Family Matters - Part 1

Beads of Joy 05-11-10

Family Matters - Part 1
©2010 James Dacey, Jr. SFO

Hello Everyone,

This is just going to be a few days of sharing all this that we are going through. I pray that before I end this, we have much better news to share. Last week Chrissy wanted to get a physical and make sure she was alright. That was completely understandable. In the meantime and in the midst of all that she has had this cough for a while, and from time to time she complained about chest pains. We didn't and she didn't think nothing of it. We are all getting older (I didn't just say that. LOL), so we figured this was all part of this journey down the other side of 40. I'll begin from this last Friday morning when the heat got turned up to boil on all of us, especially Chrissy. These past few weeks Chrissy and I on Thursday's after all the kids go to school, we go to a diner for breakfast and then do our banking, some shopping and then we come home so I can go to sleep. We just recently started this about two to three weeks ago. Well last week was leading up to Mother's Day and her flowers the kids sent her was coming on Thursday, so we bumped our Thursday routine into Friday. So other then the day of the week being different, nothing else was different. Chrissy was in the living watching the news curled up with her coffee. Once Sarah left for school then Travie left, Chrissy was in a burst of tears saying, "Look at this!" showing me her napkin, with blood she just coughed out. That sent chills up my spin, that's never a good sign.

And so Friday has begun for us, it was a very long day for all of us. We immediately called Chrissy's Doctor who's office is like 2 miles from our home while the hospital is about 10-15 miles. So her and me and Charlie (who was already for school), screeched out of the driveway and headed to her doctor. Once there, they did an EKG, and just some basic reviewing of her blood pressure, etc, and then they set up an immediate MRI, requesting a "wet test", I still have no idea what that means, but it was written on the order. So I dropped Charlie off at school which was almost like around the block from the doctor (everything is close here), then I went back and picked up Chrissy. So off to the Medical Center we go.. The MRI was a three hour process, Chrissy is allergic to the dye, so she had to be medicated an hour earlier, then they put dye in her system, so they can do the MRI. No she wasn't done, the doctor wanted them to call them for an immediate review. He concluded it was a sever case of pneumonia. My opinion, but he concluded this over the phone. Anyhow they setup an appointment for her to see a Pulmonary Specialist. Like I said this was a long day. Well between the MRI and the specialist we had less then two hours... Good! we had time to eat (we hadn't eaten at all and it was after 1pm) and hit the bank, actually we made a deposit, if we hit the bank, the cops on our tail would have slowed down our fast paced day. LOL. And then we went back to the doctors, and off I went to go pick up the kids as they get out of school, so we can all head back to pick up mommy.

Upon our return Chrissy was in the midst of the leaving process with the paperwork from the specialist. She looked heart broken and about to cry. I had that gut feeling this wasn't going to be good. Well the specialist reviewed the MRI and he told her it revealed that this growth, a rather large and dense one was inside of her lungs. Her regular physician said it was pneumonia.. NOT, after the Pulmonary Specialist reviewed all her tests this week and last he concluded and told her, it's not pneumonia. He said its a growth that is unknown, but apparently very large. She'll get a biopsy, hospital is suppose to call, not sure when. But they said the biopsy itself will be very difficult. There are 3 ways they can do it, all three ways may collapse her lung, sending her directly to the hospital. In the end, the doctor told her, it could very well be negative, or it maybe a sis, or a tumor or cancer, and depending upon what stage it's in and how much it has spread, it could be terminal. OMG, he told us that... YES. So this has been a very somber sad Mother's Day weekend for all of us. And this has all come upon us so quickly. You ask where do we find the strength. It's all in our Lord that we find strength to move forward through these unknown waters.

Then when we all headed out to the car, as soon as Chrissy walked out of the door to the center, she broke down hysterical crying saying, "I don't want to leave you guys.", then my kids were crying, I was crying. Lots of hugging as we headed to the car and little by little we gained back our composure. I told her I have her on many prayer lists. With my Rosary Ministry, I know so many people around the world. I asked many of them to put her on their prayer lists. I told Chrissy we'll ask God for a miracle that you get better. She looked at me straight in the eyes, crying and said, "Do you promise I'll get better?" I didn't know what to say. I got chills when she said that with her heart screaming for an answer. I told her it's God's hands now. Let's trust Him. Let unite and know that He knows His will for you and for us. We learned alot on this day I must say. So much more to share about this experience. It's affected our family in many ways, mostly good. So maybe all this has had a purpose from the start.. I knew that. LOL

To be continued tomorrow...


Your brother in Christ Jesus & His Most Blessed Mother,
Jim (The Rosary Man) Dacey Jr SFO