Baptism

After our trip to Orcas Island, Mike’s sisters came over and announced we were going to throw a benefit for Mike so we could afford the costs of moving to LA for his next clinical trial. Trisha gave me a list of tasks to complete for the benefit, like writing a newspaper article and making fliers, which overwhelmed me, but I knew everything would come together. We hoped to have the benefit sometime in August. We were also waiting to hear from Dr. Ribas’s assistant, Jackie, about when we should come down to LA to start the trial and for our chosen apartment to become available. The apartment we’d chosen did not allow dogs, but we had gotten a letter from the doctor to the housing authority to allow Griffey as an “emotional support” animal. He truly was that. Mike actually claimed he felt better when he woke up with Griffey next to him in the mornings. Griff was his child; he couldn’t have been without him.

The next two nights, Mike woke up to excruciating calf pain in one side. We took him to the hospital in Chewelah where he had a standing order for IV fluids whenever he wanted or needed it. So we often went down there for a few hours just to hydrate him. We hoped the pain could be cramping from an electrolyte imbalance and the fluid would help, but it did not. I feared he had a blood clot. On July 28th, after having a night of the most pain I’d ever seen Mike in, we called our local Chewelah doctor who ordered an ultrasound for Mike in Spokane. Overnight, Mike’s calf hurt so bad, he was moaning and yelling and pounding on the floor. I was crying I was so terrified of not knowing what was happening to his leg. I literally felt like something horrible was going to happen, like all of a sudden he was going to die from a blood clot. We considered going to the ER but held off to call the doctor in the morning. The ultrasound the next day found no blood clot, so we had no idea what was causing the leg pain but it seemed to dissipate shortly after that. Maybe it was the cancer invading his leg or something.

We stopped at a printing company in Spokane we’d used in the past to get Mike’s photography printed on canvas and ordered some more prints to be made for auctioning at the benefit. R and R Custom Color lab does an incredible job and the people there are the most caring, wonderful people. They spent tons of time with us going through pictures on the computers and the “store dog,” Lola, sat on Mike’s lap the entire time. They did all the printing for us at a significant discount. In a couple months, they would be printing the programs for Mike’s memorial as well.

We had previously arranged to be baptized that afternoon at my mom’s house at Waitts Lake. I don’t always talk about the spiritual aspect during those times, in fact, I avoid it because it still exhausts me, but it was actually the central theme of our day to day life. We prayed daily, read the Bible, went to church when Mike felt well enough, and I felt like every minute of the day, I was in a race for both Mike and I to achieve a certain degree of faith that was enough to heal him before it was too late. I know it sounds a bit ridiculous, but unless you’ve been faced with seeing time slip away from you (or your loved one) as quickly as we did, it’s a hard concept to grasp.

So the pastor we’d met at his house a month or two ago had become something of a spiritual healing advisor to me. He and his partner pastor came to my mom’s house, we had a discussion about what baptism means, and then Mike’s family came, since we knew it would mean something to them to be there. In the lake, first I was baptized (which was actually my second time since I’d already been baptized in high school, but it felt appropriate to do it again) and then Mike went next. It felt like a meaningful experience, and although I half expected to come up out of the water speaking tongues and seeing lightening strike, I really felt no different. And while we liked to believe Mike miraculously had no cancer after that, it was hard to ignore the fact that he felt the same before, during, and after: like shit.

July 30th was our sixth wedding anniversary. I wanted Mike to come to the lake with me but he just couldn’t do it. He was kind of grumpy and told me to go ahead without him. So I went and swam for a little bit while he sprawled on the living room floor sleeping, until he texted me and told me he missed me. The next day I went to book a hotel for our arrival in LA because our apartment wouldn’t be available yet, but there was some sporting event going on at UCLA and everything near the campus was booked. I finally found Hotel Palomar, which was pretty close to campus and pet friendly, and booked it for the week, which was not cheap. I spent the next couple days packing things that we would fly to LA with as well as packing what we would need for the apartment into my car that Tom and Sue would drive down in a couple of weeks. Looking back, I can hardly believe how much happened in such a short period of time. There were so many mini-chapters and each one gives me a different sense of anxiety, sadness, happiness, and nostalgia. Although our time in LA was extremely difficult, there were unforgettable moments that were fun and adventurous. I will start that journey in my next post.