Yay! For some good news!
A little while back, I posted a request for some prayers for my friend Carol, should you be of the prayer sort. She'd hit a very low point with her myeloma, developing very sudden and very complete kidney failure. This is apparently a fairly common side effect of the disease and signals a progression that doesn't do anything good for your prognosis.
Right around that time, I found a pattern for a prayer shawl, bought some yarn, and went to work. The deal with the prayer shawl--you say a blessing over the yarn when you start and a blessing over it when you have a finished object. Then you think about the person it's for while you're making it. Mostly I knitted while the Red Sox were on, or while Will was happily playing in the background--I figured that added some good thoughts, too. With practically every stitch, I asked for a miracle for Carol.
Monday, we got the news that Carol was back in the hospital again. Not good. Her spirits were low. She'd just about given up, telling my mom that if she ever got off dialysis, which seemed fairly unlikely, she would never go on it again, regardless of the consequences. SHe was slipping away right in front of us.
Monday night, as Johnny Damon and Doug Mirabelli both walked into Fenway for the first time this season, I finished the shawl. 15 minutes later, it was wrapped and inside her front door, along with a note for her husband, asking if he'd get it to her. When I got home, I opened my fortune cookie from dinner. My fortune? "Your fondest wish will come true."
Tuesday, Carol called my mom from her hospital bed. She's off dialysis! She has an infection that she's getting hue doses of IV antibiotics for, which is why she feels so crappy, and they're giving her another blood transfusion because her white count is low, but she's off dialysis! This means she's back on the road to her stem cell transplant!
This is all good news! Well, except for the infection part, but that's fixable.
Is it wrong that, upon hearing the news, I said a little thank you prayer, but then added on a request for a little more miracle? Because, as wonderful as this is, it's just the first step.
Keep Carol in your thoughts, would you, if you've got some good ones to spare...
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