Unless the Lord Builds the House: Long Overdue Update

Hi Everyone!

Wow! That was a very long intentional/unintentional break I took from the blog. I wish could explain why my writing comes in spurts but truthfully, even I don't understand it. Maybe I associate writing with cancer now and I just really, really needed a break. A break from thinking about cancer, reading about cancer. Honestly, sometimes I can't even stand the word cancer.

Ugh.

But also truthfully, cancer is never really gone completely from my thoughts or from my life in general. It's always just a phone call or test results away.

Also ugh!

So breaks will always be necessary. But I also don't want to give up writing altogether either. Or documenting my story. Or asking for prayer. Which is what brings me back here today.

To give you a quick recap of where I am, my November 2020 scans were great.

"She is continuing to be in clinical and radiographic as well as bio-chemical remission."

Great news for someone with Metastatic Breast Cancer.

Thank you Lord!

In January, I had some vision disturbances but a Head CT ruled out anything sinister for which I am very thankful for. I also started to have more issues with my head and some digestive issues that were very similar to what I experienced in the very beginning of 2020. I am almost positive they are related to each other somehow but as of yet, I don't know how. Sleep evaded me many nights and just made everything seem worse. Multiple trips to the doctor's office didn't reveal anything of any significance. I restarted some of my alternative protocols that I had taken a break from. All had been well so a break was ok, right? Wrong! Lesson learned.

March and April were more of the same. I didn't feel horrible but I didn't feel particularly great either. It's hard to describe the tired feeling. I am no stranger to feeling tired but this particular tired is indescribable. And eerily familiar. I also started to cough. Not a sick kind of cough, just an annoying cough. I sometimes felt winded climbing stairs. I woke up one morning in May with my neck quite swollen on one side. My lymph nodes were very angry about something. I had an ultrasound and the largest one measured 14 x 8 x 7 mm. It is possible that this was completely unrelated to anything else going on and I had just picked up a virus of some sort (No, my Dr didn't test for Covid). I had a couple of days of not feeling great and then all was back to mostly normal. With a swollen neck and persistent cough, it was decided to have my 6 month scans done in May instead of June. I had Head/Neck, Chest, Abdominal and Pelvic scans done and almost everything came back completely normal.

Almost everything.

"There is lobulated soft tissue in the inferior left hilum measuring 2.1 x 2.6 cm in size, on previous exam measured .8 x 1.8 cm."

Well hello, old friend.

It seems that what my last Chest CT scan had observed as scar tissue, wasn't scar tissue at all but new growth in my lung. Sigh. Well, at least I wasn't imagining it. I saw the Oncologist on an urgent basis and going over the scans, he informed me of the two choices that I have. One, is to do nothing. Do not initiate treatment of any kind. Just let this be what it will be. Quality of life, he said, is just as important as quantity of life and he would like to see me comfortable for as long as possible. The other option would be to go back on a low dose of chemo. I would have to go through the tedious approval process once again and this time, I might not be a candidate due to several factors, one of them being that you are not usually allowed to use this drug twice. I have no idea why? It worked before.

All things considered, the choice really isn't mine to make. I have opted to initiate treatment. I might be allowed to go back on chemo, I might not be. I think though, that I would rather do something than nothing at all. Any other chemo is off the table as I am considered a palliative case and therefore, the goal is to keep me alive and comfortable for as long as possible, but not cure me. If I am not approved for the low dose chemo, then my options, at least in conventional medicine, are few. Nothing really. Watch and wait. This seems counter productive to me and makes me wonder why anyone is surprised when people choose to go with something alternative. At least let's try something. Anything. I'm not even 50 years old and my only symptoms right now are a slight cough and swollen lymph nodes. Sitting and counting down the days until I am no longer comfortable, does not sound appealing to me. Nor should it. It goes against our natural instinct to survive. And I don't really want to just survive.

I want to live.

So we wait. And pray. And see what the Lord has for me. And this is where you come in, dear reader. Would you consider praying with us that the Lord would make His Will abundantly clear? If His will and mine disagree, would you pray with me that I would have the strength and grace to line my will up with His? If I need to go outside conventional medicine to look for solutions, will you pray that I would be brave? This part is scary for me. Well, actually all of it is scary for me. And my family. There are so many unknowns here and there are no guarantees.

Thankfully, I don't have to have all of the answers. I only need enough strength to do the next thing. Whatever that thing is. I truly believe with all of my heart the Truths found in Scripture, so I know that my days here on earth have been numbered. There are only so many of them for me and no more and nothing I can do or worry about will add more to them. I find that very comforting actually. So with the future very unknown to me at this time, we pray that more than anything else, God will be glorified. Whether it be in life or in death.

Would you pray with us?

~ God Leads His Children ~

In shady green pastures, so rich and so sweet,

God Leads His dear children along.

Where the water's cool flow bathes the weary one's feet,