What's Happy About Today

Ephesians 2:8
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – (NIV)

Today was my birthday. This is the best present that I received. What else could one want? Well, I used my birthday wish on Kendall. Now you know I can't tell you what I wished for, but it's probably not to hard to figure out........

......We started early today as Whitney, Emily, Michele and Dylan arrived really early. Around 5'ish. Dylan was first to greet me with a bear hug that squeezed the breath out of me. Hard to believe that it has only been a week since I have seen him. I had to practically carry him up the stairs to the apartment. I barely got them settled into their room when Kendall woke up. She described it as waking up on Christmas morning. She peeked her head out of the room to see if anyone was there. I don't know if we were loud coming in or she was already awake. Nonetheless, the look on everyone's faces was bright and smiles all the way around. I tried to get Kendall back to sleep but their was too much excitement going on to be sleeping. I also knew that it was going to be more exciting later with the arrival of Chase. The girls wanted breakfast and went to McDonald's only to be disappointed to find out that they do not serve "gravy biscuits" out here. Not at the one they went to anyway. As soon as they were about to wind down it was time to pick up Chase from the airport. We were running a little bit behind schedule as today was the day we had to change the CVC dressing, I.V. connectors, flush the lines and still take her medicine. Not to mention that she had to fix herself up before she could see Chase. I had to threaten to leave her at the apartment because we were going to be late if we didn't go now. She then beat me to the car before we left....

....We arrived at the airport and were parking when Kendall received a text from Chase telling her that he had landed. I could tell Kendall wanted to go with me inside the airport to meet him but I was nervous enough with her just being outside. Of course, we had the mask on her but I really thought she might show up behind me anyway. I meet Chase inside and I began to talk with him about the flight. He said it was fine, no problems. We talked about Kendall as we walked out to the car. The closer we came to the car the more I could tell that Chase wasn't really paying attention to me anymore, he was looking for Kendall. We came within two rows of the car and Kendall had already got out and met Chase half way. I continued on to the car to find Tammy crying inside. After everybody collected themselves, we were off to the apartment....

...Back at the apartment, it began to storm and rain. It's like it was a huge cleansing from God to wash all the germs away so Kendall can have a good time with her family and friends. We ordered pizza and watched movies. We played dominoes and took naps. We even had birthday cake! All of this going on and I prayed that everything would be fine. I'm gonna tell you that I wasn't sure about having any kind of visitors until Kendall was "out of the danger zone" so to speak. I want to put her in a bubble to protect her from everything. I know that I can't. But that is exactly what I was going to do until I had a long talk with one of Kendall's doctors yesterday. He explained the risks to me of Kendall being exposed to bacteria while her white blood cells were down. But he didn't think that isolating her was the "best" medicine. There are ways to control her exposure through wearing masks, washing hands and just everyday cleaning. Human contact is very important to ones self healing and to keep her from any type of contact with loved ones would be placing more stress on her. He said they have had numerous successful patients come through the treatment without complete isolation. Being smart and aware is the key. I talked it over with Kendall and Tammy and it was decided that we would all be more aware of our surroundings and do what was needed to be done for Kendall. Kendall was happy with this, and deep down I was happy that she was happy but I still have my doubts.

It was so good to see everyone today and one could say that I had a good birthday. With all that is going on with Kendall, the last thing I wanted to do was celebrate a birthday. But I had both family members and friends remind me that today was a Happy Birthday to me. I love them and thank them for remembering me as well during Kendall's journey. I guess all of this kind of answered my own doubts about having contact, because I know how Blessed it made me feel to hear them and I could not possible take away those feelings from Kendall. I hope that she can forgive me for even thinking about it. Sometimes things cloud your judgement and it's always good for your family and friends to be there to pick you up when your down. I guess it's good to try and keep things as normal as possible but it's hard to do that when facing something like this. I want to make sure everything is perfect because I don't want to give any advantage to Leukemia. I pray that Kendall's journey is manageable and victorious. Any other way WILL NOT not do....

God Bless all of you tonight...