For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand, and says to you: 

Do not fear, I will help you.  Isaiah 41:13

Over and over as a Mom I find myself reaching out for my child's hand.  Usually it's the times when the kids are trying something new, like going to school, or trying to make a new friend.  They hang back, they get quiet, they hesitate, and because I'm Mom, I notice they are having a hard time.  I bend down, hold out my hand and say, "It's OK, I'll help help you"!  Because they know I love them and they trust me, they put their little hand in my big one, and together we face the giant for the day.  There is something comforting about that thought: that the God who created the universe, is also the same God, who reaches down, holds out his big hand and says: "Don't fear, I will help you." 

So today I woke up and slipped my little hand into His big one and together we faced the giant of what Brian's treatment would look like.

The thing I continually forget, is that God is full of surprises.  We met with Brian's oncologist this afternoon and left with a mixture of relief and confusion.  The good news is that Brian will not be starting chemo anytime soon.  The bad news is, the medical community doesn't really know how to explain what Brian has, which makes treating it a little tricky.

She used a lot more technical terms to explain all of this to us, but I am not a doctor and my brain has partly fallen out with this pregnancy, so I will do my best to explain what I can.  The pathology from Brian's lymph nodes shows Hodgkins Lymphoma.  However, Hodgkins is typically a very aggressive disease which they have to treat very aggressively with chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.  If the treatment is successful, they consider someone "cured".  There are however a very small percentage of people who go through the treatment and then later relapse.  

Oh joy! You would laugh along with us at this fact, if you knew how many times we have been told this over the years.  I don't know if I can count the times we have heard from doctors: "We don't see that happen very often!"

 Brian has a specific type of Hodgkins that isn't acting like typical lymphoma, it is operating in his body much more like a chronic blood cancer.  For now, they are going to try to treat it as such.  They have an antibody drug called Rituxan that targets a specific molecule on cells affected by lymphoma.  He will go to the oncologist for a 6 hour infusion of Rituxan once a week for the next 4 weeks, then once a month for the next 2 years.  They will watch him closely and if the lymphoma starts to become resistant to the antibody, or starts acting aggressivly, then they will treat it with chemotherapy and another transplant.  

So ... first relief and a HUGE thank you to all of you who are praying!  God heard our prayers and has for the short-term provided a way through this. The antibody drug has few major side effects, and other than the day out of work for the infusion, it won't disrupt life all that much.  Which means all my stress about how we were going to deal with having a new baby and Brian being sick from chemotherapy was totally unnecessary.  For now, life will continue to operate around here, with the minor intrusion of added visits to the oncologist and eventually the welcome intrusion of a new little life into our midst.

Long term, we are still trying to process what this means.  The type of Hodgkins he has, for now seems like it will effect our lives like a chronic illness.  They will do their best to keep it suppressed with the drugs they have available for as many years as they can, and hope that the research being done now will eventually catch up with us.

For now, we will take a huge breath & thank God for His perfect provision.  We will continue to pray in faith that the cord blood from Micah will match Brian, so if he eventually needs a transplant, he will have a perfect match waiting for him. We will slip our little hands into the big hand of our Father and trust the same promise we have each time we have faced a time like this in our short marriage:

That He has a plan for us, a plan to prosper us and not harm us, a plan to give us hope and a future!

Jeremiah 29:11

Coming down off the ledge

Well here we are again at the start of a journey , we all hoped we would never be on again.  I decided it would be easier to start a blog to try to keep everyone informed and updated as we journey along.  Not that I don't love connecting and talking with all of you, but after a while I forget who I have told what information to, and I start to feel like I'm going a little crazy.   Plus, soon we will have a baby and between Brian being sick, keeping up with the twins and the sleep deprivation courtesy of a newborn, there is NO way I will ever be able to keep it strait.

The big question I find everyone asking at the moment is: "How are you doing?" I am glad you have asked!  Some of you have been down this road with us before, and some of you are joining us this time around.  There is this funny process that will take place for EVERYONE involved that I think requires continually asking: "How are you doing?" 

The first time time around, it took me a long time to understand why people were acting so strange.  After watching and listening, and years of processing that difficult time, I have realized that EVERYONE involved in this (and by that I mean: ALL of you who have found your way here and are reading this) has to process and cope and grieve this disease in their OWN way.  

Brian unfortunately gets to be the one who will carry the physical burden of treatment and fighting this STUPID (don't tell the kids I used that word!) disease.  Those of us who love him, to various degrees, are left on the outside to fight in the big and little ways we can. That fight will look different, the question to "How are you doing?", will be answered by each of us differently, over and over again along this journey.  Thank you, for all of you who have taken the time to check in, to ask us "How are you doing?" Make sure to remember to ask yourself the same thing occasionally along the way, it helps us all process and accept and feel, which is important I think!

I will answer for myself and try my best to answer for Brian, the question of how WE are doing with the news:

We got the call from his Oncologist just before dinner with his parents last Wednesday night.  We were out at a restaurant, so we all attempted to choke back tears, as he started using words like Hodgkins and chemo and transplant and donor list.  I would like to say I am actually very proud of all of us for holding it together as much as we did.  We only got a few strange glances from people who surely had to wonder what in the world was wrong with our table.  I'm pretty sure our poor waitress had NO idea what was going on. In hind-site we maybe should have had her sit down with us when Brian filled us in, so she would have had some context as to why table 10 in the corner was turning into a basket case!

We left the restaurant and started making calls to inform everyone of the news, which actually got us laughing hysterically as everyone I called started to cry and Brian goes: "Well we just single-handedly ruined everyone's night!"  For those of you who don't know, Brian often uses humor as a way to cope with things.  After almost 8 years of marriage, I have learned that sometimes it helps ... so we laughed the whole way home.

I did pretty well with the news for a couple of days, leaning into God, believing that He took care of us before, and He would do it again.  Then Friday morning hit and I don't know if it was the pregnancy hormones, the lack of sleep due to my bladder being compressed to the size of a pea, or the stages of grief, but I woke up angry.  Mad at God and mad at the world.  

The problem is that, pregnancy hormones and grief don't lend themselves to rational thought.  Which then led, to a sobbing phone-call to my very good friend Vicki, in which I informed her that: "This is a BAD time to have a baby and I've decided that he just has to stay in until September, when this was all over and we can actually be excited about having a baby, without worrying about cancer!"

  She so kindly and sweetly talked me down off my ledge, by reminding me that Micah is due in April and even if I've "decided", he actually can NOT stay in until September.  She also grieved along with me, that this is not great timing!  Bad timing however doesn't mean that we can't be excited about this new life. She assured me that people would in fact be excited WITH us about this new life, at the same time they were praying for Brian's! 

I tell you that, so that you will understand this: We are doing OK!  Some days we cry, some days we laugh hysterically and some days we go a little crazy and need me to talked down off the ledge of irrationality.  Some days we will be willing to tell you that, and some days we will smile and say we are doing fine, and you will see in our eyes that we're probably not telling you the whole truth.  And then the next day I will post a blog about how I have decided I am going to prolong my pregnancy for another 6 months, "because this is a BAD time!" and you will understand why I wasn't ready to tell you the truth the day before.  

Brian is holding up a little better than I am.  I would like to blame the pregnancy hormones, but the truth is that He usually does.  He is our rock and even though he daily tells me he's "not going to do the chemo", I know he will fight with everything he has in him!  For me and for our 3 beautiful kids and for a lifetime of memories that we have yet to have.  And the silver lining, is that we will all get to be changed, and humbled by the power of God working in our lives.

  We all get to be witness to what LOVE looks like: 

The Father fighting for His son, as he fights for his family!

I want to thank all of you who have written and texted and called and offered to go on the donor list.  ( I will have more info. about that process on here soon.) Your outpouring of love and support and prayer is humbling and life giving!  I have no idea what this journey will look like this time around, but we will do our best to keep you updated and informed as we go along.   

We WILL need help along the way, and I am going to do my best to ask for help, to accept your offers when you give them. If  we don't accept, or you can see in our eyes that we're not telling you whole truth, try not to take it personally, we all have our own process and even though we have done it before, we are learning and growing along with all of you.  

We will do our best to allow you to come along this journey with us, so together we can rejoice when we see the GOOD that God brings out of this STUPID disease!

Where we started ...