Personal Journal

911 tonight

I'll have to give my city very high marks for 911 response. It wasn't more than 3 minutes.
This entry must be brief. There are a lot of details to be extracted from it at a later date, writer's kinds of details. But for now, I'm numb, not even exhausted.

Jean called me at 2 p.m. and said she wasn't well. She sounded poor. I rushed home.
She had another massive headache, like the kind (I didn't write about) that saw her hospitalized last month. We worked it until about 8 o'clock with meds, and then she had me call her oncologist. We did what he said (take massive 1-time dose of steroid) and it didn't help.

We decided given her discomfort that we'd take her to the ER again. I got her dressed and got on the phone to call ahead for us, and i heard Jean vomiting (she had earlier in the day). I thought nothing of it - figured she rolled over and deliberately threw up into the trash can there.

I walked over to the couch - maybe 20- 30 seconds had passed. She was lying flat on her back covered in orange vomit from her eybrows to her navel, and I couldn't tell if she was breathing.

I turned her on her side, still couldn't tell if she was breathing. She was non-responsive to my voice - maybe she was having a seizure. I tried to clear her airway, but her teeth were clinched like a steel trap shut.

I didn't have time to determine if she was breathing or not, so I dialed 911. While I talked to the guy, Jean became very mildly responsive - still in seizure territory, perhaps. But she was breathing.

The fire dept. came in and took over. She went to the ER in an ambulance instead of with me. She was admitted and remains there now.

The CT scan compared with last months seems to show the tumor re-growing. Bad. Very very bad.
Jean doesn't know yet. Might know before I get there this morning from the doctor. Don't know what it will be like.

We have tickets to go to Florida for a week starting Thursday. I have serious doubts that it can be done. But Jean was so looking forward to it (as was I). And now I wonder... might this be her last vacation?

I prayed in the chapel of the Sacred Heart. A prodigalson story to tell there, as Sacred Heart was the order of my High School.

There was a young woman, Brandy, having a bad drug reaction in the other half of the ER room we had. She was alone, and I felt the difference between what she was going through alone, and what Jean was going through, having someone love her and care for her. Another story there.

And I realized that in all the philosophies about god that I've been exposed to, there's one really huge gap where theology has no merit whatsoever.

Dying.
Dying is completely unglamorous and ugly. I feel the absence of god there. The presence of sickness and enfeeblement and despair. And I wonder why no one seems to enlighten that with theology.

But I'm tired, and I have to get some rest and go to the hospital in a few more hours.




It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn