Update on Chris 07-13-07

Imagine coming home tired and overwhelmed from one of the hardest weeks of your entire life… as you arrive home, you walk up your driveway and pass a long time neglected flower bed filled with beautiful new flowers. You also hear the sounds of a lawnmower in your backyard and walk into your front door to find some of your dearest friends wrapping up from a morning of cleaning your house. Sound like a dream? This is what happened to me this morning when I came home from the hospital. The house smelled so good and looked so clean. There were new cleaning supplies to replace the ones we were running low on. The yard looks better than it has looked in two years! Old piles of brush were gathered up and taken away, after sitting there for months. And, the flowers were a special blessing that really touched my heart. This is truly evidence of God’s love. Thank you to those special people who were at my house this morning. I love you.
After a long week of making tough decisions, Chris will be coming home Saturday morning under the care of Hospice. He will be transported by ambulance. We have already had a hospital bed and other medical equipment delivered to the house. At this time, Chris’ platelets are still too low to pursue any treatments and the treatment options are unlikely to help Chris and would be more likely to make him suffer more. There is a strong feeling of not wanting to give up, so this decision to have hospice care is for the sole purpose of pain management and best comfort care. We are not accepting hospice as “the end” because we know that only God makes that decision. Chris’ doctor will continue to research possible treatment options, if Chris’ platelets improve over time, but the main goal will be to keep him comfortable. There is a strong possibility of admitting him back into the hospital, if his condition reaches a point that we don’t want the kids to see him that way, but this would not be for curative reasons.
There are mixed feelings about coming home. We miss the kids terribly and are looking forward to being with them and in our own bed, etc. However, there are a lot of concerns about how we will manage once we are home. We will have a lot of help from the Hospice team, but they will not be here 24 hours a day, so we will still need a lot of help from friends and family, as Chris requires a lot of care at times and cannot be left home alone.
This is very hard and feels like we are entering a world of the unknown, so we just trust everything to be in God’s hands. Thank you for all of your love, support and prayers. I don’t think Chris really has any clue how loved he is. Thanks for being there for us. We look forward to the day that we can give back.
Love,
Mandy