This Week

This week did not include seeing the grandkids.  

This week was not what we had planned but this week may have been exactly what was needed.  

When your on chemo you have to be careful.  You know things like wear a mask in public (especially on an airplane) and call the doctor if you have a fever above 101.  Little things for sure BUT big things when you are used to taking care of yourself and everyone else around you.  Asking for help or admitting you need help, that's a big thing.  

Always before, you just tough it out - wait a little while, it will go away.  

But not on chemo.  It doesn't go away.  

Last weekend I worked like crazy in my craft room.  The creative juices were just flowing, I was having all kinds of fun.  We were leaving early Monday morning for a quick, overnight trip to take care of some business and see the grand kids, so I stayed up here and I stayed up late wanting to finish what I had started.  See, "I wanted to."  I wanted.  I stayed up here.  

When I finally came down he was already in bed.  I walked quietly into the room and he said, 

"are you in here?"  

"yes."  

"Will you lay down beside me, I'm really cold."  

"Yes I will, let me get ready." 

 By the time I got in there I knew that my skin was going to feel cold next to his, so as I scooted in I was about to say how cool I was when I felt the heat.

Never in my life have I felt a body so hot!  He was burning up.  I jumped up and grabbed the thermometer and it read 103.9.

First thing he said to me was, "your not big enough to make me go to the hospital."

Well I may not be but I can always bring in reinforcements ... but I didn't.  

I know you ladies who read this may want to encourage me but no matter what anyone says and no matter what I try to tell myself, I know that I am not the best wife to have when you need someone to have a clue about illness.  I'm not the best mother for that either, or friend or daughter.  I just don't get it.  I don't see it.  It has to jump up and slap me across the face for me to go "hey, this doesn't seem quite right."  Well this was one of those slaps.

See I stayed in my room, crafting my silly little things, having a good time in paint and (this is a big and) and letting him tell me what he wants me to believe.

Whew, that one may have just come out of left field.  

I wait.  I hear but I don't listen.  I let him talk me into waiting "just one more hour."  It's not like I didn't know.  I came up to my computer and pulled up any article on fever with chemo, I packed my bags, I even put on make-up, I kept him in cold wash rags and I took his fever all night long and ... I mentioned.  I'm a mention-er.

Back when the knot in his stomach first showed up he would show it to me, ask me to feel it and I would say, you should get that checked out.  Then next time he showed me, I would say you should get that checked out.  And the week after that and the week after that and the all the weeks after that ... "you should get that checked out."  And when he finally did, the doctor missed it.  He told him it was something to do with his hernia surgery and not to worry about it.  

So we didn't.

And then he would show me how much bigger it was getting and I would say ... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah.  

It feels like I didn't care.  I thought, he's a grown man he knows what to do, so I didn't push.  I didn't harp, I didn't pick up the phone and schedule an appointment when I wanted to. I was too concerned with my own flesh to risk him getting mad at me.  I didn't push to the point of making him so mad at me that he would have done it sooner just to shut me up.  That's what I should have done.  That's what anyone, who really loves someone, would do.  That's what Jesus did.  He put himself out there so that we would believe - so that we would know His love is real.  And that's what He ask us to do.  To put ourselves out there and if we are rejected because of Him, because we love that much, then we are blessed, we know we did our best and maybe just maybe we pushed hard enough to break through and everyone knows you loved them. 

So, we spent this week in the hospital.  Hospitals are sad places.  I watched the faces of the people as they came and went and I recognized the ones whose face mirrored my own.  

I know this is temporary.  I know that he will get stronger.  I know that he will get back outside working again.  He is feeling better and we both know this too will pass, he will - we will get through this.   

I just hope I can love him strong enough, be tough enough to really put it out there when I need to but be soft enough to keep my mouth shut when I know there is no gain for speaking, after all it's all about love.  

  

I use to pray for all kinds of things, now I just pray for forgiveness and ask for strength.  

It's really not about me, it's about Him and him, so what am I so afraid of?