Celebration Bell

Today was a huge mile stone for us. Van finished his four days of full-body radiation with eight doses. After he finished that last radiation they take you over to the celebrate bell and ring it as loud and as much as you want while everyone claps. It’s a beautiful feeling knowing that part is over. He is pretty much constantly medicated and at least once a day takes a special nauseous medicine that will put him to sleep for six hours. But it really is a good thing.

Every time he wakes up to go to the bathroom, I know I have five to ten minutes to talk with him before he goes to sleep again. I love being with him so much. I just have to talk fast and make sure he gets whatever he needs. Sometimes those 5-10 minutes is spent holding his head and rubbing his back while his body continually heaves. I just sing the hymns until it subsides. I think this will be our routine for six more days while he gets chemo and the bad three days after.

I went to visit a neighbor across the hall from us and after hearing her story, we are REALLY thankful for our problems. Her problems and complications have been much worse than ours. She wasn’t even well enough to have a full bone marrow transplant so she had a mini transplant and it didn’t take so she just had another mini-transplant. The first time she was in ICU for weeks and almost died. We are feeling really grateful. It doesn’t matter how bad you think you have it, there is always someone worse off than yourself.

I was able to go to church today at the LDS branch of the Hospital. They have a thirty minute Sacrament Meeting and a thirty minute Relief Society/Priesthood. There are around fifteen couples in the branch. And today, I was the only person that came to church from the hospital. It was a beautiful Mother’s Day. We learned about the prophets and some of the special stories about their mothers.

I told Van that I would stay with him for the first ten days before I start going home twice a week to see the kids. I love being a Mother and all I can think about is what I can do for my kids while I’m gone. I’ve come up with a great idea of writing a special note to each child and sending one in the mail every day. Each note comes with something fun they can do to pass the time away until we are together again.  (Keep this a secret - our kids don't normally read the blog unless I'm there).