T minus 2 days = Prayer!!!!

Well, I was going to wait and write this post the night before, but after what has transpired the last 72 hours, I felt the need to write it now. As most of you know, on Thursday, August 26th at 11:30am I will be getting a port installed in the wall of my chest to administer long-term IV treatment. Yes, it will be much better then getting poked a gazillion times each week (my veins will be cheering!) AND yes it will enable us to do a lot of stuff at home AND yes many people have gone through this procedure and been just fine; however (you knew this was coming) it doesn't make it easy breezy in our case.  My chemical sensitivities cause a severe challenge in our "normal" day to day life.  We keep our world small and uneventful so that my body stays as stable as it can without putting me into a bubble.  Yes, I have heard of the bubble boy and believe you me, sometimes I feel like it! :) This small world is kept pretty controlled especially when I have an upcoming doctor's appointment, procedure etc.  The more stable and allergic reaction free my body is, the more chances I have to not have a bad reaction to my environment.  However, even when we do our best, sometimes it's not good enough.

This brings me to the last 72 hours which have definitely not been fun.  On Saturday, my protein of the day for my rotation diet was pork.  No big deal, I have eaten it before.  It should have gone off without a hitch.  However, starting at about 2am I had extremely severe stomach pains.  The kind that just take your breath away.  This lasted until about noon the next day.  I can usually figure out what makes me react because I don't eat a lot of food on this rotation diet.  So, in this case, we are suspecting the pork.  Usually, when I start reacting to food, I freak out because I can't really afford to lose any of the foods in my tiny list of 12.  However, this time, I was pretty calm and didn't worry about it much.

Monday was a chicken day.  I got up in the morning to eat my chicken breast for breakfast (yum, NOT!) and I had a throat/asthmatic reaction.  Not good.  Definitely prefer the stomach cramps to the latter.  Now, it's beginning to bother me a bit.  I was set to go to my chiropractor to get an NAET (acupuncture allergy treatment), so I knew I could talk to her about it. I had her re-test me for both pork and chicken and I did not turn up allergic to it.  However, she said there is a good chance that it could be either something they rinsed the pork/chicken in or the packaging.  That made sense because starting about 3 weeks ago I felt like I wasn't tolerating any meat from this certain store, but it never made me react bad until this past weekend.  So, we are off, once again, to find a new place to buy meat.  Whole Foods is first on our list; however, that does not come at a cheap price! It's organic though and hopefully, I will be able to tolerate it.

Now onto the most disturbing of all of this.  On my last blog post, I had written that I was not tolerating water again.  That seems to be one of the first things to go for me when my body gets set off.  However, thanks to all of your prayers and the amazing God we serve, within two days, I started being able to tolerate water from our under the sink reverse osmosis system.  This worked great until yesterday.  Now, I am reacting to water again. Ugh...not the best timing at all.  We are desperately praying that things will settle down before tomorrow morning.  I can always have my chiropractor do an NAET treatment for the water, but we really needed her to treat me for nitril gloves (the choice preferred by doctors for surgical procedures when you can't have latex) that they will most likely be using during the surgical procedure.

So, now I get to our prayer requests. 

1.  Please pray that we can find some safe foods and that my water allergy will go away.  We serve an amazing miraculous God and we are on our knees about this.  I need to be well-hydrated before I go into have this procedure, so God needs to move this big mountain. 

2.  Please pray that my body would settle down allergic reaction-wise.  I have not had a huge success rate when it comes to being in a hospital and not reacting to it ever since I got so sick 5 years ago.  So, we need my body as reaction-free to start off with that day. 

3. Please pray for this procedure and for God's protection.  We have done our best to double check drugs, preservatives in drugs, materials that they will be using etc.; however, it's impossible to control everything that I will come in contact with.  If you could please pray that there would be no reactions before, during and after the procedure to anything.  What a miracle that would be!!!  We are believing that God can do it! Pray also that the doctors and nurses would have wisdom when it comes to handling my case as it is not normal in any sense.  Even a simple thing like the cologne or aftershave of a doctor could send me down a not-so fun road. :P

4.  We are asking that you would pray for the spiritual aspect of this fight.  My husband and I believe strongly that there is a spiritual world in which a battle ensues every second.  As we have been on this journey, we do not think that it is any coincidence to see the number of Godly people that have been taken out of ministry because they have contracted Lyme Disease.  In fact, a lot of my friends feel the same way.  It has been our experience (and the experience of others) that whenever we start to head down a path of wellness (starting a treatment, finding a new doctor etc.), that we feel attacked in about every area, but especially physically.  Now, we aren't normally the kind of people to give to much thought to this; however, we feel so confident that this is the path we should be taking with this doctor and treatment, that it doesn't surprise us that my body is being attacked so that we don't make any progress or headway.  I think the evil one knows that once I am well, he'd better watch out!  Brian and I are going to jump right into ministry and nothing is going to hold us down. :)  So, please pray for God's protection over both of us. Also, please pray that we would sense God's peace and joy and that our faith would be a testimony to others as I go through treatment.  It's our desire to make the most of every opportunity that we are given, so if He can use us now and in our current state, then we are ready and willing.

5.  Finally, please keep praying that God would provide financially and at the times we need it.  We sat down two weekends ago and did our cash flow and figured out that my treatment is going to cost us $1600 each week for a total of $45,000.  Ouch!  We have some of that, but now that we have dived deeper into the details financially, we have realized that we are short about $10,000 to $15,000.  I think we were hoping that we wouldn't be as short as we expected when we sat down to look at everything again; however, it ended up being more.  I will be honest and tell you I was the first one who calculated everything (I got the smaller figure) and then my husband (who is an accountant) did it and got the more accurate figure. :)  We'll just chalk it up to his extra schooling. :) So, please continue to keep praying that God would provide financially and also that he would provide the help we need for me to get to my Monday appointments (we still have some holes that need to be filled in my appointment schedule).

Well, that is all.  If you are on Facebook, we will make sure to post an update on my profile page on how the procedure went or any updated prayer requests.  If you can only check this blog, I will try to have Brian update it Thursday or Friday evening as my guess is I won't be feeling the best. :) I know that I say this a lot, but we do appreciate all of your encouragement and support.  Thursday begins my journey to wellness and it is so comforting to know we won't be doing it alone.  We serve a big God who will be with us every step of the way and we have priceless family and friends who will be there too!  "See" you soon!