Royalties are exciting!

Hooray! Hooray! Thanks to my friends and family members purchasing THE WOMEN WHO KNEW HIM, I am able to send a donation to my first choice of the mission organizations I am interested in.         

Sometime late in my writing of the book, I chanced to read about a  Christian author connected with Stonehouse Ink, a new Christian publishing company in the Boise area.  In her bio this author mentioned that a major portion of her proceeds from book sales would go to a particular charitable organization.

I had been toying with an idea along that line, so the bio provided the impetus to my decision. I didn’t want to list a percentage on the book cover, but I decided I would contribute 90% of the royalties from THE WOMEN WHO KNEW HIM to reputable mission organizations starting with Samaritan’s Purse. I figured I could trust the Lord to eventually amass the remaining 10% to cover the costs I have paid editors, etc.

I wanted to be able to send a check for at least $100 and I am now able to do that, thanks to my readers! So many thanks to you all, and Samaritan’s Purse will also be grateful.

Friends

Friendship is sort of a blah word for opening a blog, but it is a commodity (not sure about my semantics here) that is priceless. I went to a wedding this afternoon and sat by friends I hadn’t seen for at least two or three years. Yet we picked up the thread of communication as if we had seen each other a mere week ago.

A family we first met in Laramie, Wyoming more than 25 years ago came  by and stayed a couple of nights with us on their way to Yellowstone. They not only ministered to us by their mere presence, but they showed caring in a very concrete fashion. Steve mowed our yard and drove Dean’s pickup full of lilac bush trimmings (which another local friend had trimmed for us) to the dump. Nancy took me shopping (which is a treat because I need a female with good vision for such forays). Plus she made a batch of her famous pimento cheese spread besides all the other goodies she brought with her.

 

We celebrated their visit by visiting one of Nancy’s favorite Basque restaurants. Their visit was a welcome break in our daily sometimes tedium.

I think God smiled when he came up with the idea of friends since He included some friends’ stories in the Bible: David and Jonathan, Paul and Dr. Luke, and the men who brought their friend to Jesus for healing in a most unique fashion (they made a hole in the house roof and lowered their friend down into the middle of the assembly).

I am certainly thankful for all the friends who faithfully pray for us on this surprising journey with cancer. So this blog is dedicated to you all!

Wedding Anniversary Celebration

Forty-five years ago this past Sunday, Patti Johnson and Dean Diehl got married during one of the most humid days of that Northeastern Missouri summer. 

Who likes to sweat when you want everything to look perfect? So we didn’t celebrate that memory.

Dean got ready to go to church last Sunday morning and just felt so tired he said, “I don’t think I want to try to get out today.” (That was a “little did we know” situation since he was back in the hospital with pneumonia  by the next Wednesday.)

That wasn’t a celebration moment either.

By that time I was running even later than usual so I pushed the button for the garage door opener, heard it raise, got in my Trooper, backed up—and Crash!!  The garaged door had malfunctioned again, raising only high enough to catch the edge of my roof.

With the sound of  screeching metal, I drove the only direction that seemed feasible—forward. And of course, the door refused to move either up or down—after all, it was injured!

My exhausted hubby wanted to know what all the ruckus was about and decided he could work some magic with the electric-eye box on the garage ceiling if I would put the stepladder in place. I held on to his waistband as he shakily climbed up two steps on the ladder and decided where he needed to hike the power. After seeing him safely settled on his step, I went to the opposite wall and pushed the opener-button in hopes that the door would open so that I could get my vehicle out.

With great groaning and clankings, it did so. I helped Dean off the ladder and back into his easy chair and I drove off to church thinking, “I REALLY want to cry, Lord. Please don’t let me cry. It’s not a pretty sight to see old ladies cry.”

The Lord was gracious. No tears and I even managed to worship which was why I was at church in the first place. But I have to say, that whole episode was not in any way a celebration.

Lunch time came and our celebratory meal was a grilled cheese sandwich for me (my favorite meal item on “cheat day”) and Ramen for Dean because his mouth and tongue had still not healed up from the last chemo treatment.

Not an especially celebratory menu BUT the salivating part came with the rhubarb pie I made using some of the wonderful fruit my friend, Allison, had given me. Now Dean loves rhubarb pie and despite the great pain in his mouth, he ate two pieces of that pie!                   

The actual celebration of our 45 years together cameas we realized that last year at this time, we didn’t know whether there would be an anniversary to celebrate. Dean started his first chemo treatment about this time last year and the doctor wasn’t very optimistic.

“It’s a fast-growing cancer,” he said. By July and CT scan time, the cancer gurus were beginning to wonder if they had mis-read the biopsy results. And here we are, together today. Thank you, Lord. That’s something to celebrate!                                               

   

But I'm Not a Nurse!!

A week ago Thursday I was muttering the above-mentioned words to myself, followed by, “I really need to be one.”

That day was “bottom out day” for Dean’s immune system as he had had another chemo infusion the previous Thursday. We expected a total lack of energy but we didn’t expect what happened.

He ate a healthy breakfast (we had been grateful that his appetite had improved a lot over the past month), but when I checked on him at 11 AM, he said, “My chest is freezing.” As before, that was my cue to fetch the microwave pad, warm it up, and on his chest it would go.

He was still chilled at lunch and ate next to nothing. When I checked on him at 2:30, he was telling me he was too weak to get out of his chair and still cold. I reached for the microwave pad but “accidentally” thought to feel his forehead. He was burning hot.

          

I ran to get the thermometer and then left it under Dean's tongue as I dialed the Elko Clinic. The line was busy so I went back to check the thermometer and he had coughed it out onto his lap. I tried reading it. That was a sick joke with my poor vision and since Dean was somewhat delirious by this time, he couldn't read it either.

Much against his will, I called the ambulance to take him to the ER as he couldn’t walk to the car. He was admitted with a fever of 104 and eventually, his blood test revealed that his white blood cell count was “in the basement” at 0.4. He had a slight case of pneumonia but of course couldn’t fight it off on his own so he was given antibiotics. Then his blood pressure aimed for the bottom of the barrel. (Lots of lows that night.)

All that excitement was my reason for not posting a blog last week. Don’t know why I should have been tired, as all I did was sit there (and pray for that fever to go down—which it did by the time Dean was taken to a room).

I remember feeling quite depressed Saturday morning because I had not been able to reach/see the doctor and Dean didn’t seem to be making much progress.

I have been “inching” my way through the book  of Psalms and Saturday morning I was at chapter 94. When I read verses 18 and 19, I knew it was no accident I was reading that chapter at that particular time. The NKJV reads--"If I say, 'My foot slips,' your mercy, O Lord, holds me up. In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul." I sure felt like my foot had slipped and the anxieties were definitely making themselves known. The Lord is so gracious to us in our needy times.

When I got to the hospital that morning, Dean’s BP was back up to normal and the WBC count had increased a bit but still had a ways to go. He was released from the hospital about 6:30 PM on Monday so now we are back at working on the appetite increase.  And I will definitely be checking the man’s forehead for fever when he tells me his chest is cold!