Angel of Hope

"Angel of Hope" (Willowtree Collections)

I will take my husband to his PET scan today. He gets it twice a year. They will monitor him for 10 years.

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It was August 2004. My mother-in-law had just died the previous month. My husband, John, still felt like he had something stuck in his throat. He'd been telling the doctors that for years - "I have something stuck in my throat". They tested, they probed, they palpitated. They found nothing. August 2004 they decided to operate...to take out his lingual tonsils. Mind you, lingual tonsils are different than the palatine tonsils that are normally removed. The lingual tonsils occupy the posterior part of the tongue surface. "He'll be out in 30 min. or so", they told me as he went off to undergo the surgeon's knife. 30 min. ended up being more than 2 hours. A lonely 2 hours in a hospital waiting room, trying to read a book, trying to smile at others who tried to smile too, wondering what had happened. Finally, when reunited once again with John, the doctor slammed the door shut and blurted out "You've got cancer". "You've got cancer" - he said it like the old AOL announcement "you've got mail".

That diagnosis led to another surgery while he was still "healthy" to put in a "port" and to put in a "g-tube" or feeding tube. He was to undergo weeks of daily radiation and weeks on a chemo pump round the clock with two different drugs. He couldn't eat. He couldn't keep down the sludge they prescribed to be pumped into his feeding tube. He lost too much weight. He couldn't sleep lying down flat in a bed. He couldn't keep down pain drugs. He got severely sunburned from the radiation. He was too weak to drive to his appointments. One week he developed a fever of "unknown origin". He was delirious. I thought he was going to die.

While he was on one hospital campus, my daughter during that time was admitted to the other hospital campus across town. She had pre-eclampsia and they were going to induce her baby. I didn't want to leave John's side, but I did for a short while. I was anxious about the birth of my first grandchild. It was Halloween. We waited outside the birthing room for word we had a new granddaughter. We waited, we waited...Finally, Isabelle was born. It was a difficult birth...the cord was wrapped around her neck. She was a miracle. (Another miracle, our second granddaughter, was born 5 weeks later.)

Between life and death. That's how I felt that Halloween day. But John got better. It took awhile, but he battled that cancer and won. The miracle babies helped too, we know.

Some days between all this, I made it to work when I could (and left for home or hospital when I had to). You know, someone has to work so you have insurance. I am the I.T. officer for a group of medical labs. We have 10 facilities and close to 500 employees. I know most employees by name,speak with several frequently by phone, but rarely meet all of them or get to know much about them. One day at work during all this, tired and terribly depressed, I found a little box on my desk. And inside was this "Angel of Hope" from T.G., an acquaintance at work. What a wonderful gesture (it choked me up, brought me to tears) from a woman whose husband has had parkinson's disease for years, debilitating parkinson's disease. If she could have hope...anyone could.

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May everyone meet an "angel of hope" when the seemingly insurmountable obstacles pile up.