Bad News/Better News Part 3

 

Fear is a tricky thing. In a healthy dose, it can warn us. Left unbridled and it becomes an overpowering monster, bent on paralyzing us to our core. I am no stranger to the shackles of fear. It has been my nemesis, my sin, for decades. If there is a fear of fear, then I have it. After all these years, one would think that I would smell the sulphur before I went full in to the web of fear. But after 43 years of following Christ, I still get blindsighted. I still get duped. I still think we know better than the Supreme, Holy Sovereign LORD Who has warned us 365 times in Scripture of the faith crushing sin.

Researching all I could prior to infusion, I compiled all the highlights. Two things seemed to run through all the advice and articles I read: 1. Drink a lot of water. 2. Stay ahead of nausea.  Check and check. I returned home post infusion to gear up for the ride. I started guzzling water and took two different kinds of anti nausea drugs on a religious schedule. Not today, side effects, not today.

For the rest of day and all throughout the next, I kept the routine up. I was positively obsessive about it. That was my focus. Common sense, not so much. Never in my life had I relied on medicine the way I did that day. By mid afternoon, I knew I was in trouble. I could not focus. I could not think clearly. I was trembling and frozen. I hadn't slept so I was near delirious. When I awoke at 3am, I was thrilled that I had slept four hours! I then wondered in a panic if I had thrown off 'my' schedule of meds. I grabbed my little schedule and headed to the bathroom. A swimmy kind of feeling followed me in but I figured it was probably my middle of the night fuzzy. 

The next thing I knew, my husband was yelling loudly at me. He was telling me to wake up. (Wasn't he just four hours ago telling me to go to sleep?) I was awkwardly perched in our bathtub, feet straight in the air. My head was scooched down perpendicular to the faucets. The next next thing I knew, I was back in bed, wondering what in the world? My very rational, very calm inducing hubby of 50 years was clearly losing it. That scared me more than the past ten minutes of unconsciousness. He tried to assess me and I myself. Then a thought hit-my husband lifted a dead weight, unconscious me up and out of a deep tub and onto a bed 10 feet away! He has a very bad back! He'll be 70 in a few months! How in the world! It was all too surreal. Too other worldly, but I knew I had to get to earth and figure out what was next.

Next will come in bullet points:

• ride in an ambulance
• 8 hours in ER
• 3 rides to the CT room
• 1 doppler on my carotid
• 4 different blood draws
• room in the oncology ward
• met with a kidney specialist and received excellent advice how to undo the situation I got myself into
• Found out that the huge amount of water I was ingesting, was filling my stomach so that I had no desire to eat; the water literally diluted my sodium so down I went. The amount of meds I was taking was excessive considering I didn't need them
• had a bevy of caring, tender oncology nurses
• 2 daughters came to visit
• 1 son since the other was busy coaching his wife's birth adventure
• 36 hours released

Whew.

This is not meant to terrify you. This is not meant to be a poor Deb whiny fest. This is to illustrate the depths of fear and it's web. I count it my own fault that I was so fearful. I have been assured time and time again that He is near and I know it. I chose to settle in on my own mangled control over something that I knew God was in control of, but just in case...

I know now that all that had to happen. Our caring, loving Father wanted me to wake up from my lack of faith to trusting Him with it all, not just what I wanted.  I know now that it was the best way that it would have turned out. Had I mentioned that this 69 year old woman with osteoporois, flipped over a safety rail, landed head up, in a dead weight into a steel tub with ceramic tile all around, with only a tiny cut on her foot? That there was absolutely NO bones broken in the event?? That I didn't even take a Tylenol for pain, it was that small of an amount of discomfort?

When God wants to get our attention and we keep running saying, 'Oh thanks God! I got this part!', believe me when I say, He will get your attention and He'll do it in a way that you will be praising Him in the end.

Our God is a good, good Father.

Praise God!!!!