Jane had a fairly good night’s sleep last night… or did she?
A tired, tired day. I feel totally exhausted and I can’t imagine how Jane feels still working through her first dose of chemo. Fatigue is a known side effect. What they don’t tell you is how chemo affects you by causing all manner of bizarre thoughts to flash into the mind… quite disturbing. Concentration is very limited and short term memory totally messed up. On top of that extreme stress brings its own problems. Given that I’ve suffered with M.E. for a decade it feels like we’re a right pair of confused people, and I have to admit I’ve also been a bit ratty today! M.E. is a bit like having a permanent dose of the flu with brain fog, poor concentration and forgetfulness a way of life on top of chronic fatigue. It was only today that I remembered the drug charts I made last time Jane went through chemo. It was far less complicated last week but now we have more to remember, with on-going anti-sickness and indigestion tablets plus new pre-chemo steroids and post-chemo self-injections (Jane is really brave!). Mid-afternoon neither of us could remember within a few hours when she last took pain-killers… let alone whether they were paracetamol or ibuprofen as she takes both. Definitely not morphine as she only takes a small dose last thing at night. We now have a notebook.
As already suggested, today has been a little emotional and at one point I found myself trying to comfort Jane who was really quite upset. It took a few minutes before she explained that she was not thinking at all of herself but another person close to us with their own problems. She continues to reach outside of her own need to be concerned for others.
In one way today felt quite empty as I really enjoy going to church at the moment and was unable to for obvious reasons. But God always meets with us in our own time of worship and I particularly enjoyed playing some new (to us) songs we learnt at church last week. ‘You alone can rescue’ and ‘When I call on your name you answer’ have words that seem very pertinent to our situation. It was also good to speak to my eldest sister who is so encouraging and quite concerned for Jane who she worked with 40 years ago when she introduced her to me. I also bumped into an old acquaintance who is the pastor of a local church. He didn’t know about Jane’s health and was so kind offering to help and have the church pray for Jane. Surely this mountain of prayer and expression of compassion that surrounds and comforts us is being noticed by the God of heaven and he will reach down and touch Jane with his mercy and favour!
During the day Jane had the on-going problem with coughing and some pain which has to improve soon. But again we still reckon she slept well last night… or did she?
Mark 1v41 ‘Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing” he said “be healed!” (NLT)
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