When cancer was never in the cards
Sometimes when I’m sitting in the waiting room (or more like the car now 😂😭) when Josh has his MRIs I feel stuck (and then think about how much more stuck he probably feels in that pesky little tube). Fear and anxiety, jealousy, discontentment, all the emotions, can weigh heavy on a heart and try to creep in and be a hope-stealer when cancer is a part of your life.
July 2007, staring at that dreamy eyed boy at the altar, just babies, promising to stick by each other in sickness and in health, never really imagining that the sick part would ever come. We were 21 and 23 when we got married, when you’re that age, you dream of only the good things (Like, we’re just gonna spend the first twenty years of life drinking incredibly good coffee that costs too much money and spend 6 months out of the year on the north shore—right?). We didn’t do much planning back then, and we most certainly didn’t plan on this. Finish school, have a kid, buy a house, have another kid (or 5 🤣), maybe buy a cute little farm in the country, maybe do foster care, maybe get a dog, or a bunny, or a gerbil, or a goldfish, or a bird (just listing off all the pets sweet Birghin has asked for in the last 24 hours) but not cancer, not this. So what do you do when your life gets turned upside down by a single diagnosis? When hopes and dreams and plans don’t come to be? When anxiety fills the “whats next” question because there’s no concrete prognosis except: incurable? Hold loosely. That’s what we’re learning. How to hold loosely to the things that used to be so important, to the loves that we love, and love Jesus more. How to hold loosely to this life, and cling to him.
So, back to that MRI, we met with our beloved neuro-oncologist, and she gave us good news that his scan already looks better than the pre-treatment scan, the tumor has shown regression and not as “flared up” as before. We are so grateful!
His energy has been coming back slowly but surely (we’ll thank Jesus and the golf course for that). I mean who goes through 6 weeks of brain radiation and chemo and a mere weeks later goes and shoots 69 in a casual round of golf, this guy that’s who! Only by the grace.
He started working again in the last couple weeks and puts in what his energy allows each day, and I’ll go back in two weeks. We have been so thankful for the amount of time we both got to take off of work, really such a gift to be home as a family and take time to rest and process and just ‘be’ together. My initial thought to covid hitting right when this started was….are you kidding me?? But it has turned out to be such a blessing really, the forced slow down and family time was just what we needed.
He started his first round of chemo this week, he’ll take double the dose for 5 days and then have 23 days off and do that for 6 rounds. Praying he’ll tolerate a stronger dose of chemo as well as he did the first round, aside from that and lab draws every two weeks, we can take a breath.
Thank you, thank you. We love you all so much.
