Nathan progresses steadily. He has a little more energy and we are slowly weaning him from anti-nausea meds. We are thankful he can have his IV fluids and meds at home so we don't have to be at the clinic from morning until night. Currently he is hooked up to them for two 6 hour periods - which should be 12 hours apart - and is the reason why I am typing this update in the middle of the night. Just waiting for the last one to finish so I can unhook him and flush his line. Saturday we celebrated day +50; the half way mark between transplant and going home.
Nathan hasn't had to have any transfusions for a while, but his neutrophils are still not making a great come back so he's been getting growth factor shots. So far we aren't aware of any GVHD. Ninety-nine percent of me is amazed by this and rejoices in another miracle, but I'm a little concerned about not having aggressive enough neutrophils to keep the cancer from returning. At the end of this week, Nate's immune-suppressants will start to be decreased so we'll see what happens.
Merian and Eliza are visiting this week. I had forgotten how bouncy Eliza is. She is spunky and full of energy. Merian impressed me by how she diligently worked on her homework early each morning without any prompting. Nathan has been feeling better and, although I know it wears him out afterwards, we have been able to go on walks, let the girls play at the park, and even went to the science center. Thanks to the McShanes, Megan and Derek will be visiting next.
Friday night, since the electricity went out during our dinner prayer, we ate by laptop light. I'm not used to trying to function in darkness and thought about how, through the centuries, and in many parts of the world today, people live without Edison's amazing invention. It made me think of one of my favorite conference stories. Since it is Thanksgiving season, I think it's appropriate to share it. The link to the entire talk is:
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/the-divine-gift-of-gratitude
When we encounter challenges and problems in our lives, it is often difficult for us to focus on our blessings. However, if we reach deep enough and look hard enough, we will be able to feel and recognize just how much we have been given.
I share with you an account of one
family which was able to find blessings in the midst of serious challenges. This is an account I read many years ago and have kept because of the message it conveys. It was written by Gordon Green and appeared in an American magazine over 50 years ago.
Gordon tells how he grew up on a farm in Canada, where he and his siblings had to hurry home from school while the other children played ball and went swimming. Their father, however, had the capacity to help them understand that their work amounted to something. This was especially true after harvest time when the family celebrated Thanksgiving, for on that day their father gave them a great gift. He took an inventory of everything they had.
On Thanksgiving morning he would take them to the cellar with its barrels of apples, bins of beets, carrots packed in sand, and mountains of sacked potatoes as well as peas, corn, string beans, jellies, strawberries, and other preserves which filled their shelves. He had the children count everything carefully. Then they went out to the barn and figured how many tons of hay there were and how many bushels of grain in the granary. They counted the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and geese. Their father said he wanted to see how they stood, but they knew he really wanted them to realize on that feast day how richly God had blessed them and had smiled upon all their hours of work. Finally, when they sat down to the feast their mother had prepared, the blessings were something they felt.
Gordon indicated, however, that the Thanksgiving he remembered most thankfully was the year they seemed to have nothing for which to be grateful.
The year started off well: they had leftover hay, lots of seed, four litters of pigs, and their father had a little money set aside so that someday he could afford to buy a hay loader—a wonderful machine most farmers just dreamed of owning. It was also the year that electricity came to their town—although not to them because they couldn’t afford it.
One night when Gordon’s mother was doing her big wash, his father stepped in and took his turn over the washboard and asked his wife to rest and do her knitting. He said, “You spend more time doing the wash than sleeping. Do you think we should break down and get electricity?” Although elated at the prospect, she shed a tear or two as she thought of the hay loader that wouldn’t be bought.
So the electrical line went up their lane that year. Although it was nothing fancy, they acquired a washing machine that worked all day by itself and brilliant lightbulbs that dangled from each ceiling. There were no more lamps to fill with oil, no more wicks to cut, no more sooty chimneys to wash. The lamps went quietly off to the attic.
The coming of electricity to their farm was almost the last good thing that happened to them that year. Just as their crops were starting to come through the ground, the rains started. When the water finally receded, there wasn’t a plant left anywhere. They planted again, but more rains beat the crops into the earth. Their potatoes rotted in the mud. They sold a couple of cows and all the pigs and other livestock they had intended to keep, getting very low prices for them because everybody else had to do the same thing. All they harvested that year was a patch of turnips which had somehow weathered the storms.
Then it was Thanksgiving again. Their mother said, “Maybe we’d better forget it this year. We haven’t even got a goose left.”
On Thanksgiving morning, however, Gordon’s father showed up with a jackrabbit and asked his wife to cook it. Grudgingly she started the job, indicating it would take a long time to cook that tough old thing. When it was finally on the table with some of the turnips that had survived, the children refused to eat. Gordon’s mother cried, and then his father did a strange thing. He went up to the attic, got an oil lamp, took it back to the table, and lighted it. He told the children to turn out the electric lights. When there was only the lamp again, they could hardly believe that it had been that dark before. They wondered how they had ever seen anything without the bright lights made possible by electricity.
The food was blessed, and everyone ate. When dinner was over, they all sat quietly. Wrote Gordon:
“In the humble dimness of the old lamp we were beginning to see clearly again. …
“It [was] a lovely meal. The jack rabbit tasted like turkey and the turnips were the mildest we could recall. …
“… [Our] home … , for all its want, was so rich [to] us.”
13
The English author Aldous Huxley wrote, “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
