Get's Your Hopes Up

Sometimes Monday’s are a dreaded day but I’m going into it feeling a lot of excitement. I’ll explain why. Friday was a scheduled clinic day with an 11:00 a.m. appointment. At 10:15 a.m. I received a text from my neighbor Kat. Being away from home, she and I hadn’t communicated for 10 months. At 10:50 a.m. Ashtyn and I were ready to head out the door for the hospital when Ash told me she felt too weak to walk. That was entirely unusual and in fact has never happened before. She’s always able to walk short distances using a walker or putting her arm around me. At first I didn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t have thought Kat was home but since I had just heard from her I texted asking if she could help me get Ashtyn to the car. I don’t know exactly why but Ashtyn sobbed when Kat walked into our house. Kat just held her. I wish I had a picture of the tender moment. After several minutes Ashtyn put one arm around Kat, one arm around me, and we walked to the car. Kat told us she would pick up lunch and then drove to the hospital to hang out with us for a couple hours. She has such a fun, refreshing, genuine vibe with the most captivating personality. What a last minute blessing she was for us. At clinic, Ashtyn’s labs were less than ideal. Her hematocrit dropped quite a bit from two days prior and her kidney creatinine level was heading in the wrong direction. She needed a platelet transfusion and two units of red blood cells. At 2:30 p.m. I called Morgan and asked her to pick up Ethan from school. “We will be at the hospital for awhile. You and Ethan can stay home or come hang out with us.” They chose to come to the hospital. We ended up having to stay until 10:00 p.m. but that was ok because we talked to wonderful nurses, doctors, and nurse practitioners... plus we got to go home and sleep in our own beds! We are very grateful for all the prayers said for Ashtyn over the weekend. Today she has another clinic appointment. We are going into Monday so much different than Friday. I sense more stability and strength in her. It’s subtle but it’s there. I’m excited to start seeing progress these coming weeks that’s been absent the past month. My philosophy, “Get your hopes up!” Why not? It never hurts to expect good things.