The First 48...

To fully appreciate the first 48 hours of my radiation treatment we have to go back, way back. Okay, not that far back, but about four and a half years ago to when life was much simpler. We had recently moved to Florida, we had only one beautiful child, Sydney, who was about 8 months old and we just bought our first house. We were so excited about everything, so many fun new things to enjoy and experience.

Then real life hit. Along with owning a home comes the joys of upkeep and repairs. And let me tell you, this house likes to keep us busy and oh so full of "joy". We love our house and it really has been great for us, full of learning experiences and so many wonderful memories, but it's also an older house and the previous owners did some pretty interesting, shall we call them improvements? Not quite sure you can call them that they way that they were done, but I guess you might think of them as improvements at least until you need to fix something and realize that it's going to require MAJOR action to repair the previous owner's repairs and "upgrades".

One of the more interesting oddities or quirks of this house that we discovered shortly after moving in is that the water heater seemed to have some issues. One day it would be working just fine, then the next the water was scalding hot and then shortly after that it would shut off and we'd have no hot water at all. Sometimes it would happen every couple days other times it would go months between cycles. But you always knew that you better get your shower in quick when the water turned really hot because you never knew when it was going to be gone again. It was a quick and easy fix every time the water went cold, just push the little reset button on the water heater and wait 30 minutes or so and voila, hot water. We also discovered that if you set the thermometer to the lowest setting that it would go a lot longer between cycles, so that's what we did. And that's what I thought was happening the week before my radiation. Just another cycle. But not this time.

Nope, the reset button wouldn't pop out so we could push it back in to reset it. It was done. After talking to my dad we decided that since the tank was so old that it might just be worth replacing it rather than trying to repair it. So as soon as we could we headed out to the local Home Depot to find a new water heater and get it installed. That was the Wednesday before my treatment. We knew we needed it fixed ASAP because having hot water is really kinda nice when you're supposed to be taking multiple showers a day. So we worked it out with Home Depot to have the new water heater installed Friday afternoon at the latest. Or that was the "guarantee". Friday came and so did a not so lovely phone call. The installation guy had an emergency and wasn't going to be able to make it Friday afternoon, but he could come Saturday, late morning... would that work? Okay, this wasn't ideal for us, but Jeff was able to make them give us a discount because they had "guaranteed" us that it would be done Friday and now it wasn't going to be. Slightly frustrating, sure but I could deal with another day, after all, it had already been 4 days without hot water, and hey, the kids had a bath in the pool the morning before so it would be okay to wait anther few hours. Also, the water was going to be fix before Saturday night when we do our big bath night and get everybody cleaned up and ready for church the next morning, and it would be done before my mom flew in late Saturday night, and most importantly it was going to be done before my treatment, right?

So Saturday morning came and so did the guy Home Depot sent to do the installation. He was just a contractor through Home Depot, with his own company and everything, but I think God sent him especially. He came in to look at the job and make sure that it was going to be doable before he brought everything in, and well, that was a good thing. Oh, did I mention we've had some interesting electrical issues with this house ever since we moved in? Well, Saturday we found more. So he took a look and right away a bunch of red flags went up. First of all he was going to have to hard wire the new tank and change a bunch of stuff in the local area of the water heater to bring it up to code. Then he noticed that the pipes were in the wrong location (too high or something in relation to the water heater, but I'm not really sure as I was trying to keep four kids quiet while Jeff talked to the guy all while trying to hear everything that the guy was saying) and that he'd probably have to open up the wall and move things around or something like that, if that was even going to be possible, but who knows for sure with an older house like ours. Then came the fun part. He went to the breaker box with Jeff just to check which breaker it was going to be on and weird things started to happen! Now, there's really no way to fully explain how funny and scary it was when this was all happening. They started flicking breakers to try to turn off the electricity to check some things and they couldn't figure out which breaker it was. They tried the obviously labeled one first, nope, not that one. Then they tried all the ones that looked like they might be possibly the ones. Nope still no luck. They continued turning off breakers one at a time and couldn't find the right breaker. Okay, things were weird now! So with not being able to figure out which breaker it was by turning them off one at a time they went for something a little more drastic... they turned off one entire side of the panel, all 10 or so breakers at once. Eureka, no more power to the water heater! So they knew it was one of the breakers on the right side and after a ton more flicking of switches discovered some major wiring issues that we were going to have to do. This is where we're so thankful that we had this one guy helping us out. He was totally honest and told us what we needed to do. He said he couldn't do it, at least not at this point. We were going to need to get an electrician in and fix a ton of electric stuff before he could even begin to put in a new tank. But he also told us that it would be much smarter to just change the heating elements and thermostats because the tank wasn't leaking and then we wouldn't need to pull permits and and bunch of other things that would save us a bunch of time and money. So he gave Jeff a list of things that we needed to do and then wished us luck. It didn't help that Jeff had to run off to set up for our churches big Easter service that we had at Roger Dean Stadium right after the plumber man left but that's what happened. It was only slightly stressful. Still no hot water and a huge long list of things that we needed to do before we were going to be able to get it going again. I won't lie, I cried for a few minutes. I was so stressed out and was just not sure how things were going to work out. But Jeff gave me a big hug before he left for practice and reminded me that God had it all under control and knew everything that was happening and that we were going through and that he was working it all out for our good. So I made the choice to believe that and went on with the day.

That night I boiled water in every pot and big pan that I had and after a few rounds I had enough to give the kids a warm bath and later that night did the same thing for myself so that I could enjoy a warm bath for the first time that week. I just reminded myself that it's how people used to live hundreds of years ago and to suck it up and be a big girl, God was in control! And God really was working behind the scenes working it all out. A friend came out Sunday afternoon and helped work some of the electrical issues out and figured out what we were going to need to do to solve all of our issues. Sadly Sunday night came and we still had no hot water but it was okay, God was still working things out.

And that brings us to Monday morning. I headed over to the hospital around 9 Monday morning to take my pill. It was fairly quick and easy. I went back into the nuclear medicine area where I had already gone a few times for my scans and such and got to talk to my new friends in that department and they brought me the super heavy lead canister with my pill in it. After talking to a doctor for a couple of minutes I swallowed my pill and headed home. That simple and easy. Once I got home I went straight into my bedroom and locked myself in for what was supposed to be the next couple days of little to no human interaction. It was mid morning at that point and I was tired so I decided to take a nap. I woke up a while later and had some lunch and things were going decently well. My mom was taking care of the kids and things sounded pretty good from my bedroom so I was just relaxing. Then Jeff came home from work and our electrician friend came over to fix all of the electrical stuff and finish the job. It was supposed to be a pretty simple running of new wire and putting in a new breaker, maybe an hour or so of work. But no, that would be too easy for our house. After a couple hours of banging around in the attic (okay it was probably a lot shorter than that but it seemed like a long time) Jeff realized that he just wasn't going to be able to get to the spot that he needed to because of a/c work that we had done last year. So a new plan was needed... how to access a spot in the attic to get the wire to the water heater and to the electrical panel? The solution - cut a new access point in the ceiling of our bedroom! Yup, Jeff was in the bedroom with his circular saw standing up on a ladder while I huddled as far away from him and our friend in pretty much a two foot by four foot area of the room that wasn't covered in drop clothes to try and protect everything from the copious amounts of drywall dust! After laughing for a couple of hours (this time it really was a couple of hours) while Jeff and our friend cut a hole in our ceiling and then climbed in and out with insulation falling everywhere and just mayhem going on they were finally able to rewire the water heater. Step one was completed! Later that night Jeff kindly worked and built a frame for the new attic access point and made it so there was no longer a huge hole in the ceiling. It was a really, really long day for him but he did so great and I was so thankful to have a hole-less ceiling in my room to be able to sleep in. So that concluded day one of radiation. Not exactly your normal radiation experience I'm going to guess!

Oh and after all that, still no hot water for Jeff to shower in to clean all the dust and insulation off, poor guy! But God was at work. The next day we had the plumber come out and he was able to finally do the repairs to our water heater and joyously I was able to take my first hot shower in over a week! I basically slept through my second day of radiation treatment. I woke up around 9, had a morning nap, had an afternoon nap and then went to bed decently early. And that concluded my first 48 hours of radiation. The first day full of excitement and craziness and the second full of hot water and sleep!

After all the craziness with the hot water we were finally able to see God's hand on it. We realized that we were about to spend around $1000 to get the water heater replaced originally. Then that bill jump to somewhere between $2000 and $3000 minimum according to the Home Depot supplied contractor, at least if we were to do it all with the proper permitting and legal mumbo jumbo or whatever. In the end we were able to pretty much build a new water heater and replace all the electrical for it for just over $300. If that's not God taking care of us then when you realize that according to both the plumber and electrician our house shouldn't still be standing because of the crazy wiring and electrical issues that God truly is taking care of us and blessing us. Sure it was a long, cold week, but I'm so thankful for how God takes care of us!