Autumn Update!

After using all the Chemo her body could physically handle, she has now been excepted into an Immunotherapy Study. She will be in the hospital Tuesday and Wednesday for the first treatment. (February 13 & 14). They have to do intermittent blood work for the first 24 hrs. , thus the overnight stay.

On Saturday February 17th, her first Grandbaby will arrive. Little Miss Wren Elizabeth.

Then on the 21st her daughter Randi will be here from Florida.

It has been the longing of her heart to be able to Welcome her very first Granddaughter.

We will continue to walk our journey, trusting and praying that the new therapy will change the direction the cancer has been taking.

I am trusting that this next two weeks is chucked full of memories and blessings for Autumn and her family.

 Chapter 3 Part 1 (Enjoy!)

There is no place like Home

          It was some time after midnight when I finally set my feet down in my own driveway. It didn’t matter that it was a rented drive, or that the pigs smelled as bad as ever on this hot June night. If I could have clicked my heals together, I would have chanted, “There is no place like home”!

It had been many hours since we checked our luggage at the Tegucigalpa, airport in Honduras. It seemed I had been gone a lifetime. Coming home from a mission trip is true culture shock. The contrast between here and there just screams in your head. You live at the water faucet, instead of the refrigerator. You get tired when the sun goes down. It doesn’t even occur to you to take seconds. Sadly, it doesn’t take long, and our western lifestyle with all its built-in ways to self-absorb, returns.

The world I had left behind only ten days earlier was about to turn upside down, inside out. All our plans and goals would soon become distant and insignificant.

As I looked out the van window, here came my husband to meet me. It was so good to be home. I talked to him once briefly since I was hurt. That was five days earlier. We laughed and hugged as I hobbled to the house. He had been so worried; he was just glad to see me up and breathing. You hear horror stories about hospitals in third world countries. When you don’t really know what is happening, your mind can come up with some interesting sagas.

After some hugs of reassurance for both of us, we collapsed in bed. Me, my honey, and my big blue cast. I whispered thank you Jesus for America, home, and my honey. We both fell asleep never dreaming where our lives were headed.

By noon that next day, the kids and grandkids were all there. Everyone had to see if I really was OK. A lot of phone calls from friends and families. I wasn’t scheduled for a Dr. appointment for a week, so I just hung out and enjoyed my family. Went to church the next day, had no idea it would be the last time for nearly six months.

After church we picked up two of the foster kids. 11- and 8-year-old sisters. The 11-year-old twins didn’t come back for a couple of days. They were with their dad, part of transitioning for home. The other two were with another foster family while I was in Honduras.

 The twins had been with us for two years, and the girls about nine months. It was fun when we all got back home together. We all shared stories, and everyone enjoyed playing drums, on my fiberglass cast. We had a few campfires and the kids always enjoyed it. Cheap, fun entertainment. We would sacrifice a couple bags of marshmallows. I don’t think many were eaten; mostly the kids just enjoyed watching them cook {burn}.

 The kids set their pup tents up and we celebrated the fourth of July. Kids, grandkids, and foster kids. It felt good to be back.

I had an MRI on my leg, and Surgery was scheduled for July 5^th. Just check in at 7 am and out the next morning. Right!

Well, you know the best of plans, don’t always work out like we expected. They ended up doing a lot more than we thought they were going to do. The procedure is called a Trillat. It is the same procedure football players have done when they blow out their knee. I had a 14-inch incision with 24 staples. I have allergies to a lot of painkillers. Pain control was somewhat of an issue, so I came home two days later.

It wasn’t too bad, I lay around, and people waited on me. Instead of the blue cast, I had a big bandage and a brace, pretty much like the one they put on the first night in Honduras. My husband and our oldest daughter took care of my medical needs. We weren’t supposed to change the bandages, but the drainage got so bad we didn’t have a choice. It continued to drain and seemed to be getting worse, instead of better.

I called the Doctor’s office, and of course didn’t get to talk to the Doctor. Which is par for the course here in the states. In Honduras when I called one of the numbers the Doctor had given us, I was somewhat shocked when he answered. I apologized for interrupting him. I told him I thought I would get a nurse or a secretary. Let’s just say that he was amazed, that I was amazed that he answers his own phone 🙂

Our conclusions are centered on our frame of reference. My frame of reference was they not only don’t answer their phones, and they seldom respond to their messages. One time I sat in our local clinic in atrial fibrillation, with an irregular heartbeat of 147 and was told he was running behind, that we should go grab some lunch he would see us in an hour and a half. I thought, as I was told to come into the clinic instead of ER, and that my heart rate was bouncing between 140 and 160 my name might just be somewhere on the priority list. I was wrong!

Meanwhile here in the land of good medicine, the nurse just kept putting me off saying things like “Now honey you just had major surgery. It will take awhile, before it gets better.” At that point, I would just have settled for it not getting worse.

 Ten days after surgery it got so bad, my leg was throbbing like a heartbeat. The only relief I could get was to elevate it straight up in the air. By this time, I was running a fever, and after a final attempt to contact the Doctor to no avail my husband said,” Forget it you are going to the emergency room”. Now I was getting sick by this time, I was running a very high fever, and wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. All I could think was how we were going to go to the emergency room; I couldn’t even stand up, without almost passing out.

 My husband doesn’t jump in to make a lot of decisions, but when he does it is pretty matter of fact. He just held up the phone and said,” Do you see these little buttons? I am going to push three of them, and you will be in the emergency room before you know it.” He dialed 911, and in a few minutes, they were taking me out on a stretcher. Out the door, and down the stairs. As I mentioned before I find being loaded on and off stretchers, now riding them downstairs is at best interesting.

I had read an article a few weeks earlier about the do’s and don’ts of your visit to an ER. About the only thing I remember is it said don’t go to the ER in July, your Dr. will be a student. Fresh out of the gate intern. Well, here I was being wheeled into the emergency room in the middle of July. Just like the article said, a face I had never seen before. With three kids, 5 grand’s and nearly 40 fosters, suffice it to say this wasn’t my first time here. He wasn’t only a new face but a Doogie Howser looking guy. You know you are old when your doctor, the baker and the candlestick maker all graduated with your kids.

After the nurse unveiled the incision, he leaned over, and said “Well that doesn’t look bad. I don’t think it is infected.” To which my husband began rapidly to lose his cool. He not so calmly pointed out to Doogie the signs of infection. Redness, warm to the touch, not to mention obvious drainage. I am not sure if he suddenly saw the light or if my husband scared him, he went directly to the phone and not too long {that is American ER time} the surgeon came in. She not so gently removing a staple or two, took a very long Q-tip and broken open an area where the infection appeared pocketed, took some cultures and off she went.

After a fashion, they admitted me to a room with an IV antibiotic running. I think it was the next morning they started moving carts and stands into my room. They began putting Mr. Yuk! Stickers; around my room. It seems I had a Staph infection. MRSA they call it. Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. Lay terms a bug to big to kill, with the antibiotics we now have.

 A simple explanation of how this happened is that for years we threw antibiotics at everything. We would kill off 70 or 80% either because that wasn’t the right choice of antibiotic, or we took them until we felt better then stopped before we were totally over it. Therefore, after killing off 8 out of 10 of the bacteria the remaining were of course the strongest. They in turn multiply making yet another colony of stronger, more resistant bacteria. We then killed off all but the strongest and they had babies and on and on it goes. Until now we have bacteria’s that are stronger than the medication, our bodies can handle. There are horror stories of side effects from these new high-powered antibiotics. Mine is just one of thousands a year.

 First thing when the body starts to detox itself, it causes you to sneeze, cough, even run a fever so we jump right up and take something to stop the symptoms. When we stop the detox process, we stop the natural healing process.

If we take in the good stuff, and let it clean out the bad stuff, it will heal itself. Do I mean there is no reason for medicine, no not at all? It seems instead of changing our lifestyle, we want to live anyway we wish and if we run into problems take a pill and continue life as usual.

People at risk are the weak, sickly and those cut wide open in surgery. That accounts for most Medication resistant Staph infections.

 We all carry around Staph on our skin. It is like water in a car. It is a really good thing in your radiator, but you don’t want it in your gas tank.

To be continued!

Blessings! Thanks for reading!