I wanted to call this post An Existential Soliloquy which I think sounds interesting, though a bit pretentious. But as I so often do when I write this blog, I looked up the word soliloquy to make sure I am using it correctly, lest someone who cares about that sort of thing exposes me for being an idiot who should have known better.
It turns out I wasn’t using soliloquy correctly.
Soliloquy is the act of speaking one’s thoughts out loud to yourself, regardless of any hearers. Of course, because the whole point of this blog is that there are readers (hearers), and my intent is to write for my readers, soliloquy is definitely the wrong word. On the plus side, you now know a fairly exotic word with which you can impress your own friends and family. Next time you’re sitting around shooting the breeze, you can tell them about that last soliloquy you had that helped you make a big decision in your life.
I wasn’t going to write a blog post today. It was a difficult weekend. Some of you have heard this story because I posted an Urgent Prayer Request on Saturday night on Facebook. Humor me, though, as I tell it again. It’s worth repeating, and I write this post today after all, as a testimony to God’s faithfulness.
Lynn and Dave have been here since February 18. We’ve all stuck pretty close to home because that’s kind of what we do these days. Our dear friend, Ellyn and her husband Michael, prepared a birthday celebration (turkey dinner with all the fixins’) on Saturday, March 1. Randy wanted to go to the Chinese buffet restaurant for his actual 74th birthday on Wednesday. On Tuesday, March 3, he had his first immunotherapy infusion. He was starting to cough a lot and was developing some new pain in his upper back and upper chest areas. We were also still very concerned about a very large lump that had developed at the site of his right supraclavicular lymph node where they’d done the biopsy a month before that. His oncologist (Dr Aneja) had contacted the radiologist who did the biopsy and suggested, the week before, that an ultrasound be done on the lump. We still hadn’t heard anything about that, so Dr Aneja instructed him to go straight to the ER after his infusion.
In the ER, they did another CT scan of his chest. The doctor came in and told us there was “significant progression in his disease” and sent him home with 3 days’ worth of Percocet. There was no discussion of what to do when the Percocet ran out. It was discouraging.
Reluctant to take opioids (Percocet) I had some Tylenol with Codeine (I later learned these are also opioids, but not quite as strong as Percocet) left from my breast surgery last year. He took a few of those when the pain became almost unbearable. By Friday he was coughing almost non-stop and in so much pain I wondered how in the world his disease could progress so damned fast. I honestly feared he was at death’s door.
On Friday, I pulled the report of the CT scan they did of his chest in the ER 3 days earlier and put it into AI to tell me what it meant. It did indeed say that his tumors were significantly larger, but that part of the lump at the biopsy site could be fluid (relatively good news). It also said there was necrosis and that something was pressing on an airway and that part of his lung had already collapsed (not good news). It seemed devastating to me. Lynn and I both cried. And then cried some more.
Saturday was awful. He ate almost nothing, sat in a recliner all day coughing, looked like death warmed over, and just seemed like a dying man. It is so hard to watch someone you love in so much pain. It was 100 times harder than when I had my own cancer diagnosis and surgery (all three times, combined).
Early Saturday evening, I put out an Urgent Prayer Request on Facebook with a brief description of what was going on. I asked for prayer that he’d simply quit coughing. People responded and started to pray immediately.
About a half hour later, I was crying, doing dishes, and telling God that I didn’t know what else to do. It occurred to me immediately to go lay hands on Randy and cry out to Jesus on his behalf. I dried my hands, went to him in his recliner, put my hand on the top of his (shaved from hair loss due to brain radiation) head, and cried out, “In the name of Jesus, I command you to stop coughing.”
Yes, it’s almost comical as Randy’s brother, Scott, says.
But this is how God answers prayer.
When I laid my hand on his head, he was so hot! I got a thermometer and we discovered his temperature was 101.8˚. In an instant I just knew the fever probably meant he had an infection and an infection could be the source of much of the coughing and pain he was experiencing. I knew (in that instant) that an infection is treatable, and that maybe “his disease progression” wasn’t really rolling downhill like a snowball after an avalanche.
He didn’t want to go to the ER (though he should have, but it was 8 p.m. on Saturday night) so I gave him 2 aspirin and told him that if his temperature didn’t come down in 2 hours, we were going, like it or not. In 2 hours, his temp was 99.9˚, so we decided to try to manage until Monday morning. His coughing did reduce by about 75% that evening, and he got a decent night’s rest. The power of prayer!
On Monday we got an appointment that morning to see his primary care provider and they prescribed an antibiotic. That was yesterday, and after just 2 doses, he’s much, much, much better. Still coughing a little, but the pain level is down. The fever broke and he seems more like a man recovering from a non-terminal illness.
So, I’m here to say thank you, Lord, for letting him continue to exist. And for answering prayer, for showing us in a way I clearly recognized what to do to “heal” him of the specific request we had, to stop the coughing.
God is good. All the time.
P.S. One more little miracle story to tell you.
On Saturday, at the height of my distress, we received an order of essiac tea (look it up). I brewed a pot of it and set it aside for the required 12 hours. Not 10 minutes later, I got a message from my cousin, Dawn, a nurse, who I NEVER hear from other than an occasional Facebook comment on something. She said she hesitated to send the message but asked if I’d ever heard of essiac tea. I bawled like a baby. Dawn’s message to me was a very, very powerful sign.
Make no mistake, I don’t necessarily think the sign is that essiac tea will heal Randy, but rather confirmation that God’s on this whole journey with us. He does not leave or forsake us.
So again, thank you, Father, for wrapping the arms of Jesus around us and letting us know, clearly, that You’ve got us, regardless of how it all turns out.
Leave a Reply