The Latest
Friends,
Thank you for your patience as we process everything that’s going on. Yesterday was a very emotional day for us. We did not get the best possible news we were hoping for. The thoracic surgeon we met with believes it is probably a lymphoma. He also believes any of the cancerous options are more likely than any of the benign options.
That being said, there is reason for optimism. If it is in fact a lymphoma, they tend to be very responsive to treatment (typically chemotherapy). Surgery is often not required, as chemo is typically effective to reduce the tumor. We have heard differing opinions on what kind of lymphoma, if any, it likely is, so we'll have to wait to find that out.
The doctor wants to move quickly, because of the location, size, and growth rate of the tumor, but also because it's typically responsive to treatment (if it is a lymphoma). He has scheduled me for a surgical biopsy for Friday, which will be an outpatient procedure. They should have an initial diagnosis of what it is when we leave that day, but definitive confirmation may take a week or so. If it is what he suspects, he wants to start treatment as early as next week or the week after.
Emotionally, we have alternated between sobbing on the floor holding each other, begging for Christ's mercy, to feeling more reassured after sharing our situation (and my medical records/CT scan) with an oncologist friend of Kristen's family. His informed optimism that this is probably highly curable (which is still based on some assumptions), set our minds somewhat at ease. However, we are tempering that with the reality that we still don’t know for sure what this is, whether or not there is any other cancer, and of course, the fact that even treatable cancers don’t always respond the way we want them to.
Last night was a tough night. Kristen and I slept in spurts off and on with semi-frequent overwhelming feelings of dread. Ruthie also is sleep regressing (she just started walking!), so she was up screaming for a while last night, which woke the boys up in tears. In an odd way, that was all mildly comforting, as it felt like a distraction from what’s going on inside of me. Samuel also woke up with a mild fever this morning, though he’s in pretty good spirits.
We’ve continued to try to share honestly about what’s going on with the kids. This morning we talked about what a tumor is. (They have a kids CD about science and one song is about how “cells make copies of themselves”. So we talked about how just like good cells make copies of themselves, sometimes bad cells do too, and so we need to figure out how to get them out.) They still seem to be handling it well and in a manner you’d expect from a 4.5, 3, and ~1 year old.
As we approach the biopsy on Friday, please pray again for a best-case scenario, which at this point seems like for it to be an early-stage, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which tends to respond very well to chemo and has a curability rate as high as 90%.
Pray that there would be no spreading and absolutely no cancer anywhere else.
Pray for the organs and systems near this tumor: the doctor is concerned the size of the tumor and further growth will impede or harm their normal function.
Pray for our spirits. We are physically, emotionally, and spiritually drained.
And pray for our kids to know how much Jesus loves us and them in the midst of this and that they’ll process this in the best possible way for their age.
Thanks again for your prayers, friends. They sustain us.
