Counseling, Schmounseling

First an update on Trent, he is struggling.  He has no appetite, until 3:00 in the morning and then he wakes me up to tell me he wants scrambled eggs and maple flavored sausage.  Good for you Trent, but I am not getting up at 3:00 to make you breakfast.  He sleeps most of the day and then lays awake at night.  He has his days and nights totally messed up again.  Frustrating!

Trent has been dealing with a lot more pain and nausea.  I called Dr. Carr to figure that out and he believes it is because Trent's chest cavity is almost full of fluid now.  That should be about eight liters, or twenty pounds of fluid to fill his chest cavity.  That is going to take some getting used to.  All the fluid is probably pushing everything around just a bit and causes the pain and nausea.  Again, frustrating.  Trent was doing pretty well but the last week has been rough.  He found a couple of lumps on his chest/ribs and that freaked us out.  The lumps are not small and appeared very suddenly.  Dr. Carr is going to do outpatient biopsies on Wednesday.    If the lumps are cancer, then they will up the dose of radiation to those areas.  Trent has understandably been a bit shaken by the new lumps.  It is like this is never going to end.  Every time we take a step forward, we get slammed back two steps.  We are both beginning to wonder how long we must endure.  But the answer is clear,  we must endure to the end.  Heavenly Father never said anything about enduring until it makes us too uncomfortable, or gets too hard.  So, we now realize that it is time for more help.

I called the Bishop last Thursday to get referred to a counselor and, what I didn't know was that Trent had also called him.  I had a little laugh about that.  He was able to get us set up for this afternoon.  I was actually kind of excited, imagining myself being led into a padded room and the door being shut tightly behind me.  At this point, I might think that was wonderful.  Trent was feeling relieved I think, to be able to get some stuff off his chest.  On the way down he made sure to tell me that nothing he would say was meant to hurt me and that I shouldn't take offense at it.  Um...okay.  I was not planning on a bash session or anything so that surprised me a little.

Our session turned out to be less that wonderful.  I felt like the tactic the counselor used to try to see what he was dealing with was to badger us just a little and get us riled up.  We are not people who are so full of hate that we need a mediator...we are two people who have been worn down by a pretty traumatic two years and needed help finding enough peace to keep us going.  I am trying not to be too disappointed.  We have both agreed to give him another try, but all bets are off after that.

This week is going to be a big one full of lots of appointments and hopefully a few answers.  We have an appointment with a new radiation oncologist because the first one didn't quite work out for us.  Radiation planning will be on Thursday.  Radiation will probably start within two weeks.  We are praying for the strength to keep on going.  All we have to do is one day at a time.