12. Good Morning Chemo Day!

I'm trying to remember the last time I went to bed the night before, or woke up in the morning with such awareness about an event planned for the day. I'm sitting here writing while experiencing a hot flash from the hormone treatments I'm on, and planning to drive to Sacramento with my bride in exactly 6 hours to voluntarily allow poison into my body.

I've been pretty careful to avoid reading about all the things people have experienced on chemo. But Juli has done the opposite, and that beautiful bride of mine has spent hours and hours over the last weeks preparing our home by cleaning every corner of the house, researching the value of portable steam equipment for killing every mold spore in the shower, and prodding me with questions for days about what I'm going to try and tolerate for food, from Saltines to Ensure.

Masks have been purchased, barf bags, and my Kindle is now loaded with several books I have been wanting to devour. That last item has been the subject of several conversations as "Chemo Brain" has been a concern. Will I want to read? If I want to read, will I be unable to concentrate well enough to exercise my brain with non-fiction? Or will I be able to enjoy a clever plot and the repeated dominance of the hero over evil in a novel? Yet if all I can do is repeat the short prayers described in an earlier post, it will be enough to lean heavily on our One true superhero over evil.

How will I handle business if I'm not feeling well? Two weeks out of every three will be spent isolated now for the next 4 months or more. So we brought ready-to-ship product to our garage so I can do invoicing and shipping labels from home while several others have offered to deliver the product to UPS or FedEx. And how did that product get assembled and boxed? My sons-in-law and several young men from church have worked with me over the last month to prepare for today. Work parties where one installed casters, another put stickers on, another bagged and boxed, and I got in the way and played with the grandkids.

What do people do without a system of support like the one God has provided to me? I am the richest man in Yuba City.

Yesterday was our anniversary, 38 years of marriage to Juli. Thinking about awareness of an event, I certainly remember waking up on March 1, 1980 knowing that by the end of that day the love of my life would be my love all my life. We talked yesterday about our wedding day and the day before, what we were hoping for and imagining... And yesterday, Juli spent hours on last minute house preparations while I did the same. But it's OK. We are together and enjoying an intense closeness due to the threat against us, but also due to 38 years of "getting to know each other." Many of our friends and family have been separated by death just as their wedding vows foretold. It is good to be alive, and it is really good to be Juli Jensen's husband.

Yesterday the doorbell rang and I heard Juli open the door and gasp! Our kids, Stephanie, Joel, Ashlee, Stephen, and Brett, had banded together and ordered a gorgeous arrangement of roses to honor us on our anniversary! She cried and complained that she wasn't going to be presentable later when I took her out to dinner at our favorite restaurant. We finished up preparations by about 6PM and headed to Lucille's (after a quick stop at Sam's Club to get some last minute food items that might be more easily retained by my stomach after today.

Dinner was wonderful and Juli and I both enjoyed and were encouraged by all the prayers and encouragements spoken to us over FaceBook, text-messages, and emails as we read them and talked together about them. We stopped on the way home at Chick-fil-a for frosted lemonade and coffee, then one last stop at Wal-Mart for Purell and Ensure. We're as ready as we can get I think.

Earlier this week I had been experiencing a runny nose and sinus pressure. I've had nearly continuous sinus pain since the Lupron injection though I am unsure of its origin. We were a bit worried it would delay the chemo (It still might) but the doctor said it would be OK if there was no infection. Now Juli has it and is uncomfortable. So last weekend when the Dunns came with the grandkids for a visit (I won't be able to be around them for awhile now) Stephanie brought an Essential Oils diffuser they had purchased for us to help with breathing and atmosphere. So thoughtful, even though I've always been skeptical about things like that. Except that we used it for the first time last night, and I woke this morning for the first time in a month without sinus pressure. Coincidence?

Stephanie and Joel also brought mercy in the form of olive oil. (Did you know that there is a connection between olive oil and mercy? When we pray for mercy, it is often a parallel reference to healing, and of course God is sovereign to heal us physically as well as spiritually.) In one of the most beautiful acts of love I've experienced, Stephanie gently anointed me, signing the cross on my forehead, cheeks, and neck with oil from their church while her husband Joel prayed this prayer over me:

O Heavenly Father, physician of our souls and bodies, who have sent Your Only-begotten Son and our Lord Jesus Christ to heal every sickness and infirmity, visit and heal Your servant Dan from all sickness of soul and body through the grace of your Christ. Grant him patience in sickness, strength of body and spirit, and recovery of health. For You, O Lord, have taught us through Your word to pray for each other that we may be healed. Therefore I pray, heal your servant Dan and grant him the gift of complete health. For You are the source of healing, and to You I give glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

See? The richest man in Yuba City.