Path(o) Forward (See what I did there? 😉 Post #18)

 

On my way to church!

I attended church in person yesterday. 😊 It felt good to worship with other members of God’s family; I even kept it together…mostly. (Music doesn’t count, since it often makes me cry.) I say mostly because after the service I chatted with a friend. Correction: I planned to chat with a friend. But you know, that’s not so easy right now. No, I wasn’t swarmed, and no, no one said anything triggering, I’m not entirely sure why I teared up, I just know that it’s become my new normal. I’m not impressed. I can only attribute it to an overwhelming feeling of gratefulness, knowing that these people are praying for me. 

For me. 😳 I’ve never needed intercessory prayer before. Well, I mean I did, but I didn’t ask for it, and my life was certainly not hanging in the balance! So the way things are going, I’m hoping to be able to actually chat with people sometime after Thanksgiving. I think I’ll set November 15th as the date I hope to have a normal conversation…without tears. I still can’t sing, (apologies to the people ahead of me in church yesterday; I tried, and they may have thought that I had a cat in my purse with its tail stuck in the zipper or something…) but I think this might be the result of a combination of factors that can apparently take up to 6 months to resolve, so I’ll just view that as yet another opportunity to practice patience.

My niece got married on Saturday and my hubby and I attended the ceremony held outside beneath a leafy canopy in a beautiful grove of trees on my brother’s farm. The bride was stunning, the message was meaningful and the vows even more impactful, given the events of the past months. (I may have leaked a little when they vowed: “for sickness and in health.”) It was so neat to see neighbors from the area in which I spent most of my childhood, although some of them have aged. It was rather strange seeing the parents of former classmates with white hair! (Except our former next-door neighbors  - I’m convinced they never age.) Some knew about my little post-op escapade and in attempting to answer their questions, I realized how little I actually knew about the whole experience. So, being the Mom of The Google Family, I did a little research. Do. Not. Recommend. 😖

There’s a reason my hubby doesn’t like to discuss this time period. For me, my research just brought home the power of prayer. 

1. ARDS is defined as when fluid fills up the air sacs in your lungs. Too much fluid in your lungs can lower the amount of oxygen or increase the amount of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream which can prevent your organs from getting the oxygen they need to function, and can eventually cause organ failure. I was diagnosed with severe ARDS which resolved to mild ARDS over about 24 hours. That was a fast recovery!
2. Respiratory failure is defined as having a Pa02/F102 ratio of less than 300. (The P/F ratio is the arterial partial pressure of oxygen (PaO2) divided by the inspired oxygen concentration (FiO2).) 
• Did you know that having a Pa02/Fi02 ratio of less than 100 results in a mortality rate of around 50%? Neither did I. 
3. ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) is used in critical cases where blood is pumped outside of your body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back to tissues in the body. It is used when:
• The blood PH is less than 7.2. My lowest measurement was 7.2. 
• The Pa02/Fi02 ratio is less than 70. My ratio was 73. 

So thank you for praying! It looks like I narrowly escaped needing to be on ECMO. 😬 My research also revealed that most patients do not walk out after a 6 day stay in ICU. (Okay, okay, so I was wheeled out…details, schmetails! I did pass the hall walking test first.) They usually spend at least a week in ICU, then more time on a regular ward, then go home. No wonder they were reluctant to let me leave! Every article I read spoke of reasonable expectations for each week of recovery, expectations I blew through at a miraculous rate. I feel a bit silly now for being so annoyed that I was weak, given what is considered normal. I should not have been able to weed my garden for several hours only weeks after my incident! The fact that I could retire “Benjamin Blumchen,” my incentive respirator after less than 2 weeks because it was no longer a challenge, is also nothing less than a miracle. So thank you, again, for praying. I now know more than I ever needed or wanted to learn about ARDS, and Ph levels, and P/F ratios, and ECMO criteria...etc. So if you ever need proof that God is still in the miracle business, reread this paragraph, or here's the Reader’s Digest version: For patients whose ARDS is severe enough to require ECMO, (and I was awfully close) mortality is <50 - 75%. I was only intubated for 3 days. I really, really shouldn’t have done so well. Thank you, Jesus! 💗

We got my pathology results back today from my revision surgery that was done on July 27. We think it’s good news?🤔 I currently have 3 “medical people” in my home and the general consensus is that the second surgery did not reveal any more cancer. In other words, the tissue they removed increased the margins around the tumors that were removed the first time but did not find any more tumors. Of course, I may have to correct this information after we see the surgeon tomorrow afternoon, as I’m convinced these pathology results are written in a code only understood by those in the oncology world. (Oh, and speaking of corrections, I finally read through some of my test results and it looks like my glucose hit 27, not 12. Yikes.) So was the second surgery unnecessary? No, it was. There are required minimum margins in cancer surgery and the first surgery hadn’t left enough of a margin in one area. That’s all been fixed and we’re hoping to get an oncologist’s appointment within the next week or two. 

And so we find ourselves edging towards the side of the “eye of the storm.” I feel like I’ve been in fight mode since receiving my diagnosis, except that the enemy keeps chickening out or rescheduling our matches, or something. It’s quite annoying. It might sound a little strange to hear that I’m impatient to begin, but it feels like chemo is just another weapon in my arsenal against cancer. However, after today’s Googling session, I’m more convinced than ever that prayer is my greatest weapon. So, thank you, yet again. I kinda like being alive. 😁