Hospital Stay #2

I am blogging this from Medical Center of McKinney. Mike and I dropped Elizabeth off at school and then made the decision to go to the ER. Mike's red blood cell count has been dropping since we had the 6 pints of blood 2 weeks ago. On Monday his levels we are 6.7 and over the past 48 hours his energy has dropped and the gas pain has increased. He also was getting white around his mouth. We just felt like we needed more blood. So we came to the ER and his levels were around 6.5 which surprised us. We thought they were much lower. Nonetheless, they will get his levels up to 9.0 or higher before they let him out. That with a couple of other measures we will be taking should put us on the right track and hopefully out of the hospital for awhile.

We also got a call from a home health care service and our IV's will be coming to the house very soon. That is so exciting because it means more time as a family and less time in Dallas's traffic.

The other big event that happen today was the IPEB paperwork that Mike had to sign. It is the paperwork that told Mike he is unable to perform his duties and will be medically retired. They also put 100% disability on it. So the process is almost over. A career ends with a signature on a piece of paper from the hospital bed. But do you know what? It is easy to sign that piece of paper when you know what lies ahead is the path God has made for you. Make no mistake. God has a purpose for us in this.

Dr Bo came to our house last night to adjust Mike. It actually turned into a powerful prayer meeting where we prayed healing and had to pray through hurts and unforgiveness. In this process, God gave me another vision. I literally went up and unzipped my body and stepped out of it and handed it over to him. I then walked away as me. To me it was a complete surrender of life as I have known it. I handed it over to him and am now walking forward into this new chapter.

I have said this before, but I will go anywhere as long as it is God's will for me and He walks me through it. Now sometimes I feel like I am standing at the base of Mt. Everest. But I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

We still need your prayers. And even though in the next 24 hours or so, we will be "retirees", we still want to keep in touch and celebrate promotions, births, graduations, retirements, etc with our AF family.

Prayer requests:
Mike's RBC will go up and stay up
Divine wisdom in seeking medical treatment and healing of his cancer
Divine wisdom with decisions and timing of all the different agencies
God will sell our house quickly in FL
For the packers and the final details of moving everything here to McKinney
For sleep for Mike and I
For less pain for Mike
For Elizabeth - she is getting either a cold or allergies. She isn't feeling well and I had to send her to Aunt Kathy's because I am staying with Mike in the hospital. That really hurt me to kiss her and not be able to snuggle her tonight.
For my mom and dad as they walk this road with us in their own battle