10/17/11 - Everybody just calls me "Red"...

 "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain."

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

All last week, after we heard the great news from Dr. Parker about my PET scan, I kept getting small messages from the Lord about speaking to the church on Sunday with my testimony of what He had done for us this week.

I checked with Pastor Henry yesterday morning before church, to see if I could (during church)  give my testimony of God's healing hand on me and we set that up.

I told my story of the last 7 months & especially about the last 2 months of no treatments & waiting to do scan & see Dr. for results. I also read the passages from Psalm 116, that I shared in the post last week.

Of course, after church, there were quite a few people that came up to tell us how happy they were about the news. It was a great & glorious day to be in God's house!

After church, Steve & I had lunch, then went to Micheals so I could pick up a few things. I was standing in one of the aisles, looking at some things & a young man - a teenager with bright red hair, that worked at Micheals, walked up. I looked up & he said, "Hi, how are you doing?". I told him I was doing fine, thinking he was just checking to see if I needed help finding anything. Then he said, "You don't know me, but I go to Northwest. I was in church this morning & heard what you said. You did really good." I looked up at this sweet face & told him, "thank you" and "what was his name?". He said "My name is Jason" (I think that's what he said) and then continued, "But everybody just calls me Red."

It was such a sweet thing for him to do, to make the effort to tell me that he liked what I said. It touched my heart & made my day. To think that I had really spoken, through God & His word, to a young teenage boy in our congregation.

I think God gives us things to do - if we disobey, sometimes we are punished, maybe not in the way that we know about it, but in ways that we will never know. If I had not been obedient to God's calling for my testimony, I would never have met this young man & found out that what I said made a difference to him.

If we obey, there is always a heart touching moment, somewhere down the line. Like standing in the aisle at Micheals, on a Sunday afternoon.

"I enable you not only to feel comforted but also to be a channel through whom I comfort others. Thus you are doubly blessed, because a living channel absorbs some of whatever flows through it." (Jesus Calling - October 16)

This has been an incredible week full of miracles for me...Sunday's encounter just finished off that great week. God is Good.

10/14/11 - Hallelujah, Hallelujah and Amen. God's Healing Hand...

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain."

To begin this post, I must go back two months to my 4th (and last- until this week) chemo treatment. My 4th treatment was August 10. At that time Dr. Parker told us that I was probably looking at being half way finished. 4 more to go! Sounded good to me. He said at the beginning that we were probably looking at between 6-8 treatments about  3 weeks apart. The 3 weeks apart has not happened since the 1st treatment. Each month when I went to have my blood checked, my white count was getting lower & lower and treatment had to be put off an extra week. But thankfully during that week, it would come up. But when we got to treatment #5, everything changed. For three weeks in a row, my white count went down lower & lower. It has to be around 1000 for me to take the treatment. 1st week, it was at 650, 2nd week, it was at 575, 3rd week, it went up to 625, but was no where near where it had to be for treatment.

I was very discouraged. We were told that I would have to have a PET scan for him to determine what was going on, why my white count would not come up. He ordered the PET scan, but of course the ins co. takes their sweet time in approving, so we figured it would be 3 weeks before I could do that. Now we are looking at 6 weeks later - just to find out what was going on, then make decisions about new treatments, etc.

New treatments would mean that I would/could get sick from them (the treatments I have been on have not made me sick). Also my hair is coming back in & new treatments would mean that it might fall out again...all in all, new treatments would be like starting over, especially without any treatments for apprx. 2 months.

So we had the date planned that I would have the PET scan, if the insurance approved it. Tuesday, October 4 and see the Dr. for results on Wednesday, October 5th. Well, surprise, surprise - they called me from the lab the week before & Ins had approved a week early!! So we changed the date to Wednesday, September 28th with Dr. appt  on Friday the 30th. My luck- I got violently ill on Tuesday night before the PET scan on Wednesday. Throwing up & other things I won't mention here. Needless to say I was up all night with fever (100 degrees) and chills. If your temp reaches 101 - you have to call the Dr. & probably go to the hospital, but luckily, it never reached 101, so I just tried to make it through the night. In the morning, (Steve had stayed home with me), he called the Dr. office to let them know about this & find out what, if anything, we needed to do. The nurse told him that a lot of patients were coming/calling about a 12 hour stomach virus that was going around. I guess that's what it was. Of course, I didn't feel like having a PET scan that day, so Steve had her change it to the first available time, which was the next week - Wednesday , October 5th, but I wouldn't be able to see the Dr. for almost a week after that - he had no time slots. So that appt. was set up for Monday Oct. 10, exactly 2 months from the date of my last treatment.

PET scan went fine the next week. But then there was the waiting for almost another week to find out the results...

Exactly two months from my last treatment and almost 8 weeks with NO treatment, we went to his office to hear what the verdict was & where we would go from there. Have to have my spleen removed, if that was the reason for the white count not going up, if it was my spleen or my bone marrow, if we would have to start new treatments with new drugs...starting over.

We serve a great God! A healing God!! As Dr. Parker looked down through all the layers of the PET scan... after each section, he would say..."It says this section is clear." "Your neck is clear", "Your chest is clear", Your abdomen is clear"...on & on through the report!!!! ALL CLEAR!! We were all in tears... me, Steve & Sara. Could not believe the words we were hearing, although Sara was not as happy as I thought she would be. Later on she said, she always knew that everything would be alright, so she was not surprised when we found out the results. I had always felt that God would heal me, but with this brick wall that I was having to face all over again, I was discouraged & felt defeated.

Dr. Parker said that the only place I could still have the lymphoma was in my bone marrow, which doesn't really show up clearly on the PET scan, so to be sure, we did a blood test that morning, to see what my white count was. If my white count was still very low, that would mean that the lymphoma was still in my bone marrow, if the white count was up, it would probably mean that it was gone from there, too.They gave me the results in a just a few minutes after taking the test. My count was almost 2900!!! THREE times what it needed to be, to have Chemo & more than half way to the low end of normal!!

Dr. Parker wanted me to go ahead & take the other two treatments - to bring me up to 6, just to be sure that everything was gone. After that, I may need to do a bone marrow biopsy, just to make sure that is clear. Then a chemo treatment every 6 months for the next two years...and then we will see.

I took my 5th (finally) treatment the next day - on Tuesday. I will take another one (my 6th - and final) in 3 weeks, I hope, if my white count stays up, otherwise I may have to wait an extra week, like before. But that's ok, I can do that!

I walked out of the Dr. office on August 10, after chemo... still sick. I walked out of his office exactly 2 months later, (without any treatments during that time) - cancer free! God's healing hand is on me!!

In the morning, the day I  went to see Dr. Parker last week, I had my quiet time. In my little "Jesus Calling" Devotion Book - this was the message:

"Trust Me enough to let things happen without striving to predict or control them. Relax and refresh yourself in the Light of My everlasting Love.When you project yourself into the future, rehearsing what you will do or say, you are seeking to be self-sufficient: to be adequate without My help. The alternative is to live fully in the present, depending on Me each moment. Don't divide your life into things you can do by yourself and things that require My help. Instead, learn to rely on Me in every situation. This discipline will enable you to enjoy life more and to face each day confidently."

I was not doing that. All week I had been going round & round in my mind with the thoughts of  "What will I do if my spleen is involved? What will I do if it has to be removed? What if it's my bone marrow? What does that big picture look like? Are we dealing with more than we thought we were at the beginning?"

Then God said "Trust Me", so that is what I prayed before that Dr. appt. "Lord, I am trusting you for whatever happens today. That You will get me through this."    Trust...

Wednesday after chemo was a good day, I felt fine. Thursday (yesterday & today) not so much. Yesterday, I felt terrible - flu like symptoms, just like after the very 1st chemo treatment. But I do have my trusty little pain pills now, which help enormously!! Today is better, but still a little slow & achey. But that's ok, I can deal with the pain & the aches, knowing that I am on the road to recovery & survival!!

In my quiet time on Wednesday, day after treatment, two days after hearing my healing was at hand, I read a passage from James. God then drew my eyes over to the next page to verses from Psalm 116:1-9 and Psalm 116: 15-19 and this is what they say:

"I love the Lord because He hears and answers my prayers. Because He bends down and listens, I will pray as long as I have breath! Death had its hands around my throat; the terror of the grave overtook me. I saw only trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord: "Please, Lord, save me!" How kind the Lord is! How good He is! So merciful, this God of ours! The Lord protects those of childlike faith; I was facing death, and then He saved me. Now I can rest again, for the Lord has been so good to me. He has saved me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. And so I walk in the Lord's Presence as I live here on earth! The Lord's loved ones are precious to Him; it grieves Him when they die. O Lord, I am your servant; yes, I am your servant, the son of your handmaid, and you have freed me from my bonds! I will offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will keep my promises to the Lord in the presence of all His people, in the house of the Lord, in the heart of Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!"

There could not have been scriptures that were more meaningful to me that morning and He drew my eyes right to them!

He is a Great and Mighty God! And the Healer of my soul & body! And I will be thankful & full of joy for the rest of my life for what He has done for me! He has given me back my life, to be able to work for Him, to see my grandchildren grow and my children to become the people that He has determined that they will be. 

What more can anyone ever ask for??

10/6/11 - The Long Journey & the Road Ahead...

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain."

It has been 3 weeks since I have posted, simply because I really had nothing to post. I have been living my life "day by day", as I posted the last time...waiting for tests to be approved & for the appointment dates to get here.

I did have a bit of good news 2 weeks ago, they approved my PET scan a week early, so the office called me & we changed the date from Tuesday, October 4, to Wednesday, September 28 (then to see the Dr. on Friday for the results). On the evening before (Tuesday, the 27th), I started feeling a little nauseous, so I went to bed early, but that didn't last...for the rest of the night I was up with all kinds of stomach problems...

throwing up and...other things. My temp got to 100 degrees, I was carefully maintaining that, because anytime it gets to 101, you are suppose to call the Dr. & probably have to go to the hospital. When your immune system is as low as mine is, you can get very sick, very quickly.

Luckily, mine never got over 100, but my body felt like it was closer to 110! I was freezing & burning up at the same time!

Needless to say, with no sleep & stomach problems that bad, I was not up to doing my PET scan the next day, so Steve called the nurse to change the appt., which she did. New appointment - Wednesday October 5, with new Dr. appt. the following Monday, October 10. (I would have been better off to have stayed with my original dates - then I could have seen the Dr. the very next day...but who knew??)

So I went for my PET scan yesterday...finally. It has been 2 months since I've had a treatment and I am ready to move forward with this & get finished. I will see the Dr. on Monday, so I am a little concerned with the results of the PET, but it is what it is & I will trust God to get me through whatever the results are.

I have been finding that the longer this goes on, the more I need to trust in a power higher than me. I have also found out a few other things on this journey of mine...

I have found God...not in the sense that He was not in my life before, but I have found Him as my Friend & my Comforter. I have found His Presence all around me everyday. I have been in battle with the father of lies on many occasions, feeding me doubts & fears and I have found that if I will call on the name of Jesus, those doubts & fears are replaced by Peace, Comfort, Joy & Thankfulness.

I have found the joy of just waking up in the morning to a new day.

I have found the pleasure of being able to get through a whole day of walking with my family (at the fair, shopping, etc), without really being in too much pain. And just to have the time to spend with them, brings me such joy & thankfulness.

For the last couple of weeks, I have felt really good...I feel a lot stronger & have a lot more energy. Maybe it's just that the chemo, being out of my system for so long, has given me back my strength. But I actually feel stronger & have more energy than I did a year ago! I really think I have had this lymphoma for a lot longer than a few months - now that I look back on the last couple of years and how I have felt. I always attributed the lack of energy & strength to being 60 years old & overweight, but I think it may have been more than that. So maybe since the chemo has been working & a lot of the lymphoma is gone from my body, I am getting back the strength & energy  that I haven't had for several years. That's my theory, anyway.

Each day is a new day for me to realize how much I have & how blessed I am. To live in the country I live in, to have the family & friends that I have, to wake up to cool temperatures & know that fall is here & the weather will soon change to cool/cold - all the time, the joy of seeing fall all around me - in the flowers, the pumpkins, the fall decorations and especially, as I do my quiet time each day - to know a God that loves me so much, He sent His Son to save me - long before I was even here.

This has been a long journey...and the road ahead is uncertain, but God has told me to live day-by-day and that is what I am doing. I am trying to make the most of everyday, enjoying everything around me...sights, smells, sounds...it is a beautiful world God has given us to enjoy & I intend to do just that.

"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring it's own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today." Matthew 6:34