This week has been quite a roller coaster ride.
If you don’t follow me on Twitter and you’re not a “real life” friend or family member, then allow me to catch you up to speed on all the scary stuff that went down this week.
This past Tuesday night, just moments after publishing my last blog post, I received a hysterical phone call from my mom. She had just found her husband, Edd (my stepdad), unconscious and having seizures upstairs in their home, and after about three seconds on the phone with her, Matthew and I were in the car and racing across the neighborhood in pure panic. Luckily, my mom and Edd live only moments away, so we arrived there just after the ambulance did.
As EMS worked to stabilize him, the three of us stood nearby and watched as Edd continued to have seizures and struggled to breath. To say it was terrifying is an understatement, especially since Edd already has stage 4 colon cancer. There were, and still are, a lot of unanswered questions.
To make a long story short, Edd was in the hospital for three days, but he finally returned home yesterday. Some of the major things we were concerned about, like stroke or heart attack, were ruled out, but several other tests were performed to figure out just why he had the seizures. An MRI showed suspicious spots in Edd’s brain, and that was the hardest news of all to hear.
However, NOTHING is certain yet, and we definitely haven’t given up hope that these spots could be nothing. The oncologist (cancer doctor) said he isn’t at all convinced that the spots are more cancer due to their location in the brain, and he said that cancer in that particular location probably wouldn’t cause seizures. They could have been caused by any number of things, like certain medications Edd is on or sleep deprivation. So we are clinging to that hope.
It’s hard to make you understand just what my stepdad is going through without violating his privacy, but I have this desire to express it somehow. Just because people NEED to know what depths of suffering human beings are capable of reaching. We take so many basic things for granted every single day, and you don’t realize that until you or someone you love suffers through something as excruciating as this whole ordeal has been. And the truly awful part is that this past week is just a blip on the radar as far as what Edd has to go through on a day by day basis due to certain surgeries and chemo treatments. And yet he pushes through with such courage.
I don’t talk about religion much on this blog because I am currently in a period of searching for what I believe. God is such a mystery to me, and my intellectual and questioning nature makes it difficult for me to have faith in, well… anything. I DO believe in God, but I don’t know exactly what he is. I have trouble trusting the Bible or any document or establishment that has been altered by human hands. All I really have faith in is the incredible beauty of creation, despite what could easily be perceived as its flaws. I understand why suffering has to exist, but it doesn’t make it any easier to see someone you really love in the midst of it.
I could go on and on with all the philosophical crap, but I guess I mainly just want to ask for your prayers. I know I see requests for prayer on blogs all the time, and it’s hard to really put yourself in the shoes of someone else and earnestly ask God for healing, but I really do ask that you might just take 60 seconds of your time to pray for and envision a cancer free life for my stepdad. Pray that these spots in his brain are a non issue, or that they will simply disappear altogether. Asking for miracles is certainly not beneath me.
My friends in the blogging world have been such a source of strength for me, and I appreciate you all very much. I’ve gotten behind on reading many of your blogs, but I promise to catch back up once I get all caught up on things in my non-computer world. ;)
Here’s a few photos of my mom and Edd so you can picture them in your prayers. Love every one of you!
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