Today is 493 days since we first learned that Mike has Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, better known as CLL. Not a diagnosis you would want to hear, in the hospital, by yourself, at 12:15 am on May 10, 2012. Not a diagnosis you would EVER want to hear, but that was when a doctor with the bedside manner of a bedbug told Mike he had cancer. Mike didn't want to wake me at that hour, so painstakingly and without sleep, he waited to call me until 8:15 the next morning.
I had taken him to LMH the day before with severe abdominal pains. Our friend who is also a nurse, Janet, was with us when a sweet young nurse came in and told us they would be admitting him for IV antibiotic treatments overnight. Janet asked what his WBC (white blood count) was and I remember how the young nurse looked at her, eyes penetrating with an unspoken message, and said 90,000. Of course at the time it meant nothing to us, so we were suspect to none of the soon to be learned diagnosis. Janet said nothing, knowing an infection of some sort could have also spiked his WBC.
Once again, and in the normal span of the three-year stinking diagnosis curses, we are hit in the stomach with a boulder. 2006 my dad has a brain aneurysm and dies within hours. July 7, 2009 my mother learns that her kidney cancer is back (she had a kidney removed 13 years before), and dies three months later to the day...October 7. Fast forward ahead to May 10, 2012 and another stinging diagnosis.
As excruciating painful as losing my loving dad was, I thanked God immediately after his death for the 'gift of his quick death'. I had been taking Dad to his doctor's appointments and nearly every time he said he wanted to see his grandchildren all graduate from high school, and then with a little chuckle would add, 'and my great-grandchildren'. Dad didn't want to age and didn't want to die. Not because he was afraid of death, but my dad loved living. Loved life. Loved family. Loved people. He
wasn't ready. So I began to pray and ask God to please take him quickly, like on the golf course doing what he loved to do. On October 23rd, the day of Gods choice, it was too chilly for Dad to be golfing, so one of his next favorite things to do was to go to 'coffee' every weekday with his friends. It was as he walked in the house from having coffee, that he quickly began his journey home. Thank you, God.
Mom had become increasingly weakened in the past year before Dad died. After Dad's death, I was, by choice, Mom's caregiver. I didn't work outside the home and my sister, Kathy, did, and our other sister, Krista, lived in Chicago. I was so thankful I was able to do it. Over the next three years I witnessed her decline in health. When the pain in her back returned, I took her to Dr. Kuk, and as we left the room, his eyes told me that he, too, suspected what I did. I wrote on another blog called adaughterscancerdiary.blogspot.com of our three month journey. Once again I could thank God that she didn't linger in pain and had a peaceful return home.
We've made it through that 'Year 3' with Mike. It's 2013 so he broke the cycle! YAY! We're fighting for many more years! I'll continue on with what his treatments have been this past year later.
No comments:
Post a Comment