I heard an allegory once about a farmer and his horse. In the story the farmer is in his field with his horse and a snake spooks the horse and it takes off and runs away. The farmer’s neighbor sees it happen and calls out, “that is terrible luck!”
The farmer replies, “we’ll see.”
A week later the horse returns, and with it brings a small herd of wild horses to stay. The same neighbor remarks how lucky the farmer is…
Again, the farmer replies, “we’ll see.”
Some time goes by and one of the wild horses kicks the farmer’s son and injures him severely.
“Bad luck!”
“We’ll see.”
A war breaks out while the son is healing and while all of the other sons get drafted into the war, he cannot be drafted due to his injuries.
“You are so lucky!”
And once again the farmer answers… “We’ll see.”
Coffee, red light and little boy giggles are quite healing.
Last week Elizabeth had her biopsy on the spine. A cringe worthy thing to think about, removing a small sample of bone from your vertebrae, with a drill… They drilled in her spine. Gross. But all went well with the procedure and now we have results. All of the information we had prior to the biopsy indicated it was a brand new mutation or secondary cancer. You can read the previous blog to see how we came to that conclusion. But what we found is that it is more of the same… Estrogen/Progesterone (-) HER2+. That is good news, right?!
We’ll see.
It is strange that the previous chemo made the tumors disappear in her liver, but appear in her spine. It is strange that after being off treatment for almost three months, scans stayed clear in her liver and breast, but the spine lit up. It is strange that prior to having any data from biopsies, oncology only had one proposed solution. It is strange to have a medical professional (oncology specific) from one of the leading health systems in the country (Cleveland Clinic), recommend we get more eyes on her case, not due to incompetence, but due to other places simply having a greater network of cancer care specific resources than our current provider.
Maybe this shoulder shrug of uncertainty is the exact thing we need to help find a treatment that has staying power. We’ll see.
Maybe the stress of seeking second opinions further compromises her immune system. We’ll see.
Maybe this severe back pain she has been dealing with prevents her from going out as much and prevents her getting in a car crash. While we won’t actually “see” some things that won’t happen, you get my point.
We have had a lot of “we’ll see” moments from the last five years that have had good, great, bad, and terrible circumstantial results. In the moment of the event we felt the emotion of that circumstance. In some cases it worked out to be the best thing that could have happened. In others, it has left us questioning if we made good decisions, if we truly were good stewards of God’s gifts of life, children, friends, money, time…
We’ll see…
On the practical side from our wonderful community who has read this far and is wondering what can be done and how to pray, here are a few things:
Pray for-
Quick access to the right medical professionals. It may be simply getting someone else to tell us the current care is the right care. It may be moving everything over to a UofM or something similar.
If care location changes drastically, pray for ease of transition. The right people to answer the phone, the right availability of doctors, the right schedule of treatment.
Parenting well. It is only through supernatural intervention that we can be present and intentional for our kids in the midst of this level of emotional, mental, and physical (for Elizabeth) stress.
The coffee business. I have been a terrible business owner lately and the price of everything sucks. It doesn’t matter how well you steer the car if there is no gas in the tank. I’m tired.
Elizabeth has been experiencing fairly severe back pain. Pray that goes away.
To do-
Probably going to need a fall clean up day at our house. I’ll connect with our normal channels of church and friends to schedule something, probably mid to late October.
Pending on the treatment situation, we might be sending out the beacon for a meal train type thing again.
We love you all dearly,
D & E