These past few days I've neglected to update on my condition. The reason was that I came up with a fever and didn't have the strength to write all I wanted to. The first entry was written the morning before the fever emerged. I hope you all will appreciate these update, I spent a very, very long time writing this.
Tuesday, Aug. 30 (Morning)
"Today I studied Genesis with my dad. We learned some mind-blowing facts. In chapter 1, God never created water-- it was already there! This led us to wonder: maybe we weren't the first creation. Possibly there was already another universe that has already gone through what we've gone through, what we're going through now, and what we will go through. Then I noticed that God had to separate the light from darkness, meaning that light and darkness, were mixed together. That to me is unfathomable.
Then, moving on to chapter 2, I noticed that God created man by forming him with the dust of the ground. This reminded me of something I learned a long time ago: dust is actually dead skin flakes. Then God breathed the breath of life into his being."
Tuesday, Aug. 30 (Late at night)
My mom and I had a disagreement over the music I was listening to (the "Ghostbusters" theme song) and I got mad because she felt it wasn't appropriate for a time like this. I yelled at her that I wished I was dead, then ran out of the room, trying to get away from her. A nurse saw me and asked what was wrong. I told her that I wanted to find a soundproof room and scream my lungs out. The nurse dissuaded me from foxing so, and asked my mom to leave for a while. I told the nurse that I wanted to hate my mom, but I knew that wasn't right, so maybe I should have a couple minutes alone, to calm down, but my mom was not to enter until ten minutes have passed. The nurse agreed, but she'd have to leave the door open to make sure I wouldn't try to hurt myself. I agreed, brushed my teeth, and got ready for bed. When my mom came in, I told her not to talk to me until the next morning.
Wednesday, Aug. 31 (Midnight)
About 2-3 hours after the incident, I awoke at around 1am. I just couldn't sleep. Finally, I woke up my mom and apologized for my behavior earlier. She accepted my apology, then apologized for hers. I forgave her, and we hugged, said a prayer, said, "I love you", and went back to sleep.
Ephesians 4:25-26
25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 26 “In your anger do not sin” Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry
Wednesday, Aug. 31
Around 3 or 4am, the nurse came in to take my temperature and blood pressure. I told her I couldn't fall asleep; I had been laying awake staring at the ceiling, trying to go back to sleep. After taking my temperature, she discovered that I had a fever. The commotion woke my mom up, and the nurse went to get some Tylenol. I told my mom that I regretted wanting to die when I said that earlier; I was just frustrated and didn't really want to die. At this point I was crying violently, and my mom tried to get me back to sleep, but I just couldn't. I mentioned this to my mom, and she got a chair and sat next to me, holding my hand, praying, and called my dad so we could pray together. We stayed like this until my mom felt my dad should get some rest so he could come take care of me the following day.
Fast forward to daytime; my parents and the nurses finally got my body to cool down. I can't really remember the rest of the day.
Thursday, Sept. 1
In the middle of the night, I got up to get a drink of water, when I felt something rising in my throat. I had had this feeling before. I tried to warn my dad, but before I could get two words out of my mouth, I threw up. Now, some of you may be thinking that throwing up gets the feeling out of the way. This may be true for a normal, healthy person who has not gone through 5 rounds of chemotherapy, but after chemo, you feel even worse after vomiting. It's even worse if you can smell it all over you. I vomited all over my clothes, blankets, and pillow. My dad and I quickly called for a nurse, and got me disconnected from all my tubes so I could change my clothes and my bedsheet, then went back to sleep. An hour later though, a whole bunch of doctors and nurses rushed in to check on me. I didn't really know what was going on, but when I heard that some of these doctors were from the ICU, I panicked and started worrying that I might have to go to the ICU again, and it'll be December 2010 all over again. Meanwhile, my mom, who was really at home but was talking to the doctor face-to-face, thanks to the wonders of FaceTime, was trying sort things out to know what exactly was going to happen afterwards and whatnot. In the end they decided that I needed more fluids, more platelets, and more red blood cells. When everybody left, my dad and I prayed that we would all come out of this victorious. Then, before we went back to sleep, I told my dad that the victory is already ours.
Friday, Sept. 2
In the morning, I woke up shivering and coughing. The shivering had been there for a while, but the coughing was new. They got x-ray to come up to get some shots. When the results came back, they discovered that I had water in my lungs, a result of all the fluids they were giving me, and that was why I had trouble breathing.
Fast forward to that night, my fever had gone up really high, and my dad was in no condition to take care of me that night (he had stayed up with me in a chair next to my bed all night, comforting me when I couldn't sleep, and watching the monitors to make sure nothing went awry) so my mom stayed to watch over me in the night, and when I couldn't fall asleep I prayed. I prayed for over an hour straight, declaring victory over my situation, rebuking Satan and his demons, and blessing all the people who were behind us fighting in this war with us. I had never prayed for this long before, but it felt refreshing to do so.
Saturday, Sept. 3
Today the inevitable finally happened: Haircut Day. I had been wanting to do this for several days already, because my hair kept falling out and tickled/itched everywhere, and just my swaying my head side-to-side I could feel that every single hair was loose. We had a lot of fun with the shaving-- my mom a little too much so. In fact, the day before I asked my dad to wet a towel and see if he could wipe off all the loose hairs. The end result, according to both my parents, made me look like Mao Tse-Tung. Anyways, I had my dad shave it into a mohawk, which made me look quite fierce, if I do say so myself. When the nurses came in to check vital signs, my mom insisted that they take a picture with me. After that, we had a lot of fun posing with me new (temporary) mohawk. When we felt we'd had enough, the nurse walked in with a printout of a unicorn. Oh, darn it! I had originally planned to have my dad shave of the back part of the mohawk and shape the remaining hairs into a unicorn horn. Oh well, what's done is done. Then my dad helped me take a shower, a luxury I haven't had for the past week. I felt much fresher, cleaner, and less itchy afterwards.
Coughing and difficulty breathing appeared much less today so I didn't need them to continually pump oxygen into my lungs, my energy felt much more replenished, and I could stand up and walk today, which made me dizzy the last couple of days. I believe that victory, once again, was achieved.
One last thing I wanted to share, yesterday when my dad and I were praying, my dad asked God to breathe life into me like he did to Adam, all the way back to Genesis. Immediately I felt wind on my face, which surprised me, so I opened my eyes and saw my dad's hand in from of my face, but it wasn't moving. The only possible explanation is that God heard our prayers and immediately acted. Not long after this miracle, we were still praying, but we noticed that the radio was on, playing worship music! My dad looked at me incredulously. He never touched the radio. In fact, he was sitting all the way across the room from it!
Brian
