happy change

dad moved into his own room today! he's out of the icu (after 3 weeks) wahoo! i was just talking in therapy today about how important it seemed to me to have him move into his own space. just moving out of the icu lowers my stress level i think. it makes it more like he's going to be ok. i was talking in therapy today about how it's only been 3 weeks since dad went into the hospital. he was admitted on election day exactly 21 days ago. and to me it seems like months since that happened. that was the last time i really had a normal conversation with him. so many things have happened, oy. so i'm trying to do a few things, one is let myself be exhausted. because i am. i lay down to read and fall asleep for 3 hours. i don't have to be at work till 9am, and i can't get up early to go for a walk, i'm just closing my eyes and then opening them 8-10 hours later and i'm still spent. the dark circles under my eyes are slowly going away, i might have normal sleep soon. i'm trying to focus on seminary stuff again. i'm pretty committed to staying on the east coast i think. rochester/lancaster/richmond/louisville(the farthest i think) and i think there's a school in portland maine, but i'm not sure. there are also places in jersey and mass that i need to check out. i think i'll spend all weekend on the internet :O)
all this stuff with my family just really cements that part of my calling in this life is to my family, and for me that means staying reasonably close to home.

ok. i've rambled enough. i'm off to sleep! night all
love and hugs
r

here's dad!

hey! i went to see dad yesterday, he's down to that one machine on the right side of the picture. he has some iv's still but just the one feeding tube. he had real breakfast the other day and they hope to move him to his own room in the next day or two. the bruises on his arm are a result of his platelet count being so low. any time he bumped anything he got big ugly bruises, but they are healing as his platelet count goes up. i'll post more tomorrow, i'm pretty exhausted and i have to get up early tomorrow to go to the 'hunters breakfast' at grammy's church. i'll report on that tomorrow. oh central pennsylvania. love you!

romero

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen. Oscar Romero

I read this prayer sporadically. and i love the hope it provides, and the permission it grants to say 'i can't do everything and that's ok.' i think it's particularly weighing on my mind today because i'm thinking about thanksgiving so much. we're going to be able to have thanksgiving dinner this year, but my brother and his wife won't be there, and dad won't be there. and dad isn't in his own room yet, so we can't take food to him (he's not eating solid foods anyway) but we'll have to have our dinner and then go visit him afterwards. we do have a lot to be thankful for this year. but it's still hard. everytime someone says that, we're reminded that he almost didn't make it. twice. that in the past two weeks we've had to face the reality that dad wouldn't live to see thanksgiving. now that he's going to make it, i am surely thankful and blessed and i know it, but it doesn't make almost losing him not hurt. it's hard to have so many conflicting emotions all at the same time. just makes me want to crawl into bed and hide.

i hope you all are having a great wednesday, and that you have a fantastic thanksgiving (ha. the irony) i love you all and am truly blessed to have friends like you.
r

mmmm hot chocolate

so i'm sitting in my office drinking hot chocolate. nearing the end of the first really normal day in about 2 weeks. i was in therapy today and just couldn't stop talking about how important it was for me to have a normal day. i think there's just so much that's totally not normal (like pretty much everything) that i need some normal. so i came to work, went to therapy, came back to work. talked to people on the phone met with a client, made some appointments. i've never been happier to have a boring, mildly irritatingly normal day. i'm so excited to go home and hang out and fall asleep. well i'll probably stop and get some wine on the way home, so go home, drink wine, and fall asleep. still fun :O)

so the exciting news for the day is that (with a lot of help i'm sure) the occupational therapist at the hospital had dad stand up!! mom is also having a normal day so she called to talk to his nurses and they told her that he stood up and that he was hangin' in there. i've never been so excited for someone to stand up ever :O) so i'm going to go to the hospital tomorrow with mom, maybe we'll get to see the standing! who knows. or maybe we can ask if he found the slot machines and the bar :O)

oh the drugs

so dad has been so severely drugged up the past week or so that he's still a little loopy. yesterday he thought the helicopter was a jet and kept asking if there were jets flying around, and today he asked mom if the nurses station was a bar and if there were any slot machines around. and he told her that he wanted to go on vacation in aruba when he gets out of the hospital. which would sound fun, but dad doesn't fly, so i'm not sure how he plans to get there. maybe a cruise?

my little brother is driving me insane. i need more than a 12 hour break from him. i think i'm taking tomorrow to lead a normal life. go to work, go for a walk, maybe go to the grocery store, hang out with my roommates. pretend dad isn't in the hospital. then i'll go up on tuesday and then thursday-sunday i'm guessing since i don't have to work.

mom talked to one of the residents working with dad today. she thought he would maybe be in the critical care unit through the end of the week and then into his own room for about a week. so sometime in december he'll be home. i'm trying to conserve using my time off while he's all out of it so that i can take it when he's either in his own room and bored out of his mind or when he's at home and needs someone to be there with him.

it's been a long weekend. i'm jazzed to sleep tonight. kinda wish i didn't have to go to work, but i know that it will be good to do something routine.and i am totally ordering food from somewhere tomorrow. perhaps pizza for lunch. hmmmm. oh the possibilities. ok. that's the weekend update!
peace out kids

things are looking up!

dad is off dialysis, his fever is down, his blood pressure is stable, he's producing things he's supposed to produce...and for the first time in a week, they took the breathing tube out and he can talk!!!!!!!! wahoooooooooo i'm going up to see him tomorrow or sunday, and i can't wait. i'm so excited that he can talk now! i haven't talked to mom, so i'm not sure if she told him he had 2 transplants or not. we're not sure he has any idea that there were two. anyway. so excited. things are all going in the proper direction :O) dad's chances of living are exponentially greater than they were just 48 hours ago. thanks for your thoughts and prayers and emails, i know i couldn't have made it this far without them. you guys are the best. love you! r

yay.

we got a call last night at 10:30ish and the said the liver was all hooked up and appeard to be working and that the surgery was just suppossed to be another 90 minutes. my brother called me at 1:20am, but i can't remember what he said. i'm assuming it was that dad was back up in cicu, but i was totally asleep. i called mom but she must still be asleep, so i'm waiting for her to call me back. i'm suppossed to drive up in about 30 minutes, but i'm totally sleepy,so i might wait till 9:30 to leave, i can't get in until 11 anyway. lets hope this liver works!

ok

there is a donor liver from delaware. it's only 23 years old so they're hopeful it will work out. not sure yet what me and timmy are doing, but dad's scheduled for surgery at 6pm today.

rach

tuesday sucks.

we got to the hospital around 11:30 this morning and mom told us. dads liver was in place and the blood was flowing through it, but it wasn't doing anything. they did a third biopsy and compared them and found that the liver was dying. so dad is back on the transplant list. this time right at the top, and this time for a 3 state radius. if a liver becomes available from 'pittsburgh to delaware' the doc said, dad gets first dibs. i assume that since they're putting him on this list that they think he can live through the surgery. but i think i have to confront the reality that he might die. if they don't get a liver soon enough, i don't know how long he will live, even being in the hospital and hooked up to a million machines, i'm not sure how much they can do. i know that life isn't fair. and our family has had a pretty blessed existence, but it just feels like it's not fair. my siblings are young, i don't think my sister has made peace with our dad. i'm only 26, i don't feel like i'm old enough to be losing a parent. i just want to scream and cry and kick the floor, a good old fashioned temper tantrum. there's nothing i can do but pray for strength and peace.

monday monday monday

dad's fighting the infection as i type. he's been pretty non-responsive all day, mom wasn't sure why, if it was the antibiotics or the steriods he's on. he got a little better, which is all we can ask for. there are 4 liver functions that they check to see if the liver is working, and 2 of them have been working, one just barely kicked in today and we're still waiting for the 4th. the good thing is that there's pretty much no chance of rejection of the liver, it just needs to start working. the doc's say that because dad was sooo sick when he had the surgery it's taking longer than they thought. but for now we're really just focusing on fighting the infection. me and timmy and maybe grammy are going to be going up to the hosptial tomorrow. e and j have come back to state college, there were 50mph winds at the job site so they did some work this morning and then came back to the hospital today. there really is something so important about just being present. i'm going to hang out with my roommates tonight and i think that will be some good stress relief. oh well. i'm aware that what i want might not be the same as what is going to happen, so lots of praying for strength to endure whatever is to happen. and for peace of mind while we wait to see how things are going to work out. for wisdom for the doctors and nurses and also peace of mind for dad as he's laying in the hospital.

ok. dinner time.
love you all
r

so.

apparently the liver isn't just working slow, it's barely working. which you know is the point of having a new one, that it works. sigh. so today they did a biopsy on the liver, just so they could take a look at it and see if there was something they didn't see before they did the surgery, things like that. the preliminary exam of the biopsy was good, the doctors are hopeful that the liver kicks in at any moment. if it doesn't then dad will go back on a transplant list. sigh. and he'll be 'status 1' and he'll be first in line for a liver in a 3 state radius. not sure which the other 2 states are, but anyway. so then they would just do another transplant. we're really really really hoping that the liver just starts working. they were thinking that because he was soooo sick when they did the transplant that could be why it's taking so long. so, we're all just praying that it kicks in. the other bad news was that they found some germs in his blood, so they took some blood and the infectious disease guy was going to check it out. they put him on an antibiotic the doc called 'the big guns'.
his hemoglobin's (ha. i knoooow that's spelled wrong) and his blood pressure were stable, so that's good. it's just hard to think he might have to do the surgery again. and he's hooked up to a million machines and i'm just so afraid that he's not going to be ok. the doc kept saying that he was ok, but still definitely in critical condition and not out of the woods yet. the nurse said about 5 days in the intensive care unit. i slept this afternoon a bit and i'm going to try and go to work tomorrow, just to do some work and try and figure out what my plan is for the rest of the week. and to distract myself. i've had nothing but dad and him being sick and almost dying since wednesday night and it's just too much.
ok. i'm waiting for mom to call and check in and then i'm going to go home and go to bed. sigh.

day 3

so today i went up and hung at the hospital. dad's doing ok, but just ok. yesterday we thought the doc's had said the liver was slow...it's still slow to the point of not really working. which is sooooo not the point of a transplant. they say that sometimes it takes a few days for the liver to realize where it is and what it's suppossed to be doing. so we're just praying that it kicks in any minute. dad was pretty with it today, still has the breathing tube thing in so he can't talk, but he wrote us a few notes, asking what day it was and if he was ok. it's so hard and i just want him to be ok. i don't know what happens if the liver doesn't start working. do we just have to give up? mom said we're just not even thinking about that option. the nurse said he would probably be in icu for 5ish days, so that's wednesday or thursday. the nice thing about that is that he has nurses there all the time, the bad part is there's not really anywhere for us to hang out. and when he has the breathing thing in he can't talk to us so we just feel hopeless.

i'm exhausted and totally drained. hopefully i'll get to spend some time decompressing tomorrow. i'm just completely spent. ok, i think i have about an hour to lay down before i have to drive back to the hospital.

sigh.

update

hey everyone, it's been the longest 36 hours of my life. i want to say thank you for the phone calls and emails and text messages, they all meant a lot. dad's surgery was about 8-9 hours long, he was done around 7pm and then moved up to the icu later and we got to see him around 12:30am. it took a while to stablize him, he was bleeding a lot and they went through 30 units of blood (i guess a lot? frannie?) he's still in the icu, kind of drifting in and out of being awake. he has a breathing tube and is on dialisis. apparently he was really really sick and the doctor said it was a 'life and death situation' and had they not done the surgery when they did then he wouldn't have lived through the weekend. sigh. so we saw him at 12:30am and went back to the hotel to sleep. they called mom around 2am and they took him down to the OR again because they were having problems with bleeding. he was in the OR till about 7am this morning and he's still in the icu. the doc's say the liver is doing everything it should be doing, just a little slow, but they're hoping it will perk up and work just fine. it's really hard to see him, he's all hooked up to everything and the breathing tube just looks brutal. i'm home now to help take care of timmy and stay the night in state college and then i'll head back to the hospital in the morning. the doc's said the next 48 hours are really important because of how sick he was when they did the surgery. so i'll be driving back and forth for the next few days, i'm going to try and go to work a bit monday maybe? i don't know it just depends on when he gets out of ICU the doc also said he could be on dialisis(sp?) for up to 2 weeks, so we've got a haul ahead of us.

ok. timmy and i need to find food. thanks again for the prayers (ha and rainbows and butterflies:O)
love and hugs, rach

wahoo!

mom just called and the surgery has started!!! wahooooooooooo the doc's will call in a few hours to let her know how long it should be :O)

r

keep your fingers crossed...

the fourth liver has checked out! dad should be in surgery right now, barring any last minute weirdness (mom says "i don't know, they could drop the liver or something") the surgery started at 7. it should be a 4-6 hour procedure and then a few days in the 'critical care unit' where he'll be knocked out and then some hospital time to recoup a bit and then home.

so keep your fingers crossed there are no last minute hold ups, i'll post with great sadness if there are. and i'll post again when i can.

prayers and happy thoughts of rainbows and butterflies always welcome :O)

love you!

well. that explains that.

they removed 6 litre's of fluid from dad's abdomen today (!) i mean, i'd be miserable with that much fluid hanging out doing nothing too. i guess that as his liver becomes less functional his kidneys are having to work overtime and they're not able to do everything and thusly the fluid builds up (i guess) so dad is in the hospital till at least friday. now the crazy thing is that they might have a liver to give him. they will know around 6am (again) so no one is really getting their hopes up, but we'll see. it would be convenient, that's for sure. on the plus side i might actually sleep tonight because i'm already exhausted. ok. peace out yo.

praying the hours

so, there's this tradition of praying the hours.

"Canonical hours are ancient divisions of time, developed by the Christian Church, serving as increments between the prescribed prayers of the daily round. A Book of Hours contains such a set of prayers." now to pray the hours you don't have to have a book of hours, but they are historical things. "A book of hours is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Each book of hours is unique in one way or another, but all contain a collection of texts, prayers and psalms, along with appropriate illustrations, to form a reference for Catholic Christian worship and devotion."
so this is a very old tradition of being intentional about liturgy and prayer throughout your day. original book of hours are absolutely pieces of art. you can read all about them here so i learned about this tradition a year or so ago? and i thought it sounded cool, a way to incorporate more intentional talking to god and reflection and present-ness into my everyday life. so i bought this book (the merton book) because it's got the days separated into the hours and has the passages and prayers that you are suppossed to use during the different times of the day. so i'm going to dig it out (it's still in the moving mess) and see if i like the structure or not, i really think i'm going to and i think it will help manage life stress.
the old medieval books are really fantastic,so if you go to the wikipedia link i think there are some pictures of some pages. very beautiful.

happy monday :O)

i'm feeling a little foggy this morning, like i have a busy weekend hangover or something. for something completely different, i'm going to write about just exciting things today. nothing about dad at all. because honestly, life is pretty great. i have fantastic friends, a future i'm excited about and exciting things are going on. i need to remember that more.

i'm taking thursday and friday off to work on seminary applications, and while i know the essays will be challenging, just the thought of getting the process started is super exciting. i'm so jazzed to just spend a few days doing things for just me. and i'm totally not feeling anxiety about doing it. i know i can't leave town right now, that thought just throws me straight into freaking out, but doing paperwork and writing essays is totally ok. because in a few months it will be ok to leave state college and this helps me know that.

ok. i just started to write about the other new thing that's exciting, but realized it will be a looong post so i'm going to type it all up and post it as its own entity. :O)

um, penn state won on saturday, that's exciting. i wanted the colts to win yesterday, but oh well. i'm excited that basketball season is upon us. i'm interested to see how the celtics do this season. i LOVE kg and rondo so i'm probably going to jump on the celts bandwagon :O)

um. i suppose that's all...i'll post more when i've had time to compile some info.
happy monday everyone!

3rd time was not the charm

mom and dad hit up the hospital last night for the third time. they were there a long time this time and again got sent home. my sister in law tells me that there are an average of 3 false starts, so hopefully next time the liver will be juuuust right. everyone sounded a little exasperated when i called them this morning. grammy, uncle danny, sister and brother. everyone is ready to be all done. sigh sigh and sigh.

every day when i don't sleep so spectacularly i wake up and think i'm going to have dark circles under my eyes, and i never do, but today i look like absolute shit and there's just not anything i can do about it.

i'm going to start brainstorming for seminary essays tomorrow, hopefully that will keep me occupied.

love and hugs.
r

essays are fun!

so i'm going to start my seminary applications this weekend. spend some quality time doing laundry, filling in info, and brainstorming my essays. it's like my friend matt said, they all want a 5 page version of your life, but they all want it just a little bit different. so you can't just copy and paste a thing, you just have to write a new paper for each app. wahoooo! i knew i got that english minor for something :O)

here's one application's directions:
In a separate statement, recount briefly (3 – 5 double-spaced pages) your
a. family and education.
b. decision to prepare for leadership in the church.
c. special interest in a particular area of ministry.
d extracurricular activities during college or community activities.
e. participation in church or other religious work, noting particularly positions of leadership you have held.
f. reasons for seeking admission to Columbia Theological Seminary

oy. not excited. and i'm going to apply i think to 4 schools, so i have 4 slightly different versions of that. wahooooooooooooooooooooo!!

happy friday!
hugs,r

when your body is not your own.

i have friends who have had kids and who have said that after you have a child your body is not your own anymore. it's kind of community property, you no longer have reservations about people seeing it, it's just kind of there. this was exemplified a few weeks ago when a friend (and mom of 2) had some lumps removed from her breast and she just whipped her shirt up and showed us the bruising from the surgery. (we had asked how she was doing and if she was in much pain, so there was a reason for this)and she was like, yeah i just don't care who sees what anymore. i have a friend who's currently 17 weeks pregnant and it's her first kid and we were all looking to see if there was definite baby versus what she calls her 'budda' and i touched her stomach. and after i did it i was immediately like oh my gosh i'm sorry i didn't ask i just touched it and she was like no it's ok don't worry about it. i have another friend who has a toddler(she's still a toddler, right?) and she was at a christmas party and was like 8 months pregnant and another adult was drunk and touched her stomach to move her out of the way. now it's been a few years, and this friend is still annoyed at the drunk lady. it's this weird phenomenon that your body is somehow community property when you're pregnant. strangers think they can touch your stomach and comment about your 'condition.' i was thinking about this today because my dad is sick and this morning he was in a lot of pain and couldn't stand up or sit up and was shaking really badly. so he called his doctor. he waited um about 5 hours for the doctor to call back, through the day he started to feel a bit better, and the doctor finally called back and said oh you're ok it's nothing to worry about. it strikes me as kind of the same thing. once you get sick with some disease, in dad's case cancer, you don't know what's best anymore. you're in a lot of pain? meh, it's ok says the doctor, and you just have to say 'ok' because they know your body better than you do. people poke you and drain you and analyze your blood and know you more intimately that you know yourself. it's weird to think that you're not the expert on your own body. i mean, who knows what i can do better than i do? who knows how much pain is too much for me? it's so weird. so frustrating. i'm ready to be done with this foray into science and medicine.