Hospitals -&- Easter
For context, read my previous posts:
Hospitals -&- Thanksgiving,
Hospitals -&- Christmas.
The day started out normal. A good day, actually. A fun day; a school day. I showed up to school at 9:00 AM, per usual. It was one of the first days with sunshine and blue skies in a while. I found Jaren wandering the hallways of the church in his big camo slippers. I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk and we ended up pretending to be spies and dramatically running, rolling, and hiding around corners. We found Tracie and asked her to be a spy with us. After maybe 10 minutes of sprinting past doorways and "spying" on innocent bystanders, we discovered that the baptismal pool was open, warm, and unoccupied.
"We should all three put on our swimsuits and sneak into the baptismal pool when no one is looking" Jaren suggested.
And although we all knew he was originally joking, it somehow seemed quite plausible. We even drove home, grabbed our swimsuits, and bought Jaren a pair of shorts at Walmart. We spent the rest of the day hiding backstage, doing homework, and pretending we didn't have our swimsuits on under our clothes. But to no avail -- someone was doing work in the sanctuary the entire day so we never had a moment to sneak out and accomplish our mission. Not only that, but around the time people were finally clearing out of the church and we were about to see victory, I got a call that my mom was in the ER.
Why does this always happen on good days?
"Mom seems to be getting worse."
We didn't know really why she was there.
We thought she was getting better.
We thought she was on the slow road to recovery.
We had fallen back into the illusion that life is predictable and that we can actually place some of our security in circumstances.
Moments like this become blurry -- not just when I remember them, but in the moment. Everything feels fuzzy and nothing settles in. A ton of family came to the hospital and we all waited for the doctor to come by and talk to us. I decided to take a break, walk downstairs, and grab a cup of tea. When I came back, I opened the door to a mostly quiet room full of familiar faces all listening intently to one man in the center who was leaning over my mother's bed.
MRI result: the lesions have gotten bigger again. The cancer is so aggressive that it is no longer reacting to the chemo. The only available options are deciding between the length of life and quality of life. Would you rather live longer and be miserable the whole time or die faster and be comfortable? I think the moment that it hit me was when he looked down at my mom and said "Well, where are you at with this thing? Are you actually wanting to keep fighting it?"
What are you talking about, "Keep fighting it?" None of us have ever considered anything else! There has never been any inkling in my mind of another option. Of course we want to keep fighting it. We thought we were! We thought it was working! Now we have to consider the idea of relenting to this evil disease?
Then came the far too many mentions of the word "hospice."
I didn't emotionally prepare myself for this conversation. I couldn't listen anymore. I couldn't look at him anymore. I began to back farther and farther away. Maybe somehow the distance could save me from the circumstance. I ended up backing out of the door and sanding in the hall. I didn't need to hear any more of his words.
I canceled singing on Easter weekend. I would rather sit in a hospital bed next to my beautiful mom and watch church online than spend this Easter away from her and let her spend it alone. I didn't understand why I had to celebrate Jesus being raised from the dead. "Yay, Jesus was raised but my mom is dying" didn't feel right. Thanks, God, for raising him but letting my mom have this awful disease. I didn't have the right mindset. But suddenly, I realized the truth.
Hospitals -&- Thanksgiving,
Hospitals -&- Christmas.
***
The day started out normal. A good day, actually. A fun day; a school day. I showed up to school at 9:00 AM, per usual. It was one of the first days with sunshine and blue skies in a while. I found Jaren wandering the hallways of the church in his big camo slippers. I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk and we ended up pretending to be spies and dramatically running, rolling, and hiding around corners. We found Tracie and asked her to be a spy with us. After maybe 10 minutes of sprinting past doorways and "spying" on innocent bystanders, we discovered that the baptismal pool was open, warm, and unoccupied.
"We should all three put on our swimsuits and sneak into the baptismal pool when no one is looking" Jaren suggested.
And although we all knew he was originally joking, it somehow seemed quite plausible. We even drove home, grabbed our swimsuits, and bought Jaren a pair of shorts at Walmart. We spent the rest of the day hiding backstage, doing homework, and pretending we didn't have our swimsuits on under our clothes. But to no avail -- someone was doing work in the sanctuary the entire day so we never had a moment to sneak out and accomplish our mission. Not only that, but around the time people were finally clearing out of the church and we were about to see victory, I got a call that my mom was in the ER.
Why does this always happen on good days?
"Mom seems to be getting worse."
***
We didn't know really why she was there.
We thought she was getting better.
We thought she was on the slow road to recovery.
We had fallen back into the illusion that life is predictable and that we can actually place some of our security in circumstances.
Moments like this become blurry -- not just when I remember them, but in the moment. Everything feels fuzzy and nothing settles in. A ton of family came to the hospital and we all waited for the doctor to come by and talk to us. I decided to take a break, walk downstairs, and grab a cup of tea. When I came back, I opened the door to a mostly quiet room full of familiar faces all listening intently to one man in the center who was leaning over my mother's bed.
MRI result: the lesions have gotten bigger again. The cancer is so aggressive that it is no longer reacting to the chemo. The only available options are deciding between the length of life and quality of life. Would you rather live longer and be miserable the whole time or die faster and be comfortable? I think the moment that it hit me was when he looked down at my mom and said "Well, where are you at with this thing? Are you actually wanting to keep fighting it?"
What are you talking about, "Keep fighting it?" None of us have ever considered anything else! There has never been any inkling in my mind of another option. Of course we want to keep fighting it. We thought we were! We thought it was working! Now we have to consider the idea of relenting to this evil disease?
Then came the far too many mentions of the word "hospice."
I didn't emotionally prepare myself for this conversation. I couldn't listen anymore. I couldn't look at him anymore. I began to back farther and farther away. Maybe somehow the distance could save me from the circumstance. I ended up backing out of the door and sanding in the hall. I didn't need to hear any more of his words.
***
***
At first, I was mad at the doctor. Like somehow it was his fault. Somehow he had caused it all. Like he decided it was just a good idea. It sounds silly, but I wanted to trip him as he walked out of the room. I didn't know how to react.
After the doctor communicated with my mom's main doctor from her time in Seattle, they came up with one more option. My mom could take a low-dose chemo pill every day. This pill has maybe a 15% chance of working. If it does work, we don't know how long it will. Her disease is so aggressive it could just quit working like the last one. Her cancer is advancing so quickly that this chemo could not work fast enough. But, it feels better than giving up. This option has more morale. We aren't letting go and seeing how long she survives, but we also aren't making her live miserably for the next few months. We are continuing to take it one day at a time. And even if the result is the same as if we had chosen hospice, at least there seems to be a little more hope.
I canceled singing on Easter weekend. I would rather sit in a hospital bed next to my beautiful mom and watch church online than spend this Easter away from her and let her spend it alone. I didn't understand why I had to celebrate Jesus being raised from the dead. "Yay, Jesus was raised but my mom is dying" didn't feel right. Thanks, God, for raising him but letting my mom have this awful disease. I didn't have the right mindset. But suddenly, I realized the truth.
Circumstances like mine are why we celebrate Jesus being raised from the dead. The whole reason for rejoicing is because that moment provided hope for hopeless. Jesus conquered death. Death no longer has any power since Jesus was raised. Easter weekend is about this very topic. It was a beautiful, powerful, timely reminder of the hope of the gospel. The only reason I can have hope is because Christ was raised from the dead. The only reason I can endure this is because I have that hope. This is the source of my strength.
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