Out of My Hands

It's been a frustrating day for me. Yes another. At this point I'm just fed up with all the drugs my mom is on. Her body needs to detox more than anything, but because her blood pressure is out of whack as well as the nausea, they just keep feeding her the drugs. Ugh. It's no wonder she can't get well and her body is just a mess. How is her frail, little frame supposed to metabolize all the poisons they're feeding her?

I appreciate all of the suggestions, recommendations, etc., but it's really out of our hands. I think once she's finally stable, we'll be able to do all of those things at home, but in the meantime really what I have to do is trust that God will do a miracle. I think that's what we need. We need Him to just get her over this thing so that she can begin the detox. So pray that God would do just that - a miracle.

As Time Goes By

Not such a bad day today was. Definitely better than yesterday, but we continue to look forward to better days.

Mom woke up with no nausea so she was able to eat the equivalent of about one egg and a piece of toast. She was also able to get up to shower. Of course, that wore her out, and she went down for a nap. Upon waking the nausea had returned and remained until earlier this evening. She's been taking in liquids pretty well, just not enough yet.

The good news is that the results from the CT scan and EKGs all came back fine. In fact, the blood clots Mom developed about a month ago that traveled from her arm into her lungs have all dissolved. VERY COOL!

Now we just patiently wait for Mom to get better and better, little by little. I get a little eager beaver in me and automatically think we'll have 100% progress in one day when we rise to a good start. It wasn't that way, and that was disappointing to me. What can I say? I'm a girl of high expectations and somewhat a microwave at that. I do, however, realize that this will take a little time and a little effort. I still stand on the fact that my mom is in God's hands. His hand is not removed from the situation, and I take comfort in that.

The Heart

Today, like many days, has been an emotional day. It's hard to remember what happened when, but the day included (and all as it relates to my mom):
HBP
Nausea
Vomiting
Chest pressure
Leg jerking/spasms
A harsh scare of high heart rate that made about 6 nurses all come in here and yell this and that to each other with bring this and that and page doctor and do this. That was actually a very uncomfortable moment. It also really upset Mom. It started with vomiting, then the high heart rate from the vomiting and along with it some high blood pressure. She's just really, REALLY tired of dealing with the nonsense that comes with cancer and the treatments. Who can blame her? She's had more to deal with than most of us can begin to imagine.

After that I just read some Scripture to her for a while until she fell asleep. Her oncologist came by to let us know they were taking a closer look at her heart because of the chest pressure. It could be one of the side effects from that particular type of chemo. It's too long of an explanation to go into, but yes, it can cause a heart spasm type of thing. That would cause the pressure she was feeling. They did a CT scan this evening to see what else they could find with her heart. Of course, they want to rule out heart damage, etc. If there was any kind of plaque in those arteries, they'll be able to tell as well.

I was thinking earlier...a long train of thought that it's too late for me to go into right now, but I was thinking...good will come of this. We may never know what it is, but what if it had something to do with finding heart plaque? Maybe they'll find it; maybe they won't. But if they did, it could be a great way to foresee something to be able to prevent it later. God willing, they won't find anything, but ...

So this evening Mom was actually feeling better, and I could so tell. No, she's nowhere near to what she was last Friday before the chemo started, but I'll take any victory. There are lots of small victories that I don't want to forget, and I'm trying to keep track. This is one. It's no small one to me. To have the 5 minute conversation we were able to have tonight because she felt that much better brought me some pretty good almond joy. She even wanted to make a phone call. AND she smiled a very real and hopeful smile. Nice. Very nice.

How to pray:
-that there would be no heart damage or abnormal scan results
-appetite. Now that the nausea seems to be under control, my mom really needs to eat, eat, eat to get her strength back.
-nausea. before she can eat, the nausea has to be kept under control.
-regulated blood pressure and heart rate
-infection-less stay at the hospital
-uh, and this is more of an overall request - pray that this Gustav tropical-storm-turning-into-hurricane would uh...steer clear at least for a while.

High BP

Mom's HBP was another side effect from the 'crazy' pill.

She still sleeps.

More

I forgot to mention that Mom's BP also spiked yesterday. She normally runs in the 90something/60something range. Yesterday it went up to 210/...I forgot, but it was crazy.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that the test for her heart enzymes is all fine now. Another reason for the ER visit was chest pain. The first test they did was fine, the second was very abnormal with the numbers going far above what they liked but not enough yet to consider it heart damage. The third test showed that the numbers are back to normal. They said this was probably a side effect from the chemo.

More Chemo and More ER Visits

Sunday night we had to bring Mom to the ER at MD Anderson because she was vomiting so much (from the chemo). It's very easy for her to get dehydrated with the ileostomy so we didn't want to take any chances and came right away. We got here around 8:30 or 9 on Sunday evening.

They tried 2 different nausea medicines that typically work for her, but since neither was working, they went to a third one. That was bad news. She ended up having a reaction that only 0.1 or 1% of people get. There's a name for what her reaction was, but I can't remember. It happened very quickly, and she wasn't herself. First she couldn't stay still. Then her body started shaking as if she was having chills, but I knew that wasn't it because the shakes turned into spasms. Her heart rate increased, her muscles were really stiff and then she started acting confused. Pretty soon she just wasn't herself. Let me just say that it was a pretty intense couple of hours for me. I was trying to figure out what was going on along with the doctors...and it just wasn't the most pleasant time in the world.

When they finally figured out what had happened, they gave her something to counteract it. After a bit, she started sleeping and slept very soundly. She's still sleeping soundly. She's woken up only to use the facilities. I'm also trying to wake her up to drink something every 15 or 20 minutes and to try to eat a bite of breakfast. That's one of my main concerns right now - her weight. From the vomiting and not having really eaten in a couple of days, she's down to 87 lbs. I'm wondering if they'll put her on TPN for a few days...I'm not really sure what they'll do.

That's where we are - waiting on the doctors to come in.

Mom is still kinda out of it. Whatever they gave her yesterday to counteract the 'crazy' pill is working well, too well maybe. I don't know.

Please pray that they'll have wisdom as to what steps to take next.

Attack of the Crazy Ants

My drama today - killer ants. So this morning when my mom & I opened the doors to her car to drive to her office, the crazy ants were EVERYWHERE - inside and outside the car. I haven't mentioned these crazy ants, but they really are crazy. They're these little ants that look like fire ants (but aren't), and they run around like little crazies. Seriously. So we went to the car wash, washed and vacuumed the car, and after sweating profusely, went back to her house to get cleaned up and get the rest of our stuff. By the time we got back outside and opened the car doors again, the ants were back at it again, and this time they were even worse. So I haven't really researched them, but I did find this article on them. Apparently they're taking over the Houston area. Awesome. Oh, at the end of the article, a couple of people comment on it, and one says this, "I can't believe 'Ants' are the headline story for the 4th largest city in the country. Must be a slow news day." This ignorant person has no idea. None.

My issue today - cowards. So really, if you have an issue with me, just tell me straight to my face. Telling other people about it and having them tell me is a pretty cowardly way to deal with it. I now see that Jesus was onto something when He talked about how to deal with confrontation. He doesn't want us to grow up to be complete cowards. :) Okay, and this actually had nothing to do with me, but for others' sakes, I just threw that out there.

My sadness - two days ago an accomplished jazz musician who is dear to my heart passed unexpectedly. We will miss you and what you brought to us. You make me want to "stay...for a while."

Pretty Much

I heard someone say once that there is no such thing as “Christian’ music. She was substituting for a regular teacher at the Bible institute I attended, and this statement went against the grain and culture of the school. I remember completely agreeing with her.

I repeated that statement to a friend a couple of years later. At first I just said it. He didn’t agree. Then I told him who said that, and he said he would think about it.

I don’t necessarily like labeling things as ‘Christian’ because to me it can be a dangerous practice.

I’ll be point blank.

I don’t like labeling myself as a ‘Christian’ necessarily because there are people who have been terribly hurt physically, emotionally, and in every way known to us by other people who called themselves Christians (this could very well lead into yet another discussion about how Christians are people too and make mistakes and won’t be perfect, yada, yada. I know that. I do understand that). Here’s the thing – that word means different things to different people.

I know a family who call themselves Christians yet choose to ignore one of their children while doting on the others (what I mean by ignore is that the ignored child they only see once maybe twice a year because the parents don’t want to deal with the issue at hand). So to this child, the term ‘Christian’ paints a bad picture. A picture of abandonment, rejection, guilt, and all kinds of stuff.

A little bow that is beaten up by his father or was yelled at (like Simon Birch) by a Sunday school teacher, both of whom considered themselves Christians, could have a very bad a opinion of anyone who calls himself a Christian.

People can make ‘Christian’ movies that can be terrible because the production and whatever else wasn’t done well. The same is true of music and pretty much everything else.

I’m not just aa Christian wife. My friends aren’t just Christian mothers, singers, or writers, friends. I’m a wife, a daughter, a sister. They are mothers, bosses, teachers, actors, UPS drivers, and everything else. They are my family, and they are my friends. We live passionately to love. Some of us know God and love Him. Others don’t.

Let me tell you this – I’ve had many spiritual experiences outside of church, ‘Christian’ music, Christian school and even outside of ‘Christian’ people. I’ve had spiritual, God-experiences at what the ‘church’ (and church is yet for one more blog) would call ‘secular’ concerts.

Church people say all the time, “…if God can use a donkey, He can use anyone.” I don’t think many people really believe that because God-forbid transformation taking place in my heart when in conversation ‘non-believers.’ God forbid I find worship in Him when listening to a song by someone not proclaiming to be the “C” word. That’s devil music! (*Susy rolls eyes*)

Rob Bell says this, “A Christian political group puts me in an awkward position: What if I disagree with them? Am I less of a Christian? What if I am convinced the ‘Christian’ thing to do is to vote the exact opposite?” I agree with him there. Awkward position.

Someone I dearly love often will say to me, “I want to do something spiritual, something for God, ministry.” What he doesn’t realize is that he does it every single day. He takes care of the family God has given Him. He goes to work to provide for them and spends time with them. He loves and serves them. Serving. That’s pretty much as spiritual as it can get. His job as a father isn’t secular; it’s sacred.

God is omniscient. God is everywhere. He’s in the slums. He’s in my home. To say that He’s not at a place outside of anyone’s man-made box is denying He can bring order to whatever or wherever chaos may be. He’s there; people just may not see Him. It’s up to me to make Him seen and known. It’s up to us to point Him out where He can’t be seen.

(Note: this is not to say that things can’t be corrupted and used for not-good purposes.)

An author pointed out this concept in one of his books by saying that when it comes to missions, we’ve sometimes got it wrong. We say things like, “We’re taking Jesus to Timbuktu…” Jesus is already there.

God is the creator of all and even said that He’d reveal Himself somehow to everyone. People have come to know Him by observing the magnificence of his indescribable creation. They may never have heard of His name in the depths of nowhere, Timbuktu, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they can come to believe in Him through His creation. (I know, I know. I’m gonna get all kinds of emails about blah, blah blah. And that I’m becoming new-age or hippie or something.)

Back to my point. I think the issue lies in our boxes. I do it all the time – I try to place God in this box and allow Him to operate only within it. Anything outside of that is ‘secular,’ not of Him. (I say ‘try to’ because really He just doesn’t fit in it.)

But I don’t believe that’s right. For years I’ve been trying to learn from the example of my husband not to place God in my box. The more I let God out of my box, the freer (more free) I am to be and do what I’m created to be and do. It’s funny – I let Him out of the box, but I’m the one who’s free. Is that what they would say is ironic?

FUNK

Things very often smell funky to me. My mom says that when I was a little girl, I would walk around with my nose scrunched up, and if something bothered my sense of smell, I would freak. That was my heightened sense. I still get grossed out by rank smells, but I’ve ignored one for too long – my own smell.

It’s not because I use the natural crystal deodorant. I’m talking about me – the stench of sin that runs rampant within me.

Sometimes it takes a funk time for me to come back to the real reality. Sometimes I have to get away because there are way too many distractions that pull my attention away from where it should be.

The idea of cool is disgusting to me. I hate it just as much as I hate cancer. And I hate it even more because it leeches on to insecure people like me because I’m sure I have 972 undealt-with issues.

I hate that within the American culture there’s this thing about being cool or being uncool. You either have it or you don’t. We can try to pretend and say that it’s not within the ‘Christian’ circles, but we’d all be big fat liars. It’s there, and it’s disgusting. It’s everywhere. I get caught up in the hype too, and when I pull myself away and evaluate my own behavior, I get sick. It smells.

I remember moving back and forth from one place to the other when I was younger and particularly in middle school. In 7th grade I finally got fed up with eating with the nerds, so I changed everything about myself that I could and tip-toed my way in with the cool crowd. Pretty soon I made the cheer squad in one school (but not even into the squad another because I was knew and everything was based on popularity), I was elected to be the captain. I was now ‘in.’ What a joke.

My glory days ended there when we moved away. I ‘found’ Jesus in the new place and thought things would be different with that crowd. I mean those were the people that never gossiped and accepted everyone for who they were, right? It appeared that way at first, but I soon learned differently. Things weren’t very different at all. I didn’t know the ‘Christian’ lingo, and that made me very uncool. I didn’t know the cool ‘Christian’ bands (and when I learned them, I didn’t care for many of them), and that made me really uncool. I couldn’t afford to wear the fashionable clothes, and that made me uber uncool.

I laugh now. I bring all of that up not because I hang on to it in a bitter kind of way. I hang on to it so that I won’t do that to people. I should be way too old to even care about that stuff, but you know what? When I look around and think about college or even post-college experiences, I’ve been that person. I have at times been too cool to hang out with such and such. That’s pretty sad. It’s selfish, prideful, immature, and all those other dirty things.

I may not have always done it directly, but I didn’t stop it when I saw it happening and had the power to say something.

Spending money for pointless social reasons and on fashion is the most uncool thing ever. It’s selfish and wrong and shows where our beliefs are. What I mean is that if we believe that we are supposed to give back and change the world somehow, we would do something about it. Talking about it does nothing.

I knew a dude that believed what Jesus taught about the poor and the hungry. He used to feed the homeless and would hang out with them. I talked about it and even offered to help, but how many times was I out there? Yeah.

I was too busy trying to move up the corporate ladder for what? Money, prestige. What? I didn’t believe all of Jesus teachings because if I did, I don’t think I would’ve been able to spend as much as I did on a pair of heels, a pair of jeans, or as much time doing pointless things.

A friend of mine recently said that we should do away with the Olympics just once. The billions of dollars could be used to end starvation in at least 5 cities right? Something like that. I love the Olympics. Unfortunately, I recently read an article about how up to 80% of Olympic runners dope (not to mention every other sport). I was completely disappointed with the figures…but that’s for another blog. In spite of that, I still love the Olympics and don’t believe we should punish the crazy efforts athletes put into the endless training (even if some or most are doping). I’m sure we could cut away some of the $$, but don’t cancel the games altogether. Many of the athletes do quite a bit for humanitarian causes.

My friend has a great point, though. What I do believe we should look at is us, more specifically the American culture. How about the celebrity awards shows that spend millions on their shows and extravagant parties. Not to mention the ‘goodie purses’ they receive that are worth like $50,000+. Are you kidding me? These are the people who can afford that stuff. It’s ridiculous.

There are people who are actually doing something, and that’s God. What I mean is that we think we have to say a specific prayer to know God. I was taught that. (I was always scared on mission trips that I was going to forget one part of the prayer someone was supposed to repeat after me and that they wouldn’t really experience salvation.) Again, are you kidding me? God is not in rituals taught by man. God IS in what the Bible says is pure religion – to visit orphans and widows and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

I’m glad that there are people taking that seriously. I want to be one of them. And I’m not saying that I believe that just because someone is a do-gooder that they know God. They may, they may not. Just like you and I may or may not.

God is not in our attempts at cool music or cool fashion. God is not in our aims of cool churches with cool music, a cool youth group and cool people. Why? Because it’s not truth. All of those things are “Satan’s tools to get people to be passionate about…meaningless…things” and worthless idols (Donald Miller).

God is in feeding the hungry, taking care of the widow and the orphan…whether it is done by a ‘Christian’ or not. (The whole labeling things ‘Christian’ and why I don’t do labels is for another blog).

So why all this today?

Because I need to change. I need to get back to that place of really believing what Jesus taught.

And by the way, I consider so many things uber cool in the nerdiest way because I’m the biggest nerd ever. And I love it.

Been Up To

So my mom is at the halfway mark with her chemo. This past weekend she completed the fourth treatment. I hate cancer.

The weekend was like the other chemo weekends - Friday she was okay, she mostly slept on Saturday, she felt pretty yuck on Sunday, and Monday she felt bad. Tuesday she was better, but still not well. She insisted on going to her office anyway. She's been tired, tired, tired.

She spoke to her doctor's PA yesterday, and they may actually stop the chemo. We'll see what they have to say next week.

My niece has been with us for almost 2 weeks, so I haven't taken the time to blog or anything. This is what we've been doing...

Day one at beach


Day two (also the day after Edouard so the waves were crazy high...swimming in this is NOT something you should try at home with tha kids)


Our spot


and the castle that took FOREVER to complete