolli was growing away in my body. Every single time I played the music, she would kick and become incredibly active. The only other time she was equally as active was when I played Chief's recorded voice. I thought that she liked it. My sisters and my mom, would tease me and say I was crazy. And I'd just shrug my shoulders.
We hadn't listened to that music in at least five years. I sort of forgot I even had it. Then all of a sudden Lolli found the CD and asked if we could play it. I laughed and said I used to play that all the time when Chief was deployed right after we got married. So I turned it on. She danced and sat still and listened to the entire album. Now, if you know Lolli, she loves to dance, so that didn't surprise me much, but she doesn't usually sit still for an hour listening to music.
Then when she got sick, she would ask for me to play Spirit. In particular, she would ask for one song called "Run Free" on the Spirit album, which was my favorite of all the songs. Yes, it's heavily synthesized and I wish it was actually played with an orchestra instead of keyboards, but the music brings up something in me. Apparently it does to Lolli too. She told me when we were on the way to the hospital that this song was "our song" and that if either of us ever feel lonely or afraid we should listen to this song and remember that we're not alone.
This is her song. She loved it in my womb and she loves it now. It makes her light up. It makes her smile. As I'm sitting here writing this, she is currently humming the tune and running around with her brother.
Maybe I wasn't crazy after all. Maybe that music really did have the ability to console two scared human beings, who both wanted Chief to come home alive and well. Maybe it didn't just give me courage. Maybe it gave my growing child courage too.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Aloe
I'm not good with goodbyes. In fact I'm horrible at them. I become a bumbling mess of complete emotional chaos. Truth is, if you know me, you know that I hate emotions that are sad. I always want to be cheerful and upbeat and happy and silly. I want to make jokes and I want to laugh. So when goodbye rolls across the dinner plate and I am actually faced with a situation where there are no jokes and there is no humor...
If I'm honest, I'm the biggest coward I know. I've spent an enormous amount of my life grieving something. I've spent an incredible amount of time trying to forgive the demons that have gone bump in my life. I've worked so hard to walk away from the waterfalls of tears and to move my psyche to a place of joy. Life is too short to cry. I swear I've cried so much for so long that I just don't want to do it anymore.
But you... You're forcing me to go through it, over and over again. You're forcing me to say goodbye when I don't want to and you keep forcing me to hurt. And I don't understand why. I don't understand why you bring these people into my life and you make me love them with every fiber of my very self and then you move them away or deploy them away or you take them away. I don't understand. And it hurts. And it makes me cry. And it makes me feel so small and so helpless.
Sitting here in my beautiful marriage, my home, with my children and watching the people that I love as part of my self hurt so much is like daggers. I would trade my self to make them feel better. I would bend over backwards to make them laugh. And you know how hard I try to make them laugh! How hard I try to bring even a small amount of joy to their hurt hearts. Because comforting them is maybe some retroactive way of knowing that no one will ever feel what I have felt in my life. All the hurts I've endured alone... All the tears I've cried alone.
Everyone thinks I'm so strong. I'm not strong. I'm a walking basket case that's probably one more damned goodbye away from having my heart ripped out of my chest. Loving people hurts. It's a simple fact. To love another human being is to open up all sorts of beautiful emotions, but it's also ripping pieces out of your soul and handing it to someone else and saying "Here! Take care of this. But if you don't, I'm helpless to defend myself."
It all sounds so romantic, doesn't it? I find it ugly and complicated and wonderful and messy. I guess it's strange that I'm able to love people like that without it being romanticized in my own heart. Maybe that's the gift that you have given me. But it hurts. And it leaves me feeling broken. Because I am so freaking helpless. I can't fix anything. I can't help anyone. I can't cure any illness, or prevent any tears, or make marriages happen or people to fall in love. I can't. And I wish I could.
I have endured a lot. It probably sounds sick but I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for all that you've put me through. Because every single one of those hell-on-earth experiences sucked me closer to you, like an aloe plant pulling out a splinter. It hurts like heck, but it brings out the ugliness and puts new growth back in its place. You promote my healing. But you always have to sucker punch me, because I'm just that freaking dense and I don't give up control easily.
You have brought me some beautiful people to love. And I really do love them. I really do. When they laugh, it warms my heart. When they hurt, it hurts my heart. When they're sick I want to help them. When they're excited I want to listen. When they're angry I want to support them and defend them. When they leave for horrible places that I can't go...
So here I sit helpless. I sit broken and sad and angry and vulnerable. But I need to be. Because I've never let a weakness dominate my life before and I'm not about to start now. And the more I expose myself the more you suck the splinters from my heart.
As I just finished that sentence this was what started playing on my iTunes: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Jesus, please come, today. And I find that to be so spiritually fitting for what I want to say.
Come and save the broken ones. Their hurts are so great and their needs are so astronomical. Come and save this broken one. I'm a basket case.
If I'm honest, I'm the biggest coward I know. I've spent an enormous amount of my life grieving something. I've spent an incredible amount of time trying to forgive the demons that have gone bump in my life. I've worked so hard to walk away from the waterfalls of tears and to move my psyche to a place of joy. Life is too short to cry. I swear I've cried so much for so long that I just don't want to do it anymore.
But you... You're forcing me to go through it, over and over again. You're forcing me to say goodbye when I don't want to and you keep forcing me to hurt. And I don't understand why. I don't understand why you bring these people into my life and you make me love them with every fiber of my very self and then you move them away or deploy them away or you take them away. I don't understand. And it hurts. And it makes me cry. And it makes me feel so small and so helpless.
Sitting here in my beautiful marriage, my home, with my children and watching the people that I love as part of my self hurt so much is like daggers. I would trade my self to make them feel better. I would bend over backwards to make them laugh. And you know how hard I try to make them laugh! How hard I try to bring even a small amount of joy to their hurt hearts. Because comforting them is maybe some retroactive way of knowing that no one will ever feel what I have felt in my life. All the hurts I've endured alone... All the tears I've cried alone.
Everyone thinks I'm so strong. I'm not strong. I'm a walking basket case that's probably one more damned goodbye away from having my heart ripped out of my chest. Loving people hurts. It's a simple fact. To love another human being is to open up all sorts of beautiful emotions, but it's also ripping pieces out of your soul and handing it to someone else and saying "Here! Take care of this. But if you don't, I'm helpless to defend myself."
It all sounds so romantic, doesn't it? I find it ugly and complicated and wonderful and messy. I guess it's strange that I'm able to love people like that without it being romanticized in my own heart. Maybe that's the gift that you have given me. But it hurts. And it leaves me feeling broken. Because I am so freaking helpless. I can't fix anything. I can't help anyone. I can't cure any illness, or prevent any tears, or make marriages happen or people to fall in love. I can't. And I wish I could.
I have endured a lot. It probably sounds sick but I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for all that you've put me through. Because every single one of those hell-on-earth experiences sucked me closer to you, like an aloe plant pulling out a splinter. It hurts like heck, but it brings out the ugliness and puts new growth back in its place. You promote my healing. But you always have to sucker punch me, because I'm just that freaking dense and I don't give up control easily.
You have brought me some beautiful people to love. And I really do love them. I really do. When they laugh, it warms my heart. When they hurt, it hurts my heart. When they're sick I want to help them. When they're excited I want to listen. When they're angry I want to support them and defend them. When they leave for horrible places that I can't go...
So here I sit helpless. I sit broken and sad and angry and vulnerable. But I need to be. Because I've never let a weakness dominate my life before and I'm not about to start now. And the more I expose myself the more you suck the splinters from my heart.
As I just finished that sentence this was what started playing on my iTunes: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Jesus, please come, today. And I find that to be so spiritually fitting for what I want to say.
Come and save the broken ones. Their hurts are so great and their needs are so astronomical. Come and save this broken one. I'm a basket case.
Lolli
The past several weeks have been incredibly emotionally challenging for me. We had multiple hospital hang outs, which concluded in a lovely week long stay at hotel hospital. We've been to countless doctor's appointments. My daughter has had blood taken from what can only be every single vein imaginable in her skinny little seven year old arms and hands.
It all started with my child not wanting to eat anymore. If you know Lolli, you know that the girl is the skinniest human being ever, and her not wanting to eat is not really good. That lasted for a week. Then her coloring got awful. Her eyes looked sunken in and terrible. Later that morning, she started throwing up. Not just a little bit, she was throwing up when there was nothing to throw up. She was throwing up things that were beyond possible for her to throw up (buckets of what looked like water when she hadn't had any, and there was no acid in it. And to be honest, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't sat right there with her the whole time and watched it all happen.). By the afternoon, she was bad. She was really bad. She was completely gray. Off to the ER we went. She didn't have a fever. She said her stomach didn't hurt, but she didn't want to eat either. She was just thirsty. Really, really thirsty (something she'd been all week long) and she had a headache.
At the ER, her kidney function was low (dehydration). She was borderline hospitalization, but since her pediatrician knew me very well, (from the triplets' medical needs), and she hadn't thrown up in several hours, he knew that I could take her home and if she got worse I would bring her back. Well, in the car she started throwing up buckets again. I can only guess she was throwing up stuff that had re-collected in her stomach because she had nothing to throw up (or so I thought). Back to the ER we went, and stayed there until about three in the morning.
The next day, she went to the doctor. He took one look at her, and said she needs to go in the hospital. So off she went. She was initially admitted for dehydration. She had no other symptoms other than that she didn't want to eat, and she would randomly get horrible stomach pains and throw up. No fever. No aches and pains. No diarrhea. No sore throat or cough or runny nose.
In the hospital they did random labs (like they normally do) and discovered that her white blood cell count was low. Her bone marrow was actively working to make more white blood cells (which is good) so the concern wasn't that big at that point. Her white blood cells were not freakishly low, but they were low and her pediatrician wanted to watch that. He said it was possible that a virus could attack her white blood cells, but that wasn't very common and they should be back to normal the next day. Well, in a nutshell, they weren't. They were lower the next day. And lower the next day. And the next. And the next, for over a week.
Lolli started to perk up a bit, and she was eager to get out of the hospital, so we asked to be discharged and if we could do all of these tests as an outpatient. Her pediatrician said that was fine. Well that night, from a weak immune system (having very little white blood cells will do that to a person) and having been exposed to all things sickness in the hospital, Lolli spiked a fever. And she looked awful again. She started throwing up in the middle of the night. The next morning we went back to the doctor. He looked at her again and he said, "I think she needs to go back to the hospital." Lolli said, "Will I have to have an IV?" He said "Yes you will." She started crying hysterically. I think at this point the child was just done. She was done with being poked. Done with being prodded. Done with feeling awful. He said he would put her on a lot of medicines and she would have to come back tomorrow. He said because her immune system is so weak, he was very concerned. She had one more night at home, and one more chance for her body to work.
We picked up a plethora of medications for my child. And I have to be honest, watching my always healthy little girl look the way she did was heart breaking. But I was hopeful, that the antivirals, the antibiotics, the anti nausea medications would all work together to keep her healthy. Well that first day, she threw up all of the medicines (because they were very strong). I was scared to call her doctor, but he said a couple of times is normal on such strong medicines. She had one more chance, or she would go back to the hospital. At this point, I forgot to mention, that she was having routine blood draws to watch her WBC (White blood count). So many that they were recognizing and remembering her by name in the hospital lab.
A couple more days went by (where she was stable) and she started to slowly improve. Then one of the days, she all of a sudden had energy again. I told Chief that I thought her WBC count was up. You could sort of tell. I think it was obvious when it went down (she would lose all of her energy) and then when she would get a wave of new ones it would go up again. But this day was different. She had good energy. She was alert. She was different. That day her labs showed her WBC count was normal. Her bone marrow was working extremely hard to make it normal, but it was the first promising blood test result we'd had in weeks. Because they were finally normal, she's able to have them once a week now.
So, we're watching them. It's been incredibly difficult. It's been heart breaking to have conversations about leukemia and bone marrow biopsies about my child to her doctor. It fills my heart with so much compassion for so many mothers who are currently nursing their cancer stricken children at this very moment.
I don't know if we'll be in that group of people. If I trust my instincts, I would say no. I believe that she had a random fluke virus that went hogwild on her white blood cells (Seriously! A virus attacked Grigio's stomach and killed that sucker, so why would it be impossible to believe one would attack white blood cells?). Right now we're still waiting. Hoping for great results and waiting. But thanking God SO much for her strength today. Thanking God for each moment with our children. Thanking God for the reminder that time is SO SO SO precious and we shouldn't take any moment for granted. Thanking God for our children.
It all started with my child not wanting to eat anymore. If you know Lolli, you know that the girl is the skinniest human being ever, and her not wanting to eat is not really good. That lasted for a week. Then her coloring got awful. Her eyes looked sunken in and terrible. Later that morning, she started throwing up. Not just a little bit, she was throwing up when there was nothing to throw up. She was throwing up things that were beyond possible for her to throw up (buckets of what looked like water when she hadn't had any, and there was no acid in it. And to be honest, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't sat right there with her the whole time and watched it all happen.). By the afternoon, she was bad. She was really bad. She was completely gray. Off to the ER we went. She didn't have a fever. She said her stomach didn't hurt, but she didn't want to eat either. She was just thirsty. Really, really thirsty (something she'd been all week long) and she had a headache.
At the ER, her kidney function was low (dehydration). She was borderline hospitalization, but since her pediatrician knew me very well, (from the triplets' medical needs), and she hadn't thrown up in several hours, he knew that I could take her home and if she got worse I would bring her back. Well, in the car she started throwing up buckets again. I can only guess she was throwing up stuff that had re-collected in her stomach because she had nothing to throw up (or so I thought). Back to the ER we went, and stayed there until about three in the morning.
The next day, she went to the doctor. He took one look at her, and said she needs to go in the hospital. So off she went. She was initially admitted for dehydration. She had no other symptoms other than that she didn't want to eat, and she would randomly get horrible stomach pains and throw up. No fever. No aches and pains. No diarrhea. No sore throat or cough or runny nose.
In the hospital they did random labs (like they normally do) and discovered that her white blood cell count was low. Her bone marrow was actively working to make more white blood cells (which is good) so the concern wasn't that big at that point. Her white blood cells were not freakishly low, but they were low and her pediatrician wanted to watch that. He said it was possible that a virus could attack her white blood cells, but that wasn't very common and they should be back to normal the next day. Well, in a nutshell, they weren't. They were lower the next day. And lower the next day. And the next. And the next, for over a week.
Lolli started to perk up a bit, and she was eager to get out of the hospital, so we asked to be discharged and if we could do all of these tests as an outpatient. Her pediatrician said that was fine. Well that night, from a weak immune system (having very little white blood cells will do that to a person) and having been exposed to all things sickness in the hospital, Lolli spiked a fever. And she looked awful again. She started throwing up in the middle of the night. The next morning we went back to the doctor. He looked at her again and he said, "I think she needs to go back to the hospital." Lolli said, "Will I have to have an IV?" He said "Yes you will." She started crying hysterically. I think at this point the child was just done. She was done with being poked. Done with being prodded. Done with feeling awful. He said he would put her on a lot of medicines and she would have to come back tomorrow. He said because her immune system is so weak, he was very concerned. She had one more night at home, and one more chance for her body to work.
We picked up a plethora of medications for my child. And I have to be honest, watching my always healthy little girl look the way she did was heart breaking. But I was hopeful, that the antivirals, the antibiotics, the anti nausea medications would all work together to keep her healthy. Well that first day, she threw up all of the medicines (because they were very strong). I was scared to call her doctor, but he said a couple of times is normal on such strong medicines. She had one more chance, or she would go back to the hospital. At this point, I forgot to mention, that she was having routine blood draws to watch her WBC (White blood count). So many that they were recognizing and remembering her by name in the hospital lab.
A couple more days went by (where she was stable) and she started to slowly improve. Then one of the days, she all of a sudden had energy again. I told Chief that I thought her WBC count was up. You could sort of tell. I think it was obvious when it went down (she would lose all of her energy) and then when she would get a wave of new ones it would go up again. But this day was different. She had good energy. She was alert. She was different. That day her labs showed her WBC count was normal. Her bone marrow was working extremely hard to make it normal, but it was the first promising blood test result we'd had in weeks. Because they were finally normal, she's able to have them once a week now.
So, we're watching them. It's been incredibly difficult. It's been heart breaking to have conversations about leukemia and bone marrow biopsies about my child to her doctor. It fills my heart with so much compassion for so many mothers who are currently nursing their cancer stricken children at this very moment.
I don't know if we'll be in that group of people. If I trust my instincts, I would say no. I believe that she had a random fluke virus that went hogwild on her white blood cells (Seriously! A virus attacked Grigio's stomach and killed that sucker, so why would it be impossible to believe one would attack white blood cells?). Right now we're still waiting. Hoping for great results and waiting. But thanking God SO much for her strength today. Thanking God for each moment with our children. Thanking God for the reminder that time is SO SO SO precious and we shouldn't take any moment for granted. Thanking God for our children.
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