Praises + Prayers (9/1)

Praises

+ Feeling great physically and mentally this week. I have started back running which feels fantastic (slow, but fantastic). I have connected with many IBC survivors over the past week (via facebook) and it has been encouraging to see that there can be life after IBC. Even with the tumors growing again, and having to wait an extra couple days for chemo this week, I've somehow been able to not worry about it. I know we are doing everything in our power to fix this situation, and the rest is up to God. Worrying doesn't help, if anything it hurts, so I've been pretty chill about it this weekend- praise God!

+ As I mentioned in a previous post, I had a brain MRI last week due to some brain mets symptoms that I was paranoid about and it came back negative - huge praise! Now every time I have a little headache or it seems my vision is changing slightly, I can relax knowing there isn't cancer in my brain- woohoo!

+ We traveled to NYC last weekend and rode in planes, subways, and taxis and I miraculously did not get sick this week. My immune system is crazy low so not getting sick is really amazing!

Prayers

+ We are going to MD Anderson in Houston this week. Prayers for safe travels and a productive time with the doctors there. I will have another sonogram to see if we've made progress or not with the first phase of chemo. I am meeting with an oncologist (same as before, Dr. Valero), a breast surgeon, and a radiology-oncologist (the one that does the radiation at the end). Pray that God would make it clear to us whether to do surgery and/or radiation in Dallas or Houston. There are some obvious logistical challenges to the MD Anderson options so we need to understand if there would be a benefit to my outcomes if we opted to go with MDA- pray that we would have wisdom to discern how best to proceed.

+ Chemo this week is scheduled for Wednesday, two days later than my normal 2 week cycle. Pray that Dr. Valero will have wisdom on what chemo drugs should be used for the second phase. Please pray that my counts will be up by Wednesday to actually be able to do chemo. Last Friday they were at an all-time low of 400 (before starting chemo they were ~9000, below 1000 you are neutropenic, the lowest I've ever been is 700). Pray that my body would tolerate the new kinds of chemo as well as it has for the chemo I just finished. That my energy would stay high and my symptoms would be minimal/non-existent. The kids are staying with a friend's mom from church so pray that they would be amazing for her and that she would be super blessed for volunteering to take the kids overnight- she is so kind!

Click on the picture to enlarge

+ As always, prayers that the next phase of chemo would be extremely effective resulting in a pathological complete response at the end of phase 2, for clear margins after surgery, and the big one, to not have a distant recurrence (metastases). Prayers that I would have No Evidence of Disease (NED) and stay that way.