Right in the centre - A year of turmoil and blessing

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Published on Thursday, December 19, 2024

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner & Press

Towards the end of my Christmas column last year I wrote, “I also believe in prayer and have prayed for dozens, if not hundreds of people. I plan to continue to do so but as some of you know, my wife and I, but especially my wife would appreciate your prayers. We are grateful for all our medical people, but they can only do so much. Prayer is needed for sure.”

Last fall and Christmas season, my wife Christine was in pretty tough shape. She had been dealing with various symptoms for a couple of years by then with Sjogren’s Syndrome, intermixed with an outbreak of Shingles. Then last December, she was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and faced a Whipple Procedure surgery on Jan. 4/24 at Health Sciences Centre. It was a six hour surgery and about a 14 day stay in hospital. There were some after surgery setbacks but we finally got her out of a difficult hospital stay and after the surgery healed up, she was put into a very rigorous chemotherapy treatment.

The good news is the diagnosis was fairly early, as was the surgery and chemo sessions. It was a tough go with Christine losing a lot of weight and she certainly caught up on her sleep. Many, many days were spent in her lift chair, sleeping and trying to eat. It took months for her appetite to come back to a point where her weight stopped dropping.

There were blessings along the way including many visits from friends. Together, we made the decision that I would keep on working and so I was not with her every day all day. Our office is only five minutes from our home. I re-learned how to do laundry, some shopping, cooking and housekeeping. Our son Rob, lives close by and he kept an eye on us. Son Mike phoned every day. Friends and staff kept checking in on us. 

There were little bright spots. We bought the Virden Empire-Advance in June, which seems a little silly, but that whole deal brightened Chris’s days as we renewed some connections and made many new connections in her home community of Virden. On many of the weekly paper delivery trips to Virden, Christine has been able to make the  trip with me to meet with staff and customers. 

Our last drop off on the way home is in the village of Alexander and the place we stop is at Dundee Designs which is owned by Shirley Lloyd-Davies. It was a cool re-connect with Shirley as she did some of our earliest computer work for our newspaper back in 1989 through a publishing company in Brandon. She has a little cafe in her store and one of the items she sells are delicious egg salad sandwiches that are supplied by the Honeyhouse in Rivers. Ever since childhood, Christine has loved egg salad sandwiches and those ones hit the appetite re-set button and were one of the first foods she actually enjoyed after months of battling an upset digestive system caused by the cancer and then the chemo. Another store that has nice snacks is Hi-Way Grocery in Virden, a place where we also drop off papers. Some of their offerings appealed to Christine’s taste buds as well.

Chris had her chemo stopped in the late summer, tests showed that she was on the mend and although it’s been a long haul, she is getting much stronger. The walker got put into storage a while ago, the cane often gets left behind and I have been pretty much kicked out of the kitchen and somewhat out of the laundry room.

We are very thankful for her returning health, support from staff, family and friends. There was a lot of prayer by many people, some of whom we do not even know.Christmas might be a little less stressful this year.

In poor health, even in sickness unto death, we must remain thankful to God for his provision and mercy. Christmas is a great time to think upon God and his Son Jesus. 

We are born, we live and then we die. God is good through it all and it is incumbent upon us all to live in His blessing and pass it along whenever and wherever we can.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the newspaper staff.