Another Bad Day...

My mom is truly much better than I, at expressing the thoughts and feelings that we have during the trials that we face as we battle cancer. She has an incredible gift of words and writing. But, I know that writing this is a burden sometimes and I wanted to take the opportunity to express my thoughts with each one of you faithful readers, and give you the current status as of today.

This past Monday Dad was doing much better, he was out riding his bike in the neighborhood. We really thought that we were on the up and up. Tuesday was a similar day. This morning (Wednesday) he and my mom got up with the kids, read their scriptures, and sent the girls off on their way to school. He wanted to get a lot accomplished today with his new energy. He even told my Mom that he wanted to get out and wash the windows. With a whole lot of optimism he decided to get in the shower and get ready for the new day that he had been given.

Shortly after getting out of the shower things began to take yet another turn for the worse. It happened rather quickly. His equalibrium was off, he had slurred speech, and violent vomitting began to occur. He also had a little rupture come from his incision where they had cut open his head 8 weeks ago. It continued to leak all day long, it wasn't blood it had a light pinkish color to it. All of this was completely abnormal and not part of the scheduled plan. My mom called the nurse and both determined that it was necessary to take him in to the ER. She got her things together and off they went.

I was working up in Salt Lake at the time and met them at the ER. Dad was all bandaged up on his head, and sitting in a wheel chair. He was asleep (Dad hasn't been tired for weeks by the way... constant energy). I tried talking to him, he said one sentence... he was hungry... and went back to sleep. They admitted him and that was the last time we heard from him for several hours. When the doctors would come in they would say, "HAROLD" in a pretty load voice. He didn't open his eyes and did not talk. Didn't even make a movement. They tried poking him, shaking his arm... nothing. All we could do was sit. They decided to do a CT scan, because this would give us the quickest results and we could see if there was new growth, bleeding etc.

The CT scan results came in, they found air in his cranium (extremely abnormal for 8 weeks post surgery). They were stumped as to what the cause was. Was their leaking spinal fluid? Was their an infection? Movement? They didn't know... They did a spinal tap and then the neuro surgeon team came to analyze the results what they are concluding is that Dad has spinal menengitis. They will confirm this in the next couple days, but they are treating it as this for now. This is really a hard thing for us to really get our arms around. It is hard enough worrying about the tumors in his brain and what they are doing...

Dad is very swollen, and rashy, and still has not been able to really communicate with us through the day. He feels pain and pressure in his head. We have to wear masks when we are in his room because of the worry of more infection. This is a very serious and we do not know what the outcome will be.

With all this being said, you may also be wondering how my mom is holding up, the kids etc. We, together as a family have been fighting cancer for three years. With those three years we have learned how to deal with our emotions to a certain extent. We have been able to see the worst case/best case scenario. We know how to exercise faith, and pray and trust in the Lord and his plan for each of us and for our Dad. My Mom is a rock. She is simply amazing, there is no better word to describe her. Many of you that know her would agree. As I have watched her communicate with the doctors I was amazed. To me, it is like a foreign language. But with her, she has done the research, she is on top of it, and she is able to understand everything and be fully functional for my Dad. What a blessing she is.

The kids, are doing ok from what I gather. I haven't been with them for most of the day today because we have been up at the hospital while they were at school etc. I think they are scared for the worst, and want to have normalcy wherever possible... but that is hard.

We are hangining in there and trying to do the best that we can. We are so grateful for each of you. We have felt of your love and your prayers. Thank you for your Christlike service and example that you have shown each of us. You have helped us want to be better people, and to love more fully.

I will keep you posted on any news of improvement or otherwise.

Love,

Jon