Thankful for 24-hour Walgreen's!

The Bonine made John drowsy, but it didn't relieve the nausea. So, early this morning I talked to the nurse practitioner again and she called in a prescription for anti-nausea meds. As I was sitting in the drive-thru of our 24 hour Walgreen Pharmacy, I thought about all of our modern conveniences. How wonderful it is that I can make a phone call at 6:30 AM and within thirty minutes, without even getting out of my car, I can have the medicine John needs to relieve his symptoms. I always think about the people in generations before me who were not blessed with these conveniences we often take completely for granted.

I hate to see anyone suffer. It doesn't even have to be someone I love, but of course seeing someone you really love suffering is even worse. My husband is not a baby when it comes to pain, sickness and discomfort. He never complains. He takes everything in stride. But this morning he said to me, "I thought I was tougher than this. I guess I'm not." He didn't expect to feel this bad.

John is sensitive to medications. He doesn't like to take pain pills because they make him feel sick. So he just endures pain. Last night I was doing research for his symptoms and read that patients who are normally sensitive to or made sick by other medications are more likely to suffer sickness and nausea from chemotherapy. Well, there you have it. Wish I had read that earlier and thought to ask for anti-nausea medication to have on hand. I will make sure we always have it from now on.

The medicine for his nausea also causes drowsiness. I'm hoping he can just get a lot of sleep today. Because I have done so much reading and researching ever since he was diagnosed, I had a pretty good idea that he was going to feel worse before he felt better. But I didn't expect it after the first round. From everything I've heard and read, the side effects are cumulative. The more treatments you take, the worse you feel. He was advised that he probably wouldn't feel that bad after the first round, but by the third round he would be feeling the cumulative effect.

I hope that the one thing he takes away from this weekend is how important it is for him to rest and take care of himself while going through this treatment regimen. Part of me wonders if he was unwise to go to the dealership yesterday for 6-7 hours. Maybe he would have been just as sick if he had stayed home and rested. It's hard to say for sure. I want to be the world's best wife and caregiver, but I don't want to be the police. I know I have to let him make his own choices and if it makes him feel better mentally to go check on things, I don't want to fuss at him. I'm hoping he will take the entire weekend off next time and just rest, but I seriously doubt it.

Seeing him suffer this nausea, calling the doctor's answering service and especially writing down the time I gave him his medicine brought back memories from my mom's cancer battle. I always wrote things down--especially doses of medicine--so I wouldn't forget. And I instinctively did the same thing this morning. I also programmed the number of the 24 hour Walgreen's into my cell phone for any future emergency.

As I drove to the pharmacy this morning, I was thinking about the first few years of our marriage and how this is the last thing we ever would have expected. John has always been the picture of health. Low blood pressure, low cholesterol, regular exerciser, healthy eater, stays at his ideal weight, doesn't smoke. But before our fourth wedding anniversary, he received this diagnosis. And as our sixth anniversary approaches, he is undergoing chemotherapy.

Don't wait until you receive a diagnosis to appreciate every day as a gift from God.

A good friend of ours lost his brother to lung cancer yesterday. He was just recently diagnosed and went very quickly. I don't say this to be morose. I'm not feeling morose or even depressed. I'm just living in the reality that life--or good health--can end abruptly. If you're strong and healthy today, savor that and thank God for it daily.

I just finished reading a book called Crazy Love. In this book, the author challenges our lukewarmness toward God. Chapter Two is entitled "You might not finish this chapter" and it begins like this...

You could die before you finish reading this chapter. I could die while you're reading it. Today. At any moment.

But it's easy to think about today as just another day. An average day where you go about life concerned with your to-do list, preoccupied by appointments, focused on family, thinking about your desires and needs.

On the average day, we live caught up in ourselves. On the average day, we don't consider God very much. On the average day, we forget that our life truly is a vapor.

But there is nothing normal about today. Just think about everything that must function properly just for you to survive. For example, your kidneys. The only people who really think about their kidneys are people whose kidneys don't work correctly. The majority of us take for granted our kidneys, liver, lungs, and other internal organs that we're dependent upon to continue living.

What about driving down the road at sixty-five miles per hour, only a few feet away from cars going the opposite direction at the same speed? Someone would only have to jerk his or her arm and you would be dead. I don't think that's morbid; I think it's reality.

It's crazy that we think today is just a normal day to do whatever we want with. To those of us who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money," James writes, "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (4:13-14).

When you think about it, that's a little disconcerting. But even after reading those verses, do you really believe you could vanish at any minute? That perhaps today you will die? Or do you instead feel somehow invincible?

This chapter is so good, it's hard to choose highlights. I particularly like what he wrote about stress and worry:

Worry implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives.

Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control.

Basically, those two behaviors communicate that it's okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is somehow exceptional. Both worry and stress reek of arrogance. They declare our tendency to forget that we've been forgiven, that our lives here are brief, that we are headed to a place where we won't be lonely, afraid, or hurt ever again, and that in the context of God's strength, our problems are small, indeed.

Chan goes on to say a little further on...

Maybe life's pretty good for you right now; God has given you this good stuff so that you can show the world a person who enjoys blessings, but who is still totally obsessed with God.

Or maybe life is tough right now, and everything feels like a struggle. God has allowed hard things in your life so you can show the world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard...To be brutally honest, it doesn't really matter what place you find yourself in right now...The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified...

If life were stable, I'd never need God's help. Since it's not, I reach out for Him regularly. I am thankful for the unknowns and that I don't have control, because it makes me run to God...

Just to put into perspective the brevity of our lives:

Throughout time, somewhere between forty-five billion and one hundred twenty-five billion people have lived on this earth. That's 125,000,000,000. In about fifty years (give or take a couple of decades), no one will remember you. Everyone you know will be dead. Certainly no one will care what job you had, what car you drove, what school you attended, or what clothes you wore. This can be terrifying or reassuring, or maybe a mix of both...

Friends, we need to stop living selfish lives, forgetful of our God. Our lives here are short, often unexpectedly so, and we can all stand to be reminded of it from time to time. That's why I wrote this chapter, to help us remember that in the movie of life, nothing matters except our King and God.

Don't let yourself forget. Soak it in and keep remembering that it is true. He is everything.

This is one of the things I love about writing on my blog. When I begin a post, I never know exactly where I will go with it. I started out feeling thankful for Walgreen's. I actually felt a little down when I began writing because of the memories of my mom and knowing John has at least six tough months ahead of him. But by the time I finished writing, God was reminding me of how I can glorify Him through everything and how that is all that truly matters!