May 2024
May 30, 2024
As I sit here and read the last update, it actually hurts my heart a little bit because it's very clear that God is saying “not yet” for those specific prayers from April.
I first want to focus on how we have seens God’s kindness and goodness to us over these last few weeks. Many of you saw that Ben and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary on May 23. We wanted to mark the day so we threw an Anniversary Party and Vow Renewal at our house in Texas with about 30 of our friends that have been our support system this past year. It was beautiful and a testament to God’s kindness to us through our marriage over the last 15 years.
The boys closed out their school year and we were able to celebrate them and their many accomplishments throughout the year. Considering this has been one of the hardest years in our family, being able to see the boys continue to thrive at school is such a gift. I will forever be grateful for the teachers the boys had this year, the Lord knew what they needed.
Even in all the celebrations we have had some hard weeks. A few weeks ago (Mothers Day actually), Ben started feeling fatigued and generally uncomfortable. He had a normal Oncology appointment the next day so I took him in and then what I call a perfect storm of a lot of little things happened. He spent Monday & Tuesday in the ER (overnight for him) and then back to the hospital all day Wednesday. Even after coming home Wednesday afternoon, he still did not feel well until well into the next week. This week was HARD. Hard on him physically, and hard on the rest of us with the instability and uncertainty. The silver lining of this week was that he had new sets of CT scans that he wasn’t going to have until June.
As a result of those scans we know:
The cancer is growing. There is a new lesion on the side of the liver that has not yet been operated on. Praise that the “clean” side is still healthy. The spots on the lungs are still there and some appear to be bigger than the last scans.
Oncology is recommending increasing his chemotherapy regimen by adding one of the drugs back in that he had last summer. He tolerated the chemo last summer really well and it seemed to work really well! We will pray for those things to be the same!
He will continue on the stronger chemo every other week through the summer and have scans in August to see if this regimen works on those other spots. They really need the cancer to stabilize or shrink before being comfortable talking about the next surgery.
These are the same specific prayers from April, so we plead again:
Please pray specifically for:
the spots in the lungs completely disappear by the next set of scans.
that the tumor in the liver shrinks radically
that side effects remain minimal for the next 2 months.
I read Psalm 112:7-8 the other day and it took my breath away when I read it. I pray this over all of us as we face uncertainty.
“They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the LORD. Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear; in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.”
Amen.