He's A Fighter!

Joe continues to amaze us all with his strength.  He has so many issues, yet he still gets up each day, showers, visits, prays and makes the very best out of each moment he has left on this earth. 

Bart and our friends from Honeywell Clearwater, sent these boxing gloves which state “Joe Kahler – The Greatest of All Time”.  It is the perfect symbol of just how tough Joe is.  We keep them on display in our entry way as a constant reminder of Joe’s fight and his strength.

Joe’s issues continue to get worse.  His kidneys are shutting down, which is causing a series of problems.  He developed a urinary tract infection which was horrible.  It caused so much pain, discomfort and hallucinations this past week.  We started him on an IV antibiotic, which has helped.  The only problem was it made him sick and he spent hours just dry heaving into a bucket.  We increased his pain meds as much as we could to help him sleep through most of it.  Looks like we were successful, as he is doing better now.   We had to cut his TPN (nutrition) back to 500 ML/day (he was on 1800/day) because his body rejects it.  It just can’t take the volume and he gets sick and his abdomen and feet swell.  He still walks to the bathroom, family room and the kitchen, but can no longer walk without assistance.  The hardest part is its Joe and it’s so hard to keep him down.  If we aren’t right there when he’s ready to take off, he falls.  He’s fallen several times (luckily nothing too serious), but it scares us so bad.  He keeps promising to ask for assistance, but again it’s Joe.  He just wants to do things on his own so bad.  He does let me shower him (and uses the shower chair).  He knows, without the help, he won’t get his shower!  He continues to leave us throughout the day as well.  It sounds like he mostly goes to play sports, coach sports or go to a sporting event.  He also sees people we don’t know and travels and who knows what else.  It doesn’t scare him, but he does get frustrated sometimes not being able to tell reality from his other visions.  But when he is with us, it’s magic.  We treasure the one-liners and his inspirational comments every day.  He still has us read to him at night and just cherishes the cards and messages that continue to come in.  Thank you all for giving Joe the gift of support, prayers and friendship through those messages.

Hospice continues to support us regularly.  They thought Joe had a few days left on earth a few weeks ago.  Now they just say “Wow…He is amazing”.  So as of right now, we have no idea when Joe’s time with us on earth will be done.  We try not to think about it and just try and embrace each moment we have with him.  We make him as comfortable as possible, we give him 20+ Mountain Dews/Sunny D’s/Waters each day, we keep the pain meds going so we can stay ahead of his excruciating pain and we just put all our faith and love in God and know that he will take care of the rest.

I know I sound like a broken record when I say Thank You All So Very Much!  But truly, you have no idea how much your prayers, support, friendship and love mean to us.  And no worries….even if we haven’t heard from you in awhile, believe me, we know you are out there.  The strength we get can only come from a support group like ours.

All our love and thanks,

Sherrie, Joe and family