Every Morning Mercies New

Thank you so much to all of you who reached out with kind words but especially with your heartfelt prayers for my dad. My last post was mirthless and heavy because that is what we were feeling. We have been getting more positive updates the last two days. He is being turned prone and then unproned in cycles to see how his lungs can tolerate lying on his back. So far he has done well with them flipping him back and forth. I asked my nurse husband what the point is of doing this flipping and he said that keeping a patient on their stomach does help their lungs to expand but it brings up other problems such as skin breakdown or bed sores which is why they constantly work on getting them to tolerate lying on their back again. Along with this is a daily weaning trial so they don’t become too dependent on the ventilator. That’s where Dad is at this point. He’s still heavily sedated to keep him comfortable.

We know that things could take a turn at any moment but it does feel like we’ve been given some breathing space. Mom came out of quarantine yesterday, and her sisters came to visit her for a few days. I decided to join Gabriel at our Northwest Pennsylvania house, and even though I came to work hard, it felt like a vacation. This morning I slept past 4:30 a.m. for the first time in weeks. On an air mattress. In a dirty camping situation. The mental exhaustion went deeper than I realized.

I also want to assure you that I still believe that humor is one of the best ways to cope with life. I know that it is hilariously anticlimactic for some when they get the dreaded Rona and it’s literally a slap on the wrist after all this drama for months. It is the most confusing virus I have ever seen. So I’ll just say go ahead and cheer for the weird mercies that attend the pandemic. Like my friend Stephanie wrote to me, “I have been tossed to and fro with my feelings…and while I am guilty of laughing sometimes at the jokes and calamities the virus created, I do not scorn it.  I decided this is something that I do not want to have to eat my words.  I too have reminded myself that those that face death will be forever traumatized by it.”

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I wanted to make sure that I explained that this is Northwest Pennsylvania because in an earlier post I see that I wrote Northeast. Confession: I have always had problems with West/East and left/right unless I gave it consideration.  I do know North/ South though.

Have a great day. I’ll just be here, helping to demo a bathroom, and I won’t be sorry to see it go, especially the leaky toilet and the plastic vanity.