Overwhelmed is the only way to describe the support and encouragement we have from our family, friends, work family and church family. Sunday, October 1st, the last Sunday I would be able to worship together with our small part of the body of Christ for a while, our church stood up for us in a amazing, beautiful and powerful way... from each song in the worship set (music is such a huge part of the way I experience God's presence and encouragement), to the prayer for us at the end, our church congregation continues to show what it means to be part of a church family. I've always had a tug on my heart when we have had special prayer to lift someone up during the service or send someone off, to get up off of my seat and lay hands on them through the prayer; unfortunately, I have always shied away from that prompting and just reached out my hand towards them from my comfortable safe pew seat. We certainly were grateful that we could arrange for a time for deacons to pray over us in our time of preparation and affliction; what a privilege to have church leaders so eager to come alongside anyone in their difficult times... but because of my past heart yearnings, I wanted any who felt the same way to be free to come forward, surround us, laying hands one on another to lift our little family up in prayer. Totally overwhelmingly, when Pastor Chuck graciously fit this into the service and invited anyone up who would like to come, there was not a person left in the pews... it brings tears to my eyes just thinking back to looking up and seeing everyone standing around us, hands on shoulders connecting us all together, and through many sniffles and tears, prayers lifted up for comfort, strength, support, encouragement, boldness, wisdom, skill, excitement, confidence, and on and on... truly overwhelming... I can't even describe how amazing it was... thank you church!
So, that leads us into yesterday, October 3rd, the preparation for transplant. It's the beginning of the process of the Bone Marrow Transplant, but the actual "transplant" day is considered the Stem Cell infusion day, which is tomorrow. As Jas describes it, there has been a huge amount of build up to this day, and for good reason as I reflected a bit today about where I am. I am in between death and life in a sense, a valley of the shadow of death of sorts, similar maybe to a hypothetical situation of being thrown off of a boat into the ocean, but those on the boat remain a safe distance away. They yell from the boat to you, "Don't worry we know how to get you out of this, but for this to work, you have to start drowning. After you begin to take on a couple breaths of water, we'll scoop you out and revive you." Right now, I'm effectively starting to drown, my chemo has done its job and my bone marrow should have stopped producing anything else for me. After what's in my system right now runs out, my normal blood levels should decline and bottom out at zero. At the same time, my stem cells, awoken from cryogenic sleep of five years, will have been making their way back into my marrow and begun rebuilding my blood systems. Then some time after I bottom out, the rebuilt system will begin producing necessary blood levels and get me back where I need to be, which will take a few months before I am fully back.
Contrary to our expectation, the chemo was administered at around 10pm last night rather than mid-afternoon. It was wonderful to have my mom and brother with me and Jas through most of our very long day. After a morning appointment with our Oncologist specialist, who just happens to be leaving this practice for something else in late October (it seems all of our Oncologists will have moved on), I went in to get my PICC placed. A PICC line is more convenient and comfortable than going through multiple IV placements; it's two ports hanging off of my bicep. We started settling into my room, cleaning, organizing, meeting the staff and waiting... waiting for them to mix my chemo and send it up... and waiting... and waiting... After going to grab some dinner, staff shift-change, and running out of time for my mom and brother to stay any longer, we prayed together and they headed home. Jas and I spend some much-needed time alone to digest the last minute reality of what was coming; these are the times that it is so evident how we were made for each other at the deepest level... we fight about dirty dishes and car keys, but we act as one flesh, totally unified, when it comes to difficult times like this. And then it came, a small bag of melphalan, 382 mg based on my body stats (which happen to be 1.91 meters cubed, for those geeks out there like me that find that interesting). 30 minutes of drip, drip, drip into my system and I didn't really feel anything... just the weight of what's happening behind the curtain, as Jas sat next to me, and I chomped on ice for three hours as a way to reduce the side effects associated with mouth sores that could occur later. It's still a little weird to know crazy stuff is happening inside me, and I wouldn't even know the difference if they hadn't told me, and that tomorrow even more crazy stuff is going to be happening... Thank God that this frail body of mine is resting in His capable, loving, sustaining hands. More to come, but time for me to rest up! The re-introduction of my stem cells is scheduled for 9:30am tomorrow, October 5th. Thank you for continuing to lift us up with prayers and encouragement! The Sullivan’s send our sincere gratefulness and love to you all!
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