Battle with Fear
Larry: The first battle with fear: At my GP’s office, I urinated some, and it appeared to be mostly blood with very little urine, but at this point, I was not in any pain. But I was feeling the need to urinate often and the stream was reasonable. My GP, who is also a tennis friend, didn’t seem to be too concerned, so we just returned home. Dr. Huang, my GP, cautioned me to stay hydrated, and it was my goal to take it easy over the weekend and see the Urologist early Monday morning. The remainder of Friday was uneventful, but the frequency of needing to urinate increased and it appeared to me there was much more fluid going in than coming out.
By mid-day on Sunday, I had become very uncomfortable, and my best position was lying in bed. The problem was that every 5 to 10 minutes, I had to get up and try to get to the bathroom before I lost control of my bladder. But each time there was great disappointment in the small amount of urine exiting my bladder. The difficulty of getting back into bed after attempting to urinate was highly painful because I would later learn that my bloated bladder had expanded to an unusually large size and was putting pressure on my kidneys and prostate. By Sunday night, I was doing my best to stay quiet, but I was in agony. I had some pain pills left over from a hip replacement back in 2011 and gladly took one of those pills, and took another before the night was over.
When we arrived at the doctor’s office on Monday morning, I felt like I was about to explode. The nurses could easily see the amount of pain I was in and immediately arranged to catheterize me and empty my bladder. A male bladder holds 400-600 ml of urine. They pulled out 1200 ml of a mixture of blood and urine without any problem. The PA ordered a CT scan with contrast. When the lab tested the creatinine levels, they were very high and they thought my kidneys were not functioning. So, we returned to the urologist’s office, they installed a catheter and sent us home.
Lucia: All this time we were still reading the book and praying the Lord’s Prayer, taking much solace from the truths found in this prayer, the process and in this little booklet.
We returned to the urologist on Friday morning, June 17, to have the creatinine levels tested again, but the results would not be available until the following week. At this point, the doctor felt we should see whether Larry could urinate on his own and we were sent home without a catheter. They cautioned us to return by 2:00 that afternoon if he was not urinating within a few hours—otherwise we could end up at the emergency room of the hospital since it was Friday. Early Friday afternoon, it was clear that Larry could barely urinate, and we returned to have the catheter reinstalled. It was also clear that there was a serious issue, and at this point the medical people did not know the extent of the problem and neither did we.
All during this experience, we continued to read and study Cancer and The Lord’s Prayer and obviously, we continued to pray this amazing prayer and tune our hearts to hear the Father’s voice and practice the Presence of God. We also continued to live our lives with as much normalcy as possible. As a matter of fact, on Saturday, June 18th, the day following the installation of the catheter, we celebrated our granddaughter’s birthday and Father’s Day at our daughter, Lori’s home in White House, Tennessee. What a blessing family is in the middle of all this uncertainty!
Early the next morning on Sunday, Larry woke me up at about 2:30 and said, “We may need to go to the emergency room!” Panic struck my heart! I had not factored in the possibility of losing my precious husband after less than four years of marriage. Clots were blocking the catheter and he could not empty the bag, the blood was so thick and crusty. I was facing an intense battle with fear and loss. The fear was palpable! This development eventually sent me to my knees, not begging, but TRUSTING in His kindness and favor! The hardest battle came over seeing the blood in the catheter bag, bright red and thick sometimes versus seeing with spiritual eyes the goodness, power and love of Jesus.
