Mixed Review

We are in the middle of celebrating family Christmas, so it is a bit of a challenge to write in the midst of all the crazy. At the same time, I know that you all are anxious to hear what the latest is on James, so I will write something - maybe a little short, but hopefully I can minimize the disjointedness somehow too. 

For the last two weeks James's cough has been getting increasingly worse, to the point that he now sounds as bad as when he first started treatment. Going into his latest CT scan we really had no idea of what to expect. Based on his previous, positive scan, we were fairly confident that it wouldn't be worse than, say, hearing "you have inoperable lung cancer" for the first time....but no confidence that things would actually be improved.

Long story short, James's radiologist said the scan is a "mixed review." James has a very bad case of "pneumanitis" which sounds kind of made up, but is basically inflamed lung. In James's case, his lung is inflamed from radiation. The doctor believes very strongly that James's cough is no longer a result of cancer. Awesome news. 

James will be on a crazy large dose of prednisone over the next few weeks to take care of his pneumanitis. James's first thought was "oh my, I'm going to be eating like a cow again." My first thought was, "oh my, he's going to blow up like a hippopotamus." Yeesh. Please pray that the symptoms are manageable and that it really does take care of his cough. It would be wonderful to have James be back to his quiet self again. 😀

As to his cancer, James has no new tumors (awesome!!) and all of James's tumors are in the process of death/dying/disappearing. Yeah! Except one. Boo. But the doctor reassured us, "Well, it's only grown a few millimeters." (I'm not really sure how that is supposed to be reassuring, but I guess points for being kind.)

Next step for us? We will have a follow up appointment with James's oncologist, Dr. Gupta, next Wednesday. He has had a fairly aggressive approach to James's cancer, but we don't know what he will recommend. Perhaps surgery. Perhaps more chemo. Perhaps just waiting until James's PET scan at the end of March. 

In the meantime, we are very, very grateful for how God has carried us thus far, and we are thankful that we can rest knowing that He will continue to be faithful. Thank you for your faithfulness in continuing to care for, pray for, and remember us, even in the waiting. You are a blessing and have comforted and encouraged us in more ways than you know. Thank you.

Good News

So I am China these days...I left Sunday & arrived on Tuesday. I came with the purpose to check in on everything, make corrections or tweaks as needed, and to train my staff on a few new dishes to optimize the holiday season.  (The biggie is learning how to roast a turkey.) I also hope to be an encouragement - James and I never want our staff to feel abandoned, even if our personal lives are up on end at the present. 

In short - everything is going really, really well.  I am so impressed with our staff - they are a truly remarkable group of people.  (How well do you think you'd do if James taught you how to make Kung Pao Chicken and then left you for a few months? Do you think you'd continue to nail it on the flavor, or would it start to taste like American Chinese take-out?)  Over here at The Foreign Wife, everything tastes right, everything looks good, everything is (still!) immaculately clean. It's incredible.   

It's been great to get to reconnect with our staff too.  They are some of our best friends here, and I think they've enjoyed hearing how we're really doing. It goes without saying that they are anxious for our return. 

And then, since I am here and James is there...I got an email from my husband.  I'll let him share his good news in his own words. He speaks a lot about his cough - for one, because it's an incredible nuisance (and something he's put up with for nearly a year). For two, when we asked his doctors if his cough would go away, they both responded "We hope so." (Apparently when it comes to lung cancer, asking if the cough goes away is akin to asking, "Am I going to be healed?")  

I am doing well. I feel these days my health is getting better everyday. Coughing is getting less every day and much less violent and I'm coughing much shorter. Last night, for the first time, I woke up without coughing, It was a very weird feeling. Eventually I coughed of course, but it was short and light. Yesterday I played basketball and in a few minutes I was out of breath, but this morning when I woke up I felt like I have much more energy. I took Michaela and Caroline out to walk and I chased them, didn't feel any problem to breathe at all. Today I coughed so much less than any other days. I feel God's complete healing is at hand. I'm very excited and encouraged about it. 

Thank you all, again, for your many, many prayers on our behalf. We believe that God is hearing them and is working great things on our behalf as a result. Thank you.

Hoping & Waiting in Suffering

Eugune Peterson - I love that guy. He gave us a gem of a Bible translation, The Message. Many years ago he also wrote a fabulous little book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction which is not exactly at the top of the popularity charts at the Christian bookstore these days, but is a fabulous book nonetheless. 

In one chapter, he addresses the issue of hope in suffering through Psalm 130. There's great thoughts here to shape our thoughts around truth. We know we are not the only ones going through difficulty...and so I share. Eugene writes...

Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying.

And hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do...It is willingness to let God do it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it. That is not hoping in God but bullying God.

...

The psalm does not exhort us to put up with suffering; it does not explain it or explain it away. It is, rather, a powerful demonstration that our place in the depths is not out of bounds from God...We are persuaded that God's way with us is redemption and that the redemption, not the suffering, is ultimate.

We are persuaded that God's way with us is redemption and that the redemption, not the suffering, is ultimate.

That's good stuff there, friends. Let's believe it. Let's pray it. And we'll see God do it. 

Learning to Wait

Hello friends...welcome back, and congratulations for finding our blog after a four-day weekend of EATING ALL THE THINGS. You're tremendous, truly, and we're glad you're here. 

Our weekend was a healthy mix of seriously good eats (it's great to be part of a foodie family during the holidays!), watching THE parade, carbohydrate induced comas, black-Friday shopping, and lots of crazy. You know how you know if you had a great family holiday? If you have to take one of your kids to the dentist following said holiday.  

No joke. That's where I was part of today - getting one of my kids dental xrays.

(As a TOTAL aside, one of the benefits/blessings of living overseas & only coming home every 2+ years is that technology jumps forward without you noticing.  So you get slammed with all kinds of cool stuff all at once, and you get really excited at each "new" introduction. (While the innocent clerk/staff person looks at you with this mix of absolute befuddlement/trained courtesy/pity that seems to say, "Where the heck have you been, lady?!  This is SO 2012!")  All that to say, I am happy to report to you all that the dentist finally got rid of that horrid cardboard x-ray film that was always the size appropriate for say, a tiger's mouth rather than say, a normal human who still possesses all their teeth. No more shredding the roof of my mouth whilst biting on a cardboard blade and the inevitable, uncontrollable tearing of the eyes. Woot. It's the little things.)

Ahem.  Where were we?

Ah,yes...family life in the midst of cancer. In terms of update, there's not really anything to report. We're in the midst of waiting which, some days, is really difficult. James doesn't appear noticeably better, and there are no guarantees for what the CT will show. As we're finding out, finishing cancer treatment does not automatically put you on a trajectory of health and wellness, even if you do have days where you feel mostly better than dead. You have a lot of days of feeling terrible, completely zapped of strength, energy, vitality. James is still coughing, a lot. James isn't sleeping very well and is often in pain. On days when he feels decent, attempts at physical activity (like shooting baskets) are often a painful reminder of weakness and loss as much as they are an encouraging mental break. 

So, we long to be on the other side of this...not just to return to life-as-normal (though hey, that wouldn't be all bad), but to be able to say, "Look what God has done - He has proven Himself as the faithful, miracle-working God who sustained and strengthened us through a circumstance that we could not have endured on our own." We know God is at work, and we testify of the many, many provisions He has made for us along the way. And God is, without a doubt, changing us for the better for going through this. But we're still in it, waiting to see how He's going to bring all this together for His glory. Because if I'm honest, some days it just seems like a big jumbled pile of crazy. (And some days I am the big jumbled pile of crazy.) 

Most days, it's just learning to wait, in the face of terrible odds and lots of uncertainty...with faith that God is working on our behalf.

So let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. 

--Hebrews 10.23

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!  

We trust you are all having a great week.  Just a few things the He family is thankful for this year...

*We didn't buy turkey for $5 a pound this year.  A first for us in a few years. 

*On a related note, I'm thankful that my house is not cold enough to brine said turkey outside of the refrigerator.

*We are thankful that James seems to be improving every few days or so.  He slept for 8 hours without waking from coughing fits last night, a first in a long, long time. He said that once in the night he coughed a couple times, but not enough to really wake him, and he immediately returned to sleep.  Amazing.  Hopefully the first of many more to come...

*James has also been having weird sounds coming from his lungs. Like squeaks.  Or pinched wheezes. The last time we heard those sounds, it sounded to us like his lung reinflating.  (And then his lung did in fact reinflate.)  [And no, I will not tell you about how the doctor looked at us when we described what we were hearing.  But I think he might have been thinking something like, "All those years of school.  And I am still completely unprepared to deal with crazy people."] Whether or not that is what we are hearing, James is breathing deeper and easier. Maybe the sounds we are now hearing are tumors dying. 

*This last weekend we got an unexpected visit from some dear friends of ours. We went out to lunch and they took our picture. It's surprisingly good.  (Though James says he looks fat - thank you, Prednisone.)

*We are so thankful for all of you! For all of our American friends, we hope you get all of your old favorites this weekend and that you eat too many of them. Celebrate. Indulge. Take a nap. And in the midst of all the ruckus, give thanks. 

The Part Where Things Look Worse (Before They Get Better)

Hello, dear friends. Sorry for the bit of quiet around here lately. (It's not you, it's me.) 

First, the good news - James is done with both radiation and chemo! We are so thankful to have made it thus far, thankful for God's grace that carried us through such an intense treatment regimen, thankful that now our days do not automatically include things such as a 40 minute commute to the hospital, getting prescriptions filled, or getting poked with a spring-loaded needle.  

Also, we didn't realize this at the beginning (because the doctor can't say "we hope you will be strong enough for treatment, but we'll wait and see"), but James actually got an "extra" round of chemo that is a one-in-a-million kind of deal. Basically, when the doctor saw how well he was doing, he was scheduled for the third round. Something the doctor hopes for but can't guarantee or promise. Very rarely do any of his patients hold up for round three. So we are indeed very, very thankful.  

On the other hand, events over the last three weeks have meant that we really just needed to persevere, to ask for strength to endure to the end. As James's body weakened, finishing treatment definitely felt like we were crawling to the finish line rather than sprinting through the home stretch. 

For the last three weeks, James's body has rapidly declined and weakened. (Even as we hope that the present wasting away is leading us to health and healing, it is a genuinely strange reality that it difficult for me to deal with.) Imagine, if you will, James at 90 - he no longer has energy to play with the girls, leans on shopping carts to make it through shopping trips, tires easily and fills his afternoons with naps, and even lacks the strength to consistently shoot a basketball to rim height. This is the James that we now know. 

The effects of chemo are often felt two to three weeks after the last dose, and radiation keeps working for six to eight weeks after the last treatment. So it may be awhile yet before James actually starts to feel better. His cough is getting better, but also keeps him from sleeping much past 4 a.m. Also, James's blood counts were all quite low last week (yes, again, and yes, totally normal), which means he is susceptible to infection and fatigue.  (Because of how chemo works, they will likely dip down even lower than the previous low over the next couple weeks.)

Having cancer is a rip-roaring good time, eh?! =)

The next "thing" on the horizon for us is a CT scan that James will do at the end of the year. (December 29th, if you want to mark your calendars. =) )  We'll get the results from that the following day. Hopefully, hopefully, we'll see good, great, downright awesome results from that.  The CT is kind of basic as far as scans go, and can show new growth (boo!) and decreased tumor size (yeah!) but can't differentiate between tumors and scar tissue (a common side effect of radiation). So we are praying for, once again, awesome results that are better than the doctors expect. 

And then we go from there - more waiting, more days of recovering, and then a PET scan at the end of March. 

In the meantime, thank you for continuing to pray for us, support us, and keep us encouraged. If you all keep doing that, we should be able to post again sooner rather than later.  Thanks! You all are awesome. =)

The Results Are In...

James got his CT scan results today - great news to report, friends. (But you're not that surprised after the blood count thing, are you?)

The doctor came in and got right to the results - markedly better than James's first scan at their office. The tumors are shrinking AND his right middle lobe (which has been collapsed since at least July) is starting to reinflate.  (Did you know your lungs could do that?!)  The tumors have shrunk significantly enough to require the radiation team to reduce the treatment field. (Think of it as a finer beam to hone in on a smaller object.)

Needless to say, we are thrilled, elated, excited, joyful. 

We are so thankful to know that chemo is working - and not just on James's hair follicles and white blood cells. Perhaps a little-known fact about cancer treatment is that treatment protocols are standardized which means that doctors "cannot" change course mid-stream.  That is, if doctors felt strongly that the chemo & radiation treatment were not working, there would be nothing to do but see it to the bitter end, wait 2 months, and then start over with a different regimen. Ouch. Nothing quite like how it must feel to "flunk" chemo.  

SO - thankfully this is not the case for James. We are blessed to see early results and wait to see what else God will do. 

Please continue to pray for his general health, complete healing (without surgery would be spectacular, as long as you're asking what we want), and perseverance to see this to the end. James is beginning to tire easily and his throat/swallowing is becoming increasingly painful due to daily radiation-to-the-trachea treatments. =)  (Another little-known fact about cancer...it is quite common for people to drop out before their scheduled treatments are over. Though we have no plans of being radiation drop-outs, I share that to say that apparently enduring to the finish can be challenging.) 

James has 11 more radiation treatments and 6 more days of chemo. He should be done with this intense treatment phase November 17th. 

Thanks for continuing to stand with us! Your love and support continue to be so encouraging. We don't always have the time mental energy to respond to all the emails and blog-comments, so please know that you all mean so much. Thank you.