Cancer, so far

A blog... Welcome to our era right? I am a little late on the scene. With where we are in life right now, it seems like a good idea to keep friends and family informed. I will just be up front that I am not a writer, I am also not great with grammar or sentence structure. Please forgive me.

So, where to start... Throughout the last year life has seemed almost too good to be true. Our daughter was born early last year. Her life is one of the greatest blessings we've received... EVER. She has brought so much happiness in our lives. Ben and I would literally ask each other if life could be any sweeter. Not only did we have the blessing of her life, I also have been given the great pleasure of staying home with her and getting to be her full time care giver. I cannot describe in words the fulfillment this has brought. I love it! Easy, no, but so fulfilling. She really has changed us.

Back to present day, recently I discovered a lump on my neck. I had it checked out and it led many, many, MANY more tests which led to the diagnosis of Hodgkin's Lymphoma (stage 3), a type of cancer. Stage 3 means that it is not only in my neck, but has spread through my chest and into some organs. For sure my spleen, but I am not exactly sure where else. Our oncologist said the spots that are cancerous are smaller. Not huge masses of cancer. Which is good. How they treat stage 1 and 2 is with chemotherapy and radiation. Because stage 3 and 4 cover more areas of the body they rely on chemotherapy alone because giving radiation to nearly your whole body is not safe. Our doctor is positive and deeply caring. This is a true mercy from God! He told us maybe having stage 3 is a good thing, I don't have to do radiation. We will do 2 rounds of chemotherapy to start. Each round is two doses or two times administering chemotherapy. So four treatments and then we will do another PET scan to see if the cancer is responding to the chemotherapy. If it is, which our doctor was very confident it would be, then we will do 4 more rounds or 8 times administering chemotherapy. Chemotherapy will start a week from yesterday. Next Monday. It will take 3-4 hours to administer. Mondays will be a good day for us because Ben has Mondays off. He will get to sit with me for several hours while I get chemo. This is another mercy. Having to go through this doesn't seem as scary with Ben. He of course is wanting to trade places with me, but just having him along as support for everything I've had to go through so far has helped me. For this type of chemotherapy its a pretty certain guarantee I will lose all my hair. A small price for getting healthy I guess. Other side effects that are guaranteed is a weakened immune system. I will have to avoid places that are likely for bugs and germs. There is also a moderate chance for infections. Our doctor stressed a few times to just let them know immediately if I was getting a fever. I guess chemotherapy is pretty hard on the body. Can you tell I knew almost nothing about chemo before this? Other side effects are nausea and vomiting. He said I will be on strong medications to try and prevent this, but there is no guarantee. Another side effect is for my ovaries to be attacked and destroyed. There is a drug to try and suppress your ovaries while on chemotherapy so that they can come back and spring to life again after chemo. It's also not guaranteed to work, but there is good success with it. They will also be monitoring my heart and lungs as chemotherapy can be hard on these organs. There are many other side effects but these are the more prominent ones we were informed about. I obviously do not have a medical background so hopefully I am relaying the information we were given accurately. If you, like me, know/ knew nothing about Hodgkin's Lymphoma the good news it is a cancer that can be cured. This is not the case for some other cancers. How they define cured is if 5 years from now they do a scan on my body and find I still have no cancer after chemotherapy, then I am cured. It's gone. This is comforting to us. Another comfort is that if chemotherapy does not work, which our doctor said would be shocking if it didn't, there are more options. All of these facts are a great comfort. I will start chemotherapy next week and unless I get sick or have an infection, in which case we'll have to push back a round while I try and get better, should last until late November. Six months. That's a long time. But here is more good news, we will have help! We already are being supported and surrounded by family, friends, and our church family. If you fall into this group, which you likely do reading all of this, THANK YOU. I cannot say this enough. I really need people, encouragement, and love right now. SO THANK YOU SO MUCH. The help I am referring to more specifically is my mom. She is planning to put her life on hold for a few months and come help out. This is huge for us. Our daughter will be cared for, we will be fed, and life will continue in our household. We do not know what to expect on chemotherapy. We do know that it will probably change my ability to fully care for our daughter. Our doctor said there will likely be good and bad days. I may be able to do what I normally do most days with some modifications, but there will also probably be days I won't be able to do much of anything. And knowing we'll have constant help is comforting. We are going to play it by ear. It's kind of hard to make plans around an unknown situation.

Well, I think that sums up the last year and the last few weeks. Both the sweetest blessings in life and suffering. That is life though, right? I have been asked how we are feeling and doing with all of this. I will say this, we have Christ. That changes everything. We have His promises. Some of which are: He has our best interest in mind. He is present and active in this situation. He will never leave us. He loves us. He has my days numbered. He is still God, nothing has changed about his power or sovereignty. He has forgiven us and promised life eternal with Him in glory one day. We can trust Him through this. My life seemed almost too perfect the last year. There would be weeks that would go by and I would only occasionally pray or even acknowledge God in the workings of life. This cancer has forced us to rely on Him hourly. To completely depend on Him for strength and peace. So can I say this is good in our lives, because He has brought us to  dependence on Him? I don't think I am ready to say that with an honest heart yet. Are we going there? I think so. I think God is preparing us to say this is good. This has brought many people, including us, to our knees.

I think that will be all for now.