Category: Cancer

What Is Happening Right Now?

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10/23/18

March 23, 1990

“It looks like we are going to send you home. You are tolerating the chemotherapy, you are keeping solids down, your bowels are functioning again after surgery, and you are moving around better.” Those doctor’s words were wonderful music to our ears! The other music had been screeching in our ears for two weeks, and we desperately needed a new genre. Constant beeping from the IV pole and the heart monitor, people talking in the halls, and the blood pressure machine every couple of hours. None of the milestones mentioned in the first line were expectations of the doctors when this all began. But God said otherwise.

Hospital stays are so difficult, or maybe it is just me.  At the beginning, I was started on a liquid diet for a few days and lost quite a bit of weight. When Jello was allowed, there was orange, green, and yellow, but I really wanted to have red. Do you know the hospital did not make red Jello? After a couple of days, it appeared on my food tray, and I was absolutely ecstatic! They had made it just for me. After a few days, I began to feel better, and they started weaning me off of pain medication. I was more aware of my surroundings and sleeping less. I really wanted to go home.

By the time we received those joyous words that we were going home, I had received a chemotherapy drip, with the second one scheduled to be administered at my pediatrician’s office in a few days. Two different drips were on my eighteen-month protocol. One drip was two hours and would later be the one that I dreaded. It was associated with the spinal tap, and both of them combined would make me extremely sick. The other drip was four hours long and did not seem to hit me as hard. At any rate, I tolerated them at the hospital, which was a good sign for the doctors. We received tremendous care, and we all understood we would be seeing each other for months to come.

Being home was rejuvenating, but I spent more time sleeping than anything. I was about seventy pounds and pretty weak. It was nice to be around my dad and brothers again. A new group of people to draw strength from. They were a big help, and we settled into just working at getting me strong again. My mom headed back to work to catch up, and the boys continued to go to school. Things changed quickly though. Within a week, I was writhing in pain. Mom made calls to the doctor, and dad loaded me up in the car for a trip to the hospital.

As I mentioned before, Wyoming has winter. This was the first of April, and we had received a snowstorm. On our way to the hospital, dad hit black ice, and the van spun around, flipped, and landed on the passenger side on an embankment. I was in the front passenger seat and remember looking up and seeing my dad hanging from his seatbelt. We were alive, but in a very precarious situation. Dad told me to crawl on the window over the seat, and then I could unbuckle him. By this time, a man driving by had stopped and was talking to us from outside. He and dad decided to see if the back hatch would open up, and we crawled out. I had hurt my leg, maybe when we had landed on that side, so they carried me to his truck. He drove us to our original destination, the hospital, and they started to check on me. I kept saying that my dad was in the wreck, too, and I wanted them to make sure he was fine. Thankfully, we were both injury free.

There was more of situation with the reason we were coming to the hospital. The abdominal pain was excruciating, and my incision was started to come apart. After testing, it came back that I had a bowel obstruction which is a complication from the surgery. Also, the incision was not healing because of the chemotherapy interference. It lowers the white blood cells which are supposed to help in the healing process, and it is possible I had attracted some kind of infection.

I was about to hit rock bottom, and I am pretty sure my family was about to hit the superhero status. I Corinthians 10:13 says “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” How can one verse say so much about our God, our Christian lives, and the trials that come our way?

 

The View From the Mountaintop

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10/13/18

3/15/1990

Even if you have no desire to embrace the cancer world, it does not take very long before it embraces you, and your family is plunged head first into a new life. The doctors showed us how much they cared about what was happening to us, and yet pushed my parents forward on decisions that needed to be made immediately. Once we got past the diagnosis and had a protocol in place, we hit the ground running.

I started chemotherapy the day after surgery and also had my first spinal tap. What an ordeal. They made me get in the tightest fetal position I could on my side so they could remove spinal fluid to make sure there was not cancer there, and then they replaced it with chemotherapy. If they did not replace it, I would get a massive headache they told us. Memories of a spinal tap make my stomach turn, and I feel nauseous because I can remember the gurgling sensation at the base of my skull and the cool sensation from the chemo. It is very much like an epidural administered when having a baby. Needless to say, the first tap was a hard one, because I had a gigantic incision on my stomach and sites on my hips from the bone marrow extraction. I was still on quite a bit of pain medication which was helpful but obviously not enough.

The first chemotherapy was uneventful. They administered the drip through an IV that was attached to a crazy apparatus that came out of the middle of my chest. It was basically an IV that had a needle insertion site, and it went up under my skin toward my collarbone and then down into my heart. This would allow the heart to pump the chemo to my body quickly. I really had no affects right away even though they told me about vomiting and hair loss. After a couple of days, I remember thinking that maybe I would not lose my hair; that was pretty important to me.

I was moved from ICU to a regular room. The hospital was really crowded so each room had two kiddos. We were reminded that the new hospital would be opening soon. You could tell the nurses were very excited about it. They did their best to make me comfortable, trying to get me to walk; I refused. Mom recalls that they decided to tell me I had to move rooms, but I would have to walk there. It worked, once I had to walk, I was confident that my stomach was not going to fall out and land on the floor. I still held a pillow on my belly for weeks. My scar was so giant, I kept thinking it looked like I was a gutted deer.

We would end up staying about two weeks in the hospital. The doctors wanted to watch my reactions to the chemo and make sure I was healing well, but mainly they really did not think I would leave. Of course, I was not aware of this; that was my only goal – TO leave. My mom was my rock during this time, comforting me in the pain and making me feel like I could keep moving forward. She was spent physically and emotionally, but never showed me or told me that she had had a fainting spell one morning. After a few days in the hospital, she came down with a migraine which caused a seizure where they had to take her to the regular hospital. That was scary for both of us. She did not want to leave me, and I did not want her to go.

My grandparents came up toward the end of our two weeks, and my grandmother gave my mom a break. Mom was able to go across the street to a room the hospital provided, and dad and mom were able to go for her birthday dinner one evening. As I mentioned before, we had many friends and visitors come by and spend time showing us how much they cared about what we were going through. The cards poured in. The school sent large butcher paper posters with encouraging comments from the whole student body. Churches all over the country sent envelopes filled with cards and notes from church members that we had never met. They cared about us still. They prayed for us still. It did not take much time to realize how important other people meant to us. God’s Word tells us He is our strength in times of trouble, and He hears prayers. Isaiah 40:29 tells us, “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” Psalm 66:20 says “Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me.” I know we as a family were living these verses.

Praying is like climbing a mountain. To climb a mountain, we look ahead and map our course not really knowing how hard it will be or even what the outcome will be. There is hope, right, that we can make it even when it gets hard, and we will get to see the amazing view from the top. And the view at the top is really hard to describe unless a person has seen it. When we pray, we have hope that God will map our course, show us where to go and know that no matter the outcome, we will be able to see the amazing view from the top.

I Am Not Sick

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10/7/18

3/15/90

In the faint distance I can hear myself yelling, but nothing is coming out of my mouth. Or was it? Inside I know I am yelling, and all I want to do is tell someone I am in so much pain. What is going on? Why is no one helping me? And then the yell comes out of my mouth, and I can hear someone tell me it is going to be ok. Be still, calm down, you are just waking up from surgery. But I am in so much pain; how can you tell me to calm down?

Waking up in the recovery room after surgery was a very strong memory. I could hear so many different noises; people talking, machines beeping, oxygen flowing, my own voice… And I could remember smells of antiseptic, Beda dine, rubbing alcohol… I was truly scared and was being picked up by the sheet under me and placed onto another bed. They pushed me through doors into ICU. Faint memories as I was in and out of consciousness were later filled in by my parents as they shared with me what transpired. I was very upset most of the time, mainly because I was in so much pain. At one point, I remember hearing my mom talking to the doctor, and she asked him how she was suppose to tell me I had cancer. My immediate thoughts were: What? They told us they were going to take this tumor out, and I was going home. This was not supposed to be happening.

Cancer?

That is so bad. I asked my mom if it was cancer, and she said yes. All I could do was cry, but did I really know what that meant? I fell back to sleep. Hours passed, and each time I woke up, I was more aware of my surroundings. The oncology doctor came in and greeted us with an amazingly kind and caring face. He made this crazy situation one that seemed not so crazy. He brought the comfort to the room. After a couple of days, we had a serious talk. He shared with us that I had Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and we would start a chemotherapy treatment the next day, then every two weeks for 18 months. Along with the chemo treatments they would do a spinal tap each month. My parents had already been given this information and what would be happening. It was my turn to hear it.

Later on my parents shared with me what went on while I was in surgery. During surgery, the doctor had reported to them that I had a tumor from my diaphragm down that covered my entire abdomen. He could not remove any of it because of the large amount of cancer and its proximity to the organs. One ovary was removed, which was used for the biopsy. This was the lump I felt that my mom and I had discussed a couple of weeks before. They had also done a bone marrow test, which is one of the main reasons I was in so much pain, and they had inserted a broviac line, an IV tube that came out of my chest for administering chemo drugs. My body was all riddled with stitches. When everything was done, I had an eighteen-inch-long incision down the middle of my stomach, and the cancer closed back in underneath it.

I was also connected to every hospital tube known to man and not a happy camper. It was extremely difficult for me to accept this whole ordeal. Mainly because I was healthy at the beginning of the week, so how could all of this be necessary? This silent killer called cancer was literally holding my life in the balance, and I did not realize my odds were not so good. I really just wanted to get out of there. In the next few days, my dad returned home to be with my brothers and brought them up to see us. My closest friend that I had met the first day in the new school in the new town, spent hours with me. She rallied the kids at school, and we also had many of them drive the 80 miles down and visit with us. Our wonderful church family and local pastors came up to spend time with my parents. The support we received was overwhelming. The hospital room filled to capacity with flowers, stuffed animals, balloons, large posters, and cards. The prayers filled in any space that was left.

II Timothy 1:7 “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” This verse refers to a believer and their ability to share Christ with others. We have been given power and love and a sound mind so we can share with others that God loves and wants each person to accept His Son to be their Savior. But this verse is also an encouragement to the believer in other ways. Fear is definitely an emotion that comes with cancer. Maybe it is the fear of what is going to happen next after what just unexpectedly happened last. With cancer there is never a plan that goes as planned; there is just a plan that goes. But God has a plan and sees that fear and brings a multitude of people with a multitude of loving hearts that bring before Him a multitude of prayers.

Not Just About Me

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9/28/18

Before we can move on with the words from the doctors, we have to focus on four very important people whose lives would be forever changed by those words. It was not just my life. As I mentioned before, two brothers and a dad and mom were very much a part of my thirteen years leading up to this day in March. Well, dad and mom for thirteen, a brother for twelve and another one for four. My eldest brother was just a year younger than me; fourteen months. When we were little I was always on the smaller side so the one time I cut my hair, we looked like twin boys. Nice! I was the bossy older sister, and he was the creative but willing follower. We had fun, and as our surroundings changed with the move, not much changed; except for the growing up. He did fantastic in school, and as I mentioned before was making progress up the Spelling Bee ladder. He did not join us when we went to the hospital, but my dad brought both brothers up later. Feelings about what was going on were on his face because he was a caring person. I appreciated that more than I ever expressed. Later he would help me keep normalcy alive; which was difficult because of the new normal that I would have a hard time accepting.

Little brother was a fun guy to be around; full of life. He was so much younger than us, but we enjoyed him all the same. I think he was the first one to catch onto skiing-down the little hill behind the house. During the beginning of the doctors and hospitals, he spent time with friends and sitters. I noticed he was not around the hospital as much mostly because he was younger, and what could he do? He made up for it later by lying beside the couch after chemo, helping me with the puke bucket.

My parents jumped right into cancer parent mode. What are those? Well, first off what is cancer and how does it happen and why does it happen and what kind and what is the plan of action and what was that chemo drug called?… Their child has cancer and they are responsible for the decisions they make to keep them alive. Every piece of information out there has to be discovered through research, and back then there were no smart phones. My parents, and especially my mom who was by my side the whole time, asked questions, and when there was not an answer she would ask the next nurse or the next doctor and the next. My dad took care of the boys and the church duties.

Cancer parents should get an official medical degree for the amount of time they spend finding out what is inside their child. They have the knowledge that most doctors do when it is all said and done. And they also should receive a gold medal. We all understand a gold medal is placed upon a winner of an event, and most of the time it reminds us of an Olympic athlete. Although I have never been an Olympian, I have seen their stories about the beginning stages and their first accomplishments in the particular event, many starting very young. They all spend hour after hour practicing to compete, until they hit the Olympic stage. Then many times in a timed event, they have to compete liked they trained, and hope they trained harder than the person beside them so they come out in front of them and stand on the winner’s podium. Then they receive the gold medal for being ahead of the rest who worked just as hard to get there.

Why do cancer parents need a gold medal? Because at the beginning stages, they work on this particular “event,” and spend hour after hour asking questions and studying about their child’s cancer. Then they compete against time to make the right decisions with the knowledge they have acquired. They are competing in a race not to beat someone else just something else, but sometimes that something else wins. The end results of an Olympic race differ from this race; more than one person gets the gold medal. The cancer parents. They heard the news their child has cancer, figured out how to process those words, went through the emotions on the inside while staying strong on the outside, and had to put one foot in front of the other to fight to win a cancer race. Yes, they deserve the gold.

Not just one person goes through cancer. Their family does. And although the family is not waking up from surgery, or receiving the chemo drugs, or throwing up every fifteen minutes, or losing their hair, or getting sores in their mouth… they ARE watching their loved one suffer, and they cannot help except for driving them to chemo, or sitting by their side for hours, or singing to them, or holding the puke bucket, or being yelled at when it hurts… It hurts them, too. I have said many times, I felt like cancer was harder on the family then on me. I was just trying to physically survive any way possible.

I Corinthian 13 is the Love Chapter. It speaks of love or charity, and all of its different aspects. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.” God has shown this love to us when He became man and died on the cross for our sins. This love is demonstrated in this verse and is an example of the love we have in a family. I thank God for my family and their love. They were my earthly rocks to stand on to face the difficult times that would lie ahead.

The Pink Stuff

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9/26/18

The list of my activities in the new school: choir, volleyball, basketball, and track. Singing, cleaning, and youth activities were added to my list for the new church. The new home brought a new room with organizing my clothes and shoes and doing my homework. My parents worked at the church and for the school district. By the beginning of our second year in Wyoming, my brother and I were starting school again in eighth grade and sixth grade in the same building. Our youngest brother spent time with another family in the church during the day until he would start school the next year.

Winter came, and we were still getting used to the first snow falling in October. It was pretty hard spending so much time indoors, so my brother started Spelling Bee competitions which we worked on at home. He was doing very well. In addition, we quickly found ourselves learning to ski as a family. These Texans caught on a little, and soon enjoyed the snowy outdoor life. In February, I felt this weird hard spot in my lower abdomen. Mom and I talked about it and decided that we would see if it was just a part of being a teenage girl.

March 1990

Within a few weeks, I woke up on a Monday morning and did not feel well enough to go to school. The flu, that is what it was. Achy and feeling pretty wiped out. My mom said I could stay home from school, and we went to the doctor. The pediatrician did not seem concerned until my mom mentioned that I had this hard spot in my stomach, and maybe he should check it out. After the examination of my stomach, he said that I was either 3 months pregnant, or I had a tumor. My mom’s eyes got huge and she firmly said, “She is not pregnant.” Ask mom, I probably looked exactly like her, because I immediately said, “I am not pregnant; I don’t even have a boyfriend!” This was verbalized partly because there were cute guys at school but I knew “none of them liked me.”

The doctor said that we would need to do a CT scan to see what we were dealing with. He sent us home with this awful pink drink that made me gag. I could not believe that any medical concern would require me to drink this awful stuff, and furthermore there was absolutely nothing wrong with me! The next morning after downing only a little bit of the pink stuff, we arrived at the hospital, and the nurses told me I have to drink more, because I did not finish the first one. I was not having it, but I did what I could to get by, and they took me back. I was in a new world, surrounded by all these machines, and once I got back there, they injected more dye in my veins through a needle.

After the whole ordeal, there was a waiting period, and my pediatrician came and got us. I remember so vividly walking into a dark room with films hanging up all over on glass walls. The doctor began to explain what each of the pictures were, and I realized at that moment this was not a good situation. Those pictures in front of me and the explanation from the doctor were going to change my thirteen-year-old life forever. I was totally unaware of that.

The pictures showed me black blobs. I remember the doctor explaining to us where a certain organ was, “and surrounding it we see there is a tumor.” He said that about all my abdominal organs. In my mind, I deducted that we could not see anything because of the “black blob”. I did not realize that was not good. That day, we headed to Salt Lake City which was about 80 miles away. There was a well-known Primary Children’s Hospital which had a fantastic oncology center. The hospital was located downtown at the time, and I was going to be admitted to have surgery to remove the tumor. It was pretty busy in the hospital, and we passed a couple of kids in beds in the hall in transition between rooms. They told us that the hospital was constantly running out of space, but that a new hospital was within days of opening up just a few miles away.

I remember feeling anxious because of the results of the CT scan. I was also aware that we were about to do surgery and remember the doctor come in to talk to us. He mentioned they recently did surgery on another girl that came in and had her tumor removed because it was benign. That is what they were hoping they could do with me. Or that is what they were telling me. Through this time, I know my parents were receiving much more information than I was. My dad’s pastor friends from the Salt Lake area came by to pray for me, and I was quite aware that God was in control; just not fully aware. I do not remember thinking to myself that He was going to take care of me or of a peace that came over me. I kept saying to myself, “Let’s just get this over with.” I was so done with this hospital thing already, and besides, I had schoolwork I needed to catch up on. It is so hard to explain how I could be in such denial to the happenings around me.

Even though I was not really excepting the situation at the time, throughout the process and many years later, I learned how much my God was taking care of me. These verses below show God’s direction and power; bringing them to life for a Christian. They show us how He knows all about us and the things we go through, and the psalmist recognizes how we can praise God for those things because we have chosen to follow Him.

Psalm 139:1-5, 14

“O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me, Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art aquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me… …I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”

Where Is That Place?

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9/22/18

Because there are so many details that are pertinent in a story like mine, I do have to start quite a few years before my cancer diagnosis. My mom grew up in a Christian home and accepted the Lord as her savior early on in life. My dad was saved and surrendered to be a preacher by the time he was nine years old. They both went to Bible college, got married, graduated, and headed out to serve in a ministry in North Dakota where I was born. Shortly after, they moved to another ministry in Oklahoma where my brother was born, and then back to Texas where they met. My dad was asked to be the pastor at a church in their hometown when I was five, and because this was where they grew up, their parents and siblings all lived in the same area. Everything was so wonderful in the eyes of a kid my age. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all lived nearby with many of them attending our church, and there were many family gatherings were exciting and memorable.

My brother and I attended the Christian school across the street from the church. We lived one street over, and walked and rode our bikes to school and all over the neighborhood to play with friends. My mom had our youngest brother during this time, and we stayed busy playing with him after school, as well. One day, my parents came in my room, and said they needed to tell me something. My dad had decided to take the family and go see a church in far southwestern Wyoming. I remember asking why and thinking, “I am not quite sure I really know where that state is.” I looked it up because I knew Colorado and Wyoming looked just alike, and I wanted to make sure I knew which one it was. After we returned home, my dad accepted the call to the church, and we loaded up a moving truck and a minivan and headed away from family and friends on a new adventure.

We, or should I say I, had no idea what the Lord would do in our lives from this point on. I know He had already been directing our paths and showing my parents that He was in control up to this point, but at twelve, I was a little disappointed and confused but mainly nervous. Sometimes I think about current decisions that my husband and I face right now and wonder if that was what my parents were going through at the time. I can imagine that it might be similar, and I appreciate their step of faith into the unknown.

If I recall correctly, we arrived a week after the public school started, so I headed to seventh grade and my brother to fifth grade. I remember walking in after school had started that morning, and the principal greeting us. After a conversation, they took me down this long hallway and outside of Science class I think, I was introduced to a girl. Cliché, we became fast friends. No, really, we did not leave each other’s side for years. Who knew I would need that introduction to this girl that would be a support to me, and who introduced me to other seventh graders that would eventually, outside of my parents and church family, be the support on this earth to walk through a valley. God knew. He had guided the steps of my parents up to this point in our lives. He had brought them together, showed them a path to take serving Him in the ministry, have a family, and move them to a small, remote town in Wyoming. This move was truly important in our lives not only because of the church my dad accepted, but for the proximity it was to a place we would visit often. We truly had no idea how important.

Psalm 37:23 tells us, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord; and he delighteth in his way.” It is hard to know God’s direction sometimes, but if we stay in His Word and seek counsel through those He places in our lives, the path will seem more clear to us. God wants us to follow Him, because His path is right. Whatever the journey, whatever the circumstances, whatever the outcome, He will show us the way, and then He will show us why.

The Journey Begins

9/3/18

Sitting at a restaurant recently, my friend and I ordered my favorite Sushi rolls, since it was all new to her. We spent a couple of hours talking about family, children, schooling, cancer, children (she has quite a few), church and ministry… Oh, did I mention cancer and children. She has a little one going through cancer, and quite a few years ago, 28 to be exact, I went through many of the things her little one is currently facing. Kind of ironic that our paths crossed about 15 years ago, and we became fast friends; that after moves to different cities and life changes, we still pick up where we left off? Not irony, but an Almighty God that orchestrates our every step and leads us down smooth, healthy paths most of the time with the occasional rocky, mountain trails mixed in.

I realized when we parted ways, I needed to write down my journey to where I am today. A blog seems more like putting down encouraging words for the day, so telling a story from almost 30 years ago seems a bit abnormal. But it also seems important, because there are many people today going through the exact same things just in a different way.

So this begins a new chapter in a journey that I believe is directed by a loving God that chooses paths for us to take to be an example of that love. People say that if God loves than why does He make bad things happen to good people. If we read in the Bible in the book of Job, God chose a man that went through prosperity and then lost everything, yet he never turned his back on God. Everyone around him told him to curse God, but he refused, and God returned to him the things he had lost. Job is not just an example of if you stay the course, God will bless, but he is an example of stay the course.

God does not always give back to us what we have lost like He did for Job, but He always gives us hope and peace in the journey if we keep our trust in Him. Proverbs 3:5, 6 says “Trust in the LORD with ALL thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In ALL thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

I began my journey in September 2018, so it helps to begin there. A drop down at the very bottom of this page should take you there quickly if you keep scrolling. Thank you for choosing to be a part of this journey.