Dear Readers,

One of the most beautiful things I’ve memorized is “A Liturgy for First Waking” from Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey. I will never get tired of saying this prayer or hearing my children say it. A line near the end of the liturgy reads:

The nighttime hours have been the harder ones recently. The first bad news is that we lost our final chicken a couple nights ago, but the good news is that, after multiple different set ups with the security camera, we were finally able to get footage of where the raccoon (not a crow) was getting into the chicken run.

The trap caught a possum before the raccoon came to visit, and the raccoon ate some chicken feed before it went to find the last remaining chicken at 4:40 am Monday morning.

RIP Chocolate, The Last One Standing, Who Died on the Last Day of Spring 2022

I have closure, although that netting on top did not. The raccoon went out the run a different way than he came in, so clearly he was outsmarting us left and right. It is over was the resounding refrain in my head as I went for my early morning run on Monday morning after finding Chocolate dead in the run.

Now I want to be saying It is over about what we’ve gone through with Sailor in the past week. I took the girls for their well visit at the pediatrician’s office on Monday a week ago, and through some bloodwork, we discovered that Sailor’s platelet counts were dangerously low (which explains the bruising issues she has had for the past several months). The next day we took her to the pediatric hematology clinic of the hospital where they did a blood draw to recheck her platelet level (normal is 150,000 and Sailor’s level was 2,000), and then we had a meeting with the doctor, who is a very close friend of mine and TJ’s. That is our foundations not being shaken right there. Apparently Sailor is dealing with ITP, an autoimmune response that is causing her immune system antibodies to destroy her platelets.

Sailor was scheduled for a procedure called IVIg this past Thursday. We spent about 7 hours at the hospital that day with Sailor hooked up to an IV to receive immuno-globulin, which works to create a sort of protective shield system in her body to prevent her antibodies from eating up more platelets so her platelets can get back to a normal level. She had a follow up appointment this morning and thankfully they only had to do a finger prick (not a needle!) this time to recheck her levels. The results came back at a platelet count of 85,000, which is much improved over 2,000.

We discussed Sailor’s results this morning with our friend-the doctor, and he knows me well enough to know to tell me I shouldn’t walk out of the office today thinking It is over. While 85,000 is an encouraging improvement, that is still a low number and we have to have Sailor’s levels checked again (or maybe a few more times?) before we know for sure that the levels will continue to improve. In the meantime, we are to be reasonably cautious with her activity level, plus you know we will pray for her body to keep repairing itself.

That was the waking hours part. Well, actually the next part of the story is waking hours, too, but it should have been sleeping hours. On Thursday night (the night after Sailor received the IVIg), she woke up around 9:30pm with an awful headache. For the next 18 hours, she had what we soon realized was a migraine: intense waves of headache, nausea, vomiting, fever, sensitivity to light, and very very little sleep. By mid-morning on Friday, we were finally able to establish a meds routine of Zofran-Tylenol-Benadryl that began to bring some improvement but it was not without setbacks all through those long nighttime hours. That was the hardest night of Sailor’s life, which led to one of the hardest days of my life.

On top of bearing witness to Sailor’s suffering, I had to let go of so many things the following day: my morning run, our planned celebratory outing with Sailor to Tandem, going together with TJ to Story’s graduation from K9 Kadets dog training camp with Bo, and having friends over for dinner. I got to a point by mid-morning on Friday where I knew I was being given the chance to make a choice.

There was an actual moment of decision, as I stood there in the doorway of Sailor’s sick room where TJ sat beside her on the bed, and I had to choose between me and not me. Looking back now, I know that it was Christ in me that helped me do the dying I may not have been able to do on my own. To surrender my plans. To show up for Story (meaning to drive across town by myself to a new place and watch dogs do stuff, while not having run, not having showered, not having eaten, and having cried). To do what Victor Frankl taught me.

From the moment of saying yes to not me, I experienced the truth of this line of Annie’s:

We lost chickens, yes. We lost sleep, yes. Sailor lost some of her health, yes. We lost some fun plans on Friday, yes. But I also won. And now I want to win some more. I wasn’t one to go down easy on Friday when everything I had planned was slipping away, but when I finally raised the white flag, the whole day turned into a different kind of living. I saw Story’s camp graduation and proudly celebrated her. I let her get wet (unplanned) so she could show me Bo’s dock diving skills. I braved the crowds at Costco (unplanned) and got her a smoothie at the café. I came home with pizza for the boys. I did it. I died in a small way that felt big and hard. And then I lived. I lived to watch Sailor improve. I lived to know I could do it all over if I had to. I lived to see TJ be proud of me that day. I lived to find out it was a big fat mean raccoon, not a crow. I lived to say yes to life. I lived to feel buoyed by the prayers of my close friends who know how hard schedule upset is for me. I lived to know that whatever these waking hours bring, my foundations will not be shaken. I lived to tell a story.

Love,
Ginger