Visiting Day, Next Steps, and Miracles

Mike at the keyboard tonight.

Lisa had a steady stream of visitors on Sunday, fifteen in all.  She needed some time to adjust to the commotion each time but eventually she woke and laughed and played and chatted.  In the evening we had a little trouble with her port because it began leaking.  We were able to get it accessed again at about 10:00 PM after a few tries.  Nurse Stephanie did a happy dance and Lisa celebrated with a Fruit Rollup. All told she was disconnected for about 2 hours.  Fortunately she is almost entirely on oral medication now with the only exceptions being IV hydration and the PCA, the on demand morphine.  So she didn’t get behind on any of her medication and her pain seemed to be under control the whole time.

I met with Lisa’s primary oncologist today and spoke about what options are available.  Scientifically we are out of viable healing options.  The disease is progressing in all affected areas and spreading to new ones even with the chemo that she has been receiving these past few months.  The IV chemo simply isn’t working to eliminate, stop, or slow the cancer any longer and the side effects too toxic to continue.  The plan is to continue with an oral chemo that we hope will slow the disease progression and offer some relief from pain.  Additionally, steroids and pain killers will be administered and monitored by palliative care via hospice when she comes home.

Home.  We hope to have Lisa home by Tuesday.  That’s about as far forward as I can think at the moment.  I have to force myself to remember that each day is a blessing. Each day with any one of my kids. There are going to be some good days ahead and I try to focus on that.  There are a lot of good days ahead. 

 

As I said, scientifically we are out of options but I’ve also seen and felt what can be done by way of prayer and meditation and mutual appeal.  It’s not too much to ask for that super miracle we’ve been asking for. We’ve all experienced them. We’ve all read about them.  Why not Lisa?