T'WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE TURKEY

It is Thanksgiving Eve, and we are looking forward to the coming of family. They are on the way, and we, like kids tracking the progress of Santa on Christmas eve, are keeping keeping up with where everyone is and when they hope to arrive.

First an update on the past several days. After a rocky start, we finally settled into a milder mode. Betty had several days of moderate and steady “urpsies” requiring the hugging of pink buckets and the use of warm washrags, but Cathey, our Hospice nurse rode again to the rescue with a slight tweaking to the anti-nausea meds and a couple of additional daily doses, and the result has been a couple of pre-holiday days without “losing it”. So mostly yesterday and today we have been resting.

Betty’s energy levels seem to be have slipped a bit this last week too, and she has compensated with longer or more frequent naps. Trying to keep her on schedule for her daily regimen of thirty-five pills for pain, anti-nausea, and PD is a challenge; she does the PDs and I push the rest. That means nine separate pill times with only slight overlap. Naturally she gets weary of pills and half-glasses of water or juice. Meals are a combination of fortified cereals, smoothies, occasional fruit, half-sandwiches, and whatever other mini-meals I can coax her into trying. She also samples a variety of fluids with water and mild fruit juices being preferred and sodas. etc, becoming less appealing. She doesn’t drink coffee and only rarely tries tea, so managing a variety of fluids becomes a challenge too. The other adaptation has been to sleep in more frequently, so the habit of being up-for-the-day at 6:00 AM (or earlier) is pretty well broken at this point.

What is going to boost her spirits and activity level is en route as I write this blog. The elder son and family (four in all including the two granddaughters) are on I-84 westbound and will arrive here late this evening. They will be staying in a friend’s home about a mile and a half west of us. After a long snowstorm delay, the younger son and family (four more including two grandsons) are en route now via Alaska Airlines and will arrive in Seattle hoping to make their connection to Portland tonight. The local daughter and her bunch (five including three granddaughters) will practically live here while all the rest are with us, filling the house with much joy and love and games and puzzles and entertainment and food for four days or more. We will therefore tomorrow at table be a brood of fifteen plus whoever else comes to the door to visit and add to the festivities.

No blessing could be greater than to have all of ours and all of theirs together “in the nest” in this special Thanksgiving season. Truly we have a great deal to be thankful for with all of us able to gather around Betty and shower her with love and appreciation for all she has been and done for us. She, of course, being the matriarch has been praying for and ministering to each of the others longer than any of them have been alive (and that includes the kids our kids married). We all owe her a time of special attention and a chance to express our love and thanks for all she means to each of us. This will not be a time of good-bye, as we all hope to gather again over the December holidays and continue this process of gentle closure. We all hope we will have an opportunity next month be together again.

Meanwhile, it’s turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and all the extras and trimmings tomorrow. Hallelujah! Please be sure to express your own thanksgivings to a gracious God for all his blessings to you and to yours. When you do, remember to add prayers in behalf of our precious nation (especially for our service personnel) and a small prayer for Betty’s well-being in the coming days. Thanks, my friends, and may your blessing be enjoyed as much as are ours.

AN UPDATE ON BETTY"S WEEK

Somehow the days all run together in the fall. Once the weather pattern switches from mostly sunny days to almost perpetual overcast it becomes a bit harder to distinguish one day from another, especially from inside – and we don’t get outdoors as often as we used to.

Glancing out at the rain is not a very good measure of time for us because we have had twenty-four years here of rainy falls, winters, and springs, and twenty prior years of the same in Alaska before that. For us rain is not a useful measure of time passing. Now the seasonal autumn color change is another ticket. We are still in a prolonged transformation of yellows and rusts, and the oranges and reds finally came on strong this week. (See Patty's blog; button at the right) Many of the early colors have already fallen along the roadways, but the trees of color on our acre and a quarter are still in transition. The Japanese Maple is in its finest, the ornamentals – cherrys, crabapples, dogwoods – are well into their cling-tight rusts, the ginko is bright yellow as are the Lombardy Poplars, and the Zelcova Elm is converting it’s jillion leaves from green to pale yellow to light golden brown as they individually drop. The yard under any of these trees is covered, but the rain, ah yes, the rain prohibits any cleanup at present.

This week was above average for Betty in terms of general health and activity. The daily regimen of meals and medications, household routines and personal hygiene were much the same. The highlights were in the visits and varieties of entertainment. The Canasta Ladies came again to play cards and provide a lunch, several videos helped pass the hours, calls came from friends near and far, the steady stream of notes and “get well” messages continued, and among the finest hours was a visit by good friends from our Alaskan Years who stopped by as they headed north again to Juneau. Of course family stays in close touch and Patty’s brood came to share a weird DVD western whose main characters were hairy little critters including many reptiles and other venomous villains. Most importantly, we are still managing to avoid much use of the infamous “pink buckets” due to a good combination of anti-nausea pills.

On Thursday Betty again received her monthly intravenous infusion of a medication designed to hold what calcium remains in her system in her bones. This is not in any way considered curative, but it does seem to help in terms of allowing her to maintain limited mobility which allows her to move about the house and even take the occasional trip to church or out for a restaurant meal. We have noticed that, now that she has had three of these treatments, Betty is often able to stand up on her own from a sitting position, and perhaps in combination with the excellent Hospice care is part of the reason that she has been feeling better and able to be more active each day. I find her sorting out bookcases, boxes of pictures and notes, and paperwork piles of this and that. It’s good to see she feels up to doing anything and to see her mind busy at one task or another. If you stop by (please call ahead first) you might be drafted to help on whatever current jigsaw puzzle is in progress.

As always we are touched by the generous words and thoughtful deeds of family, friends, and folk from the sometimes distant past. Your being in touch gives us great pleasure and your extra efforts to express appreciation to Betty for some past kindness is also precious. We believe God is reminding us (in spite of the world’s take on such things) that in God’s sight it is more correct to say that “no good deed goes unrewarded”. These days are rich with blessings and we are enjoying them with thanksgiving.

PS: One interesting ongoing family saga involves a granddaughter who developed a personal colony of head lice. Whether these were an inevitable byproduct of beginning to attend a public school class after years of itch-free home schooling or a contribution collected from neighborhood buddies is not clear. Neither to school nor the neighbors seem very concerned. The remedies of chemical and natural treatments, vinegar washes, daily “nit-picking” and an extremely thorough cleaning and laundry of everything in their house has complicated life and tested everyone else’s patience, but in the midst of the turmoil, the little one seems to be the calmest of all of us.

FINDING A GROOVE IN DAILY ACTIVITIES

Someone reminded me that they are looking regularly at this blog to find out how both Betty and I are doing. My original intention was to post all the news here every week so folk could do just that. Now, after several weeks, I find I am not being regular about that plan. I guess it’s because the days are all running together and seem so much the same. It’s as though time has become like a cheap telescope. In one end things seem closer; in the other things appear further away. Time is doing that now: it is passing much more quickly than ever before and it is also dragging out to unbelievable lengths. I’m learning that it is harder than ever before to make and maintain a deliberate schedule since there are so many unpredictable variables in the equation.

It’s a strange combination of things we love and stuff we don’t that complicates the planning. For example, we have no love for the unpredictable bouts of nausea or for the emesis which sometimes accompanies them. I’m growing spooky about the multitude of phone calls, often back-to-back, which seem to interrupt so many hands-on tasks. I know that irritation is due more to the volume of unsolicited solicitors and mundane business callers we receive than to the calls of family and friends calling to check in or check up. We always appreciate the contact of loved ones whenever it comes. These are the highlights of each day. One friend of over fifty years called Wednesday and together we delighted in recalling shared activities over the years and reminded one another of the many ways we had worked together in the Lord’s various ministries. The love expressed in that one contact will buoy us up for many days to come. Such calls are a balm to our weary spirits.

As for Betty’s condition, we are dependant upon Hospice Nurse Cathey for her regular calls and visits and for her current success in minimizing the impact of pain and nausea due to the bone cancer. The non-narcotic medication to which we have switched seems to be doing the desired job while not contributing to other unpleasant side effects. The spacing of the tummy soothing pills by type and strength is a small miracle of applied modern pharmaceuticals. Betty has been able to attend Sunday Morning Worship Assemblies each week and was strong enough to enjoy lunch at a favorite restaurant last week. Wednesday afternoon, Patty suggested a drive in the countryside to view the changing fall colors on what might be the last sunny day for a while, and we did see some brilliant reds, yellows, oranges, and variegated “rust” hues. That was a joyful drive. As always, the gathering of our mid-week home Bible Study group was a support and a comfort. It’s been nice to be able to reclaim some of these activities.

In recent weeks a new routine of daily activities has developed. Collectively we have about a dozen times a day to take pills, so we try to condense that schedule by letting the times slide until they overlap. I’m learning the peculiar habits of the vacuum cleaner, have nearly grasped the basic settings on the clothes washers and dryers and on the dishwasher. I’m pretty good at dividing the dirty linens and clothes into “dark and light” now. I’m still pulling together schedules for when to sweep, mop, scrub toilets, and (shudder) dust, but all of these are becoming more familiar each week. Of great help have been the kids and a few friends who tend to act like family and just take up a task like it was their personal assignment. I’m grateful for the help and for the time saved toward other jobs on the list. Apparently, when the regular house keeper can’t do it all, it takes a small community to replace her. I have a much deeper appreciation of what Betty has been quietly accomplishing around our place over nearly forty-eight years.

The doctors do not have any way to treat Betty’s cancer in terms of cure because of her decision to avoid chemo and similar harsh therapies, but she is accepting a monthly infusion of a medication that helps fix the remaining calcium in her bones. This is given with the hope of retaining as much bone strength as possible to minimize the chance of fractures and breaks that might accelerate the pain or affect her mobility. This choice is compatible with the goals of Hospice which are primarily to manage daily living as free of pain, discomfort or disability as possible. Currently Betty can get around in the house with her walker and is able to do small projects or enjoy the puzzles often set out, tinker with her laptop, watch TV and DVDs, and get to and from her frequent naps. As always, she looks forward to the daily mail and the several cards and love note she steadily receives. In that sense, every day is like Christmas morning. We are both enjoying the attention of caring friends and letting the glory of our blessings reflect upon the Benevolent and Beneficent God whom we are trying to serve even in these circumstances.