Making the Hard Choices

Throughout our battle with this illness, we've found ourselves faced with challenging choices. None was more challenging than today. When we learned earlier in the week that our daughter, Whitney and grandson, Daniel would be coming today for a week's visit, we set our hearts on getting home so that we could spend time with them. Based on the fever that just doesn't want to go away, the doctors informed us that they had different plans if we still wanted to try to get a chemotherapy treatment and take advantage of the 20-30% chance they say we have of this treatment working. They felt that the best way to be prepared for the treatment would be for Shannon to be under constant care in the hospital. Home health care would be available if we went home, but of course it would not be available 24/7 like it is in the hospital.

So here we were, on one hand wanting to spend quality time with our family members who had flown half way across the country, and on the other hand wanting to at least get a shot at the treatment that we have not been able to take due to one reason or another for so many months. If the treatment has such a small chance of being effective, would it be best to just go on home and enjoy the family in a more familiar environment? If the treatment has any chance at all of being effective, no matter how slim that chance may be, would it be best to stay in the hospital, sacrificing that week of family time for the hope of having many more weeks of family time in the future?

We opted for the prolonged stay in the hospital. Since the element of risk is evident on all sides, we decided to go the route of doing whatever we can to get to the treatment and hope and pray that the 20-30% chance is enough. Talking things out with one another and with the doctors seems to be key to making the hard choices.