Tag Archives: Update

Hope in the Face of New Tumors

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I’ve been toeing the line lately between hope and reality. There may be a better way to say that or capture what I mean by it because I realize that the truth is that in many ways what we put our hope in IS the reality. But in my context the reality is that I’m dying of cancer. We found out yesterday that there are two new tumors in my spine. They’re small but they’re there (that’s a lot of there’s in one sentence!). One is in my neck and the other is in my lower thoracic spine. Bad news. I also found out that my lungs have not yet fully recovered from the pulmonary embolism back in July, there’s still some residual clotting which means that I must continue on my blood thinners for another three months when we’ll check again. Bad news.

The reality is that this tumor seems to be an active little guy. The reality is not very hopeful. AND YET there is reason to hope. I’ve become convinced lately that hope (for me) can’t come through an ignorance of things as they are. Pretending that this isn’t bad news or watering down the news to something that feels easier doesn’t allow me to hold onto hope in a way that feels authentic. We each find our own ways of dealing with reality in its brokenness (because life is broken isn’t it!) and for me it’s beginning to come through a recognition of the ‘badness’ and a choice to hope despite it.

Ultimately my hope is not in healing. My hope is in resurrection, in a body that won’t decay, in a world that will be restored as God intended, a life lived in communion with others and the Communal God–in the restoration of all things. But I am also choosing to hope for healing, to hope that God chooses to let me experience a glimpse of that future reality today: a whole, healthy body allowing me to live a whole and healthy life.

The more I recognize the brokenness of my reality the more beautiful God’s redemption can and will be. Two new tumors? Ok. So if God chooses to bring healing it’ll be an even greater story. I don’t like it but I think I’m OK with it. If God can bring healing from one tumor…what’s a couple more? And regardless, like I’ve said from the very beginning–God desires to tell a story through each and every one of us regardless of whether we’re aware of our bodies decay or not–the question is what kind of story will we let him tell?

Lastly, and with great joy, I can also say that while there are two new tumors in my spinal cord I have absolutely no new symptoms to validate any new growth. Physically I have been healthier the last month than ever (this is all relative to how poorly I’ve felt over the last nine months of course)! It’s been a great season of health for me and it’s worth celebrating! And because I’ve got no new symptoms to validate the MRI results we are not going to change my current treatment. We will reevaluate in two months and we will continue to monitor my body, looking for any new symptoms. Until then we’ll continue on with my chemo treatment for five days on and 28 days off. Thank you for your prayers and support.

peace.

January's Downtown Dispatch

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I look forward to publishing these every month…though, if we were honest we’d know that they don’t come out monthly (shhhh, don’t tell anyone). If you don’t receive the email version you can sign up for it on the side bar on your right. Also you can always click the menu that says “Downtown Dispatches” at my blogs home page in order to read the Dispatches as far back January of 2009 (oh, how so much has changed!).

Without further adieu here is January’s Dispatch from Downtown. Read it, print it, highlight it, study it, put it on your fridge, pass it around to your coworkers (I’m sure that wouldn’t be weird right?), send it to your grandma, and forward an email on to seventeen friends (it’s not spam if its good right?).

You can read it here

 

An Update: Chemo, Drugs, MRI’s, CT Scans, and Feeling Better

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(I’m sorry, this photo has nothing to do with my post…but I stumbled across it and it’s absolutely awesome. Couldn’t pass up including it)

Well the last week wasn’t too bad now was it? I just finished my fourth round five days on 28 days off chemo treatments and it went swimmingly well (all things considered). It has been a strange month following my previous miserable bout of chemo, back pain, infection, etc. Physically I’ve felt really well (the best I’ve felt in a while), I’ve had pretty good energy, and only the expected amount of back and leg pain. Of course I still feel like I’ve been missing out on life in incredible ways as it’s been the holiday season, back to school season, my sister and her family have been in town, and there’s just been some important catchup with the fam to focus on. Tomorrow or the next day should be my last days feeling the effects of my last set of chemo pills and, like I said, it’s been a great round. I had headaches, body aches, sleepiness, and some weird hot flash kind of stuff but at no point was I down for the count. At no point was I miserable beyond belief. At virtually no point was I unable to fake that I felt fine (insert winking emoticon here).

On Monday I went in for a head to tail MRI session. It was a little sooner than I had anticipated having it done considering it was only a month ago that I had an emergency MRI done on my tumor. But it’s good to get another session out of the way and in about two weeks I’ll meet with my oncologist to discover that it probably won’t tell us much more than what we already know! (lets be realistic here huh?)

I’m looking forward to scheduling a CAT scan sometime in the next two weeks to confirm that my lungs have recovered from the pulmonary embolism from six months ago. If they have recovered (and all signs point to the fact that they have) then I can get off these nasty blood thinners once and for all! It’ll be one more gnarly drug that my body can be free of as it seeks to function in a healthy, holistic, and eventually cancer free (positive thinking right?) way.

So there’s the update. Thank you everyone for your love and concern.

peace.