Inspired

I was recently inspired by someone I've known for a long time. I knew her in high school and when she thinks of me, she probably thinks of me by my maiden name and never by my married name. I'd call her a no-nonsense kind of gal, the kind of person where you never have to worry where you stand. Probably both honest and loyal to a fault. Like me.

Traits I can appreciate.

I admire her ability to set a goal and then freakin' do it. Her ability to make a list, take charge of things and then get it done? I want that. I think she'd make a great accountability partner. Now I don't want to be a control freak, just someone who can control herself.

Reading her latest post inspired me even more. Check it out: It's Okay To Put Yourself First

I am inspired and encouraged.

A Month-Part 2

Just joining in? Start with Part 1.

Then all of a sudden, after days of improvement, she was in the hospital again. Doctors go on and off duty all the time and the transition is smooth. In this case, a doctor going on vacation led up to a mix-up at the pharmacy and the one medication keeping ammonia levels stable, was reduced by 2/3. Whose fault it is in actuality, I don't know, and at this point in time, it doesn't matter. One evening, Dad left the hospital, she was talking and responisve, and when he came back the next morning, she wasn't.

After consulting with another team of doctors at yet another hospital, the last resort was quickly reached: trying dialysis to see if that would "jump start" her kidneys which had not produced any urine in 2-3 days. If dialyis would work, they could try it over the next few days to remove fluid and poisons.

Except it didn't work. Her blood pressure bottomed out and dialysis was stopped 45 minutes after starting. Her doctors gave her 24-72 hours after that, and so we packed up again. Visiting my mother's bedside at this hospital was difficult. It was as if they went out of their way to make sure you were uncomfortable. The one folding chair in the room discouraged visitors as did the locked doors at the ward entrance. The only means of admittance would be by calling the nurses' station, and then they rarely answered that phone. Brian and Joshua stayed in the waiting room because small children were not allowed.

I was able to talk to her a little as she drifted in and out. She talked to me. I told her I'd had a short night because we'd stayed up too late watching TV and then the baby got up wanting to eat. She tried to laugh and said, "that happens". Then she recognized her brother standing behind me and said, "I didn't see you standing there," which is funny. He's 6'5" and built broad. He's a big dude. When she did recognize her brother, I watched her blood pressure climb higher than I'd seen it all day. He was having a healing affect on her. Oh, those Ferris women love their sons and brothers.

"You know I love you, right?" I would say. "Mama, you know I love you."

Hospice. The next check point on the list. It seemed evident to everyone she was not getting better, and would not be getting better. Dad had already been in contact with the hospice people, or at least, they had been in contact with him. It seemed the logical next step. But before we would transfer her to hospice care, the family spoke with the kidney doctor about trying dialysis one more time. She had been on medication to help elevate her blood pressure for a few days, and the hope was she would tolerate dialysis better. I guess we wanted to make sure every t had been crossed and every i dotted, to satisfy ourselves that absolutely everything had been done. My impression from the nephrologist was he believed this would be a futile effort done only to satisfy the family. He no more believed this would help her than he believed in the man in the moon. Yes, she had kidney issues, but her main problem was the liver. It was the malfunctioning of the liver that was causing the renal failure. And the problem with the liver was only going to worsen no matter what happened with the kidneys. "This is end stage liver disease."

On Friday, dialysis had failed again. There was nothing more medical science could offer. We had come to the difficult decision to either let nature take its course under hospice care or to let nature take its course at the hospital, continuing with fluid and medications. But nature was going to take its course.

So on that afternoon, Dad, Sam and I had a meeting at the house to discuss the options. Dad wanted to make sure we both understood what she would and would not be getting while under hospice care. Standing in my parent's kitchen, we discussed it. Staying in the hospital, they would continue to pump her full of fluids, which the kidneys could not and would not process out, and antibiotics, that were not doing one thing to alleviate a total blood infection. At this point, she had not passed urine in 6 days. In hospice care, we would have complete freedom to come and go with no restrictions on visitors. It would be quiet with very little medical interference. She would no longer be receiving any medication except what was needed for pain. No more central or arterial lines, IVs or antiobiotics. No food. No fluids. No more monitors. We agreed to transfer her to hospice care. Dad went on to the hospital, I fed the baby, and we picked up lunch and met him there.

Except Dad was not quite as ready to let her go as he was at the house. Hospice meant it was over. He just wanted one more day in the hospital before giving up. He knew there wasn't anything more the hospital was going to be able to do for her, and it wasn't that he really wanted to keep her in the hospital. He just didn't want her to go to hospice. I can't say I blame him. Thirty-five years is a long time. He asked the doctor for just one more day in the ICU until Saturday when he would be ready to move forward.

Mom made it through another night and greeted the world again on Saturday. After some serious jerking around, hospice personnel finally showed up to begin the paperwork to get her transferred to that service. Dad, Sam and I sat there with the hospice nurse and watched him sign papers and I thumbed through their book. It was like a manual for death. It was informative and yet, difficult to read. I couldn't focus on what banality the nurse was expressing because I was engrossed in knowing how to tell when the end is near. I became useful when I was able to recall from memory the phone number to the funeral home. The ambulance service was called and I refused to leave until I saw them take her out.

When the EMTs rolled her into the hall on their gurney, I broke down sobbing.

A Month-Part 1

It's been a month since my mother died and I'm still processing through everything. One thing I can say for sure is that this has been harder than I anticipated. I'm surprised by that because our relationship from as far back as I can remember has been...strained. That's the word I use to describe it anyway. It sounds polite and doesn't convey years of feeling not good enough, unwanted and bothersome. It doesn't really convey my resentment and bitterness. It sounds neutral to my ears. As if I were just stating a fact, like the weather. Growing up, I can hardly remember a time when we weren't at odds with each other. As adults, we just ignored each other. That is, until we were forced to be together and once again, I became a young girl struggling for approval I never seemed to receive.

It's never what I wanted. I always thought she was hard on me; harder on me than other people's mothers were on them. I could wear lipstick at 13, nail polish at 15 and no make-up until I was out of the house. There were very strict rules in place during a time in my life when being a girl is already very difficult without being different. The locker room was a humiliating place.

When my parents came to visit when Reagan was born, nearly 2 years ago, my mother told me then she had non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver and she would not have a transplant because it crimp her lifestyle. She looked yellow then. I remember thinking that being dead would also affect her lifestyle. Since that time, she had been in and out of the hospital for different reasons, but really started to deteroriate this summer when she started having....spells. Spells where, as my dad would later report, "she wasn't with us". She would stare off into space, be unresponsive. As it turns out, her liver wasn't processing ammonia out of the body as is its job, and these "spells" were caused by ammonia backup in the body. Ammonia can only be exited from the body in one of two ways, so she was given high doses of laxative and fluids to speed the process. Once the ammonia levels lowered, she'd "come back".

At the end of August, I started getting daily phone calls from my dad reporting her status. The information seemed to be getting bleaker and bleaker until one call said that "things didn't look good". We packed it all up, and made the 5-6 hour drive in 9 hours with a fussy newborn. When I arrived at a major hospital in the Houston Medical Center, I saw more tubes and bags and lines connected to her than I had ever seen connected to one person in my life. She had a breathing tube and couldn't talk. She had leads connected monitoring every function, every minute. She was gaunt and yellow. Doctors of every discipline came and gave their reports. "We don't know what's causing the infection, but the antibiotics seem to be working. More invasive testing to determine the exact cause of the infection is too risky." "We don't know if the liver numbers will ever return to what they were."

Then she started getting better. A lot better. I place her improvement directly at the feet of my brother who arrived from California. He moved to California a few years ago and had not yet been back home. It's never been any secret that I am a daddy's girl (as are all little girls, I'm told), and Sam is a mama's boy. After he arrived, she improved enough to be transferred out of the ICU unit to an intermediate care unit, and then was transferred to a rehab hospital to begin preparing her to return back home. Finally, the reports were getting better.

Update

Things are going well here these days. We have recently moved into a rent house, while roomier than our former domicile, still has its problems. We are grateful for the room.

I have successfully made it through the first trimester of this pregnancy...a day I thought would never come. Brian expressed concern over my pickle consumption just yesterday. I believe in my heart that this child is going to be a boy...although the odds seemed stacked against us.

Recently, we traveled to Houston to attend the Homeschool Conference. It was definitely an interesting experience in which we learned lots of information. Well, we were exposed to a lot of information. Some of the most exciting parts of the weekend were sitting down one-on-one with my husband and discussing what we had learned in a non-confrontational way and trying to figure out how best to move our family forward in a God-honoring way.

For over a year, I have felt God's call in my life in one particular area: management of my home. For the last several months, I have been reading through a book called A Woman After God's Own Heart by Elizabeth George and that has been the most eye-opening thing to come my way on this topic this far. I have found it to be a practical book with many suggestions on how to implement God's priorities for women's lives. Reading that book with a friend that has the same convictions as I do has been encouraging, but the pruning that has had to be done in my heart has been excruciating, but invigorating. Truthfully, I am beginning to feel quite strongly that the church at large has been remiss in explaining the true place of wives and mothers...which is for us to be busy.... at home. The Bible is clear on this point. We are to be the caretakers of the family; the heart of the home. How can that be possible when we are rarely at home? The care of our families and support of our husbands are to take precedence over any other activities. How in the world can we give away to others what we have first not given away at home? I have felt strongly convicted in this area and have made drastic changes to my life to support these new changes. The change has been slow, but encouraging as I am beginning to actually prefer to spend time with my family instead of believing that I "deserve" to be out and about as much as possible.

I could go on and on with this particular topic, but think now is not the best time to load up onto my soapbox. I do think that God is rewarding my obedience by changing my stone-cold heart which Brian says is 3 sizes too small under the best of circumstances.

The Book You MUST Read

Ladies, in case you didn't get the email:


I'm at a loss as to how to start this, so I'm just gonna jump right in....

I have just finished the most amazing book written by a Christian author who has her thumb on the pulse of woman...Do You Think I'm Beautiful? by Angela Thomas. You must read it. You must read it.

You must read it if ever in your life you wondered if someone (anyone) could think you were beautiful (yes, in the physical sense). I struggle with this every day of my life...my weight, the fact that I'm not a foo-foo type girl, did I mention my weight? I never thought brown eyes were beautiful...I never thought anything about me was beautiful. I was constantly comparing myself to everyone else...and not measuring up. I never accepted myself for who God made me to be...until now. I thought that God thought I was beautiful in the cosmic sense like He thinks tarantulas are beautiful...not that I was beautiful to Him. Beautiful for me. There is only one standard for me: The Georgia Standard. I learned that God likes brown eyes. He loves them on me.

You must read it if you ever wondered if people notice you...see you. If you've wondered what in the world you're doing here (like I have as I change diaper after diaper after diaper or do load after load after load of laundry). Angela writes:

But God answers and says, "I see you. I see you stumble through the night to care for the sick and afraid. I see you day after day in the bleachers, on the sidelines, in the balcony, prayingand caring and cheering. I watched you prepare the food no one ate. I was with you when you worked past exhaustion. I knew the truth when you felt misunderstood. I cried with you in disappointment. I held you when you thought you were alone. I never take My eyes off you."

When I read that, I cried. I am moved even now. I have tried to take care of Lily only to be told that she wants her daddy. I have prepared food that my children have turned their nose up at. So many times I feel misunderstood. I have shed many tears in disappointment...upsets and heartbreak I couldn't share with anyone because I was pretending. And all along, God was with me. In my head, yes, I know this. But Angela Thomas, for some strange reason, finally made my heart understand it.

Pretending is no way to live. It keeps us from God's best, which according to Angela, are all the things we've been looking for. The things I've written about here...well, she covers this in the first chapter. (I am calling her Angela like I know her, but it's because she writes like she knows me...like a trusted friend who knows all my ugly secrets and still loves me enough to tell me the truth...gently and in love....because she's been there.)

And if she could make me understand it...well, maybe I'm not the only one. I will say this...reading this book has changed my life because it has changed my view of God and the role He wants to play in my life. I am more at peace than I have ever been in my life with more joy than I ever thought possible. (My natural tendency is not to joy or peace.) Nothing has really changed either. I'm still changing diaper after diaper and doing much laundry. I am still cooking meals that don't appeal to toddlers and Lily still wants her daddy. But I have peace about it. Peace. I finally understand...with my heart...what that means. I can't even get into how this has affected me at home with my family It's not such a crazy thought that I have a quiet, gentle spirit now. I feel it. I don't feel like I'm pretending anymore. I want to read my Bible and pray not because I hope that God wants to hear from me...because I know He's sitting right there waiting for me.

I never have to worry if what I'm doing is going unnoticed. For once in my life...I know it's not. There is freedom there.