TEA FOR TWO – In Conclusion:
1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain, faith, hope and love…
Reflecting on what the last six years have been like, it was a rough time. I always knew life isn’t fair, has never been fair and is never going to be fair so I might as well get over it. Hunter and I have lived through a prime example of it so I’m a believer.
However, it has been said, ‘God will not lead you to what he cannot lead you through.’ Six years ago, I claimed that promise, because I strongly feared I was not up to the task that God had lead me to.
The first six days of Hunter’s radiation treatments were a roller coaster ride. We were getting back to Ronald McDonald House as late as 5:00 P.M. in the afternoon. Hunter was not allowed to have anything to eat or drink until he came out of recovery, which was usually around 3:30 or 4:00 P.M., because his treatments were being made at the end of the treatment schedule because he was the newest oncology patient to be put on the schedule. He couldn’t eat or drink anything after I put him down for the night, so the sum total of his daily intake of food and drink was all happening in a five or six hour window of time. As a mother of a toddler with cancer, I didn’t see how he could have a good outcome on a schedule like that.
On day four of Hunter’s radiation treatments at University of Iowa Hospitals, in the afternoon he began running a low grade temperature, vomited, and was lethargic until bedtime. At midnight he woke up with a temperature of 101 degrees so I called the University Hospitals ER. A neurosurgeon came on the line to consult with me, and said I could bring Hunter to ER, but he suspected that instead of neurology, Hunter should be seen by either oncology/radiation or pediatrics. I declined to take Hunter to the hospital where we might set for hours while hospital bureaucracy had the great debate about who should treat Hunter for the temperature.
The next morning, Hunter seemed well enough to have his radiation treatment. However, again at midnight, Hunter woke up with a temperature of 101 degrees. I again called ER, and we again had the same conversation about who should be taking care of the symptoms related to a temperature in a young child who was also a cancer patient with a brain tumor.
Wednesday morning, Hunter had another radiation treatment, but by 11:30 A.M. he was running a temperature again. This time, while we were still in recovery, I told the floor nurse of my middle of the night dilemmas with ER when Hunter had been running a temp on Monday night and Tuesday night. I asked for help in resolving this issue before we returned to Ronald McDonald for the evening.
She put in a request to have a pediatrician come and check on Hunter. That same week, there was a viral epidemic that was running the specialty clinic ragged, and it was 3:00 P.M. before the resident physician showed up, harassed, and defensive about being called in to consult on a child she didn’t know anything about when she was already overwhelmed. She knew I was ticked off when she realized I had overheard her complaints to the head nurse.
To her credit, she became the epitome of professionalism, and ordered blood tests for Hunter. She told me I could then take him back to Ronald McDonald House for the night. I went to the parking ramp to pick up my car, and had started to pull away from the hospital when I decided to pull over to the curb and pray. I said, “Lord, I’m worried Hunter is seriously ill. I’m worried that while the hospital staff are haggling over who should be taking care of him, he could take a serious turn for the worse. What should I do?”
I know there are those who question whether we actually have divine intervention in times of crisis in this world. I know there are those who believe that somebody who hears voices is certifiable. However, I’m telling this anyway. I heard this voice say to me, not out loud, the way Hunter and I can talk to each other and hear each other, but telepathically. However, it was as real as any conversation I’ve ever had with another person in my life. I’ll identify the voice as masculine, but I’m not sure it makes any difference. That person said to me, “Call Dr. Heitsman!”
I took my cell phone out and looked at it. The Ottumwa Pediatric Clinic number was in my Phone Book. I thought, ‘And what do I have to lose?’ I called Dr. Heitsman and his pediatrics nurse, Sharon, answered the phone. I explained my concerns to her as best I could, not only about the vomiting, the temperature, but also about Hunter having nothing to eat from bedtime until the following afternoons when he had come out from under his anesthesia because they were giving him such late appointment times for his radiation treatments. Shortly after that, Dr. Heitsman came on the phone. He said, “I’ve never had problems like this before with a patient I’ve referred to Iowa City for treatments, but give me a few minutes, Jody, to try to work this out. I’ll get back to you.”
While I waited for Dr. Heitsman to call me, I returned to Ronald McDonald House, and tried to coax Hunter to drink something. In about 45 minutes I got a call back.
“I’ve talked to a resident doctor who has worked with me here at the clinic in Ottumwa. She has agreed to be Hunter’s supervising physician while he’s in Iowa City going through treatment. Take Hunter back to the hospital. We’re admitting him overnight for observation.” I was both relieved and astounded. Based on my gut instincts, Dr. Heitsman was admitting my son to the hospital for the night. I thanked him profusely and returned to the hospital with Hunter.
While we had a leisurely evening, again, around midnight, Hunter sat up in the bed, vomited, and his eyes rolled in the back of his head. He flopped back on the bed, unconscious. I paged a nurse, but nobody came. I touched him and I could tell he was burning up with fever. I took his temperature, and it registered 107 degrees Farenheit. I tried paging the nurse again, and then I took off down the hall, shouting, “Help, I need help!” I stopped at the doorway of a room that had four staff members in it, and I turned back around and ran back to Hunter’s room, not even waiting to see if any of them followed me.
I got a wet washcloth, and began bathing Hunter’s face, hair, neck, arms, palms of his hands, chest with it, while I waited for the on call physician to check his temp again. She prescribed a rectal suppository for his temperature, and the first one came right back out. So the nurse tried a second one. In about five minutes Hunter’s temperature began falling a little. We cleaned up the sheets, and gave him a bed bath, and he slept peacefully through the rest of the night, but I had a ‘toss and turn’ night.
At 6:00 A.M. the next morning, the head of anesthesiology met me at Hunter’s hospital room door. We discussed my concerns that Hunter was not going to have a good outcome with the radiation treatments if the only time all day he could eat or drink anything were between 4:00 or 5:00 P.M. in the afternoon and bedtime at 10:00 P.M. He said he understood, and he would do his utmost to schedule Hunter’s treatments times first thing in the morning from now on.
Next, I had a visit from the hospital administrator. She wanted to know if I had talked to anesthesiology, and if I was able to resolve the problems with Hunter’s radiation schedule. By now, I was a little stunned and amazed. First I had the head of anesthesiology in our hospital room. Now, I head the CEO of the hospital in our hospital room. Then my new resident pediatrician entered the room with a class of student doctors. She explained to them, that while Hunter looked pretty good, he was a very sick little boy. Hunter had septus, two blood bacterias from an infected PIC line.
I interrupted her to say, “I know how he got that. Monday morning, when the anesthesiologist picked up his pick line to put the propofol in it he did not disinfect it first. I might not have known the difference, but I had been trained, myself, the Thursday before about how to disinfect it and flush the line out with heparin.”
I was beginning to get a picture of why I had received a visit from the head of anesthesiology and the head of the hospital. Hunter was a very sick little boy. He had to have Intravenous antibiotics for twelve days. He had a second PIC line go bad while we were in the hospital and had to have it replaced as well.
I had many opportunities, in the days that followed, to reflect on that moment along the curb in front of the hospital when I stopped and prayed for some divine direction. It has occurred to me that, if Hunter and I had been at Ronald McDonald House that night when he was running that 107 degree temperature, that he might not have survived it, or he might have had serious brain damage before I could get him to the hospital to treatment.
Suffice to say, I don’t believe we’ve traveled this path our feet have been set upon alone. At any point along the road, our story could have had a different outcome for either of us or both of us. Whoever that being was who spoke to me that afternoon in my car, on rare occasions, that being has spoken to me before.
Remember the day I found out Hunter had an inoperable brain tumor, when I was praying for how I was going face each day when I was paralyzed with the fear my little boy was going to die of cancer? That day, this same being reminded me what Haydn Evans had said about living ‘with’ cancer, giving me a rope of hope to hold on to, showing me how we could ‘live with cancer’ and make it through this.
II Corinthians 12:9 And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient unto thee…
There are times in our lives that the only rope we have left to hold onto is the rope of hope! But along with the knot of hope in that rope, are the knots of faith and love. When we believe we have come to the end of our rope, these three knots to cling to are enough. They are more than enough. They are actually everything of any substance that really counts in our lives.
Last night, in the middle of the night, as I let our dog, Buttercup, out and stepped out into the balmy darkness, staring at the crescent moon over the ruffled fall foliage, I found myself thinking, ‘I’m in love with autumn at the moment, the beauty of Mother Nature and all the glory surrounding me.’ Every day, I take my camera out, like a white canvas waiting for color, and walk through the woods, capturing special moments through a tiny lens. As I move through the tranquil serenity, I thank God Hunter and I are alive to celebrate it, to find joy in it. However, our real hope is in heaven. I’ve come to believe Hunter and I are still here because we have things unfinished in this life that we need to do. Our hope, though, rests in a future in a place called heaven, on the other side of a veil, we cannot see and have to have faith in, faith that we are loved enough that a Savior went there to prepare a place for us.
Meanwhile, life is a precious gift, meant to be experienced and meant to be celebrated for the genuine blessing it is.