Threat of Pneumonia

Hello All!

I hope everyone has had a good Christmas. Our family had what seemed like a very busy one. Mom and Dad celebrated on Christmas day with friends, while Jared and I travelled with our kids to Brandon to spend a few days with my family. It was a good trip, although we were hesitant to go with Dad being so sick. However, we are very thankful that nothing happened while we were away, and despite what we were told could happen, Dad made it through Christmas! Praise the Lord!

However, with the praise, there is also some bad news. We got a call on Boxing Day from Mom telling us that the nurse thought Dad might be getting pneumonia. It's a common problem amongst patients who have to spend so much time in bed - they aren't able to be up and about enough to get any fluid out of their lungs, and so it settles in and turns into pneumonia. Mom was instructed to turn Dad every two hours from side to side to help his lungs drain and the nurse returned on Saturday (the 27th) to check on how Dad was doing. Thankfully, the tiny rattle that had been in his chest on Friday was gone, and so far, there are no more signs of pneumonia. But, with Dad being almost completely confined to bed, the threat is still there, and I'm sure it will only increase the longer he is confined to bed. He is also starting to develop a few bed sores, which I'm sure will not be comfortable for him. I'm not sure what they can to do remedy that, short of changing his position every few hours. So please continue to keep him (and the rest of us) in your prayers.

I also want to take a moment to mention the art show that is being planned on behalf of Dad. Steve Bell briefly mentioned it in the comments section - He, along with a bunch of Dad's close friends have planned an exhibition featuring his two latest series of paintings here in Winnipeg at the end of January/beginning of February. We are all very excited for it, and more info can be found on the website: www.folkerts.ca. I know they've been doing a lot of updates on the site the last few days, so please continue to keep checking it for info!

A Steady Decline

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of you for the continued support and prayers. Words can't begin to express how grateful we are for the outpouring of love that has been shown to our family over these last few months. And we're going to continue to need that support as Dad continues to decline. 

Starting today palliative home care workers will be at the house from 8:30 am till 4:30 pm seven days a week. The overnight care also continues 7 nights a week. It's an adjustment to have someone else in the house for so much of the day, but I know Mom really appreciates the extra set of hands when they need to get Dad up out of bed, or help him shift positions. He got a new hospital bed last week, one with a support bar on the top for him to help pull himself up when he needs to. Although, his strength is continuing to wane, and so he can only use it about 50% of the time. He also got permanent ports put into his left arm and thigh yesterday so that Mom doesn't have to try to get him to swallow pills anymore. She was shown yesterday how to administer liquid medication through the ports, and gets the pleasure of doing that a few times each day. In another life, she would have made a great nurse! 

Despite Dad's decline in health, though, we still have many things to be thankful for. The nurses have told us that patients with this sort of illness often become very irate and rude towards the end, lashing out at family or friends and even swearing at them. Thankfully, we have not seen that in Dad at all. While he sometimes gets annoyed at the constant regime of pills (which will be alleviated now with the ports), he is still very much the gentle, loving man that he has always been. We've even seen hints of his sense of humor still, which is such a blessing. We are also very thankful that he is still able to remain at home, where we are free to visit with him as often as we like and don't have to brave the cold weather every time we want to see him. He's also not in any sort of pain, which is a huge relief for all of us.

However, there is still the reality hanging over all of our heads that Dad is not getting any better. He is slowly declining and unfortunately, there is nothing we can do for him, short of keeping him comfortable. As Christmas draws near, we're all finding it a little difficult to be our usual cheerful selves. Christmas is normally such a happy time - a time for celebration. But our journey this year seems to be taking us down a different path - one of sorrow and of loss. It's so hard to find the joy of the season when we are slowly losing one we love so much. But, thankfully, there is One who loves us even more than we love Dad. Jesus Christ, who came as a baby at Christmas, to one day die on the cross to save us all - He gives us the hope and the strength that we need to keep going forward. Knowing that Dad walked so closely with Him brings a small measure of comfort and the peace of knowing that Dad will join Him in Heaven. 

And so we continue to ask for your prayers. Prayers for strength, and of peace and of God's love and comfort. We need to feel those things so desperately right now. Pray also that what will most likely be our last few weeks with Dad would be good weeks for our family - that we would continue to love and support each other in our hurt and our grief. And please continue to pray for Dad - that he would continue to be comfortable and without pain at home. And that he, too, would feel God's love during this time.  

No Signs of Improvement

Well, unfortunately, as the days and weeks go by, we continue to see Dad's health declining. Some days are better than others, but as time passes, he is slowly spending more and more time in bed. At the recommendation of the palliative care nurse, Dad is now undergoing palliative care at home. Mom has home care workers coming from 8:30 to 4:30 seven days a week, and overnight care is being provided 7 nights a week. We have decided as a family that we would like Dad to be at home for as long as possible. It allows us to spend the most amount of time possible with him, which is what we've been focusing on these last few weeks. We're so very grateful that he is still able to be at home and especially grateful for the days that he is feeling up to sitting at the table with us for meals. We don't want to take any of this time for granted, so we've been doing our best to make the most of the situation and spend as much quality time with Dad as we can.

We've also been enjoying visits from family and friends. Some days it feels like the visitors never stop - I'm sure even more so for Mom and the other kids, since it's their house! But it brings a welcome relief to see those that we love continuing to come and visit and spend time not only with the family, but visiting with Dad as well. We know he enjoys these visits very much, even when he doesn't always have the energy for long conversations.

Please continue to keep all of us in your prayers. There is a great likelihood that this Christmas will be the last one that we get to spend with Dad, so your prayers for us during the holidays are greatly appreciated.

MRI Update

Well, we finally got the results from the MRI. Mom and Dad, along with Jared, Janis, Jesse, and Grandma Folkerts (Gerald's mom) met with the team of oncologists and nurses on Friday afternoon around 1 pm. The news was not what we were hoping for, but based on how Dad has been feeling, it was what we expected. The tumor, unfortunately, showed no signs of responding to the radiation and chemo. There is some increased swelling around the tumor since Dad was first diagnosed, but otherwise there has been no change. The other unfortunate news is that because Dad has been feeling so tired as of late that another round of chemotherapy is not an option right now.

Hearing this, while it was not a shock, has not been easy. It's been a very emotional weekend for all of us, and because the news was not as good as we were hoping, we decided to have our Christmas celebration early this year. Jared and I and the kids went to Mom and Dad's for supper last night (Saturday) and we ate a nice meal together and opened all of our gifts. It was a bit surreal to be celebrating so early, but we wanted to do it on a night while Dad was feeling fairly energetic, and it was a very good evening spent together as a family.

This most recent news has left us wondering where do we go from here? I don't know that we necessarily have an answer. We just continue to take things one day at a time. To give Mom a bit of a break, Home Care has been set up for Dad, and there are now workers coming a few times a week during the day, and also 6 nights a week overnights (11 pm - 7 am) to help care for Dad. Mom's been enjoying getting a full nights sleep now that they are coming overnights! The rest of us are still busy with the daily grind of school, homework, and caring for the kids. I think all of us are looking forward to Christmas break and the chance to unwind a little.

And above all else, we continue to trust in our Heavenly Father. We know that He is here with us, holding us all in His tender loving hands, offering the comfort and solace we so desperately seek.

A Lament from an old friend

An old professor of Dad's wrote this lament for him and posted it on his blog. We have asked his permission to share it here - it's beautiful in its honesty and fragility. Thank you, James Schaap! ~From all of us

Lament

He sat in the back, way in the back, left side. Didn’t say much either, but it was clear to me that he wasn’t dumb. He had this problem with getting work in on time—that I remember well. He was the kind of student who gives you headaches because you’ve got to bug him (or her) to stay tuned. But then, that was not an unfamiliar way of life to me.

Somehow, I got roped into sponsoring the soccer club that year, my very first year of college teaching. I don’t know how, because I knew nothing about soccer except that it was a game with astonishingly little scoring. It seemed to me an exercise in futility sometimes, but I’d been a coach before and I enjoyed the camaraderie cruising along in the van with the team.

This tall kid was one of them, quite talented too, a freshman who played a ton of soccer that year, even though he was one of the new kids on the block.

I don’t know if I had him as a student after that, but some kids you don’t lose sight of—probably because they don’t lose sight of you. This one I remembered, too.

He became a teacher, and an artist, a kid with exceptional talent with a brush and in other media as well, I suppose; and when I’d visit the place he and his wife had chosen to live, I’d run into him. He looked the artist, a pony tail shaped like an artist's brush halfway down his back from thick dark hair, hair to die for. He’d put on weight—never too much, but enough to square him up, so much so that he was an impressive physical specimen, a man with a presence. Even in a crowded room, you didn’t look past him.

And he did well as an artist, well enough to be noticed, well enough to have his work purchased and on display at a number of places and in collections, including here at his alma mater. That’s one, above—a rabbi sleeping on a bench, another man, the artist himself, walking away, leaving the scene--that one is his.

I saw him last weekend and couldn’t help but notice the half-dollar-sized spaces in that thick head of hair. He has brain cancer, and his chances are not at all good.

Twice, his singing group assembled in the front of big crowds, and all eight of them held forth beautifully; but he had obvious trouble holding up his share of the bass line. At times, he was behind a step or two—or just not with the program. But he stood there—sometimes sat—with his gang, and just seeing him up there was, to me and others, the kind of rich testimony that makes people wipe their eyes.

Twice, I saw his wife reach for hers, even though she tried stubbornly to fight the tears. And that's the picture I'm left with, his wife alone in a chair or pew, losing a battle with tears.
In little more than 12 hours I gave two talks, two speeches that had me scared spitless for more than a week. I wanted those speeches to go well, spent more than my share of worry wondering whether what I had prepared would move anyone.

What I didn’t imagine is that the story of the weekend was the story of a tall, skinny kid I had in class almost 35 years ago, a man who is now a 50-year-old man, in the prime of creative life, a pony-tailed painter and husband and father being taken slowly, painfully, from those he loves as nothing less than evil eats away at those very acute perceptions that made him an artist.
We’re not talking about a saint here. We’re not talking about someone whose life didn’t occasionally rush off in directions he hadn’t planned or later wished he’d not taken. He was as human as the rest of us.

As human as the rest of us. And now he’s facing death.

I wish I could write a thoughtful homily I could put in an inside pocket, close to my heart, something that would stanch the bleeding from my own soul.

I don’t like death.

Later today I face another class full of students. I’d like to tell them, if I could, that, quite honestly, nobody knows what life holds for them. I’d like to say a ton of things, but I won’t. Maybe one of those kids will be an artist too—who knows?

We’ll just go on. We’ll read a story about a father’s loves for his daughter, a father who talks to God. That’s what we’ll be doing. We’ll go on. As we always do.

Last night at a committee meeting, the chair extended sympathy to two members who, in the last while, lost two family members. Tonight I’ll go to a wake. Yesterday was Veteran’s Day. This country has only one doughboy left—107 years old—from the First World War. All the rest are in the earth, “one mighty sepulcher,” William Cullen Bryant once called it in a poem he wrote, as unlikely as it seems, when he 19.

It’s all around us, really, this mess. But we go on. Grab a Kleenex maybe, howl some.
But the human story—our need for love, God’s love—just keeps playing. Just keeps playing.
Not unlike soccer maybe, a game—or so it seems this morning—with not much scoring.