Another Long Night

By Marilyn Savage

Another Long Night unfolds at a compelling pace. It is set in a challenging hospitalization during the early weeks of coronavirus lockdown. The broader story of caring for an adult daughter with exceptional needs throughout a thirty-six year journey of multiple health crises is framed by her current battle with stage four neuroendocrine cancer. This personal account is an honest companion for those walking similar journeys of anguish. It documents a mother’s accompaniment with a child repeatedly facing her mortality and invites us to endure our marathons of distress by resting in the deep love of God who is ever present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664216563

Marilyn Savage

The author is an ordained minister grounded in the unchanging nature of God’s word and the life-giving springs of the Holy Spirit. She has been safely carried through many storms and prays for others to find this same source of hope in their difficulties. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Ontario, Canada.

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Copyright © 2020 Marilyn Savage.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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International Children’s Bible®

Copyright© 2015 by Tommy Nelson, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1657-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1656-3 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/21/2020

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1 Day One

CHAPTER 2 Day Two

CHAPTER 3 Day Three

CHAPTER 4 Day Four

CHAPTER 5 Day Five

CHAPTER 6 Day Six - Morning

CHAPTER 7 Day Six - Afternoon and Evening

CHAPTER 8 Days Seven and Eight

CHAPTER 9 Days Nine and Ten

CHAPTER 10 Day Eleven

CHAPTER 11 Day Twelve

Dedicated

to all who walk a road of suffering

and

to all who have blessed my life

with the kindness of your friendship and prayers …

thank you

PREFACE

Our daughter enjoys telling others how she experiences the presence of God’s love and care in and through the difficult times. She is a person of faith and courage in adversity. She is happy to welcome you into the story we’ve lived together as a witness to his sustaining grace.

Here you will enter her heartrending challenges through the eyes of a mother walking alongside. To read ‘Another Long Night’ is to become intimate companions in the common human struggle of suffering. I pray this transparent account will gently point to the unfailing source of Light in the darkness where certain hope can be found.

Marilyn Savage

December, 2020

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CHAPTER

ONE

Day One

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None of this was expected.

She had an embolization procedure to block arterial blood supply to a metastasized tumour in her liver a week prior to the nightmare that evolved. I had thought when the fevers and nausea passed she too had passed through the time of concern into the well earned state of rest and recovery. I had thought the most vexing challenge in the near future would be the wait for further scans to determine the effectiveness of the treatment. Would this malignant and inoperable mass retreat sufficiently to be surgically removed along with the primary GI site of her neuroendocrine cancer and give our daughter a fighting chance? These were the pressing questions on my mind but they paled in comparison to the crisis coming her way and mine.

The temporarily lightened load of apprehensiveness at the end of that first week turned abruptly to become a weighty uncomprehending worry. Where a calm confidence resided the day before, there is now an agonizing inward cry. What is happening?! A frantic and emotional confusion has taken up residence overnight in a mind whose rapid decline was quickly losing touch with reality. Tender fragility peeks through the windows of her gentle soul behind prison bars of chaos and uncertainty. Scripted loops of heartbreaking remorse weep over things she has not done. Tremors. Muscle contractions. Intense flushing. Seizures. Gait disturbance.

At this early stage there are still moments of clarity when she knows everything is off and fights to regain control. Through frightened frustration and tears she tells us she is talking craziness, that nothing is the same inside, that her head is acting strange. Then, wrenching instability rises and the transparent connections to lucidity take on more and more of a translucent quality and move increasingly downward on a sliding scale towards opaqueness.

We watch her disappear into the swirling mists of this unknown storm assaulting her whole being. It came out of nowhere, completely by surprise. It bears down with a vengeance, unrelenting, taking ground with each fresh gust of renewed aggression against her very life and sanity.

I turn my eyes upwards in silent prayer, ‘O Lord, please no!’

Where is she going and will she come back?

Will she return to her right mind and if not, what happens then?

Is she moving towards her final departure?

The possible eventuality of navigating a health crisis or extended convalescence where her essential nature is compromised has not crossed my mind until this alarming new set of symptoms abruptly manifests and stares me down in a show of malevolent power. Her advanced disease maliciously conceals its hand and stands in the shadows taunting, mocking. A raging riptide of regression rushes aggressively from the ominous waves washing over her and rips away my sense of balance. Pieces of her essential nature erode into a sea of drastic change like so many grains of sand racing away in retreating tides. My instinct to protect this child stumbles against the torrential swells of a pounding assault that callously presses on. It pushes and pulls, teases me with thoughts of catching these fragments of her disintegrating personality just out of reach, but there is no stopping its progression. I try to hold on but she has been caught in a current of confusion too strong to resist. She is sinking, swept from the shore of safety.

I close my eyes and prayerfully will this horror away as though I could wake from a dream but it is all too real. There is nowhere to hide in an alternate scenario where all is well. I inwardly run to the rock on which my life has been built for decades and throw out an anchor of faith to be held fast in the firm grasp of the living God. It is in him and his strength I will take my stand for us both.

It is Friday morning. I grab the pre-packed bags I’ve learned to keep prepared for such a time as this and face the road ahead. I go alone in the midst of a global coronavirus pandemic together in spirit with a family of faith whose prayers request mighty eagle wings to carry us and keep our loved one in his protective care. I go with one foot on the accelerator and the other on God’s certain promises of enduring presence. I attend her through this very dark valley into which she has stumbled as loose stones on the mountain heights of a seemingly good initial recovery break free and betray her footing.

I go not knowing where this road will lead.

We park the car and walk around the block together to enter the emergency room doors, her arm draped through mine to stabilize her weakening steps. Coronavirus screening stations plastered with notices of ever-changing health policies and restrictions silently threaten to impede my accompaniment with her into the assessment area but it is quickly evident she needs me to be her voice and I am exempted from the strictly enforced rules.

Within a very short span of time, she is stretched out on a narrow bed in cubicle six, intravenous running, blood work taken, CT scans on both her abdomen and head administered. Hepatic and neurology teams converge and examine, question and deliberate, yet they are unable to arrive at an immediately conclusive diagnosis. Something at the embolization site? Stroke? Seizures? Infection? Liver function? Other? It is clear from the outset this elusive and invasive destroyer of life would not give up its tactics, resources, or position without a fight against persistent medical attempts to demystify its strategic advantage.

The afternoon hours slip by with more tests and examinations. The decline is incessant. Renegade nerve cells fire mismatched connections of nonsensical phrases until the point she rarely speaks except for the emotionally exhausting, sorrowful and repetitious loop of, ‘I’m so, so sorry’, the one thing she says in her natural voice. Her gaze repeatedly seeks mine with a countenance of deeply held regret asking for a forgiveness and release she could not ‘hear’ in which to ground herself and find peace. Over and over I throw out the lifeline of comfort and reassurance, of love and absolute solidarity, of explanation that she’s done nothing wrong and it is just her mind playing tricks because she is very ill. But within moments, the palpable sadness of a remorse trapped in false reality swells again from this troubled sea upon which the vessel of her sinking mind and body are set adrift. This happens with all who attend her, people she has never met. Frenzied, pain-filled eyes lock on mine and theirs pleading, pleading, but we could not reach beyond the haunted, increasingly vacant stare to disentangle the cords of death distorting her perceptions and dragging her further and further away, to where? To a point of no return? To a faint shell of who she is? To a distant pier where mooring lines are cut and life begins anew for her on the other side?

The only effective interruption to these tormentingly insistent loops is to quietly sing old hymns and songs and to say recitations she’s known since childhood. We do this throughout the full hour trip from our home to the hospital. I softly hum through moments of medical care to try and steady the boat, and when we’re on our own,