Update on Edd!

Hey, friends.

Sorry I’ve been so quiet this weekend!  A lot has been going on… most notably, a real-life date with with Emily from Em=Me (which went fantastically!)… and lots of worrying and stressing about Edd.

I want to tell you all about the blate (blate = blog date, coined by Megan!), but for now I just want to say thank you so, SO much for your prayers for Edd and supportive comments and tweets this weekend.  They mean more to me then you could ever know! 

Things got really, really scary for Edd over the past few days.  It really wasn’t looking good, and we were all extremely worried. Two nights ago, as I lay in bed knowing my mom and Edd were still at the hospital and suffering immensely each in their own way, I had a truly honest conversation with God… the first in a while.  I cried (hard).  Cursed.  I really got angry, and I told Him all about it.  And you know what? It was the first time I felt truly heard.  I’m not saying He wasn’t listening before, but I think honesty was what God really wanted from me.  And I felt relieved.

Then this morning, we were given a little miracle. It’s kind of a long story, and my mom explained it all on a post HERE on her blog.  Read it if you’d like more details.  Bottom line: sometimes things happen that just can’t be explained.  God doesn’t always scream His presence, but he DOES still whisper it.  And today, he gave us a little miracle.

And I just thought you all should know. :)

More Big Life Stuff

I’m not feeling particularly funny or light hearted today.  To be honest, my family got some really hard news this week; news that we’re all still reeling a little from.

To bring my new followers up to speed, my stepdad, Edd, has stage 4 colon cancer.  He had some seizures about a month and a half ago, and brain scans showed some strange spots in an area of the brain that cancer doesn’t normally attack.  So we were hopeful that those spots were something else… anything but more cancer. 

Since that particular brain scan, he had a very important surgery elsewhere in the body that, overall, was very successful.  It gave him some serious quality of life back, and we are all very thankful that he is no longer suffering as much as he once was (sorry to be vague, but I don’t want to violate his privacy). 

To make a long story short, he had another brain scan this past week, the results of which showed that those spots in his brain ARE cancer.  He started radiation on Wednesday.

And you know, all of this just has me turning inside myself - thinking big thoughts, asking big questions.  It’s hard not to question God when prayers are continuously answered with “no” – but if your faith crumbles in the face of adversity, did you ever really have a faith at all?  Personally, MY faith, or the faith I thought I had as a child and very young adult, is being torn down brick by brick and somehow, at the same time, rebuilt in another way. 

God is easy to believe in when all the people you love are alive and healthy and happy; when your life is devoid of any tragedy.  When all of those terrible things you hear about on the news are so far away.  But when faced with sorrow and fear in our own lives, there’s a lot of thoughts and feelings to sort out.  And I’m no where near any place of understanding. 

And don’t get me wrong – we are still very hopeful that Edd will pull through all this!  The doctors seem very confident that the radiation will be effective. It’s just really hard to see people you love suffer. I can’t even begin to express the magnitude of it all on one little blog post.

Yesterday I went over to my mom and Edd’s place to take some pictures of the two of them before all his hair falls out. I enjoyed capturing their joy and love for one another, despite the card this life has dealt them.  Here’s a few photos from the day, and please… keep Edd and my mom in your prayers and your happiest thoughts.  

  

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it  is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. 

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

~Kahil Gibran (from The Prophet)

Tomorrow Is A Big Day

Damnit, I’m emotional today. Looking through potential pictures for this post has me all teary-eyed and such.

Tomorrow (Thursday) my stepdad, Edd, is having a really important and major surgery, the outcome of which could give him some serious quality of life back.  Many of you asked to be kept up to date on his health, so I thought this was really important to post about. 

No, it’s not fun or funny, but yes, it is very important to me. 

My mom and Edd met on Match.com about seven years ago. I remember meeting Edd for the first time and later finding out that he was pretty freaked out about that first meeting.  He had two boys, and my mom had two girls.  Neither of them really knew very well how to relate to teenagers of the opposite sex. 

At first, I was pretty weirded out that my mom was dating again.  Her and my dad were married for 20 years.  But eventually, Edd became a staple in the diet of my life, cheesy as that may sound.  I liked him because he made my mom so happy, and that was the most important thing.

Over the years I have tried to live up to the high opinion Edd seems to have of me.  Whenever I’ve tried to put myself down, he’s quick to dispute me.  My boyfriends were never good enough.  And when I read him the first few text messages I got from Matthew in the beginning, I still remember Edd saying, “I don’t know about this guy, Jenni.  I mean, who does he think he is?” (obviously, he likes him now!) ;)

Anyway, my point is that Edd has become someone I look up to, admire, and love.  And I want nothing but the very best for him.  Last time he had a similar surgery he got a horrible and life-threatening staff infection in the hospital, and that fear is always fresh. 

All I ask is that you say a little prayer for him today and tomorrow, no matter what you believe about God.  This is what my prayers often sounds like:

I really don’t understand what you are, God, and if you even ever choose to intervene on our behalves when we fervently ask you to.  But I still pray that you will give Edd another shot at a normal life with a healthy body.  I understand that without suffering we would never truly appreciate the absence of suffering, but Edd has had enough for now.  Please heal his body and give him many more years on this Earth.  Amen!

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers!  I always feel so many of you “got my back.”  :)

Big Life Stuff

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!

Mom and Edd just after getting married in Vegas (2007)

At our wedding last February

This Christmas