Faithfully Fighting

I have to relate a short story.  Something touched me today.  I’ve been doing home IVs of antibiotics for the last week.  Home Health Care came in and showed me how to do them and I’ve been hooking myself up every day around 10:00 and waiting about 2-1/2 hours for the medicine to finish dripping into my veins.  Now those of you who are not familiar with the “balls” of medicine they send you to do this it is very different than the bags they hang at the hospital.  They send these hard balls, about the size of a softball, that I have to keep in the refrigerator.  I take one out about 6:00 in the morning so it will warm up (turning my blood to refrigerator temperature would be mighty uncomfortable, I think).  I have a direct line inserted into my medi-port (by the home health nurse) that I can screw the medicine into and open the clamps for the drip.  Before I do that I have to use a saline wash to clear the line, then plug in the medicine for 2-1/2 hours, then after it’s done I do another saline wash and heprin to keep the line clear of clots for the next day.  There are other steps involved, using alcohol swabs and priming stuff, but basically that’s it.  You don’t have to hang the medicine ball, you can walk around with it in your hand or lay it on your lap and take a nap.  I was very nervous the first couple of times, but I only have two more balls left and I’m pretty used to it now.

A couple of days ago the nurse came in and drew blood for a “trough” level.  Apparently mine wasn’t high enough because yesterday the doctor’s office called the pharmacy and upped my dosage for my last three treatments.  They delivered the new balls at 9:30 Thursday night.  It’s quite the operation (hard to tell how much all this is costing me).  Today I had to run some errands first thing in the morning and had a check up with my surgeon.  So as soon as I got home I plugged into my medicine (about 10:30 am).  Everything went fine, but as the medicine was finishing up I noticed my stomach was not feeling well.  The vancomycin is not a friendly antibiotic to me.  It works well, but it doesn’t really like me.  I guess the increase of 150 ml in the dosage didn’t make my stomach happy. 

Pete and I were supposed to go shopping for a cookout we wanted to have tomorrow, just us, Katie and Pete’s niece, Jeanie, who I adore.  I was already apprehensive about having company, I’d barely been out of the house and knew my energy level wasn’t great.  Plus after being sick and in the hospital my house was looking a little neglected and there was no way I was going to have anyone come in the way it looked.  So I had it all planned out, shopping Friday afternoon for food, cleaning Sat morning with Pete coming to help both times.    So Pete came in this afternoon and I was trying to put on a good face, even as my stomach was playing the congo.  He took one look at me and asked “Are you tired?”  I just poo pooed him and said “That’s a loaded question.” And walked back to the bathroom for a minute.  When I came out he was sitting on the couch and said he wanted to talk to me.  He asked if I’d rather not do the dinner tomorrow.  As can be expected I burst into tears.

You have to understand that it seems whenever Pete wants to do something, either with his family or just us, I always feel like I’m putting him off.  I thought about it all the way home from the doctors this morning.  The evening before we had gone to dinner with my daughter, Jessica, to celebrate her birthday.  It was very low key and a pretty quick dinner, but I had made it.  I had made up my mind that no matter what I was going to do this cookout tomorrow.  I could summon the energy, even if it meant I was going to spend the day in bed on Sunday.  When he read me like a book, or just had his heart so open that he knew I couldn’t make it, it made me feel so loved, and so disappointed that I couldn’t make him happy, again.

He just wrapped his arms around me as I cried and told me it was all right.  I suggested we go out to dinner together instead of eating here (saving me the shopping, cooking, and cleaning).  He called Jeanie right away and it was done.  I can do dinner out, just not in, ladys you know what I mean.  What a wonderful man I have in my life that knew my pain and understood even without me telling him.  How sad that we have to compromise our lives almost daily.  I know it’s a small thing and the blessing out weigh the compromises daily. 

Just wanted to share one of my blessing today.

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