Update on Mark

Thank you so much everyone for your thoughts and prayers and asking about Mark.

He was able to keep his anti-rejection pills down! That's really great news. He's still pretty sick, though. His blood pressures are sky-high and his sugars are way out of control. This pretty much happens every time he's in the hospital. Last time, it seemed like all the extra meds and insulin they gave him all of a sudden started working the last day and he bottomed out. So, of course I'm worried about that.

He's been sleeping a lot or trying to. When he's awake, he's throwing up. :( And he's a little crabby....but I guess I would be, too, if I had to stay in the hospital and put up with a sleep-deprived, stir-crazy wife.

Hopefully he'll be able to keep his pills down within the next day or 2 and we can go home.

I'm sorry I haven't updated before now. To be honest, I was really down and discouraged. I think part of the reason was yesterday was my birthday and to be spending it in the hospital just plain sucked. Yeah, it's just another day and you can celebrate it any day....but would you really want to spend your birthday in the hospital? I think not. Mark has apologized many times for it but I just thank him because he's putting off me getting older. :) It makes him feel better. Our plan was to go to Red Lobster as that's on my "bucket list" (pretty sad, huh?) so we will just have to do it another day and really celebrate. :)

I cried a lot yesterday. I would go home and check up on Eddie and I would just sit on the deck and cry. I never wanted to cry in front of people or Mark because I didn't want them to know I was hurting. Basically I'm scared. I'm scared of what's happening. A few years after the transplant, Mark was doing incredibly well. We went almost 2 years with him not being in the hospital at all. I realized yesterday that for the last year, it's been every 4 months he's had an episode and it's always the same thing with basically the same time frame. This time it was different, though. This time he has had more episodes of SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) that he had shown on his defibrillator, and it seems like his heart couldn't take the stomach thing as his troponin enzymes went up...something that has never happened before. That scares me big time.

So, yesterday it got me thinking. And I'm just going to be blunt here....what if this is the "beginning of the end"? Mark has already beat the odds. But, now it seems it's "conveniently" every 4 months he's in the hospital and this time his heart didn't respond well to it at all. We've always assumed he's just caught a virus, but the timing is just too coincidental to me. I'm so terrified of losing Mark right now. I know, I shouldn't be thinking about that and to enjoy my time with him, but I'm a realistic person and to me, it seems like his stomach and heart are "giving up".

And at the same time, it's killing me to watch him suffer. Yesterday I prayed to God not to let him suffer anymore. Take him home. He's had enough.

And you can imagine what I was thinking about all the TTC stuff yesterday....not going to happen and that we should just stop trying.

So, yesterday was a bad day.....and to have all those thoughts going through my head on my birthday---well, it just kind of was overwhelming. I didn't want to talk to anyone and didn't really answer my phone.

Okay, enough talking about that.

I have to tell you about Peyton and Tyler to kind of lighten the moment. Friday night my parents brought Tyler and Peyton to see us. When they came in, Peyton announced to me right away that she had to change her shirt and wear her polka dots shirt before they came to see Uncle Mark. I asked her if she got her other shirt dirty. She said "No. I know Mark likes my polka dots shirt so he can poke the polka dots and I know my shirt will help him feel better." It was so sweet. It did get a smile out of Mark. :)

Then yesterday my sister and BIL came with Tyler and Peyton. They brought a couple magazines and a chocolate cheesecake for my birthday cake. :) My sister told me that Tyler and Peyton had picked out the cake for me. Tyler told me "Mommy asked what kind of cake we should get you and Peyton made me say chocolate". I said to Tyler "Well, that's okay because I love chocolate!" Then Tyler smiled and said "I knew you would".

He's a smart cookie. He knew he was covered whether I liked the cake or not. :)

Thanks again everyone for your thoughts and prayers and asking about him. It means more than you know.