Definite Decision

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.

 

Prayer works...

Rarely in my life have I felt so surrounded by prayer and so certain that God was right there with me ...in the room with Dr. M and I this morning.  A twenty minute discussion.  I can not tell you have much your prayers and e-mails meant to me as I was driving there, circling up six levels of the Florida Hosp parking garage, winding my way through the elevators and then sitting in the waiting room. I sat waiting for thirty minutes in the waiting room and read over your e-mails, over and over.

The meeting didn't go quite the way I thought it would. I left truly surprised. Shocked even. It took several hours for his news to sink in.  After reviewing all my records thoroughly the night before, and after spending time rereading studies on chemo treatment for my kind and stage of breast cancer, Dr M has no doubt in his mind that I need six chemos total  (one more.) This is definite.  Not the ambiguity I heard at the last appointment. There was no thought of giving me a choice he said, unless I physically didn't think I could handle the temporary side effects from chemo. Right.....

The tumor I had was small but very aggressive (his words.) I said, Aggressive? He said, Yes. Very Aggressive. Whoa horses, that is a hard pill to swallow. He said, It had, surprisingly for its small size, already gone into one node, and there is a good enough chance that some cancer cells had spread elsewhere through vascular means. So six treatments of a high dose of two chemo drugs at once is the recommended treatment to get the cancer cells that had spread. The studies are not ambiguous, he said.

So what about the nerve damage I am seeing, and my heart and liver and bone marrow we can't tell? He says, as long as my nerves are totally healthy at the time of a chemo, any effects of the chemo are reversible. He doesn't want to do a chemo until my nerves are completely happy. He wants to delay the last chemo one week to give me more time to get healthy, so it will be Oct 19. As for my bone marrow getting damaged (leukemia), well my white blood count, red blood count, and platelets are normal even today (only two weeks after a chemo) so he says my bone marrow is healthy and not being affected to the extent we would worry. He said my heart and liver, according to today, both look healthy and not to worry at all about them ...at all.

I asked, But you gave me the choice of four or six before. In fact, earlier you said four were definite, and the next two were maybe too much. He said my body has stayed really healthy through all the chemo, which is not the norm. And in his review for our meeting today, he went back to the original studies for this treatment and thoroughly looked at my records and reports and tests, and it was clear. Six treatments.

And of course I asked, if I were one of your family, what would you say? He said, with your blood counts, definitely do #6.  No question in his mind.

Bottom line, by him, I have a higher probability of breast cancer returning than lasting damage to my nervous system, heart, bone marrow or liver.

The big answer to prayer, Dr. M was definite. There wasn't any choice in his mind.

Thank you God for definite.

Thank you God that he reviewed my records again and reviewed the original studies.

Thank you God that all of your prayers (my friends and family) were surrounding this decision.

And

Thank you God I will get one more chemo, which will be the nail in the coffin for any cancer cells still in me.   Watch out little cancer cells, this is the final goodbye!

How wonderful that two friends, L and S, were mall walking with me today, so I got to tell them all this right away, process it, and get some exercise. I was still in shock when they first saw me, and must have babbled on and on and on.

Then I went, by Dr. M's guidance, to the surgeon Dr. R this afternoon. Seems I have an infection inside the left breast, and will get some IV antibiotic at some point over the next two days. Compared to the first discussion, this is small potatoes!

J prayed for me. I dropped by her home. I have never, that I can remember, dropped by someone's home to ask them to pray for me. I felt like I needed it, and I wanted her to pray. It was around lunch time, she was home. We talked, she prayed. I went in a little shaky, and came out with the peace that passes understanding growing stronger in me. Growing....

Dinner with Dad, talked with Mike (he's in Georgia), talked with B and Mack and D. I knew I needed to process this because I would be alone all night, needed to get this settled before the sun set. You know that feeling? Visited L to process some more. I am so blessed with all of you. Doesn't God provide more that we can ever ask?

Honestly, I am a little scared right now of actually going through Chemo #6. I was mentally done with chemo and looking ahead to starting the six and a half weeks of radiation.

But on the good side, I am one hundred percent confident that I need Chemo #6, that God's path includes me doing Chemo #6, and that I will not be alone for even one second.  Let my thoughts feed my feelings.

 Ever Onward and Upward.....