Update from Oncologist visit

On Wednesday afternoon, we went to see our oncologist (Dr. C.) to get all the details from the surgery. Our last update (Friday) was very brief from the surgeon's nurse.

Dr C. did confirm that the surgery was successful. No cancer was found on the right side. The cancerous masses were removed and 2 out of 20 lymph nodes did have cancer. As stated, margins were clear of cancer. Dr. C. told us that the cancer was rated at stage 3 (on a scale from 1-4). We were hoping that it would be staged at 2 since they "got it all" but since the size of the tumor was pretty large (5 cm) and it did enter the lymph nodes, it was rated at stage 3.

He told us that if we did nothing at all (chemo or radiation), the chances of returning was 75% and it would not be curable only treatable. Of course, we are going to do something and he recommended 6 sessions (every 3 weeks) of chemo and then 5 weeks of radiation just to put this cancer to bed! We are going to follow this advice to a T. The Dr is very hopeful especially with the preventative chemo and radiation.

We plan to start in 2 to 3 weeks.
Bruce

For all things . . .

"speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father." Ephesians 5:19-20

sunday, almost a week after my surgery. i cannot stop thinking of how thankful i am for what has been given to me. . . my thoughts are not fluid but i am able to list a few of my favorite things to be thankful for this week. some may make sense, others may not. i pray that in all things, regardless of circumstances, i am able to give thanks!

no one tells you what wonderful "things" a cancer diagnosis can bring into your life. i have never felt closer to my Lord, my family and friends. i wish we could all experience what i am experiencing on a day to day basis with or without a diagnosis. i do know that one day, we will truly live like we were meant to live, until that day, let us press on . . .

i am thankful for:
my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who promised that He would never leave me or forsake me-and He hasn't, a husband who sees me as beautiful, sons who are walking with me as they never have, longer hugs, tender kisses, lots of i love yous, a precious daughter in law who is "real" with me, the most beautiful granddaugther who makes me "forget" my circumstances with a little kiss, having a mom who is my "armor bearer", number one fan, protector as well as calf massager, having a brother who speaks and shares God's truth with me when he knows my heart can deceive me, having Cami who looks me straight in the eye and tells me to hide nothing from her even though i know it may cause her pain, having a brother who affirms to me that i am one of the most feminine women he knows, having grown up nephews who can say "i love you auntie," peace, a pink ribbon bracelet, having a "personal candy striper" who delivers onion rings and fries to my health conscious family during my surgery, love, joy, a "comfort box" made by the most awesome little friend, friends who are weeping with us, friends who want to rejoice with us, psalms that are read to me by my man, email prayers, text prayers, in person prayers, pizza party prayer meetings, prayers that continue to sustain me, blog responses, watching Godly men and family encourage Bruce, compassionate doctors and nurses, candace's homemade apple pie, mastectomies that rid my body of cancer, nuclear medicine, cards, letters, notes, flowers, pain killers, meals, desserts, golden spoons, friends who stick closer than a brother, hearing caleb play guitar, laughter, renewing times of worship, being stripped of modesty and vanity, new mercies each day, biopsies-18 out of 20 lymph nodes CANCER FREE-Hallelujah, watching friends return to Jesus and praying, cards like justin's that remind me that there is a precious, tender young man behind the tough 16 year old exterior (you know i love you) new friends, reconnecting with old friends, that being a daughter of the King is what defines me-not the external, God's promises, His presence, being barefoot-and loving it, dying to self with all "my" brilliant plans and agendas, that i can trust my Savior when i say "take my life and do with it as you please."

from a favorite hymn, "oh praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead-Jesus!"

Some really great news!!

Today, we went to the surgeon's office to get one of the drainage tubes taken out. The nurse took out all 4 of them. That was a blessing to have those gone. As her husband, I am just glad that they are out. I love her like crazy but I am glad they are out.

Now for the great news:

When the nurse came in, she had the results of the lymph node cancer test that they did. We didn't think it would be done but it was. Only 2 out of 20 had cancer in them. All others were cancer free. She said that all margins were cancer free too so they believe they got all cancer out of Terese. We were both crying in the office from joy. The nurse even started to tear up too. She still will have to go through chemo just to make sure but we are very thankful that the surgery got it all. Thanks for all your prayers. She is doing so well. She is sleeping well and we go for walks. Our time together is sweet.

Bruce

Terese is home now

Terese is now home from the hospital!! She is strong considering what she went through. She was given the opportunity to stay one more day but was feeling well enough to come home today and is doing very well. Thanks for all your prayer. I am going to let her give more insight when she is more available to write.
Bruce

terese update

From Bruce.
Terese just got out of surgery and I just chatted with the Dr. He said it went well. No cancer on right side but it appears to be in the lymph nodes on the left. She is still under. Pray for her emotional being now and a full recovery.
Bruce

hiding place

I woke up singing the words to an old, familiar song. It is 2:30 in the morning and in a few hours, I will be going in for surgery. The words of this song, based on Psalm 32:7, give me great peace.

"You are my hiding place

You always fill my heart

With songs of deliverance

Whenever I am afraid

I will trust in You

I will trust in You

Let the weak say

I am strong

In the strength of the Lord"

He is my hiding place, I will put my trust in Him. I pray these words echo in my thoughts all morning and I will enter the hospital with a song of deliverance in my heart!

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23:6

barefoot

my friend bonnie has given me a book entitled "the gospel according to job" by mike mason. from a chapter entitled "uselessness" the author writes: "how interesting it is that when the Lord appeared to Moses, and later to Joshua, to each of them He said the same thing: 'take off your sandals, for the place where your are standing is holy ground' (Ex. 3:5, Josh. 5:15). why should you take off your shoes in the Lord's presence? because without shoes you are not going anywhere. you might try to walk, but you will not get very far, especially in the hot sand and sharp rocks of the wilderness. taking off one's shoes may not be quite as drastic as cutting off one's feet, but it amounts to the same thing. barefootedness means immobilization and so it is a symbol of submission. being immobile (in other words, having nothing better to do) is a prerequisite for worship, and worship is the prerequisite for all activity, all service."

this paragraph was shared by bonnie to me just a few days before my breast cancer diagnosis. i will admit, when she read it to me, my eyes swelled up with tears. i don't want to be made immobile but yet, i do desire to submit to Him. i love "my" life, i want to serve my Lord-being immobile does not fit into "my" plan. but through it all, i know that i am standing before Him, my King on holy ground. if He asks me to remove my shoes, off they go, i trust Him, i love Him and i will worship Him standing still with barefeet.

Don't Waste Your Cancer

Pastor and Author John Piper wrote this before his prostate surgery. I have received great peace from reading the following and hope it encourages you in any area of personal suffering.

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.
It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “There is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel” (Numbers 23:23). “The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).

3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.
The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). God’s design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9, “We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.
We will all die, if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” How can you lay it to heart if you won’t think about it? Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Numbering your days means thinking about how few there are and that they will end. How will you get a heart of wisdom if you refuse to think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death.

5. You will waste your cancer if you think that “beating” cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.
Satan’s and God’s designs in your cancer are not the same. Satan designs to destroy your love for Christ. God designs to deepen your love for Christ. Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the sufficiency of Christ. It is meant to help you say and feel, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” And to know that therefore, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 3:8; 1:21).

6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.
It is not wrong to know about cancer. Ignorance is not a virtue. But the lure to know more and more and the lack of zeal to know God more and more is symptomatic of unbelief. Cancer is meant to waken us to the reality of God. It is meant to put feeling and force behind the command, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). It is meant to waken us to the truth of Daniel 11:32, “The people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.” It is meant to make unshakable, indestructible oak trees out of us: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:2). What a waste of cancer if we read day and night about cancer and not about God.

7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.
When Epaphroditus brought the gifts to Paul sent by the Philippian church he became ill and almost died. Paul tells the Philippians, “He has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill” (Philippians 2:26-27). What an amazing response! It does not say they were distressed that he was ill, but that he was distressed because they heard he was ill. That is the kind of heart God is aiming to create with cancer: a deeply affectionate, caring heart for people. Don’t waste your cancer by retreating into yourself.

8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.
Paul used this phrase in relation to those whose loved ones had died: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). There is a grief at death. Even for the believer who dies, there is temporary loss—loss of body, and loss of loved ones here, and loss of earthly ministry. But the grief is different—it is permeated with hope. “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Don’t waste your cancer grieving as those who don’t have this hope.

9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.
Are your besetting sins as attractive as they were before you had cancer? If so you are wasting your cancer. Cancer is designed to destroy the appetite for sin. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, impatience, laziness, procrastination—all these are the adversaries that cancer is meant to attack. Don’t just think of battling against cancer. Also think of battling with cancer. All these things are worse enemies than cancer. Don’t waste the power of cancer to crush these foes. Let the presence of eternity make the sins of time look as futile as they really are. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:25).

10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.

Christians are never anywhere by divine accident. There are reasons for why we wind up where we do. Consider what Jesus said about painful, unplanned circumstances: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness” (Luke 21:12 -13). So it is with cancer. This will be an opportunity to bear witness. Christ is infinitely worthy. Here is a golden opportunity to show that he is worth more than life. Don’t waste it.