SQJ Taipei

To my kids… my mom is Grandma Pagel…
But today I’m writing about MY Grandma Pagel - My dad’s mom.

She is about 87 years old and lives in a small town in Iowa.
A few years ago she suffered a stroke which has had an effect on her mobility and has limited her in some ways… much to her frustration. COnsidering the stroke and her age… I’m always a bit surprised at how great she gets along and still manages to cook and bake and get out occasionally. A strong lady.

Grandpa has shown his love for her by helping her in countless ways since the stroke. He is 90. A strong man.

A few weeks ago, Grandma had to go to the hospital because her lungs were filled with fluid. They drained the fluid and asked the obvious question: “Why was there that much (1 liter) fluid in her lungs?” In order to better assess her situation, she was transferred to the University of Iowa hospital in Iowa City. Once there they drained her lungs again and performed biopsies on some lung tissue and the fluid. The fluid was clean, but there was cancer in the lung tissue and the doctors were pretty sure that the original cancer was located elsewhere and that it had metastasized to the lungs. Further testing proved them right and we now know that Grandma has advanced ovarian cancer.

As my dad said… “at this point I didn’t think I’d lose one of my parents to cancer.”

Well… the doctors deal in a black and white world… which I’m glad for… and we’re told Grandma has 6 months to live. I’m thinking it will be longer. She’ll be taking an oral chemotherapy treatment while living at a nursing home while my grandpa lives at home about 20 miles away. He’ll go see her every day I guess.

We’ll go see her on Monday. I’d love to be able to find the right words to say in the situations we’ll likely find ourselves in.

God… please help Grandma… and Grandpa… and all of us as we try to learn how to help…

2 Cor 1:3-4

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Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.