She's out of the woods

The doctor said that my sister can be discharged from the hospital today. But he will need take another blood test to see if her platelets count is up sufficiently. We normally have 270 - 280 but her's dropped to 70 a few days ago. But she's out of the woods now. She looked so much better last night when I went to see her and she's off the drips. She didn't need help taking a shower last night too. She's almost back to her old self now. Not so blotchy, red, tired-looking and weak. But she says that her skin still feel like it's sunburned under the skin. Any scrapping on her skin is excruciating. I can't imagine how that feels like. To feel like that all over your body and there is nothing the doctors can give you to take the pain away. Of course unless you numb the entire stretch of the skin, then maybe. Ouch.

So it's good news for us. Thank you all for your wishes and prayers. *HUG*

The old woman next to her, poor thing. She's in there for a nearly collapsed spine. They put her on 24/7 morphine but she still moans in pain from time to time. It's heart-breaking to hear her. She has her maid and her daughter with her, thank goodness. I hope that never happens to me or anyone I know. Being in constant pain, being helpless as a child who needs help to eat, sit up, lift her head... down to relieving herself in the bed pan and soiling herself in her adults pampers.

Then next door was a woman who had a skin disease and we could smell her from our side. I say was as she was moved to the ICU two days ago. She too was incapacitated.

The hospital is such a depressing place. You see all these poor and unlucky people and the fact slams into you that you might be one of them someday every time.

I don't ever want to be like that. I would rather go like that *snap* than having to suffer all kinds of sickness and diseases. I watched my father suffer and die of cancer and it is not a pretty sight. It's not just the pain, but the mental pain that one goes through knowing there is no hope left. There is never enough morphine to dull the pain as it eats away at your flesh and bones one inch at a time. At first the cancer appeared in his sinuses, he did chemotherapy and it was gone. Six months later it came back, in his brain and when they did chemotherapy on that part, they had to go zapped the infected part, making him do crazy things like wanting to jump out of the window to fly, things that nearly killed him earlier. After that, he was okay. Then it came back again but this time it was infecting his liver. You can't do chemotherapy on your liver. His last few weeks was a blur of pain, medication and prayers. He turned yellow. He drastically lost more weight. He lost his will to eat as he was always in pain. When he died, I remember hearing gurgling sounds coming from his chest as though he was drowning. Then when we tried to revive him, black stuff starting oozing from his mouth and nose. It was the dead cancer infected cells. It continued oozing even when we closed his coffin.

Being in the hospital brought those 3 years of suffering back. Even though I was just 11 when he died, I remember. All my 5 senses remember what it was like to be surrounded by sickness and see death.

The only good thing I can think of that came out of his suffering was that he was drawn closer to God through it all. It made him want to be a better servant, and he was.