Abby's Journey Archive

I was tempted to entitle this entry "Journey's End," but the events of the last few hours as well as my faith in God that convince me that it is most definitely a beginning. For what seemed to be an interminable time Abby sought to be free of her body that had ceased to work as it was designed. Now she can experience life in close proximity to our Father, never again to be hampered by a mortal shell.

As always, we are so thankful for your prayers.

Abby is resting peacefully. Hospice is here, as are many of her friends. She is surrounded by the people she loves, and we are playing her favorite praise music in the background, which of course will pale in comparison to what she will be hearing (and participating in!) soon.

At around 8 pm she starting complaining quite a bit about her head hurting. We had been keeping her on liquid morphine doses every 2 hours faithfully all day. Finally, the hospice pharmacy delivered a pain medication patch which we put on her and then she asked for one more dose of liquid morphine which we also gave her. She seemed to be able to sleep peacefully after that.

At about 11:00 we went to her and realized that she was having a seizure. After consulting with our oncologist, we administered a dose of an antiseizure medication we keep on hand. After 20 minutes she seemed to calm down. Then, less than an hour later, she started seizing again so we repeated the dose. Again, that seemed to help for about 45 minutes. She started seizing again. So, we paged for the on-call hospice nurse to come access her port and we got her a stronger anti-seizure medication called Ativan which we have used before. That seems to have stopped the seizures.

Right now she is sleeping soundly. We don't expect for her to awaken any time soon. All the anti-seizure medications make her quite sleepy. When the doctors offices open, we will consult with them about possibly getting her Decadron dose delivered by IV if she doesn't seem to be able to take it orally.

Thank you for continuing to hold us up. God continues to be our source of strength. We know Jesus is weeping with us as well as many of you. God Bless you all!