It Will Get Better

It will get better.

These are words I find myself saying more often than I'd like.

"The pen is mightier than the sword" opined Edward Bulwer-Lytton, but I am confident he never had to strike that same sword against an iron rod for weeks on end, dulling it to a gentle curve.  Situations, it seems, has a tendency to turn sharpened steel into a lead pipe.

It will get better.

We are 14 days into this hospitalization, the hospitalization we hoped would go smoother than the last. Who were we kidding? The last stay lasted half as long as we expected.  This one may last longer than we feared for the first. We may have set our hopes too high.

It will get better.

These drugs haven't given Harper her deep tan (as if she needs one - she browns after 15 minutes in the sun), but they've done their damage.  Her mouth is a wreck, her strength sapped. The C. Diff is back with a vengeance, in some ways rougher than last time. Her blood pressure was up, now it's down, and her pulse is racing. And now adenovirus.  On top of the normal cocktails of infection preventing medicines, we've now added Cidofovir, which among its many attributes can impair kidney function - which we will attempt to prevent with probenecid.

It will get better.

Her platelets are striving for zero, despite regular transfusions, and those platelets can't work correctly because she doesn't have enough Vitamin K (that happens when you don't/can't eat), so we are supplementing that too.  Her electrolytes are out of balance as well, likely impacting her BP and pulse irregularities.

It will get better.

Because her platelets are low (and not working), she's bleeding in her stomach - which amassed enough this morning that it made her nauseous enough to throw up.  Yes, she threw up blood - multiple times.  And during one of those times, she also threw up her NJ tube.  She then pulled it the rest of the way out on her own.  Given her current status, they will not replace it - so all those meds that can't be given intravenously she must now swallow - with mouth, throat and lips that are blistered.

It will get better.

Spirits are at their lowest in some time.  Not since initial diagnosis have things looked so bleak.

And the words of encouragement, the words that have meant so much, for so long, are beginning to lose their edge.  Oh, there are many things you could say, like it being darkest before the dawn - but someone beaten and bloody, sitting in the darkness is likely not rallied by those words.

Edgar Allen Poe said "Never to suffer would never to have been blessed" but I am pretty confident that after 19 months of treatment, Harper is far from feeling blesses.

No, there is but one thing I have to say - and it is a belief, while shaken by current events, while rattled by pain and suffering and blood, while rounded smooth by repeated strikes, is still strong and a notion I will not abandon.

It will get better.