Update - July 27, 2010

Good morning – two weeks since I last reported in but I have quite a bit of news to tell you.

Last week was quite busy – on Monday, (July 19) my chemo day, it was discovered that my hemoglobin was down to 81 (from the normal 120 or so) and I almost didn’t get my chemo. (This happens when you are given chemo over a long period of time – it destroys fast-growing cells and the red blood cells in your bone marrow would be one of the ones ‘under attack’. They said it was surprising that I hadn’t already had a transfusion, due to the amount of chemo that I have had.) I was scheduled for a blood transfusion Wednesday morning – 2 units and 4+ hours to do this! Then Tuesday afternoon, I already had appointments in Windsor for a CT scan and bone scan. For the bone scan, you get a needle of radioactive dye that has to circulate through your body and you have to wait while it does that. I got the needle at 1:30 but had to wait for the scan until 4:15 – and then it took most of an hour. Lots of practice waiting ! The rest of the week was fairly quiet; a good thing, because it was still very hot and humid.

Amy came back Sunday to be with us for my chemo yesterday morning and also for the trip to Windsor to hear about the results from the scans. I was quite anxious – more than I realized – and afraid that I was going to hear that my bones looked like Swiss cheese. However, God is good and so was the news ! I have only the two metastases on my head – lumpy head – and the CT scan showed that my liver is still clear, so I am clean, clean, clean except for the cancer in my lungs. Such a relief !!! The doctor explained that the CT scan also showed progression of that cancer since April but that she didn’t feel it was accurate – that I had dropped farther after the CT scan in April than we realized and was now on the upward swing but still not back to where I was in April. However, I feel extremely well and everything is working very well – breathing especially – so we are going with that. The blood transfusion has helped with my energy levels – no red blood cells, no oxygen, no energy – and my colour is better too – according to onlookers!

We celebrated this good news by going to a Red Lobster in Windsor and ordering lobster ! Haven’t had one for years ! It was quite an exercise – they don’t cut it open for you as some places do, so you have to wrestle it ‘to the ground’ all by yourself. But boy! Did it taste good!

We are contemplating actually going away on a weekend trip to see if we remember how to do it – haven’t been too many places since all of this started. We did make it up to a park on the St. Clair River south of Sarnia, one of our favourite places, to have a little picnic a week ago Sunday and enjoyed that. For those of you who don’t live in this area, that’s the river between the USA and Canada, and between Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair. You can look across and watch road traffic in the USA on the other side and if you were a good swimmer you might be able to swim across. There’s always a good chance of seeing a lake freighter, too – pretty impressive at close quarters.

So I am very happy to report this good news to you and to thank you once again for all your support and prayers, especially during the last few months when things looked pretty black. I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be here long past October now but each of us only has today and I am still practicing living in ‘now’.
May God’s presence be known to you today.