Storytelling: Part II, continued from yesterday

When I came clean to Erik about missing Bryce’s kindergarten graduation, I did so with a little apprehension.  He had been so insistent and felt so passionately about me being there for Bryce.  And while it had been well over a year and the kids could hardly remember anything that had happened, I still felt guilty about keeping this secret from him.  So when he began to laugh at my semi-tearful admission, I felt relieved.

After a few minutes he decided to tell me the secret he had been keeping from me for the last year.  I paused, my fork in mid-air.

Erik had his transplant surgery on July 3, 2003.  He stayed in the hospital a mere 11 days and was released to go back to my sister’s house in Frisco.  In celebration of not only a successful transplant but also getting to leave St. Paul for the first time since April, our families surprised the two of us with a night’s stay at the Double Tree Hotel in Dallas.

We lounged by the pool, ate dinner at a fancy steakhouse and enjoyed a night’s sleep without a nurse coming in every half hour.  It was delightful.  I woke up the next morning to hot coffee, a newspaper and breakfast in bed.  It was like being on my honeymoon again.

Little did I know what my husband had been up to during the wee hours of the morning.

When we had arrived at the hotel the night before, Erik realized he had forgotten his medications at my sister’s house.  Keep in mind he CANNOT and DOES NOT miss taking his medicine.  He is immuno-suppressed, so some of the medicine keeps his body from realizing the heart is not his own and rejecting it.  The other medicines he takes prevent the slightest little germ from causing full blown pneumonia or a stomach virus from hell.

Even today, 12 years later, the medicine is vital.  But 11 days post-transplant – missing a dose was no joke.

So Mr. Double-0-7 woke up at the crack of dawn and covertly left the hotel to drive to Frisco, leaving me sound asleep.  He had never driven to my sister’s before, so of course he found himself lost after driving awhile.  At 6 a.m. he finally gave in and called my brother-in-law for directions to their house.

Kelly said when Erik walked in their house he walked straight back to our bedroom, grabbed his bag of pills and went out the door saying, “Let’s not mention this to Jennie, please.”  Matt and Kelly died laughing as they gave him directions back to the Double Tree.  They also swore to keep me in the dark for as long as necessary, or forever.

Erik was back in our hotel room with his meds and coffee by the time I woke up.  And for a year I knew nothing about his little adventure at dawn. 

How sweet of Erik to not want to worry me or stress me out about the medicine.  And boy would I have freaked out.  Not to mention, he wasn’t even fully released to drive a car yet.  He still had staples in his chest for Heaven's sake! And this is what happened 2 days later.  So yea, he should NOT have been driving!

As I said yesterday, ignorance is bliss and sometimes little white lies aren’t all that bad.   

This got me thinking about Erik's medications and how over the last 12 years they have been such a huge part of our lives.  Erik takes 42 pills a day and he can swallow a handful all at once with just a quick swig of water.  It amazes me.

The pills are like our 4^th child.  We take them everywhere we go.  We spend a great deal of time refilling, picking up and paying for them.  We wonder if we will always be able to afford them, especially after Obamacare – if not, what then?  We have been so blessed these last many years regarding his meds.  It’s just a constant worry that our coverage could change or the price could go up to an unaffordable rate.  Not to mention the tribulation or a zombie apocalypse might occur and I would be forced to break in to every Walgreens in a 100 mile radius to steal pills.

Don’t think I wouldn’t.

We have so many other stories about his plethora of pills.  Like the time they mysteriously disappeared Thanksgiving day at his mother’s.  Our family of 20 searched for 3 hours all over the house and grounds finally determining that the pills must have accidentally been thrown in the kitchen trash and thus wound up in Gramp’s garbage fire out back….we farm folks burn our trash.  Erik, the kids and I finally left to drive the six hours to Tahoka, but two hours into our drive we got a call that the pills had been located.  Behind the television in the kitchen, because of course that’s where he would put them.  We turned around, went back to Hearne and decided to forego the long trip to Tahoka for Thanksgiving on Friday.

Another time was after my Grandmother Grace died.  We drove to Tahoka and I unpacked our bags and toiletries.  Because we had a house full of curious little kiddos, I put the bag of pills up in the medicine cabinet in the girls’ bathroom.  We stayed at my parents’ for a week through all the funeral and family gatherings.  The moment we walked back into our house in New Braunfels, Erik made a fast bee-line to the bathroom and then almost fainted when his pills were not on the bathroom counter.  He had decided in Tahoka that he must have forgotten to pack them.  And I had assumed he knew where I put them.  So he had been a week without his meds and hadn’t wanted to alarm anyone because of the circumstances.  My parents FedExed the pills to us the next day.  Thanks again, Mom and Dad.

What else – oh YES, there was the time that his bag of pills got stolen out of his suitcase when he flew to Chicago.  When he got home he was able to get all the prescriptions refilled except the CellCept which is the immuno-suppressant pill….kind of important.  Because it wasn’t “time” for the insurance to refill, Walgreens told us we had to pay $1200 for the new bottle.  After some tears (me) and lots of prayers (Erik and my Mom), the transplant office in Dallas came through with some samples.  Again, thank you Jesus for your mercy!

The main reason I’m disclosing so much information about Erik’s medications is because I would like to share with you what I pray for daily. 

We know Erik got an almost perfect heart – size, blood type, young, healthy.  He no longer has heart disease.  He no longer has any heart complications.  He gets his heart biopsied every 5 years now, but that’s another story for another day.

What the devil would love for us to worry about is Erik’s kidney and liver functions after so many years of so many pills.  His body has to do a lot of work to put the medication to good use and then flush them out of his system.  The doctors watch his creatinine levels as much or more than anything else.

Many years ago I started praying a specific phrase for Erik and those pills: 

“Lord, let the medicine flow through his body like living water.”  So far, the Holy Spirit hasn’t told me to tweak that prayer at all.  And God is listening.

Will you also pray for that for Erik?  God hears our prayers and no one more than Erik Hughes could attest to that.

 

 

 

 

Storytelling: Part I

I come from a family of storytellers.  Admittedly, we tell the same stories over and over.  But we laugh just as much after the 20th time as we did the first time.  And if someone is around who has never heard our stories, it's like Christmas morning for us.  Settle in for some entertainment, my friend!  We will have your ear for awhile.

Who doesn't like to hear a person's story – either funny or scary or interesting?  It’s so easy to forget our stories as life swirls in and out of control and we fight to keep our head above water.  But what are we without our stories?

And since I love hearing people’s stories, I am all the more willing to share my own.

It was May 2003 and Erik had been in the hospital for a month and a half.  He had been on the transplant list for almost 30 days at Status 1-A which meant the doctors had given him less than 20 days to live without a transplant.  He was receiving two IV drugs around the clock and had been in and out of ICU depending on how stable he was.  It had been a very long spring.

Erik hadn’t stepped foot outside St. Paul since April 16 and I only left the hospital to check the mail at our Dallas post office box or when my sister would kidnap me for a dinner out.  I was sleeping either in Erik’s room on the cardiac floor, or in the cottage attached to the hospital when he was moved to ICU.

Bryce and Lexi were living in Tahoka with my parents and would visit almost every weekend.  Erik and I constantly worried about how the separation would affect them and all I could say was, “God's grace is sufficient…”  We really didn’t have any choice but to trust the Lord to shield our kids as much as possible from the anxiety and fear we were living with.  And thankfully my parents provided that umbrella of protection that Erik and I just couldn’t.

Word arrived one day that Bryce’s kindergarten graduation was coming up and that all parents and grandparents were invited to attend.  Erik felt very strongly that I should go home for a couple of days and go to the ceremony.  Bryce had been through a lot, so Erik thought it was imperative that I go to graduation.

I whole-heartedly disagreed!  At any moment we could get the call that a heart was available and that Erik would be going into open heart surgery.  He was also in and out of ICU due to the significant heart failure as his condition worsened.  I had been by his side since everything started going downhill in January – why NOW would I leave him to go six hours away?  I just couldn’t accept that.

However, Erik was adamant and begged me to go.  He said it would make him feel so much better to know that I was there for Bryce at his 45 minute kindergarten graduation ceremony.  Of course the separation from the kids was as hard on Erik as it was on the rest of us, so I finally agreed just to put him at ease and maybe give him one less thing to worry about.

My sister and brother-in-law had brought the kids to see us that weekend, so upon Erik’s urging I reluctantly got in the car and drove away that Sunday morning with Abby, Chris and the kids – leaving Erik and his mother in his hospital room waiting on a heart.

During that long drive to Tahoka, I sat in the backseat with Bryce and Lexi.  We cuddled and read books and visited.  I held them while they slept and it felt so good to be right in the middle of them for that long road trip.  But inside I was a nervous wreck.  Every mile we drove was a minute further away from Erik. 

What if he gets a heart and goes into surgery before I can get back?  What if he goes back into ICU and they can’t get him stabilized before I get back?  My mind was reeling.

We finally arrived in Tahoka and started to unload the car.  I walked into my parents’ house, looked at my mother in a panic and said, “I cannot do this!” 

And without hesitation my mom said, “Call Southwest!” 

So before I had even walked all the way into the living room, I picked up the phone and called Southwest Airlines.  Then I hugged the kids goodbye, walked right back outside, got in the car and drove to the airport.  I was in the air less than 2 hours after arriving home.

My sister Kelly picked me up at Dallas Love and drove me back to the hospital.  We sat in the lobby for several hours recounting the turn of events that brought me full circle back to St. Paul.  While it was a huge relief to be back in the metroplex, there was no way I could tell Erik that I had come all the way back and would indeed be missing graduation.  He was content thinking I was in Tahoka with the kids, so I decided to just go with that little white lie. 

What fun it was to call my mother-in-law and ask her to stealthily make her way down to the lobby.  And oh how we laughed as I explained my journey to Tahoka and back that afternoon.  She gladly agreed not to tell Erik and to stay with him until I came back the next day.  I had great peace knowing I could get back to the hospital in minutes if I needed to, AND that Phyllis was there with Erik.

I spent that night at Matt and Kelly’s house and got back to the hospital the next afternoon.  Erik questioned how I was back so early, but I just told him I had caught an earlier flight (which was technically true).  I had never felt better as I settled back onto my leather couch in Room 603. 

{sigh of relief}

The entire family kept my secret change of plans from Erik for a long, long time.  In fact, it was more than a year later over a steak dinner and some Merlot that I finally confessed to Erik that I had not gone to Bryce’s graduation.  It took him a second to even remember the circumstances, but once he did he could only shake his head and laugh.  Truthfully, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Then Erik proceeded to tell me a story that almost put me under the table.  The entire family had also been keeping a secret from me for over a year.  And now it was Erik’s turn to confess….

To be continued.

(Here is a picture of Bryce & Lexi during this time.  I love it because they are clearly posing for the picture, but then a cat darted out.  So Bryce took on his ninja stance and Lexi's eyes got so big!)