THIS IS NOT FUN

Yesterday, someone wrote this in the Comments Section:

"Kristy, I love seeing your family and hearing you reminiscing, but we need to hear how you are doing now. What is the latest? I felt more connected to your situation when you or Milton wrote about how your day or night was. How you felt physically and emotionally, what skills you'd gotten back. Please let us who are praying for you and love you know the latest and greatest! Because we all know God IS GREAT! Love, Bonnie"

***

Okay, here goes...

I've had this blog title ("This Is Not Fun") floating in my brain since Friday night, but I ignored it. But when I saw this comment, I decided to give you an update on me, something I find hard to do. In my life of ministry, I've always focused on other people and their needs, not my own.

As you can see by the time of this post, it's church time, yet here I sit at the computer writing. I'm here because my head is aching too badly to get dressed. Every step I take jars my head and makes it pound harder. And I'm nauseated. Except for the two Sundays following my brain surgery, I've been in church. It's my source of inspiration and joy and strength and renewing.

But today, my head hurts too badly. I could've force myself to ignore the pounding, get showered and dressed, and go. I've lived my life that way. Church, God, God's people...those have been so important to me. Not feeling well on Sunday morning? You have responsibilities, so you have to go, I've told myself. You have to fulfill your responsibility.

It's a good way to live. And God has blessed me for putting the things of the Lord first.

But today, well, let's back up to Friday night...

The conversation between Milton and me turned to the awful days in the hospital when I was incoherent and irrational. My sodium level had dropped drastically low, and the doctors later told me if it dropped one more point, I was in danger of dying. The pain in my head was so cataclysmic, my hourly "IV zaps" of morhpine weren't touching it, and I was begging for morphine around the clock. The effects of the anesthesia were still in my body. All of these things, plus my sleep deprivation, were making me raise my voice and do crazy things.

When the nurse told me I had to have a CAT scan (to see if there was bleeding in the brain), I refused, for hours and hours. Here I was, one of the most compliant people ever created, and I was adamantly refusing a much-needed CAT scan. My family, who were around my bedside 24 hours a day with love and helpfulness, didn't know about the sodium drop at that point, nor did the doctors.

"You must have a CAT scan," the nurse said.

"Patients' rights," I yelled. "I want a patient advocate."

The small flashbacks I have of that nightmarish time make me weep because THAT WAS NOT ME. THAT WAS NOT KRISTY DYKES.

All day, my family tried to talk me into the CAT scan, yet in my foggy, pain-racked, post-surgery-brain-swelled mind, well, I don't know what I was thinking. Yes, I do. I wasn't thinking. Pain was making my decisions.

Another factor came into play: the doctor had told me I had to have an MRI 48 hours after surgery. While they were trying to get me to have the CAT scan, I got it mixed up with the MRI. I'd had two MRIs in the last three days, and with my claustrophobia and my irrationality, I didn't think I could handle another one. For an MRI, they put you in a long, narrow tube that almost touches your nose, and for an hour-and-a-half, you feel like you're either under a jet, or, you're sitting right beside a person beating an iron gate with a hammer. The noise is that bad.

Finally at the end of the day, I had a lucid moment when the nurse said, "The CAT scan will take about eight minutes," and I submitted. Fortunately, it showed no bleeding in the brain.

But that night, because of the patient load, they took me in for the MRI about 1 or 2 a.m., after an evening of nervously waiting, waiting, waiting. Milton was with me, holding my feet, and the MRI was awful. I was cold and had asked for a blanket, but about 20 minutes into the MRI, I was sweating, and the blanket felt like a boa constrictor, and the technician had warned me not to ask her to stop, so that the MRI wouldn't drag out, and again, in my crazed thinking, I thought I was dying. Even Milton said it was the loudest MRI I'd had.

The next few days, still incoherent, I was saying and doing irrational things, like pulling off my hospital gown. I was a crazed woman.

***

Yesterday, Saturday, was a blue day. Blue outside with steady rain and black skies. Blue inside as flashbacks and dark thoughts consumed me.

I had a desire to sew, so I pulled out my small stack of mending. A button put on. A "spang-dangle" sewed back on a pretty shirt. A tablecloth re-sewed whose seam had come apart.

While I sewed the tablecloth, the thought came to me: Why are you sewing a tablecloth? You're never going to entertain again. Why are you wasting your time on this?

I wish I could report that I stood on the Word of God and had a moment of victory as I quoted, "The weapons we fight with are not like weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive EVERY THOUGHT TO MAKE IT OBEDIENT to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:4,5).

But scripture didn't come to me.

But what DID come to me were the everlasting arms of Jesus that held me all day as the hospital flashbacks assailed me.

And they held me as I made the decision to go to a special-called prayer meeting in a church member's home and get prayed for.

And they're holding me now.

***

A little while ago, my daughter Jennifer called, and when I told her about the headache which was much worse than the others I've had for a couple of weeks, she reminded me that the doctor said my last week of radiation would be my hardest. That brought some explanation.

***

Rethinking, the scripture I referred to earlier (2 Corinthians 10:4,5) actually DID come to me during my blue time yesterday. It was there all along BECAUSE I COMMITTED IT TO MEMORY. It was living and breathing and ALIVE inside me, and the fruit of this was when I made the decision to NOT stay home and brood, but instead, to go to a prayer meeting and be surrounded by faith-filled folks.

***

Now, I'm going to lie down.

In His everlasting arms.