Details

The scriptures that speak about God’s care for me have always been comforting in stressful times. Knowing that God cares about my situation, that He has a plan and a purpose for my life, and that everything that happens can be used for my good has helped sustain me during dark times. Life hasn’t always been easy—and sometimes its been downright hard—but God has always been there guiding me, walking with me, and providing for my needs. Nevertheless, I feel His presence more intimately now than ever before. I so clearly see His fingerprints in the details of this journey I am facing. So far I have seen 23 incidents of God’s “fingerprints” in the circumstances surrounding my diagnosis. I am sure there are many more I have missed and will only see once this season is done. Knowing He has been preparing the way, and preparing me, for this journey reassures me He will continue to provide until I am healed.

Here are a few examples of the fingerprints I’ve seen:

• When I got the results of my January 15 mammogram that told me everything was clear and to come back in a year, God nudged me to question the initial findings and not let it go. He gave me a spirit that continues to question and seek answers when something doesn’t feel right. (Maybe Allie gets a bit of her tenacity in fighting the system for her clients from me!)
• Gary got sick when we were in California visiting Allie after Christmas and we went to Urgent Care. Because we needed our insurance out of state on Sunday, when our insurance agent called me Monday with the renewal and said we could save money on our health insurance by going to an “all-state” network, I said no. If we had switched networks to save money, I would not have been able to go to MD Anderson and be treated by doctors on the cutting edge of triple negative breast cancer research.
• God’s timing for Fritz’s birth allowed us to meet our beautiful new grandson before I start treatment. If his due date had been a month later, I may not have been able to hold that precious boy in my arms until he was much older. I got to kiss his sweet toes the day he was born.

God has been in the details of our visit here at MD Anderson as well. I have felt His love and kindness shining through the smiles of the staff. Cancer is scary business but we were able to find moments of joy and laughter every day. From realizing we were in an episode of “Mr. Bean (Gary) goes to MD Anderson” to Madison and Gary bursting into laughter when the nurse stepped out to call for Mr. Bueller and no one answered, these lighthearted moments were gifts.

Although we don’t yet have a complete timeline of my treatment plan, we are moving forward. We have learned there are four types of breast cancer. Three of them have hormone receptors and they have targeted therapies that treat them. I have the fourth type, triple negative breast cancer. This is what the MD Anderson website says about triple negative breast cancer: “Since there isn’t an established receptor to target in triple negative breast cancer, this is the most difficult of the three receptor subtypes to treat. Triple negative breast cancer also tends to be more aggressive, so the prognosis for this subtype is often worse than others. Some triple negative breast cancers, however, do respond well to chemotherapy. In some cases, chemotherapy works so well that no cancer is found during surgery. This is called a pathological complete response.”

During the ultrasound they found 5 suspicious lymph nodes under my left arm. They did biopsies of the two “most suspicious”. (Actually they biopsied them both twice because the first results were inconclusive.) The preliminary pathology report showed no cancer in the lymph nodes! The final pathology report concurred, so that is a huge blessing.

My surgeon and my oncologist both agreed that with triple negative breast cancer, even if there is no cancer found in the lymph nodes, they do chemotherapy before surgery so that they can use the tumor (I actually have three tumors clustered together: one large one and two smaller ones) as a marker to gauge the cancer’s response to therapy. In addition to chemotherapy, I will participate in a clinical trial to give me the best chance of having a “pathological complete response” before surgery. We will be back at MD Anderson next week to meet with the oncologist to determine which clinical trial would be a best fit my particular triple negative cancer. My oncologist reassured me his goal was to cure me of this cancer, and that my cancer is curable. 

I feel very hopeful about my future. I still have a big mountain ahead of me to climb. I am taking Mrs. Carol’s advice and every day I am saying to this mountain of cancer “Move out of my life in Jesus name!” and trusting it will be moved! The bigger the mountain, the sweeter the victory, and the more glory to God!