Day 34/35 Last night was interesting. At about 2 AM I was roused from my sleep. What was it? There’s some faint noise. What’s that? Did I really hear something? Yes, there it is again. Where’s that coming from? It’s under the bed. No, it’s across the room in the corner. In the semi-dark the sound comes from everywhere. I get up and look around, but I can’t see anything. It seems to have stopped. When I lay down it starts right back up. Sis is starting to wake up now. By now I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. There’s a mousetrap under the bed. it’s one of those kind of traps that doesn’t hurt the mouse. It’s a little plastic box he crawls into and can’t get out of. We have these traps because from time to time we have had to catch a mouse. This was usually a process that never ended well for the mouse. Our method was to trap the creature in a room, and use duct tape to seal off all his escape routes. The first mouse was dispatched when I tossed the roll of tape at him and sent him out into eternity. After we had “trapped” a couple of other mice over the years with the same outcome for the mouse we decided to use these catch and release traps. This particular trap had been forgotten about and was just laying under the bed. It had been there for months. Apparently a mouse had crawled in so there I was at 2 in the morning, on my hands and knees, fishing this mouse trap out from under the bed. After all the “excitement” I decide I would go to the living room and watch a little TV. I was a little keyed up and it always helps me to fall asleep if I can have a little background noise. I usually lay on the couch, turn on Headline News with the sound down to where its barely audible, and drift off. This is exactly what I did. A couple of hours later at about 4 AM I was instantly awake. Sis was in the kitchen rustling through the cabinets looking for something. I jumped up and asked her what she was doing. She said she was looking for a banana. Her knees were hurting and she was convinced a banana would help. She had mentioned feeling weak in the knees almost from the start of radiation, but this was the first she said anything about them hurting, and it had woken her up. We didn’t have any bananas so I made a mad dash to the store. When I got back I gave her a banana and started asking her about her knees. She told me it wasn’t only her knees, but her ankles also. This was new. We prayed. I called the radiologist. At 4:30 AM on a Saturday morning you have to call and let the answering service get in touch with whoever is on call and wait for them to call back. When the radiologist called back about 20 minutes later I talked with him about what was happening. He said he’d never heard of anything like it and that it wasn’t likely that it had anything to do with the radiation treatments. He made a few suggestions about taking some ibuprofen and suggested calling the oncologist in a couple of hours if that didn’t help. Sis took the pills and laid down. She was able to get to sleep about 20 minutes later. I ended up on the couch in the living room again. Sis has to have a fan blowing on her in order to sleep through the night. It gets so cold sometimes you can see your breath. She had gone to sleep and had taken all the covers so I had to go in the living room to get warm. We woke up around 9. I asked her how her knees felt. She said they still hurt a little but they were better. She got up and had breakfast. We decided to call her oncologist to tell him about the knee thing. Once again, on Saturday you have to wait for a call back. Sis, in the meantime was up and doing a little house cleaning. The oncologist on call finally called back and we talked to him. He said he didn’t know exactly what it was, but thought that the ibuprofen was a good idea. We went through the rest of the day as usual. We prayed and read the bible. We resisted the doubts, fears, and anxiety. The devil was throwing it our way, and there was plenty of it, but we’ll never stop fighting, we’ll never stop believing. As the sun was setting and the afternoon was cooling into evening, we went out on our new deck. It’s glorious. I got the scissors and trimmed back the last sprigs of hair on Sis’ nearly bald head. I got my electric shaver and buzzed everything. Day 35 It’s Sunday morning and we’re off to church. It takes us a little more than an hour to get there. We usually listen to a teaching tape on the way there, so we’ve already been in church an hour before we get there. The focus of this morning’s service is the testimony of Jim M. He was diagnosed with cancer and given a month to live. He was healed of not only cancer, but as he put it, “Seven other things, any of which should have killed me.” That was three years ago. His doctors still don’t understand it. Since we’re having flooring installed tomorrow we’ve got a hotel room tonight so Sis can hang out there while all the hammering and nailing goes on. At the hotel Sis and I have an honest talk with each other and God. You see, we’re standing on the many promises of healing in the bible. God has said over and over that healing is ours. He said it in the Old Testament (Exodus 15:26, Psalm 103:3, Isaiah 53:5), He said it in the New Testament (Matt. 8:17, I Peter 2:24, III John 2). We’ve released our faith and we’ll not turn back from that. The biggest challenge for me is to realize that I can’t do everything for Sis. She has to use her faith, she has to receive her healing. I can’t use my faith and receive her healing for her. That’s a lot easier to grasp and deal with when everything is going well, it’s much harder to do when she’s laying there hurting. That’s when I want to take over, to spring into action, I want to fix it. The devil knows that. He uses that against me. Sis and I know that we can’t be focused on every little pain, or dizziness, or tiredness that comes along. I’m having to learn that things are beyond my control. God is in control. Rationally I know there’s nothing I can control. I can’t heal cancer, or anything for that matter, but God can ... and does. He loves us so much. All I need to do is use my faith and believe the promises of God. Faith is what God has given me, it’s the substance of things hoped for. (Heb. 11:1) Fear is what the devil tempts me with. I resist it, and he will flee. (James 4:7) <back