Transplant Delay | How Long, O Lord?
You know how I posted last week that January wasn’t kind to us? Well, February’s acting awfully ornery already. On Monday, we hit another setback. We’re the setback champions! There’s got to be some sort of trophy for weathering the amount of obstacles and disappointments we’ve seen, right? Surely there’s a trophy.
It’s Covid, No, It’s the Flu, No, It’s BOTH!
Those are the words that began our week last week. Mike went for his final clearance appointments on Monday. X-ray, ekg, labs, and a routine Covid test. Everyone who gets admitted to the hospital gets a routine Covid nasal swab. It’s a wonderful hospitality offering. They came back and told Mike that he tested positive for Covid, which means no high dose chemo for Mikie, which means no hospital admission, which means transplant delay. Again.
But, the thing was, he was virtually asymptomatic. He had been suffering from a lingering cough since I had Covid a month earlier, but that was it. It was more annoying than it was an active symptom. His lungs sounded and looked good on his x-ray and he felt good overall. So, they decided to do a full respiratory virus panel on him to see if perhaps it was some other virus causing a false positive on the rapid Covid test. Not really common, but if you’ve been following our story at all, you know by now that Mike doesn’t like to fit in the typical, predicable medical parameters. The full panel test came back negative for Covid, but positive for Flu-A. Are you kidding me?!! This puzzled everyone, including the infectious disease doctor at Duke who responded with . . . “huh.” The transplant team and infectious disease team decided to do a PCR Covid test at that point and if it came back negative again, just assume the first results were a false positive. It came back positive! If you’re counting, by Wednesday, he had tested positive for Flu-A and Covid. So, the transplant and infectious disease doctors huddled off to formulate some sort of plan to get Mike safely to transplant as quickly as possible.
In addition, his kidney function was . . . weird. It was unexplainably reduced and they were trying to figure out if it was due to some of his new medications that have been added over the last several months, dehydration, or if his kidneys were just taking a bit longer to clear and detox the most recent chemo drugs he was on (which is common for many people). So, while they were trying to decide what to do about the Covid and Flu, Mike’s meds were adjusted and he was given daily IV fluids and told to double his water intake. By the end of the week, his kidney numbers were trending in the right direction. Not vastly improved yet, but moving the right way.
So, back to the Covid and Flu results. On Thursday, the decision was made to treat Mike with antivirals for the two infections for five days, then admit him to the hospital for his high dose chemo on Friday, February 14th. Happy Valentine’s Day, husband! He has to go in Monday for more labs and fluids, then Wednesday for the whole clearance process again—another ekg, x-ray, labs, nurse visit, provider visit, and pharmacist visit. In total, we’ve had a 10-day delay in the transplant process.
We’re Weary of Setbacks
Folks keep telling me that God’s timing is perfect. I get that theologically. I’ve said it to others a thousand times if I’ve said it once. When I teach the Bible to groups and when I write Bible studies, I beat the sovereignty of God drum pretty hard. I fundamentally believe that God is sovereign and that his timing is perfect.
But when you’re walking through the wilderness of pain and suffering, weariness sets in. We are human and only have so much emotional, physical, and spiritual energy to exert. We are finite (limited) beings. Suffering seasons bring us to the end of ourselves. We ask like the Psalmist, Isaiah, and the the saints in Revelation, “How Long, O Lord?”
I’ve said it before; I’ve never felt more like Job in the Bible than I have in this season. In the beginning of the book of Job, God declared him blameless and upright (Job 1:8). This means was a strong believer in the future Messiah and lived a faithful life with God’s help. Then Satan tempts him to renounce God by destroying everything on earth that he loves and that gives him comfort. Messenger of doom follows on the heels of another messenger telling him of great losses. He loses his wealth, his children, his home, and his health, one right after another. I feel like Job. For a year and a half, there has been bad news heaped on bad news, setback after setback. I’m tired, y’all. I know I’ve said this before more than once, but I.Am.SO.Tired. I’ve never spoken the phrase “How Long, O Lord?” more in my life.
Perhaps that’s where God needed to bring me to teach me something. I keep thinking I’ve learned THE lesson and things will look up now, but then there’s another blow. I’m learning that a walk with Christ is not linear. Well, I knew that before, even preached it to others, but I’m learning it in a deeper, more sure way now. We don’t start out in our relationship with God at a low place and then steadily increase in holiness and closeness to God. Instead, we have lots of ups and downs, doubts and faithful moments, sins and holiness, all mixed together in no predictable patterns.
Our lives with Christ are about communion with him. Learning to be in union with Christ means learning to share in the fellowship of his sufferings (Phil. 2:10). I don’t like hearing that. I’d rather just share in his reign and rule. The suffering? I’ll take a pass on that. But I want to be like the Psalmists who declared their despair and lament. I don’t want to ask “How Long, O Lord?” without reminding myself that God is good. Take a look at Psalm 13:
“1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.”
Prayers For The Week
This week’s prayers are:
Pray for the clearance appointment to go as planned this week and admission to happen on schedule
Pray for the chemo to eradicate every cancer cell and to leave all good cells intact
Pray for Mike’s body to handle the high dose chemo with little side effects and NO lasting side effects that affect his future health
Pray for our emotional and spiritual encouragement. We are doing much better in that area now than we were last Monday after we heard about the delays. Please pray for regular encouraging encounters with God and others.
Finances are something I don’t mention often because we’re trusting the Lord to meet our needs and he’s been utterly faithful to do it. This week, though, please pray that things go smoothly with Mike’s transition to Long Term Disability. Specifically, that there is no lapse in his medical insurance coverage. We are pretty sure we’ve done everything we can do on our end to ensure everything continues, but the way things have been going, some extra prayers won’t hurt! Long Term Disability causes us to lose a significant portion of income, but thank God we still have some income! We’re choosing to focus on that and trust that God has brought us this far and supplied all our needs. He won’t stop now.
