Yesterday mom was scheduled to begin her fifth and final week of radiation treatments and chemotherapy pills. It wasn't until late last week that the treatments caught up with her.
As this is a report about her, it is also a report of observations I've just noted about my dad, too.
Yesterday mom was too weak to do anything and the radiation oncologist had her admitted to the hospital primarily to be rehydrated. The cumulative effects of the treatments have completely depleted her of energy, strength, appetite, and hydration. It was all my dad could do to get her to even sit up momentarily.
As I sit here in the hospital room, mom dozing in and out of sleep, and dad doing likewise, the type-A in me thinks he is wasting his time watching her sleep. But I realized for him, he could be nowhere else.
As that thought ran through my mind my mom woke up from a little nap, trying to recount the subject of her afternoon dream. The sight is typical now: mom too physically weak to talk loudly, feebly begins to utter a few words; dad growing ever-deafer springs out of his chair to hear her and stands at her bedside, bent over with his ear only an inch away from her mouth.
This scene brought back just a few similar scenes from today: dad's arrival at 7am bending over her bedside with the most gentile kiss on the cheek; laboring several times to get mom up and out of the bed to go to the restroom--he does not leave her side; sitting on the bed feeding her tiny spoonfuls of lunch--eager to build her strength; all the while fighting off the frustration that he can't will her to get stronger...
Bible expositors say that the word "love" in the Bible is a verb--something to be lived out in a practical fashion. I see what they mean.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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