Seriously--when it rains, it pours.

Forget all this stuff about bad things happening in threes. I think bad things are happening more like...in the dozens for us right now.

First of all, my grandmother is still in the hospital, and while I don't know all the details, it goes something like this--there is now fluid on both lungs (which they will drain and test tomorrow), she is still VERY confused and disoriented, they think she may be in the early stages of kidney failure, and they are going to do an upper G.I. tomorrow to ascertain whether she has some sort of mass in her abdominal area (I'm not sure what is leading them to that suspicion). This is all stressing my mom out, of course--since she clearly doesn't have enough to worry about right now.

Then, on top of that, there was the basement. If you live in our area, you know that we have gotten ridiculous amounts of rain lately. My parents' basement has always been damp and somewhat prone to taking on water, as it were, and even though it hasn't happened in awhile, I guess the timing was just too perfect, with all that's going on. Mom woke up to a musty smell this morning. Yep--the carpet in the basement was soaked. Excellent. Of course Dad is too weak to do anything about it, and Mom couldn't handle it alone. So she called my dear sister and asked her to see if her church had a Wet-Vac she could borrow. Laura called the church up and asked for some dudes. And, as is typical of the wonderful people at Grace Point, four amazing men showed up to my parents' house with a Wet-Vac and took care of business. I don't think any of them read this blog, but I just want to send out a thank-you to them. My sister attends church with some of the most loving, giving people I have ever met. This sort of thing is not at all out of the ordinary for them, and in fact, they are all bending over backward to help my parents and my sister with any need they may have throughout all of this, even though my parents are not members there. So even though the basement flooding was another dark spot, God managed to turn it around and make it a bright spot by reminding us that there really ARE good, decent people out there!

The worst part came later. Let me be clear at this point that we don't know anything yet for sure--we're just reading into it--but we kind of have a bad feeling. After Dad had his CAT scan on Monday, he was told to call today for the results. They called this morning and were told the nurse practitioner, Tina, would call them back. She did, but she wouldn't tell them anything except that she wanted to bring them in on Monday or Tuesday (Dr. Johnson is out of town this week) so that Dr. Johnson could discuss the results with them. Again, she didn't tell us anything more, so we don't know for sure, but suffice it to say that we do not see this as a promising sign. We already know that the cancer is in some of the abdominal lymph nodes, but we don't know how much, if any, it has spread. We are assuming that they are NOT, at this point, going to tell us that the lesions on his liver have decreased in size in response to the chemo. We are somewhat going on the assumption that Dr. Johnson is going to discuss whether or not Dad wants to continue with the chemo (but then again, you know what they say about people who assume...).

It has, overall, been a discouraging day. I have been rather steady for the past week or so, but after today I am feeling teary and emotional again. I don't worry about myself, though--I worry about everyone else. Dad still seems to be in good spirits, and Mom is handling everything with the grace and pluck that I've come to expect, but still, this just absolutely can't be easy. Please continue to pray.

One final note--Dad is going to have a procedure tomorrow to have the fluid drained off of his belly. This should help quite a bit in easing the misery he feels after he eats. Please pray that the procedure goes smoothly and gives him a great deal of relief.