update on my Dad

I just wanted to give an update on how my Dad is doing. He went down to Indianapolis on Monday for a second attempt at the surgery to remove his pancreatic cancer. The surgeon believes he was successful in removing all the cancer. Dad has been in the hospital down there recovering all week, and he is doing remarkably well. The doctors are actually amazed at how well he is doing. There are tests being done on his tumor, and the lymph nodes that were removed, that will tell us more about whether any cancer might remain in his body, and what the future might hold as far as prognosis. We are still awaiting the results of those tests.

Dad is in good spirits, which is such a relief for my brother and I, and we are hoping he will be released to come home in a couple of days. This last week was challenging as my family was seperated for the week. I was staying down in the Kokomo area all week with my four oldest kids, and driving back and forth to Indy every day from there with the kids. Rob and the littlest ones were up here staying with his parents, and Rob had to work a lot also. It was a rough week, but we are all back together for now, and if Dad continues to be well, we will likely not seperate again, and hopefully just bring dad home here soon.

Thank you everyone who has been praying for our family through all of this. The prayers were definitely felt this last week!!

Update on My Dad

Hi everyone. I wanted to give everybody who has been praying for my dad an update. For anyone who doesn't know the situation with dad read here to hear the whole story.

Last week Dad's oncologist told him that the CAT scan that he took showed some shrinking in the cancer, and no spread, so that they were going to proceed to operate again to try to take the cancer out. Well, yesterday I took dad to meet with the surgeon, who had attempted his surgery the first time. What the surgeon said was a bit different than what the oncologist said. He said that he will not attempt to do the surgery again. He said that attempting this surgery a second time, especially after weeks of radiation is extremely complicated. He wants dad to have another endoscopy, to get a better picture of the area, and then he is going to send dad's pictures down to a surgeon in Indianapolis, to see if he will attempt the surgery. He did not sound terribly convinced that it was going to be possible.

So, that is where things stand right now. If dad is going to go to Indy, it will be (hopefully) next week. The oncologist said that for this surgery to be possible, it had to be done within 6 weeks of the end of radiation, which will be next week. Obviously, the surgery being done in Indianapolis, during the time when Rob will be going back to work, and my kids need to start schooling again, is a logistical nightmare for our family. Indianapolis is 3 1/2 hours away from us.

Please pray that Dad will be able to have this surgery in Indy, and that the pieces will fall into place for me to be able to stay down there with him...at least for most of the time. Thanks to everyone who has been praying for my dad already!

Please Pray tomorrow!

Hi all. I would appreciate prayers tomorrow as I take my Dad to a doctor's appointment to find out the results of his CAT scan from Monday. This will tell him whether his cancer has spread at all, or if it has shrunk enough that they might be able to remove it this time. I will give an update when I know more!

Cancer organization- Check it out and Pray!

Hi all. I wanted to pass along a post from a blog that I saw this evening. Please read it and consider prayer for this organization and the people they serve. Cancer is such a life altering disease, and it comes with so much suffering. My dad has been doing pretty well. With 6 weeks of chemo and 3 days of radiation, he's still hanging in there. He has not been sick so far, and his energy level is still mostly up. So that has been a blessing. After the 5 weeks of radiation are complete, then he will wait two weeks before getting an MRI. The MRI will tell us whether or not they can attempt to go in and take the cancer out.
This organization is doing a wonderful service for those who are suffering physically, financially, and spiritually in this awful fight that they are thrust into! Not everyone does so well in this fight as my dad has. I am completely convinced that his doing so well is because he has so many people praying for him. So, check out the site, and take a few moments to pray! Thanks all!

The Cancer...

I've wanted to blog about this, well, since I started my blog a little over a week ago, but I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. So, here goes. Tomorrow I will be doing something that I have done every Wednesday for five weeks now........taking my dad to his chemo treatment.

This is not a fun thing to do. Let me start this by telling the whole story. To tell the whole story I feel compelled to go back to what I feel is the beginning. Back in March of 2008 my mom came on the day after my daughters birthday, to take her to go get her 4 year old pictures taken. She came, and they went, had a good time, and mom brought Audrey back to the house. We stood and chatted for awhile, and then mom left and I waved to her out the door.....little did I know this would be the last time I would ever see her on this earth! Later in the evening, we received a phone call from a paramedic that was at my parents' home. My mom was dead...just like that. I will spare all the horrible details, but she had a massive stroke, and was gone before my dad could even figure out what was going on. Needless to say, this was a major shock. My dad was a wreck for a time (that is really an understatement), but he is a man of strong faith, much like my mom was a woman of strong faith. We were trusting the Lord. Over the course of the last year, he was doing pretty well. Learning how to take care of himself, and the house, and even finding time for the grandkids.
Fast forward to March of 2009. Shortly before the one year anniversary of my mom's death, dad fell ill (which was unusual for dad). After a few days his general sick feelings began to go away, but he also had some strange symptoms. He had a little bit of abdominal pain, and his body was itchy, even though he had no rash. There were some other bizarre symptoms as well. But because he was feeling a little better, the doctor gave him some antacid type medicine, and told him to call if anything felt worse. Well, the following Saturday night, dad came to our house for supper. Rob and I could tell right away that he looked a little yellow, especially the whites of his eyes. So, I had him call the doctor back, and I took him to the emergency room.....on the anniversary of mom's death, he was told he had cancer of the pancreas. Wow. We were trusting the Lord!
It was believed to be only a small tumor, and they thought they could easily take it out. So, dad was preparing for a major surgery to take out part of his pancreas, and part of his intestines, and his gallbladder, and part of his stomach. All to get the cancer out, and make sure all of it was out. The surgeon sounded very promising about how easily this could be done. We were trusting the Lord. He went in for surgery as my brother and our spouses, and some good family friends of ours waited for the news....we got it all. But, when the surgeon finally did come out 3 hours later, it wasn't what we expected. They could not take the tumor out. The tumor had infiltrated a major vein called the portal vein, and it was in nearby lymph nodes. The surgeon told us that dad would likely have months, and there was nothing they would be able to do for him without surgery. We were trusting the Lord.
After a few weeks of recovery from the surgery that he did do (he rerouted some bile ducts and took out the gallbladder to relieve the jaundice), dad finally saw an oncologist. The oncologist was very upfront with him, yet he gave a small glimmer of hope. " I want to try to shrink the tumor off of that vein and try the surgery again", he said. I wasn't sure how this would go over with dad, the idea of another surgery, but he wanted to try it.
So, the prescription......chemo and radiation treatments! Not the words anyone wants to hear. I think the words chemo and radiation rank right up there with the word cancer itself, in words you don't want to hear. But....we were trusting the Lord.
Dad has been through five weeks of chemo now. Because they have him on a low dose, he has been doing really well, with no major symptoms. This has been encouraging. As I go with him to his chemo every week, I see people who are in much worse shape physically than my dad, even though he has one of the most deadly forms of cancer. It makes me feel good, and yet sad that dad may very well deteriorate to that point in the future. Next week he will start radiation, and that is more likely to make him sick than the chemo itself. We are trusting the Lord.
I wanted to tell this story for many reasons. Most importantly for prayer. If you think about it, pray for my dad. Pray for strength for him, and for me. It is not easy to have to take care of him now that my mom is gone. Having my own family to take care of, makes things very difficult sometimes. I will be trading off with my husband to take dad to daily radiation treatments for 5 weeks this summer, and then if he is able to have this surgery again, it will be right before the beginning of next school year. This will be a challenge!
Cancer is such an insidious thing. In my mind...The Cancer, is equal to sin itself. It creeps in slowly and for a time you don't even realize its there, until one day it rears it's ugly head on you, and you come to realize that it is destroying you. Not only is it destroying you, but it is harming your entire family, and everyone that loves you. You can put band-aids on it and try to cover it up for awhile (chemo and radiation), but it is still eating at you, and you have to realize in the end that there is only one thing that can kill the Cancer (or the sin). God is the only thing that can kill the cancer. In the end it will really be up to Him. We can try with our human ways, to hide our sin, to "cure" it, but in the end only reaching out to God will cure us. Much like with Dad's cancer..........I am trusting the Lord!