20 Days Till Heaven…Day 8 – Piggybacks, Cheer Support, Visits, and Italian Wedding Soup

October 23, 2017 Michael Weese Comments 0 Comment

20 Days Till Heaven…Day 8 – Piggybacks, Cheer Support, Visits, and Italian Wedding Soup

Memories from October 23rd, 2016 – Day 8

New day, new memories, but reality remains the same. I can tell by listening to things that her cough is becoming more steady and happening more often. Breathing and coughing has been a problem since March, but it would fluctuate and get better at times as certain medicines and chemotherapy would help. Being treated for the cancer is no longer happening, so coughing and breathing heavy are unfortunately not getting better at all.

Appetite is starting to become a real issue. She’s not hungry that often. When she is hungry, we jump at the opportunity to find something good to eat. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it makes her eat. I am willing to run anywhere at anytime to get whatever appeals to her, I just want her to eat. She needs to eat with the amount of medication and pain killers that she is taking.

Doing simple things like walking up and down the stairs is next to impossible. We begin to implement mandatory piggyback rides up and down the stairs. We have done these at certain times before, but now they are no longer an option. She just can’t get enough oxygen to keep up with the demand that her body requires.

If we are coming down the stairs, she sits on the top step and I sit on the one immediately below it. She straddles my back, I grab her legs, I stand up, and take off down the stairs. I stop at the 2nd to last step, sit down and let her down. She catches her breath and then stands up. Even just holding onto my neck takes away oxygen and energy from her. We laugh sometimes, often joking that if I slip, we both get to go to heaven together.

Going up the stairs is much safer, or at least it seems that way. I bend down at the bottom step. She leans onto my back and holds on to my neck. I do this thing where I walk up the steps on all fours. I almost look like Spider-Man walking up the steps. She gets off at the top. I’ll never forget the feeling of going up the steps. She would always crush my carotid artery with her forearm while holding on to my neck. I could feel every heart beat in my face and ears, each heartbeat was worse than the previous one. Again, we used to joke that I had 8 seconds to make it to the top or we were both going to go for a ride back down when I passed out.

I wish we had these things on video. Its was sad but fun. I guess laughing at our own misfortunes helped. If I could go back to a healthy Kate during our early years, I might just add piggyback rides up and down the steps just because.

If you’re willing and able, try the piggyback rides with your significant other, again no reason, but just because. Chalk it up to team-building. If you are feeling audacious, do it on the stairs to increase the dramatics effect. If anything you’ll create a smile together.

Back to the day at hand. Again it’s a Sunday, we are together, not too many calls or texts to go by. Matter of fact only two of each.

These are the only two texts that I received, both pretty self-explanatory. The baby escaping from his room during nap and I guess a health status update.

At some point around lunch time I was going to the store to get Pierce some tomato soup and Kate wanted Italian wedding soup from the hot bar.

Here is an audio clip of that call.

I’m not 100% sure, but it looks like Regan may have had a cheer competition this day with PHRC. Facebook would show some amazing support from the girls and even kids at the lower levels. There was the sweetest video of a bunch of little girls with their pink on saying, “Love you Miss Kate and Feel Better!” Here is one of the posts as an example.

Here is some other support and love from one of Kate’s friends.

Kate was able to visit with her “Little” from her college sorority and one of her other friends as well.

Kate also received a visit from her good friend back home in Pa, along with her son, daughter and Mother. The kids had fun playing together as well.

Later in the evening we had one more call. I was driving around trying to find her something to eat. Again it needed to appeal to her because of how small and picky her appetite was. She wanted some KFC. I called to let her know that they were closed because it was Sunday evening. During this call I chose to use some language that made part of the clip inappropriate to share. I was just frustrated that she was finally ready to eat again and of course the place she wanted food from was closed. I ended up going to the steakhouse she called in a to-go order for everyone. Kate chose some good old fried BBQ wings.

Here is an audio clip of that call.