Building Solid Foundations

In case anyone was interested we decided on an organization for donations in memory of my Mom. Three years ago she went on a mission trip to Ghana with a group called Building Solid Foundations.
Anyone who spent anytime with her knows all about the trip because she had such an incredible time she talked about it for months. So, we decided that it would be a great group to direct people to for donations. You can read about them on their website, but the short of it is it was started by a couple (Grace and Seth Quartey) from Ghana who want to help improve the lives of those living in rural Ghana. They focus on access to clean drinking water (the blue part of the logo), increasing agricultural production to reduce hunger and increase employment (green part of the logo), basic primary and secondary education including supplying curriculum and computer labs (orange part of the logo that kinda looks like a book), and providing adequate healthcare and access to heath services that are not available otherwise (red cross of logo). My mom was part of the healthcare team and helped in recovery for the hundreds of surgeries they performed in the week she was there.

Donations can be sent to 963 E. Market St. York, PA 17403 and if you'd like to call and speak to the adorable Grace you can do that too - I just talked to her this morning :) Up next is Brandy and I finishing the scrapbook we were working on for my mom and writing the eulogy...those two things will probably involve a lot more tears than this one, but will also involve a lot of laughs because we were trained by the best when it comes to looking your fear in the face and laughing at it! We were all laughing in the hospital about the day my Mom got the news that she had leukemia - she looked at my Aunt Dona and said, 'well, we might as well go have a nice lunch downtown, there is nothing we can do about it right now'. And so they did.

Some Thoughts from the First Week

In some ways it was easier than I thought it would be. Life does in fact go on, and quite normally really. The new normal as I decided to call it. I went to work, did my job, came home to my house, talked to my dad, went to bed - all things that normally happen, happened just the same as they always did. In a lot of ways it was easier than I thought it might be to be normal.

In other ways it wasn't. I drove to work wanting to call my mom the entire time. I wanted to write a post that she could read, or tell her a funny story, or hear a funny story from her to tell others, or just hear her answer the phone. I wanted the old normal back.

I didn't cry as much as I thought I might. I didn't feel angry at God, or angry at the world, or angry at all really. I laughed, a lot actually. I talked and told stories and didn't cry doing it. I played games, and ate dinners with people, and had fun doing it. Genuine fun, not make myself enjoy something fun.

I noticed everything in terms of what I was doing last week. And I noticed 8:15 on Thursday. I was driving to work, wishing I could call her. My baby sister turned 18 that day. And I sang her happy birthday while coworkers sat in the car with me. I don't really consider myself a good singer, but I didn't really care. And it made me thing of singing mom Amazing Grace while my aunt put lotion on her back. I didn't consider myself any better a singer last week, but she wanted that song and I didn't really care if I was a good singer then either.

I've stopped wanting to talk to people as much. Anyone who cares to hear the stories has heard them. Anyone who doesn't care to hear them generally won't look me in the eye when they see me. Not that it bothers me specifically, I can understand, I'm pretty sure I've done the same thing in the past. I probably won't in the future. Random chit chat just doesn't seem interesting and my stories about my mom are old news, so I find myself in a conversation just ready to be done the conversation. I find it interesting how some people feel really sorry for me and I really don't feel like they should, and other people seem to act like nothing happened or I shouldn't have any strange feelings at all, and I'm really feel like I should, and there are very few people in between those extremes. Hence, not really feeling like talking to people.

I find the cyclic nature of grief interesting. It makes me want to read about grief, and then I realize how clinical I'm being about it and try to convince myself that I need to experience it, not read about it. I'll probably still read about it. My mom would have laughed at me...and then bought me a book on grief.

I think about heaven a lot more than I ever did before. What's it like. What is she doing. Do you get to meet people like Job or Moses. I called my aunt to laugh that if mom met Jeremiah she may have told him that his book was awfully whiny (that was the last book she was reading in the 'Read through the Bible' and she told me she was tired of his whining...I told her I hated to let her know Lamentations was next and Jeremiah wrote that as well).

I seem to be wide awake at midnight when I'm supposed to be asleep and exhausted at 7am when I'm supposed to be awake for work. That may not be all that abnormal, but it is annoying. So with that I'll go lay down and read until I'm sleepy enough to fall asleep. And we'll see what the weekend brings.

Hello Internet at Home

I just hooked up a phone line (as in stripped wires in the wall and connected them to a phone jack), connected a modem and wireless router, and installed internet...BY MYSELF. I know - I'm amazed that it's working as well.

Blessed

I am blessed. My family and friends are amazing. I can't describe how beautiful it is to experience the outpouring of love and support I've experienced over the past few days. Little things like a note on facebook, big things like a dinner thrown just for me at church with more people showing up to hug me and tell me they love me than I could count, balloons, flowers, calls, texts, cards, and most of all people's time. One thing my mom always taught me was that your time is more valuable than anything tangible you can give someone. While I always knew it, I don't think I ever truly appreciated it until now. The time people take to write me a note, the time they take to sit at my house and paint my toes, the time they take to let me talk, the time they take to pray for me over and over and over again. It's actually made me realize that my mom taught me how to nurture relationships that will now nurture me. I think I'm going to notice over the next few months a whole lot of things I didn't realize my mom taught me how to do.

A poem Cynthia posted for me that I thought was beautiful...
I'M FREE (Linda Jo Jackson)

Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free,
I'm following the path God has laid you see.
I took his hand when I heard his call.
I turned my back and left it all.
I could not stay another day
To laugh, to love, to work or play.
Tasks left undone must stay that way
I foun the peace at the close of day.
If my parting has left a void
Then fill it with remembered joys -
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss
Oh yes, these things I too will miss.
Be not burdened with times of sorrow
I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.
My life's been full I savored much,
Good friends, good times, a loved one's touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief
Don't lengthen it now with undue grief
Life up your hearts, and peace to thee -
God wanted me now, he set me free.

Never the Same

My mom died yesterday at 8:15 in the morning. My aunt was whispering in her ear, my dad was holding her hand and kissing her arm and Brandy and I were rubbing her legs. There is something about a mother's love that no one can surpass, and the thought that I will never feel it again looking in her eyes all but breaks my heart. My only comfort is that she is now totally healed, gazing in the face of pure love, dancing on the streets of gold, and worshiping the King of Kings. My grief isn't for her, but for us who won't get to see her smiling face and hear her perky little voice and be wrapped in her encompassing love that she was so willing to share with everyone she knew.

Decisions

It's hard making decisions for another person. Yesterday we turned down a last ditch effort dialysis because if there is one thing my mom is not for it is last ditch efforts that prolong your living but not your life. Weighing the pros and cons of each thing, the risks if things go wrong and possible rewards if everything goes right, and what she would have decided if she could make the decision herself if something I've never had to experience first hand. I'm thankful that my mom was the kind of person who spoke her mind and wasn't afraid to talk about or have an opinion on hard things. I'm thankful that she has a sister and a husband who are willing to make the decisions she would want, not the ones they want just so she can maybe possibly stay with us one day longer. Without that, I don't know how we would make the decisions for her. So today, regardless of the fact we didn't do the last ditch effort she is still here. Sleeping. Hopefully not in pain. Hopefully dreaming of beautiful and wonderful moments from her life. We keep talking to her so she knows we are with her, letting her know it's ok to let go if she wants to but we will be by her side if she wants to keep fighting. We are forcing ourselves to take breaks from the hospital and eat in case she chooses to fight. And everytime I leavethe room, I kiss her goodbye and tell her I love her and that I will miss her, but it's ok because she raised me to be strong and I will see her again even if it's not here on earth. I sure will miss her if it's not.

Stand

So, here we sit again in room 4 - literally the same room we were in last week. A day after getting home from the last round of disaster, she started having chest pain and Brandy had to bring her back in. 12 hours and a ridiculous number of ER people later, she was back in the hospital, and it's only gotten worse since. So, the report - she has a some kind of pnemonia we think but they can't do the diagnostic test because her platlets are low. Her platelets are low because she has this syndrome that is in essence eating her platelets. They can't give her more platelets because it just feed the fire. The fire was started by some kind of reaction to the anti-rejection meds, which she had just gone back on because her GVH response was so intense they couldn't keep her off them. The other things this syndrome are causing are confusion, kidney failure, and obviously low clotting because of the platelet loss. Thus, she can't go onto dialysis because her blood won't clot after the procedure, but her kidneys are in rough shape which makes it hard for the anti-rejection meds to break down, but they need to breakdown before she can get platelets again, and she needs platelets before they can do the test to find out what is in her lungs, making it necessary for her to be on oxygen. And so we wait. For her body to break this down, but not go into rejection, for the platelets to fall and the kidney enzymes to go up, but not faster than it takes for this stuff to get out of her. And all the while we try to stay sane and keep her taken care of because she knows us when she wakes up but sleeps unless we wake her up.

So quite literally, we are going to need a miracle to get through this one. People could say that the bone marrow transplant was medicine, that the GVH recovery was medicine, that the multiple myeloma recovery was medicine, and the million things she's gone in for in the past 7 years having to do with all that (even though I disagree), but when a top of the line doctor at the best of the best cancer treatment hospital says 'we have a diagnosis, but it's as scary if not more than the leukemia diagnosis' you pay attention. And when you ask him what they can do and he says 'at this point it's a God thing' you tell your brain not to freak out. And when you ask the statistics and he says that 95% of the people who have this do not make it, you tell your stomach not to throw up. And when you hear the 18 things that are going wrong and the 80 things that could go wrong depending on what order other things happen, and the immense insanity of all the things that need to go right lining up you tell your lungs not to hyperventilate. And then following that up about 4 seconds later you have to decide what life support you mom would want to go on if she needs to go on it and when she wouldn't want to and thus they should not do it irregardless of the consequences, you beg God to please give you a miracle.

So after an absurd amount of crying, begging, yelling, and talking to God (and a full day before I could even get the courage to write this) I've come to the point where can ask God for a miracle and say that I will stand on the promise that he is out Healer, and if that is not his will, I will be ok, but I will deal with it at the time. His mercies are new every morning, which means I can't ask for the mercies I may need down the road today. Hopefully I won't need them.

And having done all, stand (Eph 6:13)

You know your office is too cold when...

...you decide to sit outside and read the article you need to look through rather than doing it inside so that your feet will thaw in the 96 degree weather. 96 degree weather should not be something you CHOOSE to sit outside in!

Musings from the Car

Well, 11 hour drive number 2 is complete. I'm back in Charleston. I finished up my page and a half of 'to-do' list items for my mom, left the house in working order and my mom is starting to be able to smile again and talk on the phone, so I'm feeling good. They backed her off the IV antibiotics and are continuing to lower the steroid dosages, so hopefully she can go home early next week.

Between the drive up and back, and then at least one drive to Hopkins each day if not two, I have put another 1,000 or so miles on my car and have decided that I have a few general comments regarding driving for the blogspace...

1) I feel like it's not too much to ask there to be a law that tractor trailers are not allowed in the left hand lane of a 3 lane highway. I get that on a 2 way highway they need to be able to pass cars, but when there are 3 lanes, I just find it very difficult to swallow that the 8 tractor trailers spanning all three lanes and slowing all of us down to 40 miles an hour is necessary. Sorry that your tractor trailer buddies are 8/10th of a mile an hour slower than you, deal with life. You are 20 miles an hour slower than me and the other 50 cars you are slowing down in these 3 lanes!

2) Along those lines, but not really. How in the world can there be 5 lanes of traffic at 9:30 at night? It's truly amazing, but true. I left last night to drive half way back down, after much prodding from my mom to do so. I figured if I left when my dad went down for dinner visit to my mom, I'd be rolling through DC at a safe 8-9pm. And then I hit Alexandria, where I sat in 45 minutes of traffic to go 4 miles at 9:30 at night. No accident, no construction, just plain old, too many cars on the road. I apologize for any of you who live in that God-forsaken place. Let's just say, you would need to drug me and pay me about 18 times what I make now to move to Northern VA.

3) I do believe I've determined why road rage is so prevalent. Let me use an example from the land of fisheries management. If you study why overfishing is such a major issue, it pretty much comes down to the fact that our fishing methods have become too efficient for the fish populations. When we couldn't catch as many at one time, they could reproduce to keep their numbers up. But now, we can catch so many and so fast that they literally have no chance against us. Why am I comparing this to road rage. Well, on a given day if you walk to all the places you need to go you would pass a decent number of people, but not all that many, and while you may pass a person or two that was doing something somewhat annoying, it probably wouldn't be all that much of an issue because by the next block you would be out of their way. However when you are driving, you can cover so much more space in the same time that you just have a higher efficiency in meeting idiots I think. And so you inevitably pass the people who are driving like they are somehow totally confused by the general rules of courtesy and plain sanity. So, the car has made so we literally have no chance but to come across people that make us want to ram our car into the back of theirs, if only we didn't have to pay their damages :)

And with that, I'm going to go to bed. Well, read and then go to bed. I'm excited that it's in my own bed tonight, although I did miss seeing my mom and dad today. And the mint chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer was no substitute for a peppermint patty snowball...just saying.

Sugar

This is what happens when I go to Brown's Orchard unsupervised to order a cake for next week's picnic...Apparently my sub conscience has decided to gain 30 pounds this week - all I crave is every single sugar item I can't get in Charleston. In my defense, if Browns didn't make such delicious items and make them superior to everyone else, I wouldn't have to buy them all!