he received my sister's bone marrow and if i can recall correctly the blood cells pumping through his body right now carries my sister's DNA- which is pretty crazy.
he has had a few rough scrapes and close calls. i don't think i can count how many times he's had MRSA(methicillin resistant staph. aurius- or however it's spelled) or skin cancer on his head and/or face. i know for a fact i can't count how many skin wounds he's had or how many times he's been to wound care clinic- he won't be able to tell you how many times either i bet.
he used to go to my sister's house every sunday and get his dressings changed there. that way he could take a bath- the only way he could bathe each week. to help his wounds heal they would use a cup of bleach in the bath tub. he wasn't able to shower or bathe all the other days of he week because his wounds were all bandaged. and whenever he went to wound care(3x/week) it was just about stripping the old bandages and replacing with new ones- no bathing.
and recently his skin won't stretch to allow full extension of joints- like his elbows. it's called scleroderma.
all these complications- i never thought about it all.
i mean, used to be in my little ol' mind i'd hear about someone getting a transplant and i'd think that the person would have nothing but blue skies and rainbows from then on out. but sadly this is not the case.
there's a little thing called graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).
when i first heard the name i immediately thought of homilies about grafted grape vines. how you can take a twig of one plant and splice it and kind of keep it alive by helping it derive life sustaining nutrients from a completely different plant.
so this is basically what's happening. fjp(father joe peek- for the sake of swift blogging has been reduced to fjp) his body is the host. and kathy(my sister -the bone marrow donor) is the grafted one in this relationship.
GVHD- it's her system fighting his system and vice versa. he gets all kinds of infections because he was on this immune suppressing drug called pro-graft that was helping him not fight her stuff. and he gets all kinds of sores when he isn't on pro-graft because the GVHD starts to get out of hand.
but he is a fighter and also the good Lord has seen it fit to have him here with us today. it is entirely a collaborative effort in my opinion.
here is a fab pic of fjp that a local photographer took. his website is here...
i just love this pic. don't you love how it captures him?
and i saw him saturday night briefly. he was wearing this same shirt- or one like it.
he had some soft clerical collars made for him when the sores made it too uncomfortable to be wearing his normal clerics.
anyhow- this pic just makes me smile.
because his face has equal parts humility and "bring it" mixed together.
classic fjp.
say a prayer of thanksgiving today with me?
1 comment:
I will be honored to say a prayer of thanksgiving for Fr. Joseph. Way back when at St. M's (8-9 years ago, maybe?) he was the priest who gave the theology portion of the first ever NFP talk at the parish. If it weren't for him giving us the truth at that time, our youngest might not be here today. She turns six tomorrow. We are so thankful for Fr. Joseph and priests like him who aren't afraid to catechize on the "unpopular" topics of today.
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