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Honestly

Let me be honest. I am not yet the person that you may think I am. Many of you, after reading something I have written here, have messaged me with words of support. I can't tell you how encouraging that is for me. Thank you! Often, though, you will say things like, "Your faith is so strong" or "You are an example to us all." Spoiler alert:  it isn't and I'm not. Honestly. Writing this blog is one of the ways that I can emotionally untangle the threads of the story that I am in. It is an avenue on which I stand tiptoed, straining to catch glimpses that can help me understand all the terrible and beautiful of this tapestry that is daily life. It is in that glimpsing and untangling that God gifts me with aspirations, with hopes. Those graciously given aspirations and hopes along with the unwavering love of the Gift Giver, form the writing that is here. I aspire to trust and have faith. I hope to be thankful for each day. I want to be strong even when I a
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Update: Counting Down or Counting Up?

Teach us O Lord to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. Ps 90:12 I've mentioned the idea of numbering our days, several times on this blog. Last week, I found myself numbering my days during a six day hospital stay in Calgary. I mean literally numbering my hospital days. This hospitalization was to get me started on a new course of treatment with a drug that had potentially life-threatening side effects on the first doses*. During that hospital stay you could certainly find me counting down the days I had left in that fifth floor room.  4 more days if all goes well. 3 more days.... 2 more....   Counting down one's days, when it comes to a hospital stay, might work, but for me it is a dangerous strategy for life. This very well could be the last treatment they can find for me. Whether I want to or not, that leads me to speculate how many days I might have left. One night in the hospital I actually found myself thinking, " Well, that's one less day of re

Update: Abide

Abide. That was our plan. Medical stuff was going to go on pause for the Christmas season and we would face the future in the new year. We would wait patiently for what would come. We would hold tight. We would abide. Health care professionals that we are blessed with, didn't wait. On Dec 21 oncologists that reviewed my file saw a concerning relapse-- more than 40 hot spots in my bone marrow.  Mysteriously, that level of activity had not been betrayed by the  protein markers in my blood. It was clear to them that a new treatment protocol would be needed as soon as possible but could not be found in a current clinical trial precisely because of the unusual nature of the relapse. With no viable trial on the horizon I was referred to the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary. A doctor there has compassionate access to an approved but unfunded newer drug known as a "bispecific." We will be doing a consult on January 8 and will make decisions after that. Now... again...we need to

Update: Trusting God's Love

We have been praying this week that God will "gentle" our hearts, and unclench our hands. Most of all we have prayed that God, in grace, will help us to trust.  Trust the love he has for us. A recent Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Scan was the subject of this week's doctor visit at the Central Alberta Cancer Centre. It revealed a number of high activity areas in my bone marrow that are likely due to active cancer cells. The scan also revealed that the cancer has done some damage to my left femur making for a higher risk of pathological fracture. It was an exam room, where there was a concerned doctor and a surprised patient. I had read the report, but the level of concern I saw in my doctor was something new. For now, we will continue my current treatment, but the doctor has sent my file to a group of experts at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton for review. He believes that a change in treatment protocol is likely warranted and hopes for a viable clinical trial.

Lucky Thirteen

I typed that title with just one hand. I held out my other hand so that you could slap my wrist... "Lucky?? Christ followers don't believe in luck!"  SLAP. "People who 'keep the faith' believe in God's good providence!"  SLAP. "You should know better!"  SLAP. I do know better. "Good luck" is a gift given by a loving God.  It is a blessing.  This week I began Cycle 13 of this chemo protocol.  Fifty two weeks. One full year. When I reflect on how fortunate I am to have access to this treatment that continues to work beyond its expected duration and when I think of opportunities that have allowed us to experience so many good times with family and friends, I feel lucky.  I feel blessed. I accept this gift of "good luck" with gratitude!  #Thankful.

Whispers and Shouts

 C.S. Lewis once wrote: " God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." (C.S. Lewis,  The Problem of Pain , first published 1940)   Many of us know what Lewis means. I do. Cancer has been and continues to be something that shouts to my deaf soul that life is precious and fleeting, that I am not in control and that I need to know right to the centre of my defective bone marrow that God meets me in my broken places with a fierce love that will not let me go. It seems to me that God has done a lot of shouting lately. Many people I know will walk this day, shouldering the weight of grief for someone they've loved and lost. Many others will endure the pain and disappointment in the way their life has turned out. Daily news is filled with more shouts. Senseless wars. Dying migrants. Houseless people. Crushing addictions....The shouting can even be heard as our planet itself groans through drou

Nothing But #Thankful

Nothing but #thankful hearts here. Many of you joined us in prayer that my health would get us to a gathering with our kids and grandkids planned for the third week of July. If a picture is indeed worth 1000 words, then below are 12,000 words of thanks for five days of beautiful chaos! (NOTE: None of these pictures show all 19 of us at once. We did have some professional family photos taken, but they have not arrived yet)