an ebenezer

throughout the old testament, God instructed his people to set reminders of his faithfulness for future generations. and when their children and grandchildren asked what a particular stack of stones meant, they could retell the story of how God faithfully cared for them. samuel called his stone ebenezer, but there are many instances of God's people marking his grace, with stones and feasts and traditions. i think about this a lot in my own life, as i am a forgetful person.

in part, i keep writing here because steve and i both have siblings who are far away. also, i keep writing because i want my boys to have a record of their childhood (and lets be honest... i am just not a scrapbooker!) but truly the most important reason for my continued presence in this space is that i desire to record the work of God in our lives. I want my boys to be able to come back here and remember (or if they were too young to have memories, be retold) the stories of God's faithfulness to us. he is so good to us, and they need to know it. so my boys, here is the story of how i almost lost my dad.

 

last month, my dad was hospitalized with a strep infection in his blood. because of some back issues he had always struggled with, the infection settled into his spine causing excruciating pain. for a little over a week, he was in the hospital being treated with iv antibiotics that were working on the infection in his blood. during this time, we traveled to tallahassee to visit mimi and papa and so that i could help my mom out at the hospital. when we headed home, my dad was still in a lot of pain. eventually, after his back pain continued to worsen and even the strongest pain medications were doing little good, the doctors found that there were new abscesses growing in his spine. thus, although the antibiotics should have been working, they apparently were not. they performed spinal surgery and cleaned out almost all of the infection, hoping that it would be just the push he needed to start improving. the following day, he was sitting up and looking much better, and we all breathed a sigh of relief and began looking forward to a fairly quick recovery. another day passed and instead of improving, my dad got much worse. now it seemed that he had an infection in his bowels. the strong antibiotics that were used to treat the strep infection had also killed off some of the good bacteria in his colon, making it possible for a very serious infection called c. difficile to thrive. at home, we waited to see how it would all play out, praying that it would be easily treated. the doctors put him on three antibiotics that usually work in treating c. diff, and we waited. one sunday evening, i called my mom to check in and she was very upset. my dad had experienced what looked like a seizure or a stroke. he was in a ct scan, and they didn't know anything yet, but we packed up the sleeping boys and started driving.

 

the next morning, things looked better. no stroke; probably just an episode caused by all of the pain medications he had been on for such a long time. he was more lucid and mom and i visited for a few hours while we waited for the doctors to come and talk with us. in the early afternoon, we were feeling much better and more optimistic when the doctor who was treating the bowel infection came to look at him. nearly four weeks later, i still feel a little anxious when i relive those moments. somehow, i didn't see it coming... how that doctor started talking about daddy's condition (toxic megacolon- a laughably silly name for a very serious condition). he talked about the possibility of bowel rupture and incredibly risky emergency surgery, and was honest about daddy's chances of survival. they moved him down the hall to the icu, we moved our things out of the old room, and i called my brother and sister to fill them in and give them the opportunity to decide if they wanted to book flights home (heather lives in taiwan and jared lives in maryland, so it would take time to get them there). we prepared ourselves for the worst, and i truly believed we were going to lose him.

instead, for the first time since the whole ordeal began, things got just the tiniest bit better. and it was enough. enough to give us some optimism about his chances of living through all of that mess. and although he was still very sick, a few tests came back better than expected. over the course of the next few days, steve left to go home and back to his job. i stayed behind with all four boys. heather and jared (and his roommate anthony) all came, as did three of daddy's siblings and a couple of their spouses. along with them came some relief for me and my mom (who was, understandably exhausted after over two weeks of living in the ER with my dad and showering and sleeping at home only during the few times when he was stable enough to be left alone). we parked my parents' camper a couple of blocks from the hospital and heather, mom, me and the boys all stayed there. for a couple of days, we just waited. for some improvement, or for some sign of what was ahead for us. and slowly, he did improve. on friday, the boys and i headed home, knowing that it was still likely that they would need to do the surgery that was so risky four days before but would be much less so now. it was clear that my boys needed to be home and that they needed some semblance of a normal life after so many weeks of craziness.

 

they did do the surgery two days later, and it went very well. he has been in a hospital-like care facility for a couple of weeks now and is slowly improving. and we are so grateful. what i tell my boys (and what i told them in the midst of all of this... and what i will continue to tell them as it all stretches on) is that we are so blessed that all of this happened. i love my dad, and it was truly awful and heart-wrenching to see him suffering so much, but this time has been good for my family in a way that only God can orchestrate. and really, how can i not feel that way with a mother like this!

   

i am sure that as this year goes on, we will continue to discover the many layers of God's blessing in this experience, and for that we are all incredibly grateful.