Lifes Crossroads part 1

I am sitting here at home reflecting on one of the most personally emotional, scary, eye opening experiences I can remember in all my sixty five years. It is a long story but so many of my family and friends have been involved in it I felt I needed to tell the whole story in my own words. This particular experience started back in November when I went for my regular oncology check up. The Doctor said he felt it was time for me to begin chemo. Not really what I wanted to hear but I knew it was coming but things started getting complicated right away. I told the Doctor that his partner told me the week before that he also felt I would need chemo real soon which is why I had this appointment only a week after my previous appointment. The doctor last week gave me a prescription for medications to take when it came time for treatment so that I would have them available. This latest appointment was on Thursday November 15 and Doctor wanted to start treatment right away. I told him that I did not start taking the medication yet as the other doctor did not tell me to start taking it but have it available when needed. This doctor was upset that I was not told to start the med and because this medication was used to keep the kidney from shutting down he struggled with whether it would be safe to start treatment immediately. In the end he decided that it would be best not to start treatment but for me to start taking the medication immediately and start treatment the following Monday, November 19. And so it began!

Timing in life is amazing, especially when you look back on it. My loving adoring wife was very stressed and upset because she would not be able to go with me for treatment because we both felt that she needed to be at work. For reasons I won’t go into her co-worker was going out of town this week and Kim was the only one available to do her job. Like all obligations we felt it was important to honor it. Lest anyone think I am saying work is more important than family, you can forget that. If there was no one else available things would have been handled differently, so now for the rest of the story.

Because Kim could not be with me one of my loving daughters, Kathy, was able to change her schedule and take me for treatment. This began a number of eye opening experiences I would witness in the next few weeks. Kathy was a delight to have by my side during a not so pleasant experience. We call her the apple because she is a lot like her father, most good some not so much. One of the similarities is that we both pretty much hold our emotions to ourselves. Spending eight hours together in a chemo room while I was hooked to an IV while they pumped poison into my veins along with 10 or 12 others going through similar procedures changes that.

Since I couldn’t go anywhere, captive audience, we had time to talk, laugh observe each other and just be together. Sometime soon I would like to do that under better circumstances. She would constantly text Kim so she would not feel left out. She would text Kim with something like “dad just went to the bathroom” and similar important updates. She was a delight to watch and I was proud to say this is my daughter. In the chemo room there is always a basket of munchies and I asked Kathy to bring me the basket so I could pick something to munch on. After I picked what I wanted Kathy proceeded to carry that basket around to every person in that room to see if they wanted some munchies also. What a delight to my heart! As the poison was slowly being pumped into my body, Kathy was able to do some work on her laptop along with her time just being my daughter. We were both starting to get a little hungry so she drove up the street and got us both something to eat. We struck up a conversation with a woman who came for treatment a little later in the morning and found that she was a member of First Baptist Church in Niceville. The three of us had some nice conversations and a few laughs. We were wondering who was going to be the last to leave since it was eventually just the three of us and the nurses. Finally they determined that I had enough poison for the day, so they unhooked me and let me go with instructions to go to the hospital first thing in the morning to get a stat blood test to determine that my kidneys were not failing and I could continue with round one Tuesday morning. Kathy drove me home and made sure I was comfortable and returned to her home.

Tuesday morning I awoke early not feeling too bad and went to Twin City Hospital at 0700 to get the stat blood test the Doctor requested. When I went in to do the paperwork the lady and I began to talk and it turned out she was a member of First Baptist Church and I mentioned the woman I met while getting chemo. She said she knew her well and we both agreed she was an inspiration to just about everyone she met. We talked a little about God’s love and grace and when we finished the paperwork I went to the lab to have my blood taken. I left there and drove to the Santa Rosa Beach office to have part B of this first round of chemo since this one normally only takes less than a couple of hours to complete and I had planned to go to work for awhile when I was finished. I arrived around 0830 and went in to have my vitals taken and have the Doctor check the hospital lab results. He said the results were borderline but he felt it was safe to continue. He once again noted that I needed to go to the hospital again first thing Wednesday morning to have them do another kidney test and if there was a problem I could be spending Thanksgiving in the hospital. I really prayed that would not happen and continued to take the medication he prescribed and drink LOTS of fluids.

When this round of chemo was complete I did not feel too badly so I decided that I would go to work. Since this was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I did not have an appointment till the following Tuesday since it takes at least that long to see the results of the chemo. Doctor reminded me though that I must get the blood test done and call his office in the morning to check the results and if anything unusual occurred to call anytime day or night. I still felt pretty good Wednesday morning and I went to the hospital at 0700 to have blood drawn for the kidney test. I went to work and of course was apprehensive waiting to hear the results. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving and I was looking forward to having two days off for the first time in years; would I be spending them in the hospital, Lord please no. I got the call from the Doctor’s office that the results were good, kidneys were normal. I breathed easier and thanked the Lord. The rest of the week was business as usual, work, Thanksgiving, weekend activities all seemed right with the world. This was going to turn out to be another lesson learned; people make you sick, and I mean that in the nicest way. Although I escaped a hospital stay during Thanksgiving, the next couple of weeks would teach me that I am a lot sicker than I thought I was and I would be learning more about my relationship with God, relationships with other people and a lot about love and being loved. This is the beginning of the story and I am going to post it as part one as I continue to write out the rest of the story.