Breathe.

I caught myself telling my sister to take a deep breath when she's nervous - and I realized that it's the same thing I told kids to do before they jumped off the zipline at camp, mostly because I did the same thing when I got nervous, and it usually helped.

I'm figuring these days it's not quite helping as much as it did. When I jumped off the zipline cliff (or the old platform... those were the days...), my fears were immediately replaced with joy and adrenaline. Right now the fears just keep on coming.

I've been telling myself for weeks that I'm not stressed, I'm strong, I'm not freaking out over this. But I think my body has other plans - my eye has been twitching for two months continuously! My chest is tight, my stomach accepts nothing but bland food, and I'm starting to ache everywhere. Now I believe I've never been this stressed in my life.

Here's the update: Dad got better for a couple of weeks, then his white blood cell count went up really high along with his temperature. We did a cat scan, which showed infection, which we hadn't seen yet, and the day before thanksgiving we had surgery. The doctor said it wasn't likely that we'd have to have another, but it was possible. So dad was sedated from Wednesday afternoon to at least last Thursday. They did another surgery the Monday before that to remove more pancreas/pus, and another surgery to insert a Trach tube on Thursday. He woke up Thursday evening, and was doing great all weekend. Yesterday he started bleeding from pretty much everywhere, and last night he started gushing blood. They removed more blood today in surgery when they were trying to figure out where the bleeding was coming from. No news there, but they packed him full of gauze and are going to see if that will help them figure it out.

So, tonight I'm sitting with dad so my step-mom could go home and take a shower and a nap in her own bed (she hasn't slept in her bed in weeks). The plan is to keep blood in (since it's still trying to make its way out). BOO.

Please, if you're the praying type, please pray for him. He's truly struggling and he's stressing himself out. It's real hard to watch a man of his size and reputation fear for his life, even if it is while he's under crazy anesthesia.