One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

(Megan Writing)

On Wednesday, Aunt Teri wrote a post about how we had a plan to use antibiotics to defeat the Staph infection in Dad's spine and take away the stiffness and pain he has been suffering from for the past two months.    Then he had another fall on Friday morning and had another, terrible two-hour episode of back pain on Friday night (why does it always happen on the weekend?!?).

On Saturday, we decided to be more proactive in trying to get him home healthcare so that there would be help for his back pain as well as the hospital bed that we had been thinking about getting for the house for some time.  By the end of the day, we learned that home healthcare cannot prescribe stronger pain meds, which is what we desperately needed.  So Dad went to bed with little more help than the hope that his pain wouldn't get out of control.

Dad made it through the night Saturday, I believe, on the prayers of our friends, without a bad episode.  But then he had another painful episode Sunday morning, when we finally had no other option but to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room.  Once he got settled there, he seemed stable again, talking and enjoying a nap and a cheeseburger for lunch.  But soon, it became time for his pain meds and we once again realized that there was no doctor to be found to prescribe something stronger than what we give him at home.  This was maddening to us all, as we had to wait out the hours and minutes of his pain as it increased until the on-site doctor finally arrived to prescribe something stronger.

The stronger meds got him through the night, but were still by no means taking away all the pain.  Finally, this morning, being Monday, the neurosurgeon and the infectious disease doctors both showed up and gave us their combined opinions.  Dad would need to be sedated, intubated, and given all the medical scans (x-ray, MRI, brain scan, CT scan) while under sedation. The scans will determine if surgery on his back is an option. If surgery is not an option, he will continue on stronger pain meds and the antibiotic.  And we have all agreed that we are not checking him out of the hospital until we get the tools that we need to keep him comfortable at home (and a back-up plan on top of that!).

So, the plus side is we finally feel like Dad's back pain is being taken seriously.  The down side is that this leaves us all having to talk ourselves and each other out of the "if onlys" and the "what ifs." Why didn't we push for this sooner?  As I look back over the last two months, and his increasing suffering, I feel regret at the things we have missed. With the wisdom of hindsight, there are for sure things we would do differently.  But the more I replay the moments in my head, the more I am sure that we did what we thought was best at each moment, given the information that we had at the time.  This is frustrating, to be sure.  We hate to watch Dad suffer needlessly and there have been lots of tears all around.

Lastly, I believe that my dad's amazing strength has somewhat worked against him in this situation.  He is so dang strong, that he has managed to make his back problem seem livable for this long until it finally brought him down this weekend.  I would defy anyone else to stay on his feet as long as my dad has.  He is amazing.  Even though that strength, and his wonderful, good, self-sufficient temperament, may have contributed in keeping him from getting the care he truly needed, I also believe that those traits will be his assets in healing from this back pain once a true solution is found.  If anyone is strong enough to come back from this, it is my dad.

Please pray with us that the solution will be found and delivered immediately.  Pray that he is able to recover considerably from the back problem and reduce his pain significantly...or how about completely!?...so that he can focus on what should be his biggest concern right now: the cancer in his brain (which of course has taken a back burner these last two weeks with his increasing back pain).  We have all been just pleading and yearning for his back pain to turn a corner for the better.  Please join us in pleading in prayer!