Light At The End Of The Tunnel

I have to stop saying dumb things like, "surely it can't get any worse."  Guess what?  It did.  On Thursday, Nate took a turn for the worse after his operation, getting an infection.  With a fever that night and the following day I ended up taking him to emergency at Woman's and Children's.  So now armed with antibiotics to add to our growing arsenal of medications, today it appears he is beginning to get back on the mend.  This on top of the worry of Karen just about did me in.  It says in the bible that God will never give us more than we can handle.  Sitting in Emergency last night with Nate, reflecting on all that has happened to our family, I was really having reservations about this, but here I am the next day, spirits buoyed by Nate's improvement overnight, telling you all about it.

So hopefully with Nate's little sub-plot dealt with, it is back to the business of Karen and her treatment.  We survived the rest of the week managing to keep Karen from becoming an in patient, due to her increasing side effects.  She has surprised a lot of staff at radiology who have commented that people with far less side effects than what she is dealing with have been admitted.  Having said all this we have had lots of discussion with her doctor here at RAH, a Professor and her consultant who is currently on holidays with family overseas.  He has been fantastic keeping in constant email contact with me getting updates about Karen, culminating in a phone call late on Wednesday night from India. So  after much communication between all parties it was decided that in the interest of Karen's long term health that they needed to cut short the therapy by 3 sessions.  This now has her having her last treatment on Christmas Eve.  It was agreed that there would not be any compromise in the out come of the cancer treatment by shortening the treatment.  The real concern however was that if they continued they would leave Karen with some long tern ongoing side effects which could further reduce the quality of life.  As it is, I think we are in for a longer than normal recovery period.  Even though the radiotherapy stops on Monday, the side effect will continue to manifest for a further 2 weeks before we will see any signs of improvement.  So just another example of how God has been carrying us on this journey and never leaving us or forsaking us.  Just when we really thought it beyond us to get through another week of treatment, the light at the end of the tunnel become closer, brighter, warmer and more tangible.

So looking forward now to just enjoying Christmas with family and just forgetting all the dramas for a few days.  It will be nice not to have to travel into the RAH everyday as we migrate to weekly visits and in months to come, monthly visits and then 3 monthly visits to 6 monthly visits to yearly visits, but that is a way yet.