Thoughts for Thursday

I don't really have any deep thoughts today, but I do have a lot of friends who don't know the full extend of what is going on in my family's life right now - so I am going to talk about that instead.

Many of you know about my niece, Alia, and all of her medical problems. She was released from the hospital earlier this week, only to have to return again last night. She has a very fast moving "cousin" of tuberculosis growing inside what is left of her left lung. Today she is going to have surgery to have a port put in where they can directly administer antibiotics and draw blood. They are hoping this will help and will make it so that they will not have to remove the remainder of her left lung. The incision from the surgery over a month ago reopened and the doctors have called it "interesting" and "amazing" - coming from dr's who have people coming from across the US for their help, it's not quite what you want to hear.

Poor Landon, Alia's 8 year old brother, gets shuttled back and forth from grandma's, aunts, neighbors as Suzanne, my sister is living in a 1979 winnebago in the parking lot of the hospital. My brother-in-law tries to divide his time between Landon, the hospital, and work. Thankfully the hospital is only about a 40 min drive away.

Needless to say, it's been quite hard on our whole family.

Then, about the same time as Alia's major surgery (a little over a month ago) - my cousin was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Unfortunately, the cancer has spread throughout his body and they are treating him as much as they can but of course, that's a lot of setbacks. His blood sugar went screwy and he was hospitalized for that. Now, my cousin is about 15 years older than me, and he's always been so good to me. He let me borrow his car when I was still in HS so that we could get up on base to go shopping. He's always a happy cheerful guy.

My dad is also going to be going in for neck surgery this summer because of an accident that happened over 20 years ago. He's had different surgeries to help as things come up, and this one is no exception. He keeps losing feeling because his nerves get pinched and other times he hurts so bad.

If I could only stay in a little bubble that only included Jason, Jenna and I - life would be great. But, I would miss out on all of my family. We are close knit and love each other so much. When one family member hurts, we all do. I am truly thankful for the family I have - with all the chaos that it brings and wouldn't change our relationships.

The question has been asked - how much can 1 family take - I guess the only answer comes from the scriptures where it says that our Heavenly Father will only give us as much as we can handle. Guess He has more faith in us than we do of ourselves.

Thank you for all your kind words and support - it means the world to me and to my family.