Peaceful Day

I can't feel the weather here inside the hospital, but it looks like one of those drizzly, wet fall days that will send you scurrying for a hot cup of cappucino or a bowl of soup.

Days like this make me feel like I'm in a C.S. Lewis or George MacDonald novel. The British Isles are well acquainted with days like this.

My wife wrote a great blog today about our view, specifically our ability to zoom.

I got the report back on my echocardiogram. It was still good, maybe even very good, but not great like my October echo. This probably due to chemotherapy, and my heart may be back to great within a couple weeks. There's no evidence of a weak area of the heart from Sunday night's mild heart attack.

As soon as the cardiologists can get their hands on me, which will be as soon as I have platelet counts in the hundreds, they will be probing for blocked arteries. I read on the internet about how well they can find blockages, and I'm impressed. I'm not as impressed with suggested solutions, so there may be some head-butting happening. I'm hardening my forehead even as we speak.

Thank you for all your prayers. I'm getting so used to being ill enough to wave at death off in the distance, or sometimes close enough to smell his breath, and then having the doctors do great work which always works out to the best possible scenario, that I could be in danger of taking the blessing of God for granted.

Right now, I'm not. I am infused with gratefulness. I think God knows I could not possibly be more grateful than I am.

But there's been some great answer to prayer, and it's become so normal that I don't always report it well. I had a heart attack, and it did no damage whatsoever. I had an infection and fever while I had no immune system for the third time, and antibiotics have always been able to treat it. I've picked up no flus, gotten no hospital-bred infections, and I've had five weeks total now of being completely susceptible to microbes.

Those are things to thank God for.

Speaking of the infection, Dr. Reddy came in this morning to tell me they finished typing the bacteria in my blood. "It's the same one as last time," she said. "Some weird bacteria we don't know what it is. But the antibiotics are working, so ... okay."

The word "weird" comes up a lot in the hospital around me. Now even my bacteria are weird. The doctors say this bacteria is either carried in my skin or my mouth.

My own, personal, weird bacteria.

One quick funny story. I hope I haven't told it already in a previous post.

When you're going through what I'm going through, you get stuck with needles a lot. Nurses are always looking for veins in my hands and forearms. One particular day, I told a nurse that it'd be better if she had to do this with one of my teenage sons. Her reply cracked me up.

"Oh, I know," she said. "My son is sixteen, and he plays football. Sometimes, we sit at breakfast, and I look across the table and think, 'Ooh, I'd love to stick him.'"

I laughed so hard it probably made it pretty hard to finish sticking me. They're pretty good at this stuff, though.