Welcome to my Nightmare

My entire life, but more specifically my married life, I have had the same nightmare. It always involves me losing the ones I love J and Amberly and Zoey specifically. This usually happens when they are driving to see family members and I am not with them, tragic drunk driver, or sliding off the road or any number of bad things. Sometimes I fear losing them in a house fire, sometimes a fall from some height. It’s a recurring theme, these bad dreams replaced my standard nightmare from years past, the one where I am crawling across a wide rope and feet from the end I watch as the strands that make up the rope snap one at a time plunging me to certain doom on the rocks below.

Fast forward in life and I realize that there are times that I have been so wrapped up in these nightmares that I have distanced myself from the ones I love. I have tried to protect them or to get them to be safe. I have tried to take over and take the place of God. I have been a man that is full of self righteousness and pride. I can handle it I can fix it. That’s the thing. Somewhere in the past two years the nightmare has changed a bit and this ordeal has just solidified that change. My nightmare now is that I will somehow not be the man that they need me to be, that I have worked so hard at exorcising my demons and keeping them safe that I will not take the chances and step up as the man of God that I am to be. That I will forget how to ask for help.

This whole ordeal has helped me realize that Help is okay That I can ask for help and accept it. God has helped me through these past two years to recognize that I am not and never have been the man nor do I need to be. This is even more pronounced as I try and understand the remonstrations of my wife.

So to the update.

1. The dialysis yesterday helped she is awake now much more than ever before.


2. Earlier this AM J began to answer questions with nods and gestures.


3. I asked her to squeeze my hand and because she was frustrated at my lack of understanding she bore down hard. It was the best feeling in the world.


4. Kidneys are producing more they are happier with that.


5. She still has a long way to go. The tube is going to come out at some point in the next two days and she will be in icu for at least 24 more hours. We then begin the long trek to finding out about the mass and when she can begin to have a more normal existence.


6. Hemoglobin is still not where it needs to be (look at me with the big medical terms)

I can not begin to describe the joy that I felt when she began to respond and when her eyes took on more cognizance. She still goes off into la la land once in a while and who can blame her she is still very sick and is tied to a bed. She has lost seven days of her life. The last thing she remembers is the Ambulance in Oakland.

Keep Praying because it’s obvious that the prayers are working.