AND THE BAND PLAYS ON

Yesterday was another horror story, with the same old song and dance and the band played on. This tiny little woman, not over 100 pounds anymore is fighting for her life giving it everything she has. She beat back cancer of her colon and is still fighting pneumonia. As my wife says when things seem to be settling down: “When will the next shoe drop?”

As a miserable morning started in the early hours I arrived at the hospital filled with hope, trying to steady myself that something new happens to my little girl and I would want to crawl into a deep hole and pour the dirt over me. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Ellen has a partially collapsed lung!” This was after the immediate need to give her painkiller morphine that is too strong for her weak and frail body and she spiraled into extreme pain shaking and struggling in the bed with her hands tied down so she doesn’t pull out the tubes. More meds and changing of the apparatus to help her shallow breathing as things spiraled out of control.

The amount of phlegm and mucus they withdrew from her lungs was as thick as a vanilla pudding as her nurse described it.

They now have her resting in her room, the key here is ‘resting’. The hospital cleared her lungs and she is breathing now with the help of a machine, a good sign for a change. Hang on as I walk out to the floor and choose a new dance partner.