Autumn Update. Home from the hospital after 9 days. Challenge still is keeping enough calories down to survive/thrive!!! Immunotherapy is one hold until she at least maintains. She will have blood work about every 5 days. She came home with many new (supportive car meds). She said WOW! Mom never thought I would own my very own can of NARCAN 🙂

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This week was my husband Jim’s birthday. He would have been 75. One of those days in life that don’t go unnoticed. This year I am sure walking with Autumn through her cancer journey has left me a bit raw.

I was remembering the day the Home Health workers came to remove their equipment. Jim was moved at his request to the VA. He said early on, that at the end he wanted to be in the VA. He enjoyed the comradery with the other Vets. He said at the end I don’t want you to be my Pastor or my nurse. I want you to be my wife. Though there were times I bit my lip, they took good care of him. No one is going to do it like you do.

         He was a great encourager to many, especially those that had no one to come and see them. He also stood up for the nurses when someone would take out their frustrations on them.

         Jim had been on that same ward in rehab. The hospice unit is separate, but they share the same staff. Many people had cared for Jim the last year of his life. He was only in hospice for 3 weeks before he passed.

         The supervisor of the unit said “We are really going to miss Jim, but we also are going to miss your family. You brightened up and brought life to our ward so many times in this last year.”

 We all planned on going back, but I believe I am the only one that has. COVID like for so many others, changed a lot of plans. We are just so grateful that he passed before it hit. None of us can imagine not being there to walk him home.

         As soon as the hospital bed, with it’s grab bar and rails, as well as the O2 concentrator, over bed stand and commode were removed, my daughter Autumn said “Mom what is this room going to be now”? I replied “It will once again be the office.”

         Jim had taken it over, when we came to the time of realizing that we would both sleep better in separate rooms. Also our room wasn’t big enough for him and all his equipment.

         All the office things just kind of found a place elsewhere in the house.

         Autumn said one thing I read Mom is you are never supposed to leave a room sounding hollow and empty. Though Jim was still alive, he would never again sleep another night in our little duplex on the prairie.

         As I am writing this and thinking of empty rooms that have been left hollow, my mine goes to several woman that I know that have miscarried babies recently.

         I remember though I wasn’t really planning to have a baby, I still felt empty and hollow in my soul after the loss.

         Years earlier at age 19 my full term baby girl passed away after only eight days. I never got to bring her home, or hold her in my arms. Because of this (Not everyone) but many thought I shouldn’t or wouldn’t grieve. I received some of those dumb quote or remark that people with good intentions say, like because you weren’t married it will all be easier. What the heck! Like going through any pain alone ever made the pain easier. Or someday you will have a husband and can have more kids. Or one of my favorites is being you weren’t married it’s probably better, you can go on with your life.

 Being an unmarried pregnant 19 in the early 70s was interesting at best.

          It isn’t that anyone needs or expects us to fix it, but please don’t try to erase the right to mourn, with one of societies one liners for comfort. EVEN if they include scripture. Lord forgive me for the times I am sure I have made that tragic error, and help me to never do that again.

         To all that have suffered a miscarriage – to all that have suffered from the sound of an empty womb, I say from the bottom of my heart. “I am so very sorry for your loss”.

         I hope this blog will encourage each of us to get better at comforting those that have miscarried, and have heard the echo of an empty womb. No one expects us to fix it or take the pain away. But acknowledging it, gives the right to grieve openly. That in it’s self, can begin healing the hollowness in their soul. 

Blessings!

         The Falls Chapter 5

         It was the last week of August, and I was on the Specialty Kidney, and Cardiac ward. I was away from my doctors and the hospital that I knew. Around eight A.M. a nurse’s aide came in and announced it was time to get up in the chair. I told her, I couldn’t sit up in the chair. She said, sorry that is the rule on this ward. Everyone is up in the chair from 8 am until 1 pm.

 Not only was I burned/rashes all over my body, a later CAT scan showed my insides were also burned. This meant the bladder catheter was a little more than irritating. I was able to tolerate it lying down, but sitting was quite another story.

 My protesting did no good. She called for help. I am not sure I would be exaggerating, when I say they threw me in the chair. I began to tip forward, by this time my muscle tone was very poor. I again told her, I couldn’t sit up in the chair because I would fall over. She flipped this hard plastic covered recliner {OLD GERI CHAIR} back as far as she could get it, then walked out of the room. Stating on her way out that it would all be better, if I would just sit back and relax.

I settled back in the chair with tears running down my face, partially from pain the rest from angry. I decided I had earned a good pity party, and so I was going to have one. That lasted until my husband walked in. I began with big crocodile tears to share the total unfairness of life. He wasn’t alone; he just turned to the others with him, and said, Could you give us a minute!

He stepped back into the room and began by announcing, Number 1 it is not my fault you are in this hospital.” “Number 2 if it hurts that bad, tell them to put you back in bed. I recited the 8 to 1 rule, to which he replied, if you will feel more comfortable in bed, I will put you there. Then I will go find the Dr. and let them know what I think about their 8 to 1 rule.”

He put me back in my bed, then as promised went to find the Doctor. A short while later she came in and removed the bladder catheter then had a few words with the nurse for not reporting my discomfort to her. Let me say here I am a nurse and that action doesn’t necessarily mean she didn’t report it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The rattled cage gets the food, and the angry husband gets heard.

More and more tests were scheduled. The faces were becoming grim; visitors said “goodbye” like it could be the last one.  I was becoming weaker and weaker.

The decision was made, I needed dialysis. They put this new catheter/port on the right side of my chest. This would give them easy access for the dialysis. The procedure was done in my room after they put some, what they refer to, as I don’t care medication in the IV. I had that medication a number of times. It works, you don’t remember.

After everyone was gone and I was alone with my thoughts, I knew, I needed to pray. Now don’t think for a minute I was some Holy set aside person. I just knew there was a big black hole of depression and fear looming close by; prayer is the only thing I knew that would keep me from falling in. I have been in that hole before, the only thing worse than falling in, is trying to crawl back out.  I knew my pity parties better be short and sweet because I couldn’t afford to stay there for any amount of time.

I know we always hear that if you are having a hard time look around someone is going through something worse. When you are possibly dying, you just must look a bit harder. Then it became as clear as day, one thing worse than dying would be to be dying alone. Without family, friends, and worst of all without God. So, I began to pray first for the people right on the ward I was on. After all this was the kidney and cardiac ward. No one is here without significant health problems.

I then prayed for others in the hospital. For the ones alone without families. I especially prayed for Christians that were sick. Afraid and questioning Gods love for them. In the Bible when Jesus prayed for Peter, he didn’t pray that Peter wouldn’t fail; he prayed that his faith wouldn’t fail. I prayed that prayer for myself many times. It is amazing how intense your prayers can become, when you can relate to the persons sufferings. With each thing we go through, we gained a new frame of reference.

 Before I could have prayed and impressive prayer for someone that had kidney problems. Now that I knew the only thing between me and death was a refrigerator sized dialysis machine, my prayers took on a new fervor, and for that I say “Thank You Lord”.

Sometimes you just need to see maybe only one other person, but someone has made it through, what ever it is. That one other person can be like a lifesaver in the mist of a storm. It gives you hope to keep swimming.

Many of the people that came when my brother drown, had also lost sons or brothers. There is something about touching lives that hurt, as you have hurt. Prayer flows readily out from a heart of compassion.  In the Bible 2 CO 1:3 reads Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, [4] who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. [5] For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. Amen!

 It also cuts down on the pity parties.

 I had determined, to the best of my abilities I was not going to whine! Whiners are not fun to be around. People have told me all my life that I was fun to be around. I was not going to change that by whining.

Not to mention it does absolutely no good. In every situation, be thankful, not for every situation, BUT IN every situation. WHILE YOU ARE IN IT!  That was my goal to Fear Not, be of good cheer. Don’t whine!

I always chuckle when I think of Angel popping out of thin air saying “Fear Not”! Oh! Why would I be afraid, is it because you are very large? In addition, I don’t know who you are, or what you want. Do you think an angel enjoys doing that?

In my mind I can imagine them doing lunch and talking about the humans they scared the britches off. Maybe I watched too many episodes of touched by an angel, but I think about things like that 😊

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I want to say here that as my body became weaker and weaker, my spirit became stronger and stronger. That small place in my heart where I could retreat into the arms of God increasingly became larger.  PS 91:1&2 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

I was finding a place, a level of intimacy that I had never known, and I can’t explain. You can’t understand, looking from the outside in, and can’t explain from the inside out. Like the old saying goes, you had to be there!

Blessings!  Thanks for Reading!

!!!  I am going to repost this poem I wrote during that time.. !!!

My PLACE WITH-IN

While a prisoner

In these flesh worn walls

Where pain and anguish

Run the halls.

When faint yet loud voices

Speak of doom

I was nearing the door.

Of a secret room

Yet not to that place

Called far away.

But one deep inside

This pot of clay

Shooting pain returns

Again

From skilled hands

Beneath the skin

No matter how deep

The scalpel would go.

I possessed a place.

They did not know.

I had found a place.

No one else could go.

Where religious pride

Would never know.

That place with the flutter

Of the eagle wing

From inside comes a whisper

you’ll rise and you’ll sing.

Though my body may have made it

I doubt my soul would have survived.

Had I not discovered?

That place deep inside..

Hope Bennett 2002