This Is Hard

So, everything has taken a turn for the worse. We lost Bill at 2:20 pm on Thanksgiving day. I am so devastated I am just raw. I know I will get through this, but I’m not sure how. I am home now, and I have a great support group, but it is incredibly hard to get through each day. I assume it will get better at some point. Please pray for me.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

This was not the Thanksgiving I had pictured; a little over a week ago my daughter and I were planning the menu, and I had gone to the grocery store to get the things I needed for dressing and sweet potatoes. As everyone knows, circumstances can change overnight, and those circumstances can change your whole life.

It took several days to get a diagnosis for my husband. I was told lymphoma and then I was told leukemia, and finally yesterday, I was told ALL: acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He is very sick. His liver and kidneys have shut down. He is on 24-hour dialysis, and the chemo treatment starts today. He had been transferred to St. Luke’s in San Antonio, and that’s where we were through yesterday. The goal was to get him to MD Anderson or Methodist before they had to start chemo as those are bigger, more cancer-focused facilities, but there were no beds available at either one. I have been praying for a miracle (and I’m not the only one), and I was told last night there was a bed at Methodist, and he would be moved sometime during the night. I believe we are at least headed in the right direction, and I thank God for that. 

I am sitting here writing this blog post waiting for the ICU to open for visitors and thinking of all the things I am grateful for. There are so many things—both big and small. The fact that treatment is available for Bill, the fact that I am now retired and can be in San Antonio for as long as I need to, the fact that I have a support system at home, the fact that I have praying friends and church family, the fact that I have the financial resources to be here for a while, the fact that my step-daughter can be here on weekends to give a day or two of relief. Those are the big things, but there are hundreds of little things that make everything a little more tolerable. Things like a hot shower at night, phone calls and texts, the taste of the tamales I bought last night at HEB, nurses and doctors who are patient with my dumb questions, and so much more.

I know this is just a stage of life we need to get through and wait for things to get better. I have faith that they will.

Some New News

My life has changed pretty much overnight.

My last post was when Bill was in one of the local hospitals getting all kinds of tests and basically not getting any better. Unfortunately, we got the news that it is cancer, probably lymphoma, although the needle biopsy was “sub-optimal” so they couldn’t make a definite confirmation. It is definitely very fast moving as his routine labs from August don’t show any abnormalities. He was moved to San Antonio late Friday night by ambulance so that aggressive chemo could be started. It is now Sunday night and he is currently getting dialysis as he is in renal failure. 

I don’t like to post negative anything, but I wanted to let everyone know my posts may be infrequent at best. There is no sewing or quilting happening, although I have my cross stitch and some crochet yarn with me, so maybe I will post some of that progress. If not, well, Bill is the most important thing right now, and he is so sick. I am hating every minute of this. He doesn’t deserve this, but I guess no one deserves cancer. If you are a praying person, we can use all your prayers. 

Some Art Work

Well, the bad news is that Bill tested positive for both strains of the flu and his blood work showed some worrisome abnormalities. His platelet count was so low, the nurse practitioner called and asked that we take him to the ER and get him admitted as soon as possible in case there was any internal bleeding. He is still in the hospital and really not doing better. They are continuing to do tests and MRI’s but haven’t found any bleeding, so we are still waiting to see what the outcome is.

In the meantime, I had signed up for an art class for Saturday night for Serenity and me. The other granddaughter was busy, so…..

Anyway, it was fun, and it was a nice break from the hospital. We had a small class so we each got to do two canvases. Here are Serenity’s:

And here are mine:

There was an unfortunate glare from the overhead lighting, and I couldn’t figure out how to edit it out. It has been a few years since I did an acrylic pour, and Serenity had never done one. It was a nice night out for us.

What I've Been Working On

I showed a picture a few days ago of all the binding I had made.....

I have really been working to get it all put on the quilts and get them totally done.

It's not too bad if I can get in a rhythm and get some uninterrupted time at the sewing machine. I got the binding on all three of the ones I quilted last week.

These two are the same fabrics and the same binding. I think this makes four or possibly five I have done for this lady using this same fabric. 

She loves a striped binding cut on the bias. I can't say I blame her; I like it too. She also likes the quilts pretty densely quilted. 

I also got my Prairie Flowers quilt off the frame and got the binding cut for it. I still need to trim it which may happen tomorrow. I am playing things by ear for now. I took Bill to Urgent Care in the morning morning and he got some shots (steroids, antibiotics) and got some lab work done. Depending on what we hear about the lab results we may have to go back or possibly I will need to pick up more medications for him. I am relieved to finally get him into a clinic and get some  antibiotics into him. I think it is going to help immensely. I am hoping so--I hate to see him so sick. It's really cold and dreary here. I plan to spend the evening on the couch working on my cross stitch. 

This is so cute

Well, I am always attracted to the gray backgrounds. The pattern is called Barbados. You can find it here. It uses 16 fat eighths plus yardage, but it could be easily modified for fat quarters (which, of course, I have lots of). The dimensions are 50” by 74”. 

I do love a scrappy quilt, especially when I can use my stash. I have several baskets of fat quarters that are just gathering dust at this point. I think I just need some inspiration….and maybe some free time.

 

To Do List Tuesday 11-15-22

I've gotten quite a bit done in the past week, but some of the time was spent on things that weren't on my list. It's okay, though. Sometimes I need to go where the mood takes me. Here's a recap from last week:

1) Bind the three customer quilts I did last week. I did two of them. I am still trying to find thread to match the binding on the third one.....hopefully soon. 

2) Keep cutting scraps. I did so-so on this one. I got some done, but it wasn't every day like I would like to do.

3) Sashing for Kaffe design roll. I won’t finish this one, but I would like to keep making forward progress. I got a few rows together so it's coming together.

4) Finish the sewing machine cover I started last week. Oh my. This got finished, but I don't like it. It's a tragedy.

I didn't have any thick stabilizer, so I used a midweight fusible interfacing. Total fail. I ordered some fusible bosal foam and will see if I can take it apart and make it work. If not, I'll have to start over. Luckily, I didn't spend much for the fabric.

5) Crochet some more dish cloths. Yes, I did. I think I got five or six done. I will add pictures in a later blog post.

So, I guess you could say I had mixed success with my list. Time to start a new list and see what happens this week.

1) Quilt and bind three more customer quilts.

2) Finish the quilting on my Prairie Flowers quilt and then get it off the frame so I can proceed with number one.

3) More crocheted dish cloths. Hobby Lobby has the cotton yarn on sale this week, so I will try to make a trip over there and see what I can find.

4) Keep cutting up scraps.

5) Keep adding rows to the Kaffe quilt. 

That's enough to keep me busy and out of trouble for a week, I think. I know it's doable, but it's a lot of stuff, so I won't be upset with myself if it doesn't all get done. I am linking this post to TexasQuiltGal.