Evening and Morning

Almost (Wednesday afternoon)

This post is bugging me. It doesn’t flow right. I have a minor fever that saps my energy and my words. The chemo not only wipes out white blood cells, but red ones, too, the ones that carry oxygen, so that with this count low, I am short of breath and tired. All I want to do is lay my head down and rest and wait for something to come back. But here goes:

Yesterday I had a great day, visiting with two sisters and packing my bags to drive up to Camp for a few days. I’ve never been to this Camp, and I am sure it’s beautiful, relaxing, and I would love being there. We were going because our friend Philip asked Robert to help in the training of a mission team, going…somewhere I can’t say…this summer.  When I got home from all my visiting, I was feeling wiped, so I took my temperature with that fancy digital thermometer the Clinic so helpfully includes in your first med pack (still getting used to numbers on there that are way too small to be healthy) and it dinged ( it dings!) at 37.9, almost 38, which would send me to the ER again. I’d get to visit my friends with their unintelligible accents. Kinda hoping to avoid that.

I walked upstairs to tell Marg and Larry (and Katie, too), sitting chatting at the dinner table, and they took my hands, and prayed for me. I went downstairs and got my stuff together. This time I wouldn’t have Marge making three trips to St Catharines (or St Catharsis as my cell phone stubbornly insists on spelling it—I think that fits, so St Catharsis it is from now on) to bring meds, toothbrush, clean underwear, and soup. (When I’d packed the first time, I’d had one concern: books.) But I made it through the night. My temperature hovered at 37.9 for hours and then slowly dropped. I still have a fever, and I’m not going to Camp Crossroads, because it’s hard enough getting used to the accents at one hospital, but for today I have avoided the ER. One day at a time.

Robert is going on to Camp Crossroads without me. He would stay if I said the word, no question, but I am insisting he go. It’s easier on me to know he’s doing the things he loves, and to be honest, he’s not the world’s best nurse anyway, although he does try. My hero. We can love our husbands’ strengths, knowing full well that every strength has its necessary, corresponding weakness, and who cares? when the strengths shape our days? Besides, I’m well stocked with gifted nurses: Tish, Becky, Marg, Marianne, and more.

Prayer was answered today. And it’s good to notice the close calls, the almosts, the near misses, the prayers that get answered unexpectedly. They fill the chinks of our routines with suspense and remind us not to take anything bad for granted. I am surprised to be here this morning, typing away, with the cornfield outside my picture window, which is extra sparkly now after Marg’s rigorous spring cleaning, and with Robert working on his next article to be published in Anabaptist Witness (I’m not the only writer in the family, see. And my dad even has novels published. In Spanish, which I find totally awesome and totally intimidating).

The day fades. The fever creeps. I’m not sure what windows I’ll wake up to. But today was one more day to call a good one.

Klingons Beware (Thursday morning)

This morning at 3 am instead of posting from bed, I was turning into the driveway with Janey, just getting out of ER. Apparently my white blood counts are crazy high, the talk of the floor. Numbers like Neutrophils: 19 (compare this to 0.1 a week ago) and leucocytes: 45. (I love just tossing out those terms).  But 45? Sounds to me like I’m the Star Ship Enterprise with force fields at max! Sneeze on me, Klingons; I defy you.) So how can I have a fever? Not sure, exactly. The best I could make out (and Tim, my doctor and a friend of Janey’s—I mean she’s giving hugs to ER doctors now: she knows everybody— So Tim spoke my language perfectly), the best I can make out is that I have yet another illness to add to my growing list: cancer, ventricle tachycardia, and now, possibly (the tests would be harsh and expensive so let’s forego them), pneumonia. And I want to find out the name of that new antiobiotic they handed me before I left, because it’s getting crossed off my list, let me tell you. My body had forcefully removed that sucker out of me and out of Janey’s car window 15 minutes flat after it found stomach bottom. We will be having no more of that stuff. But I am home now. I am well. I am very, very immune. And it’s a new day.