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.”