Three Days And Back

We’re home again!!  …after our shortest hospital stay yet!!  (only three days!)

Thank you for praying!  Chase had a successful central line surgery on Thursday and his Friday and Saturday chemo passed without any excitement (adverse reactions, weird vitals, etc, just the usual “excitement” involved in AT/RT chemo…)

A couple updates on the specifics for which I’d asked prayer:

  • So far, the central line is holding and has not infected!
  • The cancer is still in his spinal fluid, but that we entrust (as always) to the One who made him.

Our next scheduled chemo clinic is Thursday and we have high hopes that Chase’s white blood count will still be high enough that we won’t be admitted at that time.

I will leave you with a small picture of my Saturday hospital experience… Chase, with his track pants and light-up Spiderman shoes, sans shirt, chest wrapped in an ace bandage, stomp-running down a hospital hallway (while trailing a large IV pole) pointing at medical staff and growling “No smiling in the hospital!” …

Never a dull part of our moment by moment … 🙂

Chase rockin’ his new central line!

Five Years

Five years later…

My Dearest Husband,
As we pledged our lives to one another, we never could have known what was ahead. I know that these first five years are only a small dip into the well of blessing that the Lord has for us. As I write, I am reminded of the words we sang that day:

“Thine own great presence to cheer and to guide; strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside.”

In joyful anticipation of growing closer every year…

Love,
Your Wife

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Nuts and Bolts

Thursday morning, from the surgery floor

I just passed my nearly unconscious son into the arms of the medical team. Have I ever mentioned that this is my least favorite part of procedure days? They give Chase a small drug to relieve “separation anxiety” before they take him back to the OR and he immediately relaxes, but I still hate watching them wheel him away from me. I just do.

After almost two weeks, Chase is back in the hospital today. Right now, he is in the OR to get a new central line, remove the picc line in his arm, get a spinal tap, and receive his spinal chemo. After post-op recovery, he will be admitted for about four days of chemo infusions.

Many times, my thoughts and prayers are more general in nature, but today I have a couple specific requests: Please pray that this new central line does not infect (as his first one did) and please pray that the cancer is no longer present in his spinal fluid.

Thank you.

Hoping and believing outside the OR room…

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Impossible Question

“There has been no success in curing this cancer without radiation, but we know that there are long term neural and even physical effects from this course of treatment. What do you, as Chase’s parents, think?”

The impossible scenario with the impossible question.

What do we think?

In that moment, I think I wish I’d never walked into the room and never heard of cancer, and brain tumors, and chemo, and…

The reality is that Chase (barring the miracle we never cease to hope for) will begin radiation in a few short weeks. He is an excellent candidate for proton radiation (a “better” type) and our preliminary meetings and planning sessions with the doctors have been very encouraging.

It’s taken me a long time to blog about this scenario and its because I have found it almost impossible to write through being in a room and discussing the crushing reality of your child’s impending mental and physical changes …all the while knowing that these changes are still a lesser damage to him than his cancer.

Then, we leave the room and he’s still our Chase. In many ways, we said goodbye to who and what Chase was the minute we drove into the ambulance bay on that epic Tuesday in July. And at the end of my every thought and emotion on this, I have to come back to this promise…

“For you [God] formed Chase’s inward parts; you knitted him together in his mother’s womb. I praise you, for he is fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; and my soul knows it very well. Chase’s frame was not hidden from you, when he was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw his unformed substance; and in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for him, when as yet there were none of them.” Psalm 139:13-16 ( personalization added)

Our decision is big, but Jesus is bigger.

Moment by moment…