Thursday Evening

Greetings and God’s blessing to you all:

“Oh what a beautiful morning,
oh what a beautiful day,
I have a wonderful feeling,
that everything is going my way.”
Praise the Lord!

Well today has been a pretty good day for the both of us. Marty has had to have both two bags of platelets and two units of blood today and her WBC was down to .2. That is the lowest that it has been recorded this trip to the hospital. We are hoping that tomorrow or Saturday will be a big fat O. That will give us a much better chance to go into remission.

Blood sugar has really been interesting today, in that this morning; actually during the night it got so low that she had to have OJ and crackers. Then at each meal it has been high and she has had to have more than her “normal” dose of insulin. It will be nice when those steroids get out of her body and leave her blood sugar alone.

The “stuff” in her lungs is breaking up, but is not coming up. I guess it doesn’t like two “up’s” in a row. At any rate she continues to get 4 breathing treatments a day, uses the incentive spirometer on and hourly or better basis, and has a new little toy that makes a sound that helps to break up the “junk” in lungs by using a. flutter valve or the acapella vibratory PEP therapy system. Of course on top of that are the medicines that she is getting. It sure seems like it should be enough to get all that out of there, but so far no go.

It seems like Marty has not been as tired and maybe not quite as weak today. Praise the Lord! With the blood the way it was that was a big surprise even for the doctor. He thought that she should be feeling worse than she is. We are just so please that she is not. Even though she walks the hall 4 to 7 times a day, the doctor wants her to be out of bed sitting in the chair more. So today she eat all three of her meals in the chair. That went well and was no problem. Praise the Lord!

Over all she seems to be feeling better that she did a couple of days ago, say Monday and Tuesday. Again we just pray that she gets down to “0” WBC tomorrow or Saturday and that on the way back up there are no infections and/or problems.

Today I have gotten a little bit of sleep. After the last two nights when I have only had 3 hours sleep each night, I decided that I need to get some sleep this afternoon. That happened after I had an experience this morning that I thought would be interesting to share. (By the way, as a side note, I was recently asked how I come up with the ideas that I write about each day. Well, God gives them to me a number of different ways: sometimes it is through something that happens that day, sometimes it is a thought placed in my mind, sometimes it is something I have read, and sometimes I have to sit and struggle and think about it before I can write.) At any rate we learned that the new doctor in Dr. Lee’s firm was going to be seeing Marty for the next four days. Dr. Lee had told us a little about him, but you know it was that ‘c’ word – change- and Marty and I had some mixed feelings. In fact we have talked a little about what we were going to do when Dr. Lee retires and really are not sure. We know and like other doctors in the firm and now who is this new guy? Like I said there is that ‘c’ word. Do you give him a change or what? Well if he is going to be seeing Marty for the next 4 days, since Dr. Lee is not making rounds, I guess you do give him a chance. And this morning it was awesome. He came in introduced himself, pulled up a chair, had knowledge about Marty’s case, was a very good listener, asked question, and both Marty and I were very pleased. We talked a little about his family, his experiences the last 5 years in Chicago, and really got to know a little about him.
It was indeed a good experience and we look forward to seeing him tomorrow.

Now my point for thought here is how often do we prejudge a situation and therefore do not give it a chance? Isn’t it true that we black ball a situation and/or person before we even really know the facts and/or the person? I remember growing up and being told that when I was a small child and would come to the dinner table I would look at the food and say “I don’t lik tha!” having never tasted it, or maybe not remembering when I had it before and could not get enough of it. You know what I mean? Oh, yes by the way, I didn’t get away with it, I always had to try everything and today there is not to much I don’t like. (You can tell that by looking at me.)

But what I rather we would look at is what did Jesus do in situations when He met new people. The stories that come to my mind about that are those where Jesus did not prejudge, but rather he listened to the person’s story, to the way that they looked at their situation, got to know them from what they had to say, and then He spoke. A few examples of this might be: the rich young ruler, the woman being stoned, the women at the well, the sick man lowered through the roof and so on. Isn’t that different than the way we do things most of the time? So often in to many situations we start out feeling sorry for our selves, because we think we are being wronged or getting the bad end of the stick. So right from the beginning we get defensive – was Jesus ever defensive? Then often we make it very difficult to work through a situation or conflict or a decision because we are so closed, so set in our ways, so sure that we already know what is right.

God has given us so many tools to work with to become the people He wants us to be, but we so limit our selves because we prejudge, hold grudges, become defensive, are closed minded, and just plain hate the ‘c’ word. If only we would be like the “C” (Christ) and put God in the first place and as the first priority in our lives, what a difference it would make. I am going to try and be better at that tomorrow and the next days, as the other way has been proven wrong for me again. Will you join me?

Have a positive day and God bless.

Marty and Jack
John 3:16