The never ending saga

I don't know what it is about me that causes, allows, or encourages so many strange circumstances to befall my family and I. If I wasn't living it, I am not confident that I would even believe it were possible for so many strange events to happen to one family. So here are some of the strange things that have happened in the last three days, read them and see if you agree with me. On Monday I call the cancer center to arrange for Dawn's labs to be drawn, no answer so I leave a message. Not wanting to leave things to chance I call the infusion center to make sure labs need to be done, and yes they confirm we need labs before chemotherapy can begin. Two hours after my first call I try another person at the cancer center, again she is not available so again I leave a message. Having done all I believe that I can do I wait and at 5:15pm we receive a call, sorry we didn't call you back our phone system crashed and we are just now retrieving messages. Question: do we need labs, answer: no the doctor has taken care of it with the infusion center, sounds fishy but too late to do anything about it. Ten
o' clock we arrive at the infusion center; where are your labs? I told them the entire story and a laugh ensued, followed by; "don't worry we will fix you up", and let me tell you she did. Within an hour we had completed labs that showed Dawn needed extra meds along with her chemo, two hours worth. Hence what should have lasted 3 hours became an eight hour event, (kudo's to the two Mary's at Owens Infusion Center). Before we left that night one of the two Mary's (two nurses named Mary cared for us), encouraged us that if we had any problems feel free to call at any time, little did I know how important that would be.
At around 4am Dawn begins to shake and shiver obviously having some sort of reaction to the treatments she had received. After caring for her for a few hours it was obvious now that she had a fever, a red flag, this was serious and all of my instructions were to treat it as such. My instructions were in this case to call the triage nurse who would make the neccesary arraingements to receive immedeate care. So I did so and of course she was not available, and yes you guessed it I left a message. After caring for Dawn for another hour with no phone call I tried again, and again no answer, and no I did not leave a message, I had another plan. You got it, I called one of the Mary's! Her words were give me five minutes and I will call you back with an answer, well it was closer to four minutes when she called back and yes she had an answer: "your Doctor wants to see Dawn right now! Rather than bore you with more details let us skip to the part where Dawn's cancer Dr. sends us to a local hospital for immediate admission and testing. As we checked in we were informed that her room was not ready and that we would have a short wait in the Chemo waiting room while her room was being cleaned. Now I must interject that Dawn is very ill and has had none of her meds and they are all due to be taken, neither has she had lunch or any other care. The three of us enter a small room with a televison blaring designed for no more than five people, however there are already five in the room and there are three of us, one of who is slumped over in a wheel chair in intense pain with a 101 plus fever. Well the short wait ended up being over five hours long! Oh don't get me wrong there were high points of the wait, the best one being when an RN and a Lab tech come to take blood from Dawn's port. "Now it is not proper for us to take blood in a public place" sounded the RN and after looking around for a few moments she decided it would be best to take Dawn's blood in the small adjacent rest room! Somehow I just don't see the rest room as a dignified, or sanitary place for someone's blood to be drawn, creative yes, sanitary no!
Yes I can honestly say that all of the things I have mentioned and much more really have happened over the past three days, and even though I was personaly there and can testify to the reality of it all I still find it hard to believe! The fact is that I am truly beginning to understand what the Lord meant when He said "My grace is sufficient for thee", for without His strength and His grace we would never survive such pandemonium. To lean not on our only understanding truly does require that we look far beyond what is going on around us, but rather to realize who is causing our trials, our enemy. We must learn to draw from the Lord, to look past the circumstances, and "let your light so shine that they may see your goodworks and glorify your Father in Heaven" no matter how difficult it may seem. After all is God in control or not, remember circumstances do not dictate who is in control, but your actions do!